White Space

By Matt Durand

In the not-so-distant future, design and technology collide In this collection of ten short fictions. The lines of reality blur and bend, where logo projects go haywire, selfies change more than your social status, gods upgrade to the internet age, and photoshoots open doors that are better left closed. Fall into the darker depths of creative minds as they struggle to find order amongst the chaos in an ever pixelating world.

 

01 - White Space
A graphic designer gets a new job for a logo that turns into a fight for his life when things go awry.

 

02 - Reality Stamp
Greta, a lonely college freshman, discovers a photo manipulation app update that allows its users to alter their photos with real-life consequences.

 

03 - Typographic Adultery
A remorseful creative director writes an apology letter to a typeface while on his deathbed.

 

04 - Now You Don't
Computer wiz Clement Womack is trying to settle into a normal life after a stint in prison. But when a person from his past comes back into his life, he finds himself coerced into a bank heist.

 

05 - Undone
A high-tech watch allows its wearers to go back short distances in time, but when it comes to life and death, some things can't be undone.

 

06 - Digits
In a dystopian future where robots have taken over, humans struggle to find their purpose in the working world that no longer needs them.

 

07 - Different Strokes
A web developer takes on a unique job for sex crazed deities.

 

08 - Counterfeit
Fed up with where her career has gone, Emily Noor comes up with a clever job application despite it being illegal.

 

09 - Flashbulb
The grandson of a famous photographer uncovers family secrets and a new world, when he discovers a mysterious and magical camera.

 

10 - Client Side
Follows a child of the Greek god Hades, as he travels throughout time and history as the thorn in the side of all creatives.

 

For fans of Black Mirror and the Twilight Zone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Durand
• Release date: Jan 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215437353

Book preview

White Space, ©2021. Matt Durand. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of Matt Durand. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satirical intent, is coincidental.

CONTENTS

WHITE SPACE

REALITY STAMP

TYPOGRAPHIC ADULTERY

NOW YOU DON’T

UNDONE

DIGITS

DIFFERENT STROKES

COUNTERFEIT

FLASHBULB

CLIENT SIDE

// ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WHITE SPACE

The project seemed simple enough. I would’ve never guessed it’d be the one that ruined my career, but I suppose you never really know where a project will take you until you’re lost in the land of pixels and feedback.

My friend Ashley described the job as a basic poster design for a booze cruise company. She’d given one of the owners my name. I think she felt pity for me since I’d been scraping by doing banner ads for the previous two months for a super strength hemorrhoid cream. The copy read, A soothing smear for your rear. After many a drunken night, I questioned the sanity of coming all the way out to this city to do design for a living. Was this the best I could hope for? A life of showing people how to stop itching their inflamed ass holes? Anyway, I took the booze cruise job.

I took a train out to the Hamptons to meet a guy named Brad. He was about what you would expect from someone that started a booze cruise company and was named Brad. He stunk of Long Island rich kid money. His hair was slicked back with enough gel that I found myself wondering how his head didn’t combust under the heat of the summer sun. A tight-fitting, Big Bird yellow tank top fit like a sausage casing over the muscles of his tanned torso. The logo of his company sat squarely in the middle of his shirt. An all uppercase sans serif font spelled out the company name, Rager Boat. At its core the logo was just a wine bottle on its side with three triangles for sails, a circle for a sun, and some simple straight lines that suggested calm water. It was as literal of a depiction as you could get, devoid of any creativity. I could picture Brad hovering over some poor designer's shoulder as he directed the formation of the eyesore. Brad told me with a matter of fact shrug that he came up with the idea one night raging on the beach with his best bro from college.

The neighbors kept hassling us for partying too late. The old cocksuckers would even call the cops on us half the time. Like, what the fuck, right? He slapped me on the arm with the back of his hand. So I said to Chad, Chad’s my partner, by the way, why don’t we just throw everyone on my dad’s boat and rage at sea. And he was like, Bro, that’s brilliant.’ So we did it. That’s how we started Rager Boat.

Cool, I said half-heartedly. Okay, what exactly are you looking for on the poster? I asked.

