DEAR READER, PLEASE READ: SHALL WE READ FURTHER?

Januar Rianto (Januar) — My name is Januar Rianto, a graphic designer. I run Each Other Company, a graphic design studio. We mainly work for cultural and creative clients, but also commercial clients like hospitality or F&B. Apart from Each Other Company, I also run Further Reading, a publication platform mainly focused on design subjects. Further Reading started two years after we started the studio. We have started the studio in 2015 and Further Reading in 2017. Through Further Reading we do exhibitions, publish printed publications, do curations and programmes both online and offline. We are based in Jakarta, but our contributors are from different places in the world.

Januar — I started Further Reading with our team in the studio. We basically share the same interests. At first, we act like the editor of the project. So, we basically share our interests and our reading references together, then we discuss which one to publish, which one to share. So, from the start the team of Further Reading is pretty much the same as our studio team. We had three people when we started. It was me, one designer, and one intern, and we basically talked during lunch. There is the problem of design education in Indonesia. Because it is not much of a critical discourse within the educational system. It is not much of a discussion going on even within the institutions, within the schools or anything. We think that we have to fill in the gap by providing an alternative, so we decided to start Further Reading.

Actually I have never studied graphic design in Indonesia. I took my diploma in graphic design in Kuala Lumpur and then transferred to graphic design in London. But my designers are mostly from Indonesia, they are quite familiar with the education situation here.

Januar — I think the starting point was when I found the studio in 2015. Before I started Each Other Company I was working in the small graphic design studio where it mostly deals with art, like art catalogues or art exhibition identity. Because it was my first official job when I returned to Indonesia, so at the time I was not really exposed to the industry as a whole. So, for my own studio I would like to explore graphic design as a discipline, graphic design like my time back in the university in Kuala Lumpur and London. The studio started with two main focuses, fifty percent we want to focus on client projects. And because of the size of the studio we have to come up with a side project. So it is to balance out between the commercial and the idealism side of the studio, to see it as an important practice for us to not just do commercial works but also keep exploring, keep developing our criticality, our design thinking. We produce various side projects, and one of them is Further Reading. It is one of the most recognizable projects, so we try to grow it, to make it more serious. Now we treat it as a new entity.

Januar — We were lucky because when we started Further Reading all of us like stories. Basically we have a lot of bookmarks on our web browsers, and we started from there, curated our own references, and discussed which one to publish. The name Further Reading is part of the textual references. It was a quick reference, we want it to be short but also substantial. At first most of our references came from other publications, other books and magazines, or references that are already available on the internet. Because we think that there are a lot of references that are not really well exposed to the readers. I think it is important to bring literature to the surface so people can have access to the reading. That is what we do for the online platform. We slowly do more segments, we do the projects like Bookmark, Bookshelf etc. Then we start to invite our friends to share their own reading references.

Pic.1 — Bookshelf project by Further Reading posted on an instagram. In this image are the books recommended by Alice Rawsthorn including Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez, Radical Help by Hilary Cottam, AK47: The Story of the People’s Gun by Michael Hodges, Irma Boom: The Architecture of the Book by Irma Boom.

In 2018 we came up with our own contents by doing a printed publication called Further Reading Print No.1. The starting point was that during my trip to London last year I rarely saw design books or design magazines from Southeast Asia, so from that trip me and my team thought it would be a good idea to have a space for people from the region, people from Asia to bring out their voices. 

Pic.2 — Further Reading Print No.1, the first printed publication by Further Reading.

Januar — I was more in design and creative directing in the past, and I also did some curations. So, I think what I can do best is to help edit all these texts and then come up with editorial concepts or editorial approaches for the publication. We also  have in our team a writer, so a few of the content in the publication are from our team, some articles and photo essays in the publication.

Januar — Yeah, what we did with the open call is basically to get the writings and the perspectives from people that we have not known yet but we can see they have interesting points of view. Apart from that, we also invited some of our friends that we know their practices reflected the theme of the publication. There are various methods for the content of the publication.

