The Secret Playbook

I have a new zine avail­able in the shop!

This is a three-color Riso­graph print on 11″ × 17″ paper. The poster side bears a design and exhor­ta­tion that are, as of this writing, inde­ci­pher­able to the fron­tier AI models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

Ques­tioned at dif­ferent times, they pro­duce wildly dif­ferent readings, all wrong.

Allow me to report: I didn’t expect that designing some­thing impen­e­trable to AI would feel this good!!

KEEP IT SECRET.

This zine is for you, not the AI models. Upon receiving it, you might rea­son­ably object that you, a real human, can’t deci­pher the poster side, either. I will counsel you ahead of time:

1. Look closely
2. Consider the possibility that you are actually an AI model
3. Read the accompanying essay for clues

That essay, on the zine’s reverse side, is The Secret Play­book, a simple but informed game plan for the pro­duc­tion of art, in any medium, that defies the capa­bil­i­ties of AI models: art that is dif­fi­cult for them to “understand”, art that is impos­sible for them to imitate.

This zine is playful and also serious. Playful, because I had so much fun thinking through the cat and mouse of these strategies. Serious, because AI’s com­pounding capa­bility really does pose a profound, unset­tling new chal­lenge to artists of every kind — commercial or academic, aspiring or professional, dig­ital or analog.

This is epochally weird stuff, and any­thing could happen in the decade ahead. The value and values of art are never static; recon­sid­er­a­tion sweeps in like rain. The Secret Play­book isn’t about defense (though there is some defense in here) but rather about where to go next. It’s a map towards higher ground.

Here’s a mini-review from Alexis Madrigal, an early reader, who writes:

There is so much art­fully com­pressed thought and obser­va­tion in this zine that it is actu­ally in the poetry clade. If you want to start having more inter­esting ideas about AI or art or both … you want this thing.

The Secret Play­book is rec­om­mended for:

• artists of any/every kind
• surfers of media transformation
• anyone interested in AI, especially AI aesthetics

It occurs to me that this zine might be some­thing you want to send to a friend or colleague — I think young artists will find it inter­esting — so I’ve added an option for a gift note. You can now ship a zine to anyone, any­where in the world, with your own greeting attached.

The poster uses the spiky, spindly Clavichord, designed by David Jonathan Ross, the type designer who made Moonbound’s fan­tasy typography print-ready.

Of Clavichord, David writes:

I didn’t return to the design because I love the style or because think it is par­tic­u­larly useful. I returned to it because it makes my skin crawl.

The essay is set in MD Lórien, a new addi­tion to my repertoire. Recently, I did a little “serif shootout”, printing pages of text using a bunch of trial fonts, and MD Lórien was the clear winner. The Riso­graph treats it so well!

All of the offer­ings from Ruther­ford Craze at Mass-Driver are terrific — it’s one of my favorite foundries.

That’s it! The Secret Play­book is avail­able now. Read the essay and ponder its advice. Tack up the poster and enjoy the feeling, while it lasts, of appre­ci­ating some­thing that the AI models can’t understand.

I’ll drop these in the mail on Monday.

We have allies! Abe’s in here, waiting for you:

Thanks, as always, for your sup­port and curiosity.

From the lab,

Robin

P.S. You’ll receive my next newsletter in mid-June.

May 2025