Dear Terry,

While I am no longer active in the thread on mathematics in design, I want to point to a more general problem in these threads. In thread after thread, you begin with blunt assertions that you treat as self-evident propositions. When asked to explain, you plead the lack of time. You always find the time for new propositions and new assertions, but you seem never to have the time to demonstrate the value of your earlier assertions or to answer questions.

At a certain point in many of these debates, you switch from discussing the issues to evaluating those who disagree with you. You switch from a debate on the topic to an ad hominem attempt to discredit the people.

In your reply to Martin Salisbury, you wrote: “I’d suspect that you believe that you can understand and know what designing is by reflecting on your thoughts and feelings while doing design? And, that you can understand what others are doing while designing by the same method?”

This suggests to me that you have no direct knowledge of Martin’s field, children’s book illustration, or the fields with which a book illustrator must be familiar.

You “suspect” that Martin understands the design process through an entirely internalized world of reflection and feeling. Having illustrated books and managed a publishing firm, I’d say this cannot be the case.

A successful book illustrator must first work with the publisher and author of the book to understand the desired outcome for the project. Different kinds of conversations come into play depending on whether the illustrator is also the author or also the designer. In some cases, authors and illustrators will also take into consideration such pedagogical and psychological issues as target audience, age group, reading level, or gender. Depending on the publisher’s needs, budget, and market, this may involve consultation with experts in other fields. Then a wide range of issues come in regard publishing specs, material choices, design choices, market needs, price point, and the rest. All of these choices require a high level of expertise and serious involvement in a vast range of empirical data outside and beyond the illustrator’s own world of reflection and feeling.

Then, too, there is the matter of serious engagement with the content and narrative. This requires sensitivity and creativity applied to narrative, story line, story arc, and understanding what each of these means in the final book. With respect to older stories or historical accounts, this also requires sensitivity to and awareness of history and the exegetical questions of original context against the current context of today’s reader.

There is a way to move beyond what you “suspect” about Martin to learn how Martin actually works, or at least how he believes he works in contrast to what you "suspect" he believes. You can ask him. And you can ask him in a serious way, rather than with the leading questions you have posed in earlier debates where your question posits the answer in its specific grammatical form. In contrast, the questions I asked you were open: any number of extremely different answers would have been possible.

Questions that ask “why,” or “how” tend to be open. Questions that ask, “is it not true that you are [x]” tend to posit the answer. In past debates, this is the point where you ask leading questions or state plainly that you “suspect” something.

Rather step up to the challenge of a serious question, you offer your summary evaluation of the counterparty together with yet another series of evasions.

Fortunately, anyone can learn what is involved in the design work of illustrating children’s book. Even better, Martin has given his own views in four widely read books (Salisbury 2004; Salisbury 2007; Salisbury and Styles 2012; Salisbury and Tordo 2005).

There is no need to suspect anything. Martin has made a full confession.

In contrast, you have remained evasive. First, you refused to answer open questions on the assertion that these questions predicated an answer. Now, you shift entirely from an issue-oriented debate to an imaginary evaluation of Martin’s professional working mode and – by implication – an evaluation of his character.

You are saying that you cannot answer the questions that many of us have asked because you fear that your answers will not persuade one individual: Martin Salisbury.

Stranger still, you claim that you cannot persuade Martin because you “suspect that [Martin] believe[s] that [he] can understand and know what designing is by reflecting on [his] thoughts and feelings while doing design? And, that [Martin] can understand what others are doing while designing by the same method?”

Based on Martin’s track record of publications and teaching, I’d say that within his fields of expertise, this is not the case.

But even if it were the case, you avoided answering everyone else who has raised similar questions in this thread and others –Birger Sevaldsen, Francois Nsenga, Lars Albinsson, Gunnar Swanson, and myself within the past couple of weeks.

Your repeated assertions of mathematical clarity position you as a scientific mind and a skilled researcher. Despite this, you refuse to answer questions you don’t like or to provide cases and examples to support your claims.

You’ve taken the time to write over thirty posts in the past two months. In all of these, you repeat your assertions without addressing the questions that people ask and without developing the argument.

Now you are back to evaluating people who ask questions you don’t want to answer.

This is not an issue specific to this thread, but to the style of debate. Martin was quite right to note that: “you have decided against presenting evidence and reasoning and in favour of a slanging match.”

This has often happened before.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia

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References

Salisbury, Martin. 2004. Illustrating Children’s Books: Creating Pictures for Publication. New York: Barron’s Educational.

Salisbury, Martin. 2007. Play Pen: New Children’s Book Illustration. London: Laurence King.

Salisbury, Martin, and Morag Styles. 2012. Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling. London: Laurence King.

Salisbury, Martin, and Hélène Tordo. 2005. Illustrer des livres pour enfants : Imaginer, créer, se faire éditer. Paris: Eyrolles.



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