Doodling Publicly
A short interview with journalist Josh Marshall
Josh Marshall is the creator of Talking Points Memo.
The way this conversation happened was like this: I had started collecting images of handmade protest signs (and other handwritten text that could be shared widely and consistently through photos and videos online). I was looking at how people were using the ability to digitally communicate with their own handwriting rather than relying on typography.
Around that time, Josh Marshall’s twitter feed had started including screenshots of newspapers or other documents with his own doodles and handwritten text. Although he was not the first person to mark up screenshots of text, it was unusual that he was adding doodles and other types of marks, not just words. I reached out, and he was (incredibly!) nice enough to let me interview him about it. This is lightly edited for clarity. Josh was extremely kind and patient with me, for which I’m grateful. I really enjoyed his insights and wanted to share them.
Josh Marhall is @joshtpm here and on twitter. I’ve used screen shots rather than embedded links, but all the tweets are still up. His twitter feed is mostly doodle-free these days. We had this conversation on June 15, 2017.
RMC (me): In our typography class, one of the things we talk about is meeting the needs of an audience, and identifying those needs as they change. We have so much written communication that one of the challenges becomes communicating tone, which a lot of students will do by using emoji, or gifs, or playing with their lettering and punctuation [e.g. lmaoooooo] — you’ve begun making a sort of customized visual language in your twitter with these annotated notes, where you’re representing yourself and your reactions along with the text or image your referencing. How did that come about?
JM (Josh Marshall): It sort of grew organically. But I would say that long before twitter — you know, the site that I run [Talking Points Memo] has been around for almost 17 years. And, from the start of my running that, I have always been focused on trying to break down the walls that writing engenders—and various kinds of formalism—create in critical journalism and commentary. One of the things that I did a lot early on was in some cases just literally write in the first person. But in other cases sort of married the recording (in addition to recording the recording). It was always very important to me to [create] a sense of an intimacy with readers also spurred them to come forward with tips or feedback or something like that. I think that everything that I had done in my professional life as a writer, commentator, whatever, has been based on trying to communicate the person who was actually talking. So in that sense it kind of fits what you’re saying: to find non-text ways to convey things. I actually got started doing it with gifs to convey emotions or attitudes.
RMC: You’ve started drawing these animals also. I wasn’t sure if that was an offshoot or something new. But for example yesterday I noticed that you drew a picture of Donald Trump on kind of like a tricycle. Are these different kind of imagery serving different purposes. Is [the image of Trump] partly to release frustration? I mean, it’s funny also!
JM: Well actually if you look on my twitter account now [June 15] Basically, I did a tweet last night where I said how, Donald Trump is going into this investigation with a lawyer that I think is clearly not qualified to defend someone in a case like this. And I used the analogy that it’s like driving a motorcycle on a slippery road in your underwear with no helmet. So it was my attempt at a motorcycle but [laughs] obviously people have noted that it looks more like a moped or something.
RMC: [laughs] Okay, I misunderstood!
JM: In any case after I did that tweet, I just tried to illustrate it. This morning I did a thing where I tried to create a picture without the tweet. I did it late last night. So that was just an effort to illustrate an analogy.
RMC: Right, It’s interesting to see the ways we’re beginning to drop bits of [written] language for efficiency or for expression. With the animals, those were really interesting to me because they were quite formal looking. That’s where I started to wonder about if they were medieval references because you were playing with heraldry. Is it for fun, is there a larger picture that you’re making?
JM: I think a couple of things. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this, but I was trained as an historian and so history is a big thing for me. So a lot of these things are organic. But as I’ve gone, I have — again, not with any kind of particular design — sort of created stories out of them, for lack of a better word. So the dog for instance, I was just drawing dogs at one point and then I built a back story about that dog [see caption below], and how he relates to Trump. Again, just as a part of a fantasy universe.
For the other point you’re making: I have always been interested in the history of print, in the history of print culture, and then prior to that, manuscript illumination and the way that — I’m sure you know more about this than I do — but there’s commonality between manuscript illumination and a lot of medieval architecture. The creators of this stuff are putting in these little things which are, on the one hand, extraneous to the main endeavour. And they’re often bizarre or grotesque or comical and I like playing with these different ideas. And that’s what I see in some of the stuff. Sometimes they’re illustrated with a self-portrait with a certain expression but other times just like little ridiculous things going on to express views.
RMC: What I’ve been finding is, I’ve never been a huge fan of medieval history. I’ve never…It’s not the era that usually speaks to me. But what I’ve been finding recently is that I feel this incredible sympathy for people of that time [laughs]. And I think it’s partly because I think at some level that I felt really separate from them. That they were kind of living in this other historical era and that they didn’t understand a lot of things that I understood, you know, post-enlightenment and post-renaissance and all that stuff. And now that I look at all of their confusion and that sort of changing times that they’re going through and I kind of feel, “Oh, I’m going through that, too. How was it for you guys? How did you get through it?”.
JM: right, right.