He leaned forward on the black meshed circular table outside the bar we agreed to meet at in a downtown area of Montauk. Well, it’s gotta be large. Uh, it’s def gotta have the logo on it. I’ll send you some photos of some hot chicks you can throw on there, too.

Is this for an event or something or just a get the word out there type of poster? Make people aware of the brand?

I guess it’s more to just get the word out.

I jotted a few notes down. As far as copy goes, anything, in particular, you want to say on it?

He shifted in his chair and waved his hand in front of him like he was quickly slapping a fish in the face. I don’t deal with that part of it. That’s more a Chad thing. He’s got those Wolf of Wall Street type of skills for selling shit. I’ll have him email you what it should say on there.

When are you looking to have these done by? I asked, hoping it wouldn’t be totally unrealistic.

I mean, ASAP, bro. We’re looking to make that bank.

It was Friday. I didn’t get the impression Brad knew much of what went into creating a design like he was asking for. So I cushioned the timeline. I probably could have something done within the next day, but I said, How does a week sound?

He flashed his perfect white teeth in a movie star smile, That’s money, bro.

And as far as the budget goes? I left the question hanging so he would answer. Money negotiations were always one of the things I hated the most about being a freelancer.

We’re a startup, so we’re bootstrapping right now. We don’t want to spend a fortune.

I normally charged fifty an hour, but I figured I’d take a shot. He said his dad had a boat, and I wanted to put my theory to the test that he came from money. I scribbled down the math on my notebook. The job would probably take me eight hours for the first round. This guy seemed like he’d be in the mid-range of pain in the ass clientele, so I figured maybe three rounds, and I could get it out the door. Each round after the first, I ballparked at three hours each. A quick calculation came out to seventeen hours. Seventeen times fifty came out to eight hundred and fifty bucks. I doubled it. That got me to seventeen hundred. I didn’t like that it wasn’t even, so I said, Based on my workload and some other jobs in the hopper, I can get this done for two grand flat.

It was a lot of potential money for me. A quick score like that would’ve paid the rent and left enough for a decent bottle of bourbon. I held my breath and watched his face as he sat there silently. He didn’t say anything for what felt like an eternity. I wasn’t sure if he had heard me or if he was trying to make his own calculations in his head. I was about to say something to break the awkward silence when he said, Yeah, that’s cool. He then abruptly stood up from his chair as though he was thoroughly checked out of the conversation with me and was already on to something new.

Just send me a contract or a brief or whatever it is you guys do, and we’ll get started, he said.

I dropped my pen as I fumbled to move my notebook to get up to match his actions. Oh, okay, all right, I’ll...

Before I could finish the sentence and look up, he was already on the sidewalk, riffling for his keys in his beach shorts. He threw a casual wave over his shoulder as he unlocked the door to his BMW parked on the street.

Gotta go. Looking forward to seeing it. Thanks, bro, he shouted back as he jumped into his car.

As I watched the frenetic taillights weave in and out down the street, I thought to myself that maybe I should’ve charged three grand.

_

IT WAS DARK BY THE time I got back to the city by train from the Hamptons. I wanted to preserve as much of my potential earnings from my upcoming gig as I could, so I skipped a taxi and took the number four train. It was more crowded than I was hoping it would be. Coming from the Midwest, I never could get a good handle on the subway system. The train pulled up to the platform, and my pace quickened as I searched out the least packed train car I could find in time. A sense of panic washed over me as I kept walking, certain the doors were going to close any second. Rushed, I half tripped, half leapt into the next open door. My face landed in a moist region of a large woman’s lower back. Matching black garbage bags covered her arms. A previously white tank top now a tie dye of stains had the words ‘Not. Today.’ screen printed on the front. She scowled at me and rattled off a litany of what I assumed were curse words, in a language I didn’t recognize. I murmured an apology as I tried wiping the residue off the side of my face with the sleeve of my shirt. The car was packed and I couldn’t raise my arm fully, so I only managed to smear a small portion of wet body juice down my cheek.

Whenever I rode the subway, I always wondered what the original creators would think if they were alive today. What would they think if they could see the state of their engineering and design genius left neglected and unadapted to a massive growth in population? To see their cars overflooded like a sock drawer? Would they change their whole approach if they could see into the future? Would they scrap the idea entirely?

