It was a dark and stormy night when the worst first line was written. Now the future’s bright: we have the technology to create as much meaningless corporate codswallop as we want.

Once I know what topic I want to (or have to) write about, the most critical decision becomes inevitable: how to begin? No evening class in Creative Writing, no journalism course fails to mention how important the first sentence is for the impression a text makes upon the unprepared reader. Norbert Miller, a German literary historian, published a collection of essays about what he called this ​‘radical decision’. The first sentence compresses the infinite space for reflection into a finite object, sett­ling on one version out of a multitude of variations and possible strategies. Consider these alternatives: ​‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ and ​‘One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.’ The first example is by the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who thus began his Paul Clifford. The second is, of course, from Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. After a beginning like this, you know Kafka’s novel is not going to be light reading, while Bulwer-Lytton’s turn of phrase does not bode well if you’re looking for world literature. Its author gave his name to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The team describes itself thus: ​”The contest receives thousands of entries each year, and every summer our Panel of Undistinguished Judges convenes to select winners and dishonorable mentions for such categories as Purpose Prose and Vile Puns.”

An earlier winner, Professor Sue Fondrie from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, wrote: ​‘Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories’. If you spend any time reading press releases, this style of writing won’t surprise you, even though the topics may be less personal. Mixing as many unrelated metaphors as possible into one statement seems to be considered a high art in those circles.

Many trades have developed their own style of templated writing. You can actually find bullshit generators online that provide ready-made statements, such as this from arty​bol​locks​.com: ​‘My work explores the relationship between acquired synesthesia and emotional memories. With influences as diverse as Nietzsche and Roy Lichtenstein, new synergies are crafted from both.’ If that isn’t good (or bad) enough for your purpose, there are alternatives: ​‘My work explores the relationship between the tyranny of ageing and skateboard ethics. With influences as diverse as Kierkegaard and John Lennon, new combinations are generated from both simple and complex meanings.’ Increasing levels of complexity, cliché and incomprehensibility are on offer. I am sure that there are bullshit generators for architects and designers somewhere. I haven’t bothered to look for them yet, for fear of being infected. 

Before one even gets to the first sentence, though, potential readers have to pass another obstacle: the title of the book. While the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest encourages people to write original lines just for the contest, the Bookseller / Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, commonly known as the Diagram Prize, is a humorous literary award that has been made annually since 2000. The winner is decided by a public vote on the Bookseller’s website. The very first award in 1978 went to a publication by the University of Tokyo Press about medical studies using laboratory mice with inhibited immune systems, accordingly but somewhat surprisingly titled ​“Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice”.

The 2000 winner delighted with ​“High Performance Stiffened Structures”, published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Then there’s ​“Highlights in the History of Concrete”, by CC Stanley, published by the British Cement Association. It stormed the Oddest Title in 1994.

The First Line is difficult. So is the ending.

What is almost as difficult as starting a text is finishing it. At the end, you are supposed to offer some closure, like answering the rhetorical question posed in the first paragraph; revealing an unexpected answer to a problem that your article had discovered, or at least wrapping up your ramblings with a phrase that would make punters happy about just having grown older by ten minutes reading it, without immediate danger to their health. There could even be a conclusion that would add lasting benefit to all that intellectual activity. This time, I got to 800 words or so rather cheaply: a quarter are quotes. To get maximum benefit from reading this, you should look online for bullshit detectors and humorous literary awards. If nothing else, it’ll help against the dreaded Fear of the First Line: you can always do better than this. Chosen from over 4500 entries, the winner of the XXXIXth Lyttoniad is Stu Duval of Auckland, New Zealand:
​“A lecherous sunrise flaunted itself over a flatulent sea, ripping the obsidian bodice of night asunder with its rapacious fingers of gold, thus exposing her dusky bosom to the dawn’s ogling stare.“ ★

Update:
The winner for 2023 has been announced:
2023 Grand Prize
​“She was a beautiful woman; more specifically she was the kind of beautiful woman who had an hourlong skincare routine that made her look either ethereal or like a glazed donut, depending on how attracted to her you were.”
Maya Pasic, New York, NY

Like everybody else, I usually have more to do than even a 36-hour day will fit in. I always scribble stuff on bits of papers, and sometimes even make lists. That may not qualify as ​“drawing” in the professional sense, but even a few marks on paper can signify a beginning.

Drawing is the greatest means of communication for architects and designers with or without a brief. Getting the ideas on to paper is another matter, but a foolproof strategy for designing does exist. When Le Corbusier ​‘designed’ the Cabanon in 45 minutes, what exactly did he do? Did he scribble a complete building – plan, elevation and section – on to the back of that proverbial envelope? Or was it just a doodle that was then deciphered and translated by assistants who were familiar with the master’s handwriting? We all know that a quick sketch can be both the beginning of a process or the end of it. It all depends on what you call ​‘designing’. Does it only happen while actually working on paper or screen, or does a problem, a brief, or a project leech itself to the inside of your head without you even knowing it’s there? And then come out, fully developed as a building, a painting, a chair, a lamp, or a book cover? For myself, I have identified five distinct strategies to start designing. (They apply to writing as well.)

