Special Issue 17 Editorial

[WIP]

In a nutshell

The Editors team for this special issue was Alex and Gersande. In order to help the small groups (teams 1, 2 and 3) connect their ideas in a joint concept as well as exchange feedback and make editorial decisions, Alex and Gersande facilitated a process with several steps. In a nutshell, we started with listening to all of the teams' ideas, summarised them and looked for the common ground. After that, we facilitated a meeting with the group representatives. Once we agreed on a joint narrative and angle, the groups had their time to re-assess their concepts and align them with the overall Special Issue's needs. The editors also worked on the texts, parts of the publication by writing, editing, copy-editing and proofing. They created the introduction for the Special Issue.

Context

-how did we support the group to decide on the final concept and what elements to keep, what darlings to kill?
-to add here: editorial prep, editorial meeting, editorial summaries, letter to ourselves

Introduction letter

[step 1: form and structure] Alex and Gersande agreed on some structural elements on the letter: to be in the form of a letter that addresses the reader as a Player. This decision was inspired by the "letter to ourselves" Gersande wrote earlier. We also wanted to address our readers directly, gently and speak to them from the perspective of the box. Since part of the overall concept was to make the box a precious object, giving it a soul was also part of that intent. The structure was to be: a paragraph about the context (productive play and productive environment), another one about the box and one about the content (that gives some hints what to do with it). We also made a prototype how what it would look like.

[step 2: first draft] Having all of this in mind, Gersande wrote the first draft.

[step 3: comments by Lidia, Carmen & Mitsa] On the next day, we invited Lidia to have a look and leave comments. Carmen and Mitsa also added some ideas and suggestions for edits.
[step 4: editing by Steve and Alex] Alex and Steve spent the next day doing line by line editing and two additional versions of the letters were created after it.
The version Steve and Alex created together:

The version Steve created afterwards:

[step 5: final copy edits by Alex & proofing by Gersande] after all the edits we did with Steve and Lidia during the day, we finalised the letter to this version:

[step 6: graphic design of the letter & paper by Gersande] paper came straight outta Amsterdam. On the one side of the paper there is the paper and on the other one: the colophon.

[step 7: printing, folding & sticking] the perfect production line. In XPUB studio environment. And Alex became a folding machine with 99 letters to fold (396 folds). And Gersande spending the day at the plotter to make the stickers for the letters and for the box.

Padliography

https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/pad/p/Letter_to_ourselves - letter to ourselves by G
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/xpub1-editorial-draft - the editorial organisation pad by Al
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/xpub1-si17-editorial-groups-outlines - teams' summaries by Al & editorial meeting outcome
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Intro_SI17 - editing masterclass with Steve
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/si17-editorial-texts - final texts