Januar — The interview section in the first issue of our publication came about from the book that I bought when I went to London. The book is Extra-curricular by Jacob Lindgren, published by Onomatopee. It is about design collectives and some sort of design education alternatives. It is a compilation of interviews on and around the topic of self-organised learning, curriculum, experiments and alternatives in graphic design education.

  
Pic. 3-5 — Extra-curricular by Jacob Lindgren published by Onomatopee.

We think that the subject is suitable for our first issue so we basically sent them an email introducing ourselves who we are, what is Further Reading and what we are trying to do with it. We also explained what the theme of the publication is about and then started from there. It started from the email and then we asked if there were available for an interview.

We basically want to use the same question for the interview and try to get the perspectives from Europe, Southeast Asia and the US. And then you can see, maybe, the differences or similarities between practices from different places.

The interviews happened through emails. We asked the questions mainly with email and sometimes it was going back and forth if we needed some clarifications. It was less interactive but still interactive.

Januar — That was our discussions in the first place. Because we started the online first and it was mainly a reposting from other people’s writings, we only curated and republished, and then printed publication came about because a lot of our friends and our readers asked about original contents like some new writings, some new works. So we discussed the idea internally and decided to differentiate the content between the online and the publication. The way we differentiate, I think, was mostly based on the medium we are working on. For the online, it has to be quicker, faster content. What we do online is basically very loose, very casual, we do not have a specific theme. It could be any subject. And for the print, we have more time to select which one is more suitable, we want to focus on one specific theme and really dig deep into the subject. I think this is the main difference, the print may have more in-depth perspectives, in-depth analysis. People could read the print and have different experiences than the online and also different experiences from our other projects like our curations and exhibitions.

Januar — We mainly distribute through art book fairs, it is our main channel. And through art book fairs we get to meet people who actually own a bookshop. It was started from there and then for now we work with a few bookstores and independent bookshops. There are independent bookshops in Indonesia in major cities like Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya. And we also try to distribute in the region, in Singapore through Basheer, also in Shanghai and South Korea. So it is basically through friends. Some bookshops reached out to us too, because they follow us on instagram. They know us from our online platform.

Januar — For independent publishing, actually we had zine festivals in the past, like photocopy zine with very diverse content, mostly on music and art subjects. And there is the Jakarta Art Book Fair which I’m also part of. We want to build the ecosystem, for bolder subjects like design, photography, maybe more writings, more texts. In terms of the scene, we don’t have a lot of bookshops, like design or art related bookshops. But I think there are several shops that sell books online. The scene I think is bigger for the art in general like art exhibition, but for the publishing I think there are more works to be done. It needs more supports, more developed ecosystem. But it is a good starting point that we have something like the Jakarta Art Book Fair. Because there are a lot of independent publications, independent zine makers, so I think they need a platform which can accommodate all that. And for approaching broader audiences, we joined Singapore Art Book Fair, and Shanghai Art Book Fair last year.

Januar — We would like to reach out to broader audiences, maybe international audiences. So we started using English for our Instagram. The print also carries the same purpose, so we continue to use English. But if you noticed, there is one article in the printed publication that is written in Indonesia. We did actually translate the article but we feel that a lot of meaning has been reduced by translating them. So we try to keep the article in its original language and also because our publication is in the form of a magazine I think it still suitable to have different languages in one publication. But we think of refining the translation and maybe update the article with translated pages in the coming updated version.

There is certainly a challenge in translating local content to English. We are close with our contributors in its original language, so we make sure that the content in Indonesia version is already correct for its meaning and we only translate it into English. I think it is important to have local contents in English because it also introduces our content to a broader audience. To use English to communicate our local contents is a tool to introduce our value to the west. It works like a bridge to fill in the gap in the discourse, to keep our locality in the conversation.

Januar — It was mainly an article that talks about modernity, especially in graphic design. 

