So…

I finished them. For what seems like an eternity now, I have been creating guidebooks to every country of the world. At the heart of it all, is the working assumption that where people travel is determined by those who have been before them.

Let me back up a minute. For this project, I was asked to exchange work with someone else and create a thesis project using the other person’s point of view. It was a match made in heaven, as Leslie’s network analysis of online photo-sharing network, Flickr, was a great lens through which to re-examine my own thinking. My investigation began as a desire to characterize the collective conscience of travel.¹

I was compelled to quantify the global scale of tourist movements in a way that would shed light on where the most popular tourist destinations are and why travelers choose to frequent these places. Thanks to generous support from the UN World Tourism Association, I was able to gain access to a database of tourist arrivals by country. I translated their numbers into a series of books that cumulatively represent the global scale of tourist movements in one year. The number of pages within each volume corresponds to the number of documented tourist arrivals in 2005 (100,000 arrivals per page).

The resulting shelf of books is a snapshot of one year’s worth of information. I have been thinking of them both as guidebooks and as massing studies that form a physical world view². The books can be arranged and filtered in various ways³ as a means of comparing and contrasting the tourist potential (or lack thereof) of various places.

I won’t lie, it was a pretty daunting self-prescribed assignment, but I really enjoyed the process. With my crazy Excel sheet acting as a checklist, I chipped away at the countries over the course of our six-week Wintersession. There were skeptics at times (myself included), but I’m quite proud of the final result, as it gives a context to the rest of my thesis. It was important for me to understand for myself the scale and breadth of what I’m dealing with. Global tourism is peppered with all kinds of statistics, lists and quantifications. As the fastest growing industry in the world and the primary source of income for many developing nations, its effects and motivations are far-reaching. Within all this, I’m interested in unpacking the human drive to go somewhere, and to understand the patterns and cycles that occur within the context of tourism.

Guidebooks carry a strange authority in dictating where travelers go. In my own travels I often rely on a guidebook as a means of navigation, to get my bearings in unfamiliar places. But it’s also not uncommon for travelers to chart their every move by the book. Rarely do we question who is writing and editing and whether or not we trust their opinion. In a recent interview series I did with guidebook writers, I asked these questions. The answers I found were surprising. I’ll go into more detail on that in another post. But suffice it to say that within this I saw a connection between my collection of books and a shelf like this:

Due to the nature of the industry, guidebooks thicknesses are seemingly proportionate to the popularity of places. More visitors means more guidebooks sold, which in turn equals greater coverage by writers and editors of the most desirable destinations. It’s all cyclical, like so many things in tourism.

My first prototype was a stab at the most widely visited country in the world, France. Seventy-five million, fifteen thousand people visited in 2003. I played with the idea of adding postcards of the most popular tourist attractions within the country. These were later taken out of the final versions, as they seemed more like a separate idea.

I sketched out what a shelf of volumes of the entire world might look like and how the scale of the pages would work.

I then went into bookmaking mode.

You can view the fruits of my labor here. I’m going to be using these books to generate more projects. An installation of sorts? Posters? Movie?

1. Or rather, a desire to understand the similarities in behavior amongst leisure travelers. For example, posing in front of famous places is often done with an air of irony in this day and age, but one is made more comfortable knowing that everyone else around is doing it as well. [↩]
2. And it’s to scale! [↩]
3. For example, you could rearrange them by size or by continent, for starters. If you really want to get into it, they can be alphabetized. War-torn areas can be compared. Or you could separate out the islands for fun. You know, just in case you are looking for another rainy day activity. [↩]

There has been a lot of emphasis placed on ‘research’ in the weeks since school began. At the larger level, we’re being asked to respond to the question of how we, as graphic designers, employ research in our work. Specifically, for those of us working toward a design thesis, how does research inform the cohesion of both our formal work, and the written component of it? How do we approach our respective topics in a way that contributes to design discourse, but also furthers the dialogue in our subject area?

