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Scrapbook Future

the scrap part

The scrapbook has a long heritage including exemplars such as the calligraphic album of early Islam, the commonplacing book of excerpts of reading and the mounted formats of early photography. A new exemplar is now apparent with the advent of a decoupage technique, intermingling reminiscence items, manuscript and decorative cutouts. This new genre of scrapbook is supported by a well developed commercial infrastructure complete with industrial products, extensive publications and extensive retailing and training facilities and communities of dedicated practitioners.

This current scrapbook movement is distinct from other historical exemplars for a peculiar reason. It seems to be a type of e-book decoupled from display devices. Or, to put it another way, the scrapbookers are conditioned to act as bionic output devices. The evidence is in the exemplars provided in instructional and magazine publications. (scrapbook.com)

(1) the “book” aspect is minimized into simplex (one sided) pages. (The simplex page is a feature of both desktop printers and the screen reading format.) These simplex pages stand alone as the design unit, page after page, with no condescending to a greater, volumetric story. It is as if the page is the object, while the accumulation of a designer “collection” of these units is only an added benefit.

(2) the ingredients of page assembly are imposed by arrays of packaged motifs. This clip art is almost infinite and almost without variety. Formulas for arrangements and tilting of images and engrossed lettering encourage mimicry rather than creativity. Organization is the keyword and this theme is initiated by the precise packaging, strictly ordered display arrays and hygiene of the retail facilities. The incentive is toward management of memories and their distillation into flat panels.

(3) an opportunity to develop and enjoy manual craft skills is forestalled by the hard edge, device imposed stamping, cutting, and secure adhering of paper elements. Ingenious cutters and die presses are provided to assure accuracy of compound and shaped cutouts. This scrapbooking is far from origami or the finesse of Chinese torn paper albums. The important craft skill of neatness is encouraged, but that skill is not then conveyed to any larger creative purpose.

(4) the current scrapbook movement is not a post digital achievement in the future of the paper book. It is a paper format evocation of computer output. The navigational interface, the application tool box, a scanner idiom of image production and other computer processing metaphors dominate. The new age scrapbook is a paper production for those who will not threshold from an on-line reading mode.

So what can be done to enrich or even redirect this scrapbook movement? Aside from response to the issues already mentioned, there is another important initiative needed. This is the deliberate utilization of the infrastructure of the scrapbook industry to achieve unintended, creative results and unexpected scrapbook maker insights and satisfactions. This can be achieved many ways, but one way is to redirect the scrapbook movement toward visionary paper format expression beyond the conventions of computer output. In other words, a redirection toward the future of the legacy of the scrapbook.

the book part

The charm of the scrapbook is in the book part, not the scrap part. It is the enchantment that life is a story; a thriller, a romance and a pulp Noir. Particularly it is in the attraction that each individual and each family authors an irresitible novel that can be read over and over. This book part needs greater visualization and more deliberate realization if the current wave of scrapbooking is to become adventure rather than simple participation in a hobby commerce.

How can this be accomplished? By using the potencies of the book to tell and retell drama of individual histories. The book is an excellent explainer of mortality. While it follows a fixed collation as a metaphor for the arrow of time it also transcends time. Sure, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, but it also has the capacity to be re-read endlessly and each time with a spontaneously, ever changing meaning.

The book attribute can also resolve the embarrassment of hand writing, not only the embarrassment of unpracticed and unattractive script, but also the great time and anguish disparity between writing and reading. Books both deliver and validate the story. Here the return of labored script engrossing, so despised by calligraphers, provides an interesting opportunity. This is the opportunity to twist and coerce printer captions into simple, clean narrative service as well as an opportunity to learn hand writing, for the first time, as an adult.

to be continued