RMC: And now when I look at the manuscripts with them, to me one of the interesting things that you can see evidence of their physical body in their work. So like, the thickness of their [pen] strokes or whatever. It’s individual from person to person and so when I saw what you were doing, and with the wax seal and things like that. That’s really what sparked my interest in that.
I wondered also, if you feel like when you’re drawing or annotating, do you feel like you’re accessing a different part of your brain? Or of your style of thinking? Does it change the way that you’re thinking?
JM: [thoughtfully] Yeah… Just in the last 6 to 9 months or so, I have been — I think on a lot of different fronts — I have wanted to do new things. And some of that is playing out in things we’re doing with the web site I run. I turned 48 a few months ago. I don’t know if that’s a milestone, but it makes you think. And so [that lead me to ask] what do I want to do now? I think the drawing has allowed me to express a whimsical side of myself in public but which is also still about the main things that I talk about. It’s just given me a new language to operate in. So, yeah, I think it definitely does access a different part of my brain and probably a different part of my personality, because I’m drawn to it. If anything I mean I still have a day job [laughs] so I’ve had to keep it in bounds. But yeah, I think it definitely does. And I mean all of this has been really organic. I just sort of understand it in retrospect my self. I enjoyed doing it
RMC: One of the things I’m feeling right now about reading is just overwhelmed by the amount of content and I think a lot of people are feeling that way. And maybe also that language — it doesn’t seem as firm as it used to. I think maybe because people have gotten so good at arguing points: there’s something about language that’s so specific and that sometimes there’s something that might be freeing about using language that’s visual instead. Maybe you can find more ways to agree with other people or accommodate a more flexible point of view in a drawing. I don’t know if that resonates with you?
JM: I guess I can see that. I mean, I guess. Two thoughts: One of the amazing things about the internet is just that it — and I mean the internet going back 25 years ago — is that it created this renaissance of text. Right? I mean everybody said, nobody reads anymore all this sort of stuff. Well, I mean, people read constantly now. They may not read in a sort of a book-reading repose. But I mean we read text just I’m sure someone in social science could come up with a number , but like way way more. It is a very denatured text. Literally, the fonts are denatured. And going to your other point that there’s so much, even now you have some publications moving towards articles written by machine-learning — so that’s written by machines. So the profusion of it, both in quantity but also in aesthetic terms is kind of denatured and flat. It’s funny one of the things I started doing was just screen-capturing chunks of text and then drawing on them. In some ways that was to get past 140 characters [the twitter limit of the time, since doubled].
But it is was also — and again, this is me making sense of it in retrospect — but creating a physical artifact. And that grabs your eye. You know I just kind of do like hand-drop-shadowing. That’s just kind of like, whoa that’s a fake, you know creating the illusion of a physical artifact. But it’s not…and again, there is something very anonymous and denatured about the online text world that we live in. So yeah, it does kind of resonate with me. And I guess in another sense that’s just — I don’t know if it allows people to get out of their silos, but again, visual communication is sort of like you’re … you know, you’re hopping into a different bucket
RMC: [The images on your timeline] look very different [to me] than the kind of meme images that people will put out. Where there’s kind of an image of an animal or something with [text] over it. Those are often sarcastic, which I tend to read as wanting to empty out the content of something [I meant here that they negate the content to which it’s responding]. Whereas what you’re doing, part of what I like about it, is that it seems quite sincere. Even if you’re joking, I feel that there’s a sincerity or humanity behind it, like you’re trying to understand something or you’re trying to communicate.
I was just wondering if that was partly a way of establishing some sense of trust with your audience, like: I’m a real person, I’m not part of a cabal or a some sort of fake person: ‘this is me, this is my feeling’?
JM: Yeah I think, kind of going back to what I said at the beginning of our conversation. I have — for probably a mixture of just personal reasons but also just how I go about things — to insert myself into what I do and what I write . And again, that is some of that is probably some of my own inner- psychological needs [laughs] but also it advances the writing for me. So that’s sort of always been part of just what I do and how I approach things. I guess I would say there’s often things I write that are very cutting, so it’s not like I’m not sarcastic or snarky or whatever but I like to have sort of a whimsical side of myself and I think that there’s maybe … [pauses]
RMC: Playful?
JM: Playful or kind a kind of innocent in a way. One of the funny things about this in the way it progressed. I had struggled with it a bit because I’ve been writing for a long time and by various measure I’m pretty good at it. But I guess the point is that I have a level of mastery of that, that I believe in, and it’s sort of validated by audience, etc. etc. etc. But I’m not a professional artist, obviously, so there was a real sense of sort of like, “Am I making a fool of myself here ?”
RMC: No!
JM: Is this silly? So a part of it has is inevitably playful and sort of putting myself out there to be criticized. And again, it’s very mixed in with my normal line of business. But again it’s sort of like you’re singing in the shower for yourself for a long time and then [laughs] that’s very scary, you don’t know what the reaction is going to be. I think that despite very kind of aggressive and controversial state that I operate in and even the fact that I myself can be very cutting I think there’s a deeper part of my personality that is humane and playful, let’s say, and this gives me an outlet.