After a few stops, the car began to thin out. The large woman gave me one last dirty look as she got off. I melted gratefully into an open seat and let out my breath that I’d been trying to hold since I’d boarded. Outside the window I could see a large ad on the wall across from the platform, a spectacular mix of type and imagery from Pantheon Creative. The ad was for one of their latest software releases. All of their work was stunning. Every time I saw a piece of theirs, I’d initially be amazed, but then that amazement would deteriorate into insecurity and self-doubt that I’d never be able to create something that good. The woman at the center of the ad looked flat but somehow dimensional. I made a note to myself to check if Pantheon had started using holograms or some sort of light mapping techniques.

I thought of the poster project I’d agreed to and questioned whether I could turn it into something so cool that maybe Pantheon would even take notice. As the train pulled away, I could tell I was overtired and in need of a drink, because I could swear the woman on the ad blew me a kiss.

Five stops later, I finally arrived in my neighborhood. I climbed the steps back to the world and emerged from the concrete tunnel like an overgrown mole. The grid of streets was about the smartest thing the city had taken from design theory. Their intersecting horizontal and vertical lines made it easy to switch on the internal autopilot and get to where you needed to be without much thinking. I wished the same could be said for the rest of the composition of the city. Of course, it’s not just New York — cities are designed by committee, time, and happenstance, leaving its inhabitants on their own to decode the muddled mess of often clashing design ideas.

The night air was heavy with a muggy haze. The humidity’s density trapped the worst of the foul air on the streets—one block smelt of puke and day-old beer, the next of dirty exhaust and smoldering asphalt. As I got stuck in a sea of people crossing a street, scents of body odor and hours old sex bombarded me from all sides. By the time I arrived home, even the flies didn’t know what to make of my second-hand stench.

My two hundred and fifty square foot mousetrap of a studio apartment was on the third floor of a beige brick building. It was cemented between a florist and a grocery store with the faded sign reading Bangkok Center Grocery. I lumbered up the narrow staircase and walked down the hallway and pushed the hefty slab of a door to my apartment with a heavy sigh. I flicked the switch and dropped my notebook on the kitchen counter and went to the tiny bathroom. Then I went out to the kitchenette and reached up above the sink to a cabinet filled with random glasses and mugs. I pulled out a four-ounce glass that I’d stolen from a beer tasting a year before. I had about half a handle left of whiskey. I poured it to the brim of the glass, grabbed my notebook, and sank into the faux leather chair at my desk.

I took a sip of the whiskey and booted up my computer. I typed up the notes from the meeting with Brad and put together a creative brief along with a request for some assets. I hit send then downed the bulk of the remaining whiskey in one satisfying slug. I spun the chair away from the desk and took the two steps to the couch’s inviting cushions that doubled as my bed. Within seconds I was off to the loneliness of my dreams.

_

THE SOFT LIGHT REFLECTING off the brick outside my one window woke me up. It was ten. I rolled out of bed and into the bathroom. I hosed off in the vampire tomb of a shower stall. After toweling off and sliding on my clean jeans and t-shirt, I fixed myself some breakfast. Two eggs over easy with a Kraft single on the top and a sprinkle of pepper. Since it was Saturday, I treated myself to a strong Irish coffee. A quick shake of the mouse and the computer lit back up. Surprisingly, Brad had signed off already on the brief and sent me all of the assets I’d asked for. I downloaded the files, set up my folders, and polished off my coffee. Then I got to work.

I skimmed through the folder of images he’d sent me, and indeed there were many photos of hot chicks. One of them stood out to me. She was thin, blonde, and scantily clad with her arms raised high in the air. The freedom of her smile combined with her youth seemed to sum up who I thought the target audience was for the Rager Boat. She was a mix of a Girl Gone Wild with the girl next door. I cut her out of the background and masked her inside of a circle cut in half. I let her arms and top of her head break the circle’s plane and reach towards the sky of the page. I copied and pasted in the text that, presumably, the master wordsmith Chad had devised. It read, Ready to Party? Book your own private boat and rage into the morning. No nosy neighbors. No cops. Just booze, girls, and awesome times. Call [phone] to set up an event or visit ragerboat.com. It wasn’t terribly original, but it got the job done.