Because graphic designers use content from disciplines outside of design,¹ it’s crucial that we have at least a working understanding of the terms and conditions of our subject matter. But it’s one thing to troll Wikipedia for subject articles, or to check out a few books from the library as inspiration. It’s another thing completely to approach your subject with the rigor worthy of a PhD dissertation, to analyze and develop new possibilities or interpretations, and to immerse yourself so deeply in your subject that you could sit across the table from an expert in your field and have a mutually beneficial discussion.

These are things that have been on my mind of late. My attendance this summer at the Things that Move: The Material Worlds of Tourism and Travel Conference in the UK forced me to confront the subject of what I have to contribute to the field of tourism studies. It was a question that was (indirectly) asked of me frequently during my stay there. Surrounded by 150 ‘researchers’ from around the world, (most with PhDs, others working toward them), who were looking at the ’stuff’ of tourism in a myriad of different ways, I found myself desiring to legitimize my presence there, to respond to people’s innocent inquiries about why I was there with an answer that would make sense to them.² Oddly enough, there were less people addressing the the physical relics of tourism from a formal-historical³ perspective than I had anticipated. The conference was billed as multi-disciplinary, but the bulk of the attendees were from the social sciences. Most were not visual people, and yet they were dealing with visual things. From my perspective this is a fantastic opportunity to explore things from the other direction, to analyze the visual toward understanding the cultural and historical and to bring that to a future conference.⁴

One of the first things we were reminded of on the first day of class was that in the end, we are graphic designers, not anthropologists, sociologists, etc.. Be that as it may, I still value the ability to be able to be fluent with my content. One of my goals for the year is that when this is all said and done, I want to be able to talk shop with the cultural anthropologists, the sociologists, the urban planners and historians who are working with this topic.⁵

But back to the subject of research..

1. Within my graduating class alone, the subjects we’re tackling include anthropology, sociology, politics, linguistics, economics.. to name a few. [↩]
2. Let’s face it, Graphic Designer is a misunderstood title. To the outside world, its associated meanings equate to Photoshop Wizard, Web Designer, Production Assistant, or Hey, Can You Draw Me a Logo? It Won’t Take You Long and It Will Be Great For Your Portfolio. Given the overwhelming excess of ‘Graphics Design’ out there, it’s no surprise this misconception is so prevalent. Or that my connection with the visual aspects of tourism was not immediately apparent to those around me. [↩]
3. The term art-historical gets used a lot. I think there’s a lot of space out there for the design-historical as well. Formal-historical is a term I made up just now to try and encompass all of the disciplines that examine the formal and structural qualities of objects, with a critical eye for things such as provenance and historical context, in order to hypothesize about culture and history. [↩]
4. This is not to say that nobody is emphasizing the visual. It would be trite of me to continue without mentioning the work of critic Lucy Lippard and David Crouch and Nina Lübren. Or the recent exhibition at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. But there is a lot of room for exploration from this end. [↩]
5. Keeping in mind, of course, that the danger in existing in the middle ground is the potential for pseudo scientific work indicative of a lack of rigor in dealing with complex content. My colleague Fish could give you an earful about why this is not the way to design. [↩]

The coast was packed. Browned bodies lined the shores of the Mediterranean like seals. I arrived in Nice on a Saturday morning, and (not surprisingly at this point) got lost while trying to find my hostel. I made the mistake of trusting Lonely Planet’s writers in their ‘top pick’ hostel. Not that the service was bad. In fact, it was excellent, and the amenities were good too (free internet access, big kitchen blasting Bryan Adams ballads..). They had to do something to compensate for the fact that they were located two miles north of town atop a frustratingly steep hill. I spent more time waiting for buses than I did seeing things. And the whole place was like a transplanted frat party. I’m too old for this shit.

