As a designer at Southern California News Group, part of our procedure in the proofing process is to print out pages for copy editors to review and return with corrections noted and amended.

I noticed, upon receiving pages back, one editor, Michael Bowers, left a different highlighted marking noting that he had ‘made fixes’ on each page returned.

Once I had realized his various and creative markings I began setting his
pages aside planning to eventually create a comprehensive collection of these
marks for a book.

With the turn of the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, and the newsroom subsequently working remotely, copy editors now make all of their corrections digitally without the process of print proofing ­­— and with it, this small art has been lost.

Using the pages I retained, I created this collection as a tribute to micro-expressions in our everyday lives to buffer the mundane, bring a lightness to daily toil, and create physical markings as a personal expression of individuality, autonomy and our ephemeral humanity.