A note on Desktop, issue #294

Issue #294, In the Neighbourhood, focuses on the Asia Pacific community, the definition of community, and what purpose a community might serve. Earlier this year, Desktop editor Heath Killen contacted me wanting to run a feature-length interview, and have me design the cover for the June issue using lasercutting as the embellishment. Of course I needed to have the inside spread as well to execute my offering! Hard to imagine I will ever again get access to such prime real estate, and how Killen persuaded everyone to move further in, I have no idea, other than Killen has real gumption and a generosity of spirit.

Typeset in two of my favourites — Dala Floda and Pitch — with the third in FF ThreeSix which I have only just begun to explore, the cut-out shapes are a composition of diacritical marks used to alter the sound of speech when added to a vowel or consonant. Through these marks of sound, are glimpses of sound: a reduced detail from Sound Tracks, a seven metre long digital-analogue drawing of the sound of the vowels (an installation at The Dowse), overlaid with the blood red, brush-lettered O from the title of Bruce Connew’s Muttonbirds — part of a story, an artist book of photographs and oral history text with Dean Tiemi Te Au.

Catherine Griffiths / June 2013

Along with the interview, #294 includes guest Lucy Feagins (The Design Files); The Value Exchange, by Stuart Buchanan; What is your definition of the 21st century? with Robyn McDonald, Seb Chan, Aaron Moodie, Sali Sasaki, Tina Roth Eisenberg and Jess Scully; The Shape of Libraries to Come, by Christian Duell; Trade Routes with words and work by so+ba (Japan), Na Kim (Korea), Guang Yu (China), Jackkrit Anantakul (Thailand), Wang Zhi Hong (Taiwan); Dual Citizenship, with three Australian studios, Atia Cader (Paper Stone Scissors), Martin Maher (Zebra) and Brett Phillips (3 Deep); projects — Gap Filler (Christchurch), and Candy Chang’s I Wish This was ... ; Broached East, an interview with Lou Weiss (Broached Commissions); and a small entry remembering the late Joseph Churchward.