The author of the article is a curator and a writer. He works a lot in art and cultural projects, so in this article he investigates graphic design modernism through packaging. The discussion is that modernity has never completely evolved, or has never completely fit in into our culture. He called it fifty percent modernity, so it has never fully completed. The reason it has never fully developed in our country is because we have such a diverse culture. In the packaging images you will see like Indonesia language, Chinese scripts, and also some English words. He specifically talked about the images, about these superhero images, how companies in Indonesia use superhero images to sell local contents. So it was mostly like a cross reference. In short, I think it is a proof that modernism has never fully embedded into our society because of our own locality, as it does happen in many southeast asian countries

Januar — Because graphic design is such a facilitating discipline, so we basically, in a way, a communicator for other disciplines. Back in the day, I worked in a design studio that works quite a lot on art. We basically did exhibition identity or art catalogue for them. Graphic design is mainly facilitating art to communicate to the public, so I think because of this means of the discipline that makes most graphic designers interested in exploring the potential of working with other disciplines because graphic design is never really working on itself. 

In a broader sense, graphic design has always existed around other disciplines. Even doing a publication, we are working with a printer, a bookshop, a contributor etc., and contributors are also from different backgrounds, different disciplines, like art, architecture. So I think that is a reason it is, in a way, so flexible.

Januar — The urgency in Indonesia, for me, is mainly to provide the alternative reading references. What we have in design schools right now compared to twenty years ago is still the same, it was mainly graphic design as a commodity, in a commercial aspect. I think it is important to provide some alternatives, so that it is not self-referential. We can still explore the potential of graphic design as a discipline, but it is not only for commercial work. We can also do cultural stuff and things beyond commercial. I’m not sure about urgency in other countries but maybe in Southeast Asia it is still the same.

In Asia, graphic design starts to gain some popularity compared to the west because design has originated from the west and they have been doing it like forever. So, I think particularly in Asia, we still have some rooms, some space to develop the way the discipline could be, or should go to. 

For the recent project we are working on, one is the second printed publication which is due to be available in September. And also we have been working with an exhibition in Guangzhou, the exhibition is focused on graphic design from East Asia, and my work particularly is about common reading within Southeast Asia. What creatives are reading here? We are reading a lot from the west, or we are reading from our local culture. The project investigates the way we read, the way graphic design is read, and also the influences of that. It is an ongoing project and the exhibition is the starting point. Like I said there is a lot of room graphic design can be developed, particularly in Southeast Asia, so it is important to see what we read, what we consume basically, and then what we produce out of it.

I’m not reading much lately, mostly due to crippling tasks we have to do at the studio (works for our clients) as well as editing contents for the upcoming Further Reading Print No.2, which I consider an irony (not being able to read as much, as Further Reading progresses, compared to what we did in the beginning). But some of my recent reads include: Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design Paperback by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, and Design as an Attitude by Alice Rawsthorn.
  
Pic. 12-13 — Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design Paperback by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley.

Pic. 14 — Design as an Attitude by Alice Rawsthorn

Januar — I prefer to keep it small, because then we have better quality discussions and internal value. And for me, we can navigate quickly within a small team. But for the direction of Further Reading as a publishing platform we would like to work together with designers or architects in the future. Maybe come up with a publication about them, develop some projects together apart from making publications. I think it is also important to keep promoting reading. Reading as a habit, especially in the country. It is important for the designer to read, because more substantial ideas come from reading. What we are trying to do in the next step is to familiarize reading through various media. May be not only through online, instagram, printed publications, but also through some activities, exhibitions, and installations. Something that is more familiar to people. Because reading in itself here in our country is somehow perceived as an intellectual thing, so it is not very approachable. 

Maybe in the future we will do some kind of a podcast or merchandise that is related to reading. It is just a way to make it more familiar, or to make it more relevant. I think the importance is the dissemination of the information rather than the format. If we think it irrelevant to publish a printed publication in the future, maybe we can just do like a podcast or exhibition. What we are trying to do through Further Reading is to make sure that the information is well distributed through various exploration of media rather than just fixed into one or two.