Another super-shiny catalogue arrived in the mailbox, this time from the local bottle shop. The UV varnish on the cover is so smooth I can see my face in it.
Why am I writing about this catalogue? That is the question. It is the question I was asking myself recently while speculating idly about the degree to which my interest in such ephemera is intellectual rather than emotional – what do I care about the catalogue? Nothing, of course. By it’s very nature, ephemera is transient and fleeting, no more substantial than the bow wave from a passing ship or a puff of smoke from a dying fire.
Pushing on, I can remark on the strange wondrousness of somebody wanting to produce this item and stick it in my letterbox, what this says about the nature of print in the early 21st century – reviled in many quarters as an environmental turd, ignored by perhaps far more, regarded by just about everybody as old, old, old. And yet, and yet… here is this thing. Nothing like this has been done before, or rather it has… but never so easily nor so abundantly and given away for free.
Look at the number of design elements on each page. Quite apart from the serried ranks of reds, whites and rosés, there are corners of concentrated design that combine a dozen different elements or more – text, reversed out text, reversed out raggedy text that picks up the background colour, curved text, text down to, say, four or five points and still readable, very subtle vignettes and shading, photos with borders, deep-etched with drop shadows, all printed in full colour on coated stock, folded and stapled.
Last week, the Americans landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. Fantastic, mind-boggling achievement, almost unbelievable, way out at the far extremes of what humans can do ie put something on another planet. Given the tiny amount of matter that has ever managed to break free of our blue orb, it shows remarkable skill and dexterity to do it so carefully and precisely.
I’m not foolish enough to compare Curiosity with a piece of junk mail. Actually I am. One may be wholly admirable and the other more often despised but both are almost beyond my comprehension. I can barely grasp the hours of endeavour, the mind-stretching use of technology, the creativity of purpose that went into producing both items – neither of which would have been possible just a few years ago.
So this is where we are at. From Mars to my mailbox, the mechanics of production and delivery are a baffling mystery. And yet I know what is possible. The gulf between what is possible and what is knowable seems to widen ever more.
But maybe that’s just me. Always a sucker for a bit of techno-rapture.
