The Empty Water

Ed Ruscha, Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, 1968

The pagination of a book should be like a film. There will be loud and energetic scenes, quiet moments, long shots and close-ups, and titles and credits. If you haven't watched Chris Marker's La Jetee, watch it now. It is the best example of pagination and pacing with still images. 

Ed Ruscha's Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass is another wonderful example. The images of swimming pools without people, expanses of blue, and blank white pages talk about the sense of emptiness and absence in a world of luxury and leisure. The broken glass image adds a hint of danger. Ruscha made this book in 1968, a year before the Manson murders. In Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion captured the atmosphere of emptiness and looming danger in the late 1960s: 

The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing persons reports, then moved on themselves.

And then there is the simple beauty of the book. The turquoise color and minimal typography in Stymie are aesthetically incredible. Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass is the best argument that the pages do not have nothing on them, that negative space is bank. There's a whole lot of emptiness there.

images via Elisabeth Tonnard

Sean Adams

Sean Adams is the Dean of Visual Art and Communication at ArtCenter, founder of Burning Settlers Cabin studio, and on-screen author for LinkedIn Learning/Lynda.com He is the only two term AIGA national president in AIGA’s 100 year history. In 2014, Adams was awarded the AIGA Medal, the highest honor in the profession. He is an AIGA Fellow, and Aspen Design Fellow. He has been recognized by every major competition and publication including; How, Print, Step, Communication Arts, Graphis, AIGA, The Type Directors Club, The British Art Director’s Club, and the Art Director’s Club. Adams has been exhibited often, including a solo exhibition at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Adams is an author of multiple magazine columns, and several best-selling books. He has been cited as one of the forty most important people shaping design internationally, and one of the top ten influential designers in the United States. Previously, Adams was a founding partner at AdamsMorioka, whose clients included The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Disney, Mohawk Fine Papers, The Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Richard Meier & Partners, Sundance, and the University of Southern California.

www.burningsettlerscabin.com
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