Over the past decades, there have been a few trends that originated in the Midwest that have become multi-billion dollar industries. One of these is the popularity of The Secret, which gained much of its traction in small churches before becoming an Oprah-level media sensation. The second is scrapbooking. There are more, but these are some of the biggest ones.
As a former inside-the-Beltway type, I wouldn't say that I disdain scrapbooks, but I missed the trend and am not crafty, so I haven't thought too much about it. However, Jessica Helfand, the author of Scrapbooks: An American History, has been an outspoken critic in the past. Her original posts about the treacle-y aspects of "crapbooking" stemmed in part from a sense of outrage that scrapbookers seemed to think that what they did involved aspects of design, something Helfand, a Yale professor of design, feels strongly about.
Much of Helfand's book seems like it would be fascinating -- she has historical information and fascinating examples of famous scrapbookers -- for example, playwright Lillian Hellman used her scrapbook as a place to store bad reviews and document her numerous feuds with other writers, and Mark Twain patented the first self-pasting scrapbook in 1872.
However, there is a distinct hint of classes v. masses in Helfand's attitude about modern scrapbooking -- she doesn't like capital-C cute, she doesn't like the rituals that have sprung up around scrapbooking and she doesn't like that people dare to use the term "design" to discuss the layout of their scrapbooks. This is seen quite clearly (and brutally) in this excerpt from a Salon interview.
Writing this book was very hard, because I couldn't soft-pedal my willingness to accept this as graphic design under the standards I believe are important. But I do recognize the instinct to want to put pen or paste to paper and commemorate some aspect of your life. It's just when you see this $2.6 billion industry and people critiquing each other's work as "cute" -- it makes me break out in hives. But we're talking about raising money for a documentary about this because, in a kind of Morgan Spurlock, "Supersize Me" view of an American phenomenon, it is a world unto itself. Why are women targeted in this treat-them-like-13-year-olds way? I went to one of these scrapbooking retreats, and it's all these women in their pajamas with snacks -- Hostess Twinkies everywhere! There's something about junk food being part of this. It's like, no husbands, I'm going to let myself go and look at pictures of my family and eat Twinkies. It's not really about design, so it's out of my league in terms of a critique, but it fascinates me sociologically.
Unfortunately, this disdain (sometimes thinly veiled, normally not) for current scrapbookers makes me want to avoid the book. I just have a very hard time criticizing people who want to make aspects of their lives pretty -- it's a very natural instinct.
Finally Helfand's suggestion that such works of self-expression are inauthentic rankle a bit. Yes, there is a hint of conformity to the modern scrapbooking movement. However, it appears to be a part of human nature that the more popular an art form, the fewer edges it is going to have. And at the most elite level (investment art) the rules have ceased to be about expression and have become almost entirely about marketing, charisma, novelty and buzz. Although I find some of these works very charming or interesting, I don't see a lot of authenticity there -- just commercialized nonconformity.
Above: Ballon dog by Jeff Koons, photo by Moroder
Above: Topiary/papier mache dog by Jeff Koons
