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New Book Now Available: As If By Chance

Southfield, MI, January 26, 2024 –(PR.com)– Fulton Books author Kevin Reed Donley—who has worked in the graphic arts, publishing, and printing industries in the Detroit area for over forty years—has completed his most recent book, “As if by Chance: Sketches of Disruptive Continuity in the Age of Print from Johannes Gutenberg to Steve Jobs”: a fascinating look at the evolution of printing technology since the time of Gutenberg and the resonating relevance of this history for the modern digital age.

Born and raised in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, author Kevin Reed Donley graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design in 1982, after which he relocated to Detroit to start his professional career. In 1997, Kevin became a certified business planning executive with the National Association for Printing Leadership Management Institute at Northwestern University.

The author is active in the Detroit and Michigan graphic arts and printing community and has also been an active participant in the national and international technical standards initiatives of the printing industry. Donley is a speaker on printing business and technology topics, having addressed audiences at colleges and universities and industry events for more than three decades. In 2008, he launched a blog called “Multimediaman: Know the Past, Create the Future” at multimediaman.net and published studies of major innovators in the history of print technology as well as reviews of contemporary developments in new electronic and digital media.

“This book discusses these two bookends in the age of print,” writes Donley. “It follows the transitions and stages of innovation in printing between the fifteenth and twenty-first centuries and shows how the inventors responsible for this progress are bound together in a chain of revolutionary technical change called disruptive continuity.

“While the works of Gutenberg and Jobs are separated by more than five centuries, there are striking parallels and differences between these two innovations. They both sparked the quantitative expansion of literacy and the spread of knowledge around the world. However, the emergence of electronic publishing—especially in its present-day social media forms—has brought a vast increase in the consumption of information while also heralding a qualitative transformation that places the tools of wireless and mobile multimedia publishing into the hands of billions of people on earth.

“Much in the same way that there was a historical lag between Gutenberg’s invention and the full impact of printing on the world, so too in our own time, the long-term societal consequences of electronic publishing have yet to be realized.”

Published by Fulton Books, Kevin Reed Donley’s book will provide readers with a comprehensive look at the transformations of the printing industry over the centuries, incorporating new innovations that correspond with fundamental technological, economic, and cultural needs of society.

Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase “As if by Chance: Sketches of Disruptive Continuity in the Age of Print from Johannes Gutenberg to Steve Jobs” at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

Please direct all media inquiries to Author Support via email at support@fultonbooks.com or via telephone at 877-210-0816.

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http://www.fultonbooks.com

My visit to Pittsburg State University (Kansas) and presentation of my book at the 2026 GCEA Conference 

On July 19-22, I attended the 2026 Conference of the Graphic Communications Education (GCEA) Association at Pittsburg State University (PSU) in Pittsburg, Kansas. I was one of the speakers at the conference and delivered a short presentation to the attendees on my book, “As If By Chance: Sketches of Disruptive Continuity in the Age of Print from Johannes Gutenberg to Steve Jobs.”

This was the 101st conference of GCEA. The membership of the organization consists of high school, technical school and college and university educators who teach classes in numerous disciplines within the printing and graphic communications industries.

This was the first time I attended the GCEA conference. It was originally introduced to me two years ago by my friend, Mike Stinnett, who is a retired high school graphic arts teacher from Royal Oak, Michigan.

The conference program was exceptional from the opening keynote, which was delivered by Bill Gardner, the owner and creative director of the design agency Garder Design, from Wichita, Kansas. Bill’s presentation, which focused on the changing conception of corporate identity in our multimedia world, was outstanding.

I attended the conference sessions between, many of which were given by members of GCEA. The conference theme was built around “Enduring | Embracing | Empowering” with an emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on teaching in the graphic communications. I learned many important things about how AI is being implemented in schools and some of the challenges that it poses to both educators and students.

I am pleased to report that the overall sense of those in attendance was to embrace the powerful new technology while also establishing guidelines for its use in a school environment.

