My name is David Knauer.
I'm a graphic designer.

I ride a 70's Swing Bike, I'm currently restoring a 1980 Honda CX500, I enjoy locksport, have become interested in cryptography and information security (encouraging me to learn Linux, BASH, Python, and generally nerd out). I love taking things apart—sometimes I put them back together. I like to capture images on film—especially with a Holga (then push and cross process it! It's Instagram IRL!).

I listen to (possible NSFW lyrics) obnoxious music, more relaxed obnoxious music, and what some people would call "not obnoxious music". WARNING: if you're old enough to shake your fist at kids on your lawn, you'll probably #smh as hard as "#smh" makes you #smh.

While most travel magazines show only the extraordinary, ite's approach attempts to present an immersive experience to the reader. In order to accomplish this experience, *ite presents typical travel/culture content (pictorial, historical, editorial content) as well as interactive content (web forums, photo scavenger hunt, guides for navigating the current city both geographically and culturally).

The aesthetic of each issue changes to one inspired by the city. Layering dominates the aesthetic of the D.C. issue—inspired the qualities that combine, superimpose, and conflict to make D.C. such a unique city. D.C.'s unique socioeconomic diversity, commuter volume, and unique political situation are characteristics that give D.C. an amorphous, impenetrable quality for visitors. It is *ite's duty to guide its readers through any obstacles to make a city an experience rather than a visit.

It was my intention to combine disparate works whose themes affect and interact with each other. Albert Camus's book, A Happy Death, concerns a man (Patrice Mersault) who vainly seeks happiness through wealth and travel. He discovers happiness as illness kills him: “And stone among the stones, he returned in the joy of his heart to the truth of the motionless worlds.” Conversely, Oscar Wilde's Salome is a Femme Fatale; universally desired, exhibitionistic, power-seeking—the opposite of the impotent Mersault of A Happy Death.

The intention of superimposing these illustrations on A Happy Death is not to overtly change the meaning of the book. While the illustrations do physically interact with the text, their content remains discrete. This is similar to how Beardsley illustrated Salome—the illustrations were embellishment to add to the text, rather than a visual interpretation of the text. Should the reader investigate the source of the illustrations (or be so familiar with Beardsley that they can recognize the illustrations), the illustrations introduce an additional contrasting perspective through which the reader may interpret the work.

Though it's a bit morbid, the death of a feral cat is not a hugely significant event. However, happening upon a dead cat on the sidewalk impacted me disproportionately in realtion to its significance. It was the contrast between global significance and personal impact that inspired this project.

This project is a study contrasting two significant experiences: seeing a dead cat on the sidewalk and witnessing the tragic results of hurricane Katrina—cemented with the text of Joyce's Ulysses.

I chose Ulysses as a canvas because this work deals with a similar magnification of significance. On the most superficial level, Ulysses is about a day in Dublin. However, the style and detail reveal greater meaning rather than than simply portraying events. Joyce's stream of consciousness writing reveals great detail, personal thoughts, and themes from another historical work, the Odyssey. However, interpreting beyond Joyce's words reveals far more; the history of his characters, sociopolitical thought of Joyce's time, and, even further, a projection of Homer's work onto the aforementioned. It is the layering of themes that interested me during this project. Applying further layers of information (physicality of the book, images, and typographical illustration in regards to both content and style) makes this information-dense work even more rich.

This is not an attempt to neatly house a work in an appropriate container. It is an examination of layers of meaning—does the density of information add or detract from the work? By adding interpretable layers do I make the work more accessible by adding more paths of interpretation, or do the additional layers of abstraction cause an already great task to become insurmountable? I would argue that these additions cause both—the book can be picked up and flipped through like a coffee table book, or the additional elements can add points of inspiration for additional (perhaps new, originally unintended) interpretations for the reader.