Making Our Misfits Publication

As we planned our inaugural session of the Cross-Reference Coalition, we sought to choose a theme that acknowledged the political turmoil and trauma of the era while also offering space for critique, catharsis, and re-creation. “Misfits” allowed us to lament the marginalization, criminalization, and erasure of people and ideas that embody threatening forms of difference; then celebrate and reclaim the aberrant and ornery.

Our end-of-class publication was meant to document our experiences, to share them with a public beyond the 19 members of our group, and to see what new insights emerge when we reflect collectively and prismatically — through our different life experiences and professional expertise — on the productive juxtapositions of different manifestations of misfittery. We initially assumed that our participants would be busy with work and consumed by the chaos of the world, so we had modest ambitions for our little book. Each participant would contribute a few pages, and those offerings — essays, collages, recipes, scores, and so forth — would add up to a delightful pastiche of polyphonous parts. Our spectacular designer, Elaine Lopez, who also generously joined us each week as a class participant, would devise a graphic language that highlighted the mutualism amidst that misfittery, then we’d send a massive InDesign file off to have it digitally printed.

Yet The Misfits, in keeping with the course theme, defied our expectations. They wanted more: more engagement, more hands-on making, more productive messiness. More opportunities to manifest misfitterery in the book’s content, shape, visual identity, materiality, genre, modes of distribution, and overall ethos. So, our process became a lot more ambitious, unpredictable, and, occasionally, frustratingly deviant 🙂

We drew inspiration from precedent publications we encountered at the ABC No Rio Zine Library, Printed Matter, and the Cybernetics Library, where Gavin Marcus, Craig Mathis, Kristen Mueller, David Isaac Hecht, and Chaski Knowles showcased some of their weirdest collection items. Elaine shared examples from her own library, too. We settled on some basic parameters, submitted proposals for our individual contributions, then worked inductively from those collected themes to design a bibliographic container — both metaphorical and literal — that could contain them all while celebrating their mismatch.

Shannon offered substantial feedback on each proposal. Everyone ruminated on their ideas over the holidays, then Shannon and Elaine met individually with each contributor to discuss productive (mis-)connections between content and form. A small group of Misfits volunteered to constitute a peer-review group. Drawing inspiration from various experimental and ethical peer-review precedents and ongoing experiments, they worked with Shannon to design a review processes that would be constructive, collaborative, motivating, and, ideally, fun. David hosted our first community review workshop — where we explored contributors’ big concepts and macro-scale plans — at Prime Produce,. Temperatures were in the single digits that day, yet most folks trekked over to Hells Kitchen, and others joined online. Inspired by our lesson on containers, David had already determined that his contribution to the book would be its bespoke box; thus, it seemed fitting that his own physical space provided a hospitable container for our collaboration.

After a second round of one-on-one virtual consultations, we met for a second round of community peer review — this time, addressing contributors’ near-final drafts. Amanda and sam hosted us at NYU’s  Bobst Library, where sam welcomed us into the room with a chillwave soundtrack and delightful videos of panda cubs: a perfect vibe to start the day. By this point in the process, each contributor had received focused feedback from at least six other people, and many folks had begun working with Elaine to develop plans for bespoke bibliographic elements: maps, zines, fold-outs, and other ephemera we’d insert into the book. We created a Style & Formatting Guide.

Folks submitted final drafts to Shannon, who guided each contributor through two to four rounds of revision. Edited drafts then went to Becca Quon and Rachel Meade Smith for copyediting, after which the whole package passed to Elaine for design. Elaine’s involvement throughout the entire course granted her insight into the project, its ethos, and individual contributors’ commitments — which allowed her to develop graphic treatments that manifest “misfit” while still doing justice to the tremendous care invested in each work.

While Shannon, Becca, and Rachel led the entire group through proofing, the group met — on one of the hottest days of the year to that point (97°!) —  for a production workshop at Parsons’ Design Lab, where Elaine and Joe Hirsch generously shared their equipment and resources. We learned about riso-printing, then printed and folded several contributors’ ephemera: Melissa’s zine, Sam’s game boards, Nicole’s flaps and fold-outs.

At the time of this writing, Elaine is diligently incorporating a couple hundred proof revisions. She’ll then send the book off for printing (we’re aiming to work with a printer that embodies our values — as we did for a previous collaborative project). When we have the books in-hand next month, we’ll meet again to print and construct Amanda’s thaumatropes, tuck and tape all those inserts into their proper spots within the book, ornament David’s boxes, and fold our bound book and all its misfit parts into those containers. We’ll then plan an appropriately oddball launch party, freely distribute 300 print copies, and make a pdf of the book — along with digital documentation of its material misfittery — available online.