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About the type used in this book:Univers font family Bodoni font family

About the Designer:The designer is a Latin American derived, Chicagoan born male.He has studied many languages including Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French and English. His works are influenced by many Asian and European modern and contemporary design.

Thanks:Matthew Gaynor, the teacher, whom aided in helping to under-stand how a book is suppose to be created with flow, hierarchy, and good design in mind.Joyce, a student teacher, who aided in many of the revisions of this book and also helped the designer gain an even stronger insight of Graphic Design.

05 invisible cities

invisible citiesbuilding new realities

MiguelAngelMartinez

This book’s ideas are so crumpled together and so cumbersome it’s sometimes hard to tell what is im-portant and what is simply there.

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cussed usually revolve around theories of time, perceptions, space, possibilities and memo-ry. The cities have been catego-rized under specific titles in-cluding thin cities, hidden cities, cities in the sky, etc. We are not directly told whether the narration is based around the two main characters, or the actual cities that they speak about.The two main characters in the book carry a dialogue. One that is sometimes direct and literal

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space possibilitiesInvisible Cities is a book on phi-losophy. There is no plot, only ideas. There are only two char-acters that exist in the book: Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. These characters have been used to develop the story and its ideas through story telling and imagery, but the story is simply a set of random details, since there is no plot to form a story from. The main topic of the book is the idea of cities and their differences. Of the cities, the topics most dis-

and then other times confus-ing and ridiculous. This adds to the confusion of the book as the reader tries to slowly un-derstand where the book leaves on theory and begin an-other. And whether the conver-sation between the two char-acters is part of one theory that carries throughout the book or if it simply a way of summariz-ing the theories are displayed through each story after or be-fore the story is told.

Because this book is so strongly suggestive and digs so deep into its philosophical theories, readers who have a hard time analyzing stories or

“reading between the lines,” should be aware that this book may be difficult to fully com-prehend and understand. Having written the book in a third person point of view, in which the reader is playing the role of the omnipotent listener, it tend to be easier to under-stand where the reader is

suppose to be, in relation to the text, and how the reader is suppose interpret exactly what he or she is reading. Many parts of the book where dia-logue appears the reader is in most cases suppose to attach

what they have just read, or sometimes what they are about to read, with the dia-logue. But, as mentioned ear-lier, the dialogue sometimes

has a small connection to the prior or latter text and makes for a difficult understand of where the book is going. The dialogue itself though usually contains its own theories. Of these theories, seperate from the

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butes are things such as base structure, fountains, people, etc. And things that are not as easy to see are things such as, transitional spaces, rules, microscopic elements, dreams, etc. The book beckons the ques-tion of whether the two main characters are actually discuss-ing real cities that have been journeyed to, or simply cities that could, in some way, possibly exist. But after one question is answered, another

“When he enters the territory of which Eutropia is the capital, the traveler sees not one city but many...”

comes up: Are they discuss-ing these ideas of cities and places after Po l o h a s

returned from them or has this whole book been simply two individuals in one room having never moved from their original spot. It’s possible that the latter is true because in some parts of the book the cities are said to only exist in the characters minds and

theories explaines in the story, ideas come up of things that exist, things that might exist, things that don’t exist once they say they exist, and so on. The book also takes place in many foreign cities, some cit-ies that may sound familiar by name and some that sound from out of this world. The sto-ries, though not exactly, seem to display possible city attri-butes, things that hold a city together that are both physical and invisible. Physical attri-

nowhere else. Also, the book narrates conversation in which characters are said to have never moved or left the spot they are discussing. To add to the question of whether or not they are even discussing at all, the book, while developing the story, notes that at a certain point Kahn and Polo actually do not understand the language each of them are speaking to each other. They simply carry the story in their head and through their mind.

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Polo, though, while describing certain cities, mentions fea-tures of cities that he should not have knowledge of. Some-things that are so futuristic that the only way to know of them is to actually see them or expe-rience them. Is it even possible for a person to dream or think of something that they have never seen or experienced before? And how can a person who has never moved from a particular spot, at all, describe

“Is it even possi-ble to dream or think of some-thing never seen or experienced before?“

Are all things simply cause and effect? When one stops it only decides that another must start.

Are there infinities in life that go beyond our thoughts, questions and insights.

cities with these futuristic fea-tures that only have existed recently? When I speak of these futuristic features I mean things such as airports, elevators, and modern day products. If any of

this is true then does that mean that ideas are eternal and infinite and that an idea

not made or decided yet, can still be dreamed up and or made at any point in time and space, regardless of the individual or cause of its effect.Reading this deep into any subject can cause alarm and will spark more questions than what are already at hand. And of these question “why” will

be the strongest and longest question any reader can ask. Any analytical read-er will understand that why is the only question that can find an answer and then ask the answer the same question for an infinite amount of times. When speaking of cities that contains imagery that no one has experienced or spoken of, “why” will intro-duce the question and in it the

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“...of equal size and not unlike one another, scattered over a vast, rolling plateau. Eu-tropia’s not one, but all these cities together; only one is inhabited at a time, the others are empty; and this process is carried out in rotation.”

reader will try to render an idea or answer from his or her sus-picion to the story. Reading the book the first time for face value and seeing it only as it is for words, the reader may be able to see and understand

certain portions of the book that are simple and require no research or questioning. But those parts are only the direct parts of the book. Descriptions that are related to reader or remind them of something that relates to them at that particular time in their life. They simply read direct descriptions of cities, this will cause them to understand enigmas that might only make sense to

What creates questions? Is it not understanding or it is not being understood.

the descriptions are of: the inhabitants, the cities, the inhabitants describing the city, the city describing it’s inhabit-ants, or whether there were inhabitants and city at all.

them. It is a long process to intake this book, since under-standing it will take more than seeing it for face value, the reader must understand the book every level it possibly has. At times the questioned comes to mind as to where the book’s descriptions are coming from. Not in the sense of who is speaking the words, but to whether

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“On the day when Eutropia’s inhabitant feel the grip of weariness and no one could bear any longer his job, his relatives, his house and his life, debts, the people he must greet or who greet him...”

