Production Narrative

by J. Drucker

This "book" was produced in a dark period, when I was working for the East Bay Regional Park District at the exhibition design facility in Alameda. A good job, with nice people, but the hours were long and I felt the difficulty of the way this cut into time for making books or writing. So this project was conceived as a way to counter the desperate sense I had that I wasn't making anything at all. The drawings could be done in a day and so I could work on them in the morning, even with my boss picking me up at 6:30 am. The captions were produced on one of Tamia Marg's dad's typewriters. In those days, access to an IBM selectric was the closest I could get to typesetting. And I appreciated it. The ironies in the image and text relations echo the alienation I felt at that point. I was so unsure about where I was, what I was doing. I'd been in Europe for two years, come back by way of Phila., and then returned to California to live in the warehouse with Tamia, Julie, and Diane. Making a living turned out to be much harder than it had been when I'd left. And in general, the transition from the travel mode, with all its independence and lack of real responsibility (albeit, also, poverty) took a toll.

Critical Analysis

by J. Drucker

Design Features

turnings: The cards were intended to be able to be combined into a quasi-narrative, but that never quite worked.

other features: This project never quite had a formalized presentation -- no box, container, or any other wrapping, just plastic bags and rubber bands, which gives some indication of my own attitude towards it.

Critical Discussion

The best thing about this work is its tone. I'm still fond of the irony and the just plain weirdness of it. Someone once suggested it would make a good cartoon panel for a weekly paper -- just one panel at a time, for the sake of the strangeness. Maybe so.

Critical Analysis

by A. Pratt

Design Features

typographic: Printed entirely with a single monospace font in all caps.

imagery: Images are all line art - usually ironic depictions of ordinary objects and occurences.

graphical: Cards are all laid out in the same format with image on top and a single line of text below.

It Happens Pretty Fast

Agents

Johanna Drucker

type: initiating

role:
author
printer
designer

nationality:
born: United States
active: United States
citizenship: United States

dates:
birth: 1952-05-30

Publication Information

edition type: editioned

publisher: self-published

place: Oakland, California

dates:
publication: 1982-00-00

edition size: Small. Very small. Maybe ten copies?

note: Produced in a very small number of sets. [J. Drucker]

Measurements

horizontal: 2.9 inches closed

vertical: 2.7 inches closed

Production Information

production means:
offset (local)
xerographic (local)

binding: other unbound

substrate:
bookBlock: paper

media:
ink (local)

Appearance

general description: Each card was made with ivory colored paper. On the front of the card there is an image with one line of type underneath it; the back of each card is blank. There are 64 cards total, and there does not appear to be any particular order to them.

format: cards (local)

cover: none

color: no

Content

pagination: unpaginated 64 cards

numbered?: unnumbered

signed?: unsigned

Colophon

none