I’ve noticed that the French way of doing things often involves a complete disregard for efficiency or common sense. For example, the ticket kiosks at the Gare Nice Ville were an exercise in absolute futility. They neither accepted bills or credit cards without a smart chip, rendering them almost useless (and yes, causing me to miss yet another train). That aside, Nice was a decent hub. Took the train out to Antibes, Cannes, and Juan les Pins. Got some sun. The Mediterranean is like a giant bathtub. So calm and nice. Due to another series of blunders, I ended up in St. Raphael, waiting for a later train to Marseille. It was hot, so I did what had to be done. The threat of terrorism has rendered many of the manual consigné machines useless, and there was no official baggage check at the train station. After paying a random employee at the bus station to watch my bag for three hours (because this is a much safer alternative..), I changed into my bathing suit in one of those coin-op bathrooms and headed for the beach. Passed the restaurant where I spent my 21st birthday. It seemed that all of France had gone on holiday there. It was impossible to find a spot on the beach.

Had been trying desperately to get into my book The Tourist by Dean MacCannell, but finding it really difficult to focus on tourism theory while on the go. My eyes would wander down the page while my brain was somewhere else completely. Eventually, I fell asleep in the sun and missed the train to Marseille, meaning that I had to take yet another night train to Carcassonne. Balls. In all, the Cote d’Azur was less relaxing than I had hoped for, but I did come away with a good tan.

Ran through the streets of Venice, dodging tourists to catch my train to Firenze. Got lost, again, trying to find the hostel. Italy is insanely expensive compared to the way I remembered it. Photographed tourists at the Duomo, and had a good stroll around the city. Met the most wonderful little old Italian man, Giorgio, who gave me a personal tour of the city.

I did not know that Michelangelo’s David used to be outside, before they moved it into the Galleria. In the space where it used to sit there is a replica. This is fascinating to me, as tourists were still swarming the replica to pose for pictures, despite its inauthenticity. Made me think of the fact that there are about five copies of Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, and it is dubious if the original still even exists. But despite our desire to see the ‘real thing,’ in Firenze it was OK to make do with a copy.

Arrived in Venice an hour later than I anticipated. It was already dark, and I got totally lost. Which is what they say happens to everybody. But given this, the locals still feel no need to put in much signage, I think the idea being that if you can’t get around, you might just go home (which is quite possibly what they really want). In fact, there were very few locals to be found (they all skipped town to avoid the mess; can’t blame them). Finally found the hostel after much circumnavigation. The next day I hit up Piazza Sant Marco and the Rialto. Was blown away by the number of tourists that PAID to feed the pigeons. And the pigeons were crawling all over them. It was insanely disgusting and the whole place smelled like bird shit. I guess it’s all part of the ‘authentic’ experience of being in Venice. At one point, someone blew a bird whistle and all the pigeons flew up at once, circled around and landed again to continue doing their pigeon thing. It was terrifying, as they all flew right at you. Took several shots of people in front of the Basilica, then remembered that the Biennale was going. Walked down the waterfront to the Giardini and strolled around the show for hours. I was so blown away by Sophie Calle’s entry, ‘Take Care of Yourself.’ It was absolutely stunning in its depth and execution, and it moved me in a way that a project has not in some time. I ended up spending one and a half hours in the French Pavilion, meandering my way through her work. Amazing that the Biennale was going on, and the majority of the tourists in Venice were probably none the wiser.

All in all, a great experience. No visible evidence that it is sinking.

Flew to Bilbao on the morning of the 24th, after going back to London for the evening. Got to spend some time with Jana, after not having seen her much the week before. She had just returned from a week long sojourn to Ibiza. Unfortunately, her airline had lost her luggage for a second time. Strange how much we are both obligated and obliged to an airline to deliver us and our valuables safely. Especially when we give them so much money. What a weird industry. There was a woman at the conference who gave a paper on the shifting designs of airline flight attendant uniforms throughout the 20th century. Fascinating stuff, that apparel design so directly influenced the brand image of these airlines.

