This was the result of a workshop I gave at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHKD) for students in the Visual Communication department. First we recorded a roundtable discussion, which lasted about three hours. During a break towards the end we all read a short text, “Now graphic design is easy,” the opening section of a longer essay by the designer, writer and teacher James Langdon about graphic design and neuroscience.

The next morning we chopped the recording into parts and each student transcribed one before we stitched them back together in a shared Google doc. Everyone was then allowed to edit their own words for another hour or so—to remove repetitions, make points more clearly, or generally sound smarter. At the end we were left with a single master file, and from there the individual groups were free to further edit the discussion according to their approach, then finally translate it onto the printed page. The results of the five groups are markedly different, variously emphasizing the space, time, voices, and lateral references.