Our Story
ColorBook Press is a very small operation. We are people who are fascinated by the power of paper throughout history. Not just in its ability to document words but in its properties to serve as the basis for three dimensional creativity. From German Fensterbilder to Japanese Origamic Architecture, to American Cut and Assemble Crafts, paper has long been unifying material with the ability to bring joy to nearly anyone. While we started out wanting to share our own fun paper craft creations, we are growing into a small corner of the world where revolution through creativity is part of the order of the day. All are welcome, all are invited and all are asked to be fully present as we navigate this crazy world and figure out life together - one paper project, one inspiring sticker, one present moment of intentional creation at a time.
Our Stance on AI
We have given quite a bit of thought and discussion to the inescapable existence of AI. Here is what we have currently concluded:
We are not inherently anti AI. It is a powerful tool that has the potential to solve issues of disease, climate destruction, poverty and other human made pain points of existence. That said, we are absolutely anti corporate theft; where given the roles reversed anyone would be jailed for such a large scale felony offenses. We are most definitely anti environmental destruction for the greed of the few without the painstakingly deliberate and thoughtful consideration of the many. We are anti political corruption taking place across American municipalities and nation states around the world. We are anti NDA's that hide corporate schemes at best, and pay for play agreements at worst. We are anti techno-oligarchs seeking to remake the world in their psychopathic images and we are anti competitive technological concepts that are designed to exacerbate inequality. But mostly, we are anti sitting on our laurels and just letting things roll out the way they are because they are too big, too overwhelming and too scary to do anything about. We know you are exhausted by the light speed at which the world is turning. We are too! AND....we have an opportunity to stand up, speak up, even in the smallest of ways as creators. So while we are anti all the awful ways AI is being forced upon us for economic greed, we are for YOU! We are for US! We are for the power of art as a positive form of nervous system regulation, neighborly communication and socio-economic-political resistance. We are for what history repeatedly shows us always happens in the end....revolutions start small and art is an essential component for revolutions to be successful! So...Vive la révolution!
ColorBook Press has chosen not to use AI in 98% of our world. Our artwork is all human made, human ideated, human painted, colored, designed, formatted and produced. You will find misspellings and design errors that we somehow missed in the 50th review meeting. We do not use AI in our website (like you couldn't tell) and we do not use AI in the writing of our books. We do not use AI to manage our calendars, meetings, tasks, social media or any other part of our daily business lives, that we make every effort to be aware of. What we do reserve the remaining 2% possibility of using AI is in the researching of medical issues and healthcare needs of our team members.
Anything outside of that, we will continue to be in conversation with each other and the larger creative community each year as AI continues to evolve. We welcome and respect your opinions on the subject as we all grow.
...And shout out to Karen Hao (www.karendhao.com) for her relentless work on breaking the myths and bringing a studied understanding to the "real" stories around the empires of AI. She's our AI hero! Go read her books and watch her interviews.
Please Be Patient With Us
We are currently a VERY small operation. Because we have made a commitment to AI that will absolutely require more time, human effort and consideration when things go wrong, we ask one simple thing of you:
Please be patient with us!
We are a new company. We have never built anything like this, in our previous professional lives. We are all learning on the job and we are excited. We have a microscopic budget and are using third party vendors for many of our products. We don't feel the need to hide that reality. As such, there is more opportunity for things to go wrong that are out of our control. Please be kind in your patience when reaching out to share a mistake. We look forward to learning through those "failures" and hopefully it being further opportunity to make a new friend. Things will take longer and require some old fashioned hurdles for us all to jump over if we are to stay committed to our AI stance for everyone's larger benefit. That will require our immediate mea culpa, a quick chuckle and your fun loving patience. For that you will have our eternal gratitude and continued philosophy that most of us really are super cool humans worth getting to know.