When I was in high school, I had a (very, very) short run as a Lincoln-Douglas debater. There are a few things I’ve learned from high school debate that I slowly realize carry on to my current life — interpretations of prompts for creative projects, emphasis on language and word choice, cross-analysis, scalar/systematic thinking, and a general care for the impact of the things I make. But one detail that continues to inspire me for just what it is: cutting cards.
Lincoln-Douglas debate has its own particular set of rules. While the sport of debate is largely about the ability to quickly articulate and re-present completely new thoughts within a time-limited round, LD placed a large additional emphasis on preparation. The value and methods of preparation is interesting to dissect in the context of its usefulness being in such short-term scenarios. So while kids will walk into rounds with piles of printed documents collected and curated through months, you’ll also find that they’ll also be “spreading” in rounds (a learned method of speaking incredibly fast, like 350wpm), able to articulate arguments and search within their papers for evidence on top of even having that much to say in response to start with (lol).
Another detail that makes LD interesting is that the preparation and evidence is quite strict on being factual. It’s looked down on to paraphrase evidence in a debater’s own words. And you’re also not allowed to bring in evidence that is not “whole” (ie. pulling quotes out into a set of bullet points). So debaters do end up bringing in literal copies upon copies of all sorts of material, verbatim. But how are they able to sparse through it so quickly for the debate?
The answer: cutting cards.
Cutting cards is a method of annotating verbatim written medium to create levels of factual summarizations of the information. Visually, it’s a technique that’s also meant to enhance readability and glanceability. Taken this example from Lawrence:
My favorite thing about cutting cards is that it still retains full sentences to be read out loud without second thought. With this example, a medium-length summary of the text would be only reading everything underlined, and the short version would be everything highlighted. You get: “A Harvard epidemiologist says 70 percent of the world could get the coronavirus. It’s inevitable the virus will impact the globe. It is the best estimate based on models we se to track epidemics. There’s reason for people to be concerned. We can turn that concern into actions…”
I remember the first time I was cutting cards and the girl looking over my shoulder would be pushing me, “Are you sure you need that word?” And I’d look back and realize I didn’t, and it’d feel so exhilarating to be getting better at this skill of shorten a message in a way that it still retained both its semantic and legible/grammatical integrity.
As a designer, I now consciously think a lot about a lot of these same things I previously thought/acted about so naturally. I didn’t need to go to design school for someone to tell me to care about readability; I needed to be put in a weird/tough situation where I had to figure out a way to both visually parse through and read aloud a very large text in a very limited amount of time.
While I’ve never retouched high school debate, the concept of cutting cards sticks with me. Manipulating typography to enhance readability, lessen cognitive load, and relay a scale of messages are all interests of mine and the fundamental questions asked in design as a whole. I have also always loved writing, and in combination with visual design, I’ve been digging around the concept of “hidden messages”.
Moving on, here’s a new project idea:
- Digital messages (think: pen pals, postcards, love letters)
- Re-imagined “annotations” for the written text, appropriating the traditional design/character/paragraph properties
Changing the tools changes the message received, and the message as it is being written. Digital messages are not meant to imitate notes we pass along physically.
Digital writing has so many of their own affordances!
Project One:
- backbone: a writing tool
- annotation options when text highlighted, but joyful, fantastical, borderline/exceptionally unnecessary
- utilizing variable fonts
- automatically adjusting/assistive leading/tracking/kerning of the different fonts
- NLP parsing through your full message and offering suggestions for hidden messages (at a range, maybe a slider)
- in contrast to the spirit of LD debate, a range for the “truth” or senselessness of hidden messages?
PROCESS 10.10
1] playing with variable fonts: whyte, galapagos, indie flower (very 2010s google docs)
2] more buttons and metaphors: editing on a grid, editing a message like a static image
“Cutting cards” got its name from its history — where before the popularity of home computers and digitized news, kids would go to libraries and scan and print copies books and newspapers. Then, they would literally cut up and paste snippets of text back together to make their evidence cards.
Scissors, gluesticks, highliters, even the libraries and scanners and printers are all precious tools that have been replaced by metaphors in the infamous graphical user interface.
Growing up, I was always considered more “creative” than artistic. I didn’t love drawing the way doodlers do, and hated drawing animals (this last detail is kind of a tangent but I feel like making it). But I loved crafting and putting things together and playing with materials. I guess one factor I can remember is that at the peak of my “childlike curiosity”, around when I was 4–6 years old and still untouched by the “rules” of creating and art in society, my family couldn’t afford to give me a lot to play/make with. I remember wanting just to glue paper together for this one craft, and my mom giving me pieces of sticky rice. I wanted to sew buttons onto my teddy bear’s jacket, and found pens to use as makeshift crochet needles. Paint pigment was made by crushing rose petals in the bathroom sink.
One of my biggest struggles as an artist/designer is getting started, in a very literal sense. It’s always been difficult for me to make that first mark on a canvas. I grew up with frugality which means that my preciousness towards materials is a fear that runs deep. I remember receiving a friendship bracelet book and kit for Christmas one year (I was maybe 8 years old), and my aunt finding me holding back on which designs I wanted to make. I don’t think I told her much about how I was feeling then, but she did quite quickly figure it out, asking me “Are you afraid you’re going to run out string?” And then she brought me to the craft store and we bought quantities of thread and glass beads. That night, my nimble fingers were braiding designs of utmost complexity, managing a dozen threads and colors at once.
I still have and use these threads and beads for different projects today, well over ten years later.
Project Two
- Using the Apple ecosystem (because of the ease of sharing content between devices) and tools to create collages, imitating physical tools for crafting (in an interaction method vs. just graphically)
- Making screen-based devices in tangible user interfaces, reassigning roles to types of devices based on their particular affordances. ie phone becomes capturing device, tablet becomes cutting mat
- gesture-based interactions, even on a 2D screen. Every gesture corresponds to an action (no instruction manual).
Project Three:
- Design a text editor tool that takes in written text and makes live edits based on how the text is being written
- 2D visualization of live text editing
- ie. visualizing backspace when written
- digitized version of a typewriter, where every edit can be seen and must be made very intentionally
- start with: programming something where delete button doesn’t return delete, it returns a different type of visualization
- continue: tracking edits in the future (maybe every time the story/document is revisited, all of the other text decreases in opacity by 25% ?)
Final outcome: some very beautiful documents of stories that are written with this tool