Anyway, back to Bilbao. Walked around for a good part of the morning, wandering the streets. Had an interesting experience at the post office trying to figure out if postcard stamps cost the same amount throughout Europe. Apparently my Spanish is that bad. The museum was much more impressive than I had imagined. It really was quite beautiful, regardless of what I think of Frank Gehry. I found the interior hall where Richard Serra’s work is displayed to be a much more appropriate venue than the current MOMA exhibition. What I found to be lacking was actually the collection. Even though the building takes up a lot of real estate, there did not seem to be that much work up. And the stuff that was up was not very interesting to. Oh well.

Amazing to think that this shiny icon became the driving force behind a total overhaul of this Spanish city. It’s on all the postcards. In some ways, it has come to symbolize the city altogether. Took lots of photos and gave out a handful of postcards. Ended up having to stay in Bilbao for five hours longer than I expected, so I was even able to see the building at sunset, which was a totally different experience. Jeff Koons’ ‘Puppy’ was also a sight to behold. I guess I’m just as guilty as any other tourist for being wowed by finally getting to see the real deal.

Unfortunately, all my hard work in Bilbao was undone when I got to Madrid..

Went north to Leeds on the 19th of July for the Things that Move conference. The conference was quite good. A lot of ideas were thrown around about tourism that I have not fully processed. Need to go through my notebook again to take it all in. The experience was much like being in summer camp, where there were academic activities set up for us during the day, and then social stuff set up during the rest of the time to help break the ice between 140 individuals who don’t know one another very well. By the end of the five days, I felt a comraderie with a slew of people who I had never met prior to this event.

Among the ideas I was particularly fascinated by: there was a lot of talk of binary relationships between themes and ideas. For example, in tourism study there is much talk about the ‘authentic’ and the tourist’s quest for the real experience. However, authenticity cannot exist without kitsch, and is even solidified by the presence of the other. Self:other is another one of these ideas (the way the tourist thinks about him/her self in relationship to the local). Amazing to what degree semiotics comes to play in examining tourism. So many parallels to the way that we think about Graphic Design. And yet I still had a hard time justifying to people why specifically I was at this conference. I need to find better ways of explaining what it is that I do, as nobody seems to get it. Or at least they don’t immediately make the leap from Graphic Designer as Photoshop Wizard to Graphic Designer as both a creator and analyst of visual culture. I really wish now that I had submitted a paper. Would have been fascinating to explore some form of artifact through typography or to have traced the genesis of a particular type of ephemera. Alas, next time.. On the whole though, the conference was very relaxed, which put me at ease. I think I had expected to feel inferior or completely removed from the goings on, but people were incredibly warm and open to talking about their research and ideas. It was a very generous atmosphere.

They took us on a field trip to Saltaire, a UNESCO heritage site. It’s a planned community from the late 18th century that was built around a textiles mill and church. Lots of great handpainted signage. Crazy to see the way that the community has evolved around this built infrastructure. The streets are now lined with chic boutiques and shops that have inhabited the old stone buildings. Residences have pipes coming out of their walls to deal with sewage and drainage, things that did not exist at the time they were originally built.

Leeds itself is known for its beautiful arcades. Unfortunately I did not get to stroll around as much as I thought I would, but I managed to see a few all the same. There was an unexpected lack of access to internet, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to do all the work and updates I had intended to at night. Instead, I went out to the pubs and got to know my colleagues at the conference. That’s worth a lot too.

British food started to take its toll on me. I love fried foods as much as the next person, but damn. The only vegetables we really ate were bits of lettuce intended as garnish around the fried fish sticks, french fried potatoes, chicken wings, cornish pasties.

On the upside, those that I gave postcards and business cards to were really excited about the project. I have a feeling that at least some of them will participate, which makes me happy. More on the conference to come, as soon as I can go over my notes and digest everything..

I flew into London on July 12th. As usual, I almost missed my flight. I think I’m turning into my parents. Yikes.

