The Greater Than Or Equal To side-project Detainee 063 came to an end yesterday, after 50 days of republishing the interrogation log of Guantanamo Bay inmate Mohammed Al-Qahtani in real time. To mark the end, there is a blog post over there about how things stood before the beginning of the log.

In a cell clinging to his blanket, the lights always on, with no windows or way to know the time, having been denied human contact for months, at the tail end of his senses, secretly observed talking to people who aren’t there: this is the state of Al-Qahtani when his hood is removed in the interrogation booth on November 23.

This is his state before the log begins, before it records: Detainee states he’s on hunger strike, asks to pray and is refused, The Detainee began to cry, agreed to drink water in return for being allowed to prayMedical personnel checked vital signs.

Before Detainee was informed that we would not let him die, wrap was put on detainee’s feet to combat the swelling, The detainee bent over and bit the IV tube completely in two …

There was only one best book cover design of 2009:

The Humbling by Philip Roth, designed by Milton Glaser.

And I say that even with a horse in the running on The Book Design Review’s rather more thorough round-up of the year.

(Actually it’s gray318’s horse, but I still like to brush its locks and feed it sugarcubes.)

The New York Times Magazine, alternate covers for issue on infrastructure

The New York Times Magazine spread

Alternate covers for an issue of The New York Times Magazine and a spread, taken from ‘Behind The New York Times Magazine’s Redesign with DD Arem Duplessis’ at The Society of Publication Designers blog Grids.