One story in the book describes the inhabitants and how they make the city. They were what the city was made of, and the city could not be complete or completed without them. It is a description of any possible possibility. The universe is this book’s playground Anything

that is possible does exist, and anything that is not possible must exist as well. Or in some cases because it does exist and it is acknowledged it must not exist. Models, by this I mean structures, functions, abilities, ideas, and of the sort, of this can exist in any format. Just because it cannot be seen by

The universe is this book’s playground.

the eye does not mean that it cannot be there, it just means that we have yet to discover it. Invisible Cities is primarily about discovery. Discoveringmolecules in the universe, dis-covering ones inner self, discovering new methods of medicine, discovering very angle to photograph something, rediscovering old discoveries. Nothing is ever truly complete. Nothing is really fully discovered, because once something is seen once, the next

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With a log of infinite de-scriptions, this book be-comes harder after each turn of a page.

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second it can have been modi-fied or changed a million times in ways we could only imagine, or not even imagine. And those changes are what cause our infinite discoveries and why we can infinitiley create ideas and theories because in the end really haven’t discovered anything, we’re just finding something that has always been there to begin with.

So what do you really see? Is it simply our own perfect city in which is made up of only different parts and or differences in general? And of our differences, do they make many cities or just one? And if it is this just one, do many cities construct its make up? This book then brings to my mind the idea of Pla-to’s Republic. A philosophical book on about different ideas and possible theories. Plato’s

So what do we really see?

“Then the whole citizenry decides to move to the next city, which is there waiting for them, empty and good as new;”

closet explains the idea of the Dual World Theory. Plato’s idea of the universe is that it expands beyond the physical nature of itself. The universe is split into two dif-

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“So their life is renewed from move to move, among cit-ies whose exposure of declivity or steams or winds make each sire somehow different from the others.”

is real when in fact it isn’t, through dreams and drugs. Because of this we should not blindly believe that the senses tells us what is real and what isn’t. Thus saying our perceived

idea of the world we live in, can possibly be a fake world. If it can be doubted, than it

Instead of the Universe expanding it splits.

means that it cannot be per-fectly true. And if it’s truth is doubtable then that means it cannot be used as fact.

ferent worlds: The idea goes that the “world” of the senses can be tricked and make it seem as though something

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“There each will take up a new job, a diffe-rent wife, will see another landscape on opening his window, and will spend his time with different pastimes, friends, gossip. “

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There are too many cit-ies to cite and decipher.

our minds. We then know the idea of a horse more than we know the horse. That idea is the perfect form of whatever it physically becomes. To bring up the horse again, a person knows that in their mind a horse will always be a horse regardless of its colour, size, pedal ability, etc.

Make a long story short.

A dream can very closely resemble reality. It affects our vision, hearing and some-times even our sense of touch, but because we know it’s not real we cannot rely on our senses to tell us truth. Senses can be doubted, and because of this the world of the physical can also be doubted. An example of these two worlds is: we all know what a horse is, because we’ve seen one, but to describe it, or give a universal definition of a horse without describing any other animal is a task we can only do in

This book follows this idea of the mind’s world and the world of the physical. The physical world exist simply due to our ability to comprehend the per-fect form of whatever it is that we make. Though we compre-hend the perfect possible outcome of any one thing, we can only create a version of what we really truly understand about it. That is why every pos-sible city is describable, be-

cause even one city that fol-lows the same form, or blueprint, as another still comes out with different faults and properties, can populate different inhabitants, are made with different structural properties, and can change with technology. And so the cit-ies described in the book may not be real cities at all, but sim-ply the physical, by language and listening, descriptions of a

The world of the senses, touch, smell, taste, see, hear.

and the world of ideas, the perfect world.

perfectly modeled city. This book is many things, many things that cannot be under-stood and many things that can only be understood in refer-ence to an individual.

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“Since their society is ordered without great distinctions of wealth or authority, the passage from one function to another takes place almost without jolts; variety is guar-anteed by the multiple assignments, so that in the span of a lifetime a man rarely re-turns to a job that has already been his.”

The book is of differences, discovery and their differences. Semantics, language, space, angles, everything is different depending on the beholder. Maybe the book tries to relate to the ideas of the creator, the creation (its perfect form), the created, the process in creat-ing, and the one who sees the creation.

“Thus the city repeats its life, identical, shifting up and down on its empty chess-board. The inhabitants repeat the same scenes, with the actors changes;”

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The user is not allowed to break those rules in

developing a creation.

I can gather that I have under-stood a great amount of this book and from that great amount I am able to decipher my own pieces of work, and this book, as I’ve made them: from idea, to sketch, to trial, to display, to refinalization, to fin-ish, and then to destruction.

Such ideas can refer to design assignments for a class of students. Simple rules are given, invisible rules, to follow. Though the ideas were most likely the same, the product, as seen by the creator and the onlooker, were all different. A full understanding of this book will difficult for anyone, even possibly the writer.

Fully understandings the writ-ing of this book takes a long time and a very strong under-standing of many types of phi-losophy.

“They repeat the same speeches with variously combined accents; they open alternate mouths in identical yawns.”

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