Hot off the press

Local author Preston Taylor celebrated the launch of his first book, Illustrated History of Green Bay, last week with The Teaching Press at UW-Green Bay, even assisting with the binding, trimming and folding of the 100th copy.

Illustrated History of Green Bay is a collection of illustrations of 14 landmarks from around the community.

“He started doing this actually during COVID,” said Julie Taylor, Preston’s mom. “Julianne, his big sister, would take him for rides in the car just to get out and do things and he started taking pictures and he would come home and start drawing the pictures. So he’s kind of been working on this for a few years and then he wanted to publish a book.”

The book features many of Julianne’s photos paired with Preston’s illustrations, though Preston said he has also learned to love photography himself,

“I’m a photographer,” Preston said. “I take pictures of Green Bay history. I take a lot of photos. I take photos of architecture — not inside, but outside of buildings.”

For Preston, what makes a photo truly interesting is the story behind it.

“I like to look through very interesting photos and the history of Green Bay — what it looked like in the past,” Preston said. “History has a lot of topics. It’s my favorite.”

Some of Preston’s favorite photos and drawings featured in the book include St. Willebrord Catholic Church, the Leo Frigo bridge, the Brown County Courthouse and City Stadium.

And how does it feel to be a published author?

“I like my life,” Preston said. “I’m so proud of myself.”

An intentional design

For Dr. Rebecca Meacham, director of The Teaching Press at UW-Green Bay, Preston’s book was an opportunity to work towards a goal she’s had for the program since its inception.

“When I first started doing The Teaching Press and thinking about the form of a book and the way that people interact with stories… I was thinking about what all you could do to make a story accessible,” Meacham said.

Illustrated History of Green Bay stood out as an appealing project for two main reasons.

“One: I’ve had a bigger project to be thinking about how we can create books that imagine readers experiencing the book in different ways — physically and cognitively,” Meacham said. “And two: These drawings are vibrant and joyful and they have a perspective on architecture that isn’t just lines and angles — they’re exuberant. And then we met Preston and this was something I really wanted to do, to put those two things together.”

Knowing that copies of Preston’s book would be donated to students with a wide range of ability, Meacham said it was important to her and the students who worked on the book to really consider what it meant to make the book accessible.

“I really wanted to have a group of students think about accessibility… so our first assignment was to take any book from your shelf and think about what assumptions are being made about the accessibility of it…” Meacham said. “They were all really thinking about dimension and binding and then we had Michelle Holton from Syble Hopp come talk to our class about how they do storytelling and why and what are some ways we can think about a book that works for a lot of the readers there because we knew Preston was going to donate books there.”

And the final result reflects the attention to detail and careful planning the students put into the book, all the way down to the type of paper used and how the book lays when opened.

“The students were very intentional about how the story works — how the images would look if people were flipping the pages, the paper, the texture… the binding itself and thinking of somebody laying it flat or not wanting to hold the book up…” Meacham said.

“I’m so proud of the students. I’m proud of them with everything we do, but this was really special with their passion for figuring it out.”