Berkeley, sun, and progress

I went here last week:

Where it was sunny and warm, and there was neither ice nor snow. For the Codex Bookfair and Symposium, a biennial event in Berkeley, CA, featuring the finest in publication materials. I was mostly bowled over by the fact I didn’t have to wear a coat, and I could run without a hat. I saw many beautiful books and talked to many lovely people but, as I tend to do, took no documenting photographs of the experience, except for this one of the trees. What kind of trees are they? Anyone know?

I made progress before I left on this:

Which is going well, and I now have all of the text set, except for some bits I think I’ll re-set. There are parts that look fine in print, but the breaks don’t make sense in animated form. Or the font is wrong, or that e is upside down and I didn’t catch it until it was too late. There’s a few more blocks I want to carve, and a few more colors I want to try. But most of it is in good shape at this point.

I am worried about the pacing/readability issue, but I’ve found a very honest person who I’m sure will give me very honest feedback as far as that goes. The problem is, I read very quickly, and I also already know what the text says, so when I’m scanning these images in and arrange them in a sequence I think the pacing is a bit too quick in many cases for someone Other Than Myself to get it all.

After seeing much work at Codex I thought more about having a boxed edition of prints, a small edition, with a copy of the animation inside, so you can read it either way, digitally or physically. I also think now that certain parts of the text would make nice poster-size editions, and that this block should be used in some other form.

I also have finally started setting up a shop, which you can see here, so as to make available all past printed projects for sale at reasonable prices. I am generally much better at making work than at selling work, or selling my work, though otherwise perfectly capable of running other people’s businesses. I think I should maybe work on that, in the interest of income diversification.