This book is the result of discourse, between Oliver Knight, Rory McGrath (OK-RM) and James Langdon, in London and Berlin. It was made and remade as an idea of itself: versions of it were spoken aloud, thought through, dismissed. It began to manifest in text before it had any material specifications. Its happening as an exhibition, in Hangzhou, concentrated it and gave it structure. Negotiation of its production as an industrial design object gave its pages gravity and specificity. In its final phase it became a collective pursuit of synchronicity, its sequences of technical parameters brought into rhythm with its content.
This book is ‘A Meaningful Order’ by OK-RM. Across its 328 pages it holds a new history of the distributed realities of design. It depicts designed objects on their own terms to give an account of vision, material, and curiosity—representing a selection of the vast archive of more than 16 years of work from OK-RM through an orchestration of the lithographic process with a special set of colours.
It is a site for committed study and experimentation, away from the structures of academe. It generates examples, prototypes, and models. It stages a dialogue rendered in a designerly writing through 26 alphabetised chapters (A–Z). It is unashamedly performative in its play with language, direction, and story. It captures the ongoing conversation between the editors, who are makers and thinkers of design, including a long form discussion in the form of an interview with Jack Self and is introduced by Lila Matsumoto.
In this social arena, the book is considered as everyday object and object of art. It examines designed objects and their meanings, which emerge from the interplay of form and context. What does it do? Why does it do it? How does it do it? It lays out new ideas about how designed objects relate to the cultures that they are borne from and the cultures they can create. It strives for transparency, but not at the cost of transcendence.
