Hello, and welcome to the Nontext newsletter! This entry is focused on my self published art book, Secret Schematic. It’s one of those rare projects that was both successful conceptually and has gotten better with age (it was released in 2023). Featuring a series of drawings and illustrations from the previous year and a poem (see below), it is representative of a time in my life that was filled with upheaval and enormous loss. Despite all that, my intent was to design a book that was optimistic and, most importantly, stood on it’s own as a physical piece of art. The resulting publication was one of the more difficult things I’ve produced but has come to be the blueprint for where my work is now.

“The Secret Schematic (poem from the artbook by Nonstndrd Creative)”

In the beginning, there was a tree.
It was strong and stood for millennia,
growing harmoniously with the landscape in which it was planted.
A great storm ravaged the land and the tree was gravely damaged.
Its trunk was destroyed and mutilated.
Its branches were broken into a thousand fragments,
and scattered across the planet.
Each piece took root in foreign soil,
enduring great pain and sacrifice
as they they fought to grow into trees themselves.
In time they sprouted lush appendages that filled the sky,
forming a vast, interconnected canopy that enveloped the earth.
It was there that the branches,
of trees that were once branches,
found each other again.
In the end there was a forest.

The artwork in the book is from a period when I was exploring the intersection between geometry, identity, and the natural world. At the time I was obsessed with tree branches and growing plants (cacti and other succulents) from cuttings, a hobby I picked up during the pandemic lockdowns that stuck with me. I observed a parallel between these natural processes/elements and the dispersal of the African diaspora in the Americas. From a creative standpoint, I had fully entered my current “abstraction” phase, a period in which I had (and continue to) break apart and reconfigure different parts of my artistic practice.

This book was a big departure from the zines that I had been publishing in recent years. Those were mostly photo based and the ones that weren’t were filled with the type of work my audience was used to seeing from me. It was also a premium, more polished release, printed on high end paper and perfect bound. The decision to go all in was a risk as I didn’t really know how it would be received.

The initial response and sales were not encouraging. Turns out, my timing was really, really bad. I released Secret Schematic in 2023, right when what had been my main source of promotion, Twitter, was purchased by “he who shall not be named” and promptly went to shit. Aside from losing one of the best social media platforms to date, my former Twitter audience was my main set of customers as well. Sales in my online store cratered after that and at the time it was hard to separate the dip from the debut of Secret Schematic. But despite all that, I knew that I was on to something. So I kept pushing into 2024, which brings things to the present.

Eventually I found a way to overcome the loss of Twitter as a promotional tool, mostly by leveraging my Instagram accounts and starting my Archival Recordings documentary photography newsletter. In the interim, I sold a few copies of Secret Schematic here and there but I mostly considered the book a loss. It wasn’t until I had a table at this years Los Angeles Zine Fest that I realized I had written it off too soon. See, I was tabling as Archival Recordings since building an audience for that project has been my main focus this year. I brought along copies of Secret Schematic mostly to see if I could move a few but, based on the launch fiasco the previous year, I had low expectations. That being the case, you could imagine how surprised I was that it was my best selling book at the table! People really responded to the artwork and overall design in a way that was both gratifying and vindicating. That experience is what prompted me to invest even more into publishing art books and zines, which is why I started this newsletter in the first place.

It was impossible to know when I designed it but Secret Schematic was a precursor to where I am now. It’s an important reminder that all the data and metrics available to creatives is a poor substitute for your gut feeling. That info can be helpful, for sure, but you can miss a lot when you rely on it completely.

Thank you for reading another issue of Nontext. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more notes and reflections from my creative journey.