Making the hidden visible

Dan Nott ’12 shows and tells about the systems that structure our world

By
Dan Nott ’12
Illustration of buildings and interconnected power lines.

Comics and graphic novels have come a long way, not just entertaining readers but also covering complex and nuanced subject matter. Combining text with images in this format can help readers improve vocabulary and comprehension and grasp topics that would be difficult with text alone.

Dan Nott ’12 took full advantage of those capabilities in his book Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day (2023, Random House Graphic), which was longlisted for the National Book Award. Nott shared some of his thoughts about the project and his journey to get there, as well as an excerpt from the book.

By the time I got to UMass, I had been considering the question for years: How can I combine research and art to better understand our world, and share that sense of discovery with others?

As a student in the Commonwealth Honors College, I created a Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration (BDIC) major that combined political science, art, and journalism. These studies set the foundation for a research and art practice that would take a few forms—from illustration for newsrooms to political cartoons—before eventually leading me to comics and graphic novels.

My debut nonfiction graphic novel uses comics, diagrams, and maps to provide context for the infrastructure that structures our society. Whether you’re an advocate for climate action or digital privacy, or you’re just seeking to understand any of the challenges we face today, I think that a visual approach to absorbing context can be a powerful form of understanding.

Page from Hidden Systems. Text reads: “Sometimes, I am very surprised by how little I know about everyday things. Usually I just move on. But sometimes, a question sticks, and I’ll look it up. Answers are often basic, or technical and hard to visualize, so I go on not knowing, and forget about it until something goes very wrong.”
Page from Hidden Systems. Text reads: “A hidden system is something we don’t notice until it breaks. But when these systems are doing what they’re supposed to, they become so commonplace that we hardly see them.”
Page from Hidden Systems. Text reads: “Hidden systems are in the news all the time. Usually when something dramatic happens. (Especially if something explodes.) But by overlooking hidden systems the rest of the time, we take for granted the benefits they provide for some of us, and disregard the harm they cause for others. These systems structure our society, and even when they’re working, are a source of inequality and environmental harm.”
Page from Hidden Systems. Text reads: “I began drawing about hidden systems because comics seem to have this superpower-like ability to compare how we think about something with how it works concretely. To view small pieces in the context of larger systems. And to show the embedded histories, inequities, and imagined potentials...”
Page from Hidden Systems. Text reads: “…all contained within the things we notice least.”
Page from Hidden Systems. Text reads: “To make this book, I talked with a lot of people and read as much as I could. I believe that asking questions and drawing out answers can be a powerful way of learning and understanding. These comics are about the process of forming questions—and discovering a small piece of what's hidden beneath the surface.”

 

Dan Nott is an artist, cartoonist, and educator living in Vermont. Hidden Systems (Random House Graphic, March 2023) was long-listed for a National Book Award, and won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Children’s Literature. He has released two civics-focused comic books with the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), This is What Democracy Looks Like: A Graphic Guide to Governance and Freedom and Unity: A Graphic Guide to Civics and Democracy in Vermont. He graduated from UMass Amherst in 2012 and holds an MFA from CCS, where he teaches comics studies.

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