Benson & Benson~ Book Design in the Age of Slop

The threat of generative AI presents only the most recent of a slew of challenges to the book designer in the digital age. It has been almost two decades since the first Kindle was released, and despite initial promises that the book was "dead" as we know it, the publishing industry has survived, adapted, and even thrived through technological change. So what role does the book designer have to play in this new landscape of algorithms, automation, and robot “art”?

Join award-winning book designers Kevin Barrett Kane and Emma Christine Hall of Benson & Benson and the Contemporary Book Design Workshop for an earnest discussion about the role of book design in the age of algorithms. Looking back to another such cataclysmic technological revolution from the 16th century and the over 400 years of book design history since, this talk provides a hopeful perspective on the importance of specialization in the face of mass generalization in design and an urgent call for the education of future designers in analog-informed methodology. The imperative for working designers to weigh both past and future when solving design problems has never been more urgent.