1. AVOIDING
Need the car washed, emails answered, receipts filed? When the deadline already casts a long shadow on your conscience, you suddenly feel the urgent need to tidy up all those loose ends. You can only sit down to work when everything is tidy, in your mind and on your desk. I have to go through this phase every time. By now, I recognize it and use it to actually finish all these little annoying tasks that keep piling up.

2. THINKING
Our brain is an amazing tool: unlimited capacity, works at the speed of light and is incredibly flexible. Unfortunately the problem is never lack of capacity but retrieval. We know it’s in there, but cannot find it. Just sitting down (after having cleaned up the desk, of course) and putting your mind to a problem for a few minutes is an amazing experience that we hardly ever allow ourselves to enjoy. If you do not look at emails, switch off the phone, keep your door and the books on your desk closed, you’d be surprised how quickly you start getting things sorted, in your head at least.

3. SKETCHING
After a few minutes of plain old pondering the issue at hand, it can be useful to start making marks on paper. Not necessarily proper mind maps or floor plans, but anything that will still be visible a day later. Picturing thoughts, even if you cannot draw at all, is amazingly effective, especially if you have to remember what you thought about a day later or communicate it to someone else. You can buy expensive software to help with this, but I find that the time spent mastering the learning curve of a new application would be better applied to learning to sketch simple little drawings. Everybody – especially clients – loves a designer who can actually draw. As a type designer I am loathe to admit that a picture does sometimes say more than a thousand words.

4. RESEARCHING
Knowledge is good, and looking around for signs of other intelligent solutions to a similar task may help. Gathering background facts also builds confidence and may help convince a client. Looking at too many annuals full of other peoples’ work can be dangerous though: you either get totally discouraged because everybody else’s stuff looks so good, or you – inadvertently, of course – imitate something, often later, when you think you cannot recall anything you’ve seen.

5. COLLECTING
This is an ongoing activity. I do not know one designer, writer or architect who doesn’t keep things that are ​‘interesting’. That doesn’t always have to amount to a complete collection of Braun hi-fi equipment from 1957 until today, as in my case, but anything that you could not throw away at the time survived for a good reason: it spoke to you. If you can make your collection bring back that original inspiration, you can trigger parts of your brain that may have encountered the same problem before, even without knowing it at the time. All these strategies work. One after the other, if not in the order mentioned above, but more often than not concurrently. We carry a design brief around with us all the time, not just during the hours we can actually charge a client. It just needs the right moment to manifest itself. That’s why Le Corbusier probably knew exactly what he wanted to do when he took out his pen. 

What these anecdotes fail to mention, however, is that after the first strike of genius, most of us have to spend much, much longer getting scribbles made into plans, ideas turned into prose and proposals into commissions.

At school – way back in the 20^th century, my nickname was Spieki. Saves only one syllable over my proper last name, Spiekermann, but conforms to the unwritten rule that nicknames shouldn’t be longer than two syllables and preferably end in /y or /i. This was Germany in the 1950s but it still seems to apply today. Susi, Johnny, Hansi, Micky, Angie. Even short and plain names like Luke (my Spanish-English grandson) have to conform: Lukie/Luky/Luki.

For decades I’ve had the spiek​ileaks​.com domain reserved to provide a platform for all the texts, notes, articles, forewords, opinions, etc I have written since I’ve been able to hold a pen, strike a key or speak into a microphone. Now here we are. Some of these pieces have been published before: in the Blueprint columns I wrote in English; my contributions for Form magazine were written in German and sometimes translated to English, and numerous other publications. I also intend to publish some of the scraps from my archives, be they photographs, sketches, and half-baked theories. That’ll mostly be about typographic topics because that is what I can write about without looking things up elsewhere. While I do have two separate sites: spieker­mann.com/en and spiek​er​mann​.com/de, spiekileaks will provide no preference. If you cannot read German, you may miss out, unless I can be bothered to translate stuff previously only available in my native language.

Ab hier auch Deutsch:

Mein Spitzname in der Schule war natürlich Spieki. Spart nur eine Silbe, aber alle Spitz­namen dürfen nur zwei Silben haben und müssen auf /i, /y oder /ie enden. Zumindest war das im Deutschland der 50^er Jahre so: Susi, Gabi, Hansi, Micky, Angie. Selbst ein so kurzer Name wie Luke (mein spanisch-englischer Enkel) muss die diminuitive Endung kriegen, auch wenn das die Silbenzahl verdoppelt: Lukie/Luky/Luki.

Die Domain spiek​ileaks​.com habe ich seit Jahrzehnten (!) reserviert um irgendwann meine ganzen Texte, Vorworte, Interviews, Theorien, Meinungen usw. zu veröffentlichen, die ich verfasst habe, seit ich schreiben, tippen oder in ein Mikrofon sprechen kann. Hier also: Beiträge aus meinen Kolumnen für Blueprint und für die Form, auf Englisch oder Deutsch geschrieben und mitunter in die jeweils andere Sprache übersetzt. Außerdem hoffentlich neue Texte, Gedanken und Bilder zu vorzugsweise typografischen Themen. Denn davon verstehe ich was ohne jedesmal lange zu recherchieren. Meine Festplatten sind voll von Fotos, Skizzen, Zeichnungen und Textfragmenten. Hier wird es Beiträge hin und wieder nur in einer der beiden Sprachen geben, was für deutschsprachige Leser ein kleineres Problem sein wird. ★