Conversations

Brussels, 2014 - 360 pages.
This book documents an ongoing dialogue between developers and designers involved in the wider ecosystem of Libre Graphics. Its lengthy title, I think that conversations are the best, biggest thing that Free Software has to offer its user, is taken from an interview with Debian developer Asheesh Laroia, Just ask and that will be that, included in this publication. His remark points at the difference that Free Software can make when users are invited to consider, interrogate and discuss not only the technical details of software, but its concepts and histories as well.
Conversations documents discussions about tools and practices for typography, layout and image processing that stretch out over a period of more than eight years. The questions and answers were recorded in the margins of events such as the yearly Libre Graphics Meeting, the Libre Graphics Research Unit, a two-year collaboration between Medialab Prado in Madrid, Worm in Rotterdam, Piksel in Bergen and Constant in Brussels, or as part of documenting the work process of the Brussels' design team OSP. Participants in these intersecting events and organisations constitute the various instances of 'we' and 'I' that you will discover throughout this book.
The transcriptions are loosely organised around three themes: tools, communities and design. At the same time, I invite you to read Conversations as a chronology of growing up in Libre Graphics, a portrait of a community gradually grasping the interdependencies between Free Software and design practice.