RMC: How do you think the reaction has been to the annotations. People seem to recognize it and enjoy it. Have you heard much back about it?
JM: You know it’s certainly some occasional negative feedback.
RMC: [laughs] It’s the internet!
JM: You now, just people say, “Dude, why are you doing this?” Which, that’s ok. I wouldn’t say anybody’s been nasty about it. I think overall people have been very accommodating and it’s been gratifying. And I guess the way I look at it is you know and I’m obviously not a trained artist and don’t put myself forward as one, but I think for my needs I only need to be able to draw at the level to get you reading. So in that sense it works for me because even if the technical skill is in short supply I can do it enough to sort of convey meaning to the expression. That’s all I’m trying to do. It’s been positive.
RMC: I am a professional illustrator and I don’t think my skills are better than yours. Like, we have a camera now so we can do what we want [laughs]. That’s how I feel about it
JM: That’s nice of you to say
RMC: It seems like in some way this is like a visual extension of a blogging way of thinking….or something….[I think I was searching for the word ‘zine’ here]
JM: Mm-hmm
RMC: Because earlier on I was reading a GQ article about you from like ten years ago, and they were talking about how amazing it was [back then] to have blogging showing up in more traditional reporting, and they were trying to locate you within that profession. And I was thinking that there’s something that feels like a visual continuation of that. That’s it kind of immediate and a little bit more informal
JM: Yeah, it feels the same to me, and kind of going back to when I was in graduate school for most of my twenties. It was in my late twenties when I transitioned into journalism. And I, well you know kind of semi-traditional journalism for like two years and then I was just doing Talking Points Memo. And you know when I started Talking Points Memo there were like two people that were doing what we now call blogging. And when I started it I. I found the voice and style profoundly liberating and something that I was good at. And worried that I wasn’t always always that great at longform journalism. There’s different muscles, right? You know, you can be an illustrator or you can do oil painted portraits. They use different skill sets and parts of your brain and stuff. And I think one of the big reasons I got out of academic work is that as it felt profoundly confining to me. That I need to choose a topic, and I’ll be working on that topic like 25 years. And I needed more freedom. And so to me it’s sort of an extension of that. This is kind of another way to communicate ideas on a more brainstem level [laughs] and a way to interact with people and get feedback from other people and all that kind of stuff. It wasn’t what I started out with. And I was looking at the first drawing I did a couple of months ago and sort of looking at the evolution itself, It was just organic and un-thought-through. But thinking back on it, yeah, what you’re describing, it does fit to me.
RMC: Oh, that’s great! Before you go, can I ask you, are you thinking more about type or fonts? Because you did the typeface of yourself which I thought was really interesting and then you gave it a name which was a bit of a joke [Joshica Boldface]. It’s not a real font that someone can download, [but] are you looking more at fonts now that you’re playing around more with them? Do you have a favourite font? Like what typeface would you want to use to express yourself?
JM: I guess I’ve always thought about some of that, just because we have to use fonts and all that stuff. I guess I’ve probably become a little me aware of it, because you have to think through how to restructure the letters. I guess, the best answer I can think of is not really an answer, but I’m sure you’ve seen the Helvetica documentary?
RMC: I have. I moderated a panel with Gary Hustwit about it when that came out. He was really nice!
JM: Yeah, I love that documentary. there are so many different things that get pulled together in that documentary, like, obviously fonts, but also modernism, and some of the technical architecture of pre-internet fonts. I just love that. And I guess I just have a bit of a thing for sort of the minimalism of modernist fonts. I guess what really just gives me some fulfillment about [laughs] being able to doodle publicly — and again, this goes back to what we were saying at the beginning about manuscript illumination — I like adding these sort of baroque details that may not have a functional or even logical connection. But if you look at those manuscript illuminations you see sort of people sort of twirled into the letters, you know? But also the stuff going on there which is clearly the work of a scrivener. You know, whatever the copyist is called, who is on the one hand doing the most self-effacing work possible. Copying something exactly that has been copied for hundreds or thousands years before. And yet you see the person sort of like pushing through into the impersonal work. I just like that and in some ways it sort of makes me think of serifs and flourishes and stuff like that I mean — I’m totally riffing right now, I’m not really adding anything…
RMC: No, no that’s all right! That’s true, because the serif and the flourish and all that stuff. It’s partly because of the tool they’re using but it also has to do with their personal rhythm. Like, their internal rhythm is captured on the page.
The ending here is very abrupt because I, uh, accidentally turned off the recording. However, I had asked if he had a particular manuscript that was a favourite of his before we said goodbye. He followed up by email with this image of a Spanish scriptorium, which is a writing room set aside in monastic communities for the use of scribes engaged in copying manuscripts.I found this description: In this image from the 14th Century (Madrid, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial), we see three figures working. In the middle is a monk. To his left is likely a wealthy lay person. The person to the right is also not a monk based on appearance, via medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel.
Thank-you very much to Josh Marshall for speaking with me about this!