Spent my first night in a free hotel room (courtesy of British Airways), but stayed up much later than I should have cutting out all my postcards. During the day I chilled out and got my bearings with Leslie and Hoon. We went up to Hampstead Heath and to an exhibit at the Camden Arts Centre. So many museums, so little time. If you happen to be in London, you really should check out the Antony Gormley exhibit at the Southbank Center. It is truly amazing. Hoon and I also went to see Alice Twemlow and Jonathan Barnbrook speak about his work at the Design Museum. I actually was not familiar with any of his work outside of his typefaces. It seems like he has been grappling with many of the issues that Katherine and I have been dealing with in our Manifesto¹. And as of yet he has not come up with a definitive answer. Neither have we. But I think we are on the right track.

Several hours and several beers later, I was invited to visit his studio the next day. I love seeing how designers work and organize their space. I think I have both Alice Twemlow and James Goggin to thank for this obsession. One thing I have definitely noticed about Graphic Designers is that we are all natural collectors. This observation makes me feel much better about my own practices.²

Once I had adjusted to the time difference and gotten my bearings, I started hitting up the major tourist destinations in London. The best place to research what these are? Cheesy souvenir vendors.³ I have become fascinated with the ways in which the creators of souvenirs (more on this to come..) represent the idea of a place. Specifically, the way that many magnets, postcards, keychains, tote bags, t-shirts, mugs, spoons and ball caps often condense the major icons of any destination into one space, as if making it easier to consume all at once.

Places I went? The London Eye, Big Ben, the Tower of London (and its corresponding bridge), Buckingham Palace, a red telephone booth, the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern. The one big thing I noticed? There are very few American tourists here right now. And justifiably so. The exchange rate in the UK is out of hand. So the only Americans around are either the foolish ones,⁴ or the really affluent ones who don’t care that their pocket books are being emptied at twice the rate they would be at home.⁵ It took me a while to work up the courage to approach strangers and ask them to participate in my projects. Oddly enough, it was the Americans that usually turned me away before I could finish my sentence. Maybe we’re all sort of sensitive about the fact that nobody on the world stage likes us very much right now.

Other than that, people were fairly receptive. I have no idea if any of my postcards are rolling in yet, but I really hope that people are doing it. Nobody really seemed to mind having their picture taken either. Especially since it was a great opportunity for them to have me take a picture of them on their camera in return. I became like a bit of a hawk, staking out a prime spot on the Thames and waiting for them to come to me. I realized later that this was not the best approach, as it made me feel uncomfortable to be preying on them in that way. Also, it made for a rather static collection of photos. Wandering up and down the river produced better results.

London was a fabulous place. Thanks to Jana and Gran, I had a comfortable place to return to every night. And thanks to James and Alice, I was able to meet up with a few designers who are practising in the city. It is so refreshing to meet people who genuinely want to help you in your own field. In architecture, this was rare.⁶

1. How can Graphic Design directly influence positive social change? Katherine and I embarked on a six week study of how various designers have approached the subject. We researched. We gathered. We wrote. It’s an on-going dilemma, and one which Katherine is bravely tackling as part of her thesis investigation [↩]
2. Among the things I started collecting this summer: photos of ice cream trucks, instances of Windsor (the typeface). London was a particularly good place to find these things. Who knew that so many Piccadilly Whip trucks could be in business simultaneously? [↩]
3. Who, consequently, don´t like it when you photograph their wares, as they wouldn’t want you to be able to duplicate their one-of-a-kind goods and set up shop next door, of course [↩]
4. Ahem.. [↩]
5. And this is precisely why Marks & Spencer became my favorite eating establishment in London. Nothing beats a Ploughmans sandwich, black pepper crisps and tap water by the Thames. [↩]
6. Another side note: Zaha Hadid also has a show up at the Design Museum. Meh. [↩]

So, I’ve started this blog to keep track of my comings and goings, musings and epiphanies as I embark on my third year toward an MFA in Graphic Design at RISD. This summer I am traveling through Europe in a quest to make some progress toward my thesis on tourism. I am currently in Leeds, UK attending the Things That Move: The Material World of Tourism and Travel to mingle with international researchers from all disciplines who are investigating the ’stuff’ of tourism. Following the conference, I will be embarking on a one-month trek through Western Europe, in ethnographic pursuit of the contemporary tourist.