Make mistakes...
Prior to now, whenever I incorporated type into my pieces it wasn't done with a great deal of attention or intention. I cut whatever letter I needed from whatever magazine was closest to me. It gave my work a random, ransom note quality. Which seems on brand for me. Haphazardly put together. One premeditated moment away from criminality, and yet, somehow, endearing.
But recently, I've been making work that's more purposefully typographic. An endeavor that comes with a list of challenges I'm still trying to sort through. Trying to write about your process while you're still discovering it is as cumbersome as it is helpful. As soon as you look up from typing your notes you find that your methods have changed. All your proven techniques have proven themselves to be inadequate. What worked yesterday doesn't work as well anymore. What seemed like a solution doesn't solve what it did before. All your darlings torn apart and crumpled in the corner.
The mother of an astute philosophical thinker once described life as "a box of chocolates". She's right, or course, as most mothers are. When you work on paper, you never know what you're going to get.
Grayson Perry says that your mistakes are your style. Given the amount of mistakes I'm guilty of, I hope it's true.
Art. Like writing. Like marriages. Like first dates and second chances. Some things don't go according to plan. Because almost nothing does. Because almost nothing ever will. Sometimes things go sideways. Sometimes things end badly. C’est la vie.
But sometimes the parts where it collapses are the places with the most opportunity. Sometimes the parts where the words went wrong and the lines are wonky, are the parts where it gets interesting. The parts where you had to let go of everything you thought you were making. Turn out to be the best parts of the whole goddamn thing.