Attendees at the 2026 Graphic Communications Education Association Conference

Presentation of my book

On the final day of the conference, I gave my presentation, which focused on the basic ideas contained in “As If By Chance” and why it is of critical importance to students that they be provided with a historical understanding of the origins and development of our industry.

For one, printing and graphic arts have been around for nearly 600 years. Having knowledge of how printing started and the transitions it has gone through over the generations gives students both an understanding of the technological changes over the centuries as well as a view of world history going back to the Middle Ages.

Additionally, learning about the inventors and their innovations teaches students that they too can participate in our own time in technologically disruptive continuity, i.e., the way that breakaway technologies emerge as something entirely new out of the things that have previously existed.

The GCEA members that attended my presentation participated actively by answering my questions—some received a copy of my book—making comments and asking their own questions. I also distributed a copy of a Teachers’ Guide to teaching the content of “As If By Chance.”

An important part of the conference was a road trip to visit two print businesses in the Pittsburg, Kansas area. We toured Miller’s Professional Imaging, a printing company that produces photographic prints, photo cards, photo albums and books, wall art and fine art prints. The second printing firm we visited was Kendall Packaging Company, a producer of flexible packaging for food and retail products.

Pittsburg State University (Kansas) Crossland Technology Center

Pittsburg State University

The highlight of the conference was meeting and getting to know our hosts at Pittsburg State University (PSU). We not only learned that the university mascot is the Gorillas of Pittsburg State but that there is an exceptional printing and graphics arts program at the school.

With a faculty of eight professors covering various disciplines, Pittsburg State offers a Bachelor of Science in Technology  degree in Graphic Communications. Among the areas of focus for students are graphic design, UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience) and web design, print media and packaging design and photography and videography.

The graphic communications facilities at the Crossland Technology Center are impressive. Among the most significant and unique is the consumer products and packaging production studio. In this area, students use the latest in folding carton and corrugated box design and production. I saw many examples on display of structural prototypes that involved physically cutting printed substrates designed for retail products and exploration of product shelf-appeal, durability, and brand alignment.

The students are also learning about more traditional forms of print media such as prepress, magazine and book production as well as screen printing, wide format and vinyl and adhesive printing for commercial signage. 

I have visited multiple college campuses during my career where graphic communications and printing is being taught. The offerings from PSU is state-of-the-art and unique. Plus, as I learned from Professor Emeritus and former Department Chair Dr. Jesús J. Rodriguez, Pittsburg State offers in-state tuition to 34 other states in the US. You can review this program, called the Gorilla Advantage, here. The current cost of in-state tuition plus on-campus room and board at PSU is approximately $10,259 per semester or $20,518 per year.

Pittsburg, is located in the southeast corner of Kansas near the border with Missouri to the east and Oklahoma to the south. Started as a coal mining camp, the town was named by its founders in 1876 after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The name was later changed to Pittsburg with the “h” dropped at the request of the US Board on Geographic Names.

Pittsburg, Kansas was named without the “h,” in the late 1800s a project to standardize spellings across the country. The US Board of Geographical Names, after some feedback, allowed cities impacted by the change to petition to restore the “h.” Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania did this. There are now 19 cities or towns across the US named Pittsburg and only one named Pittsburgh.

While the identity of the town has changed over the decades and the university has come to define the identity of Pittsburg. I made a few trips into town and spoke with residents and found them to be very friendly to a visitor all the way from Michigan. The community is ideal for college students seeking to attend a small-to-medium size university and study graphic communications.

My journey through 5+ centuries of printing technology

Author Kevin R. Donley presents his recently published, “As If By Chance: Sketches of Disruptive Continuity in the Age of Print from Johannes Gutenberg to Steve Jobs,” on the history of printing technology at the Detroit Club of Printing House Craftsmen (DCPHC) meeting held at the Detroit Historical Museum on Wednesday, February 19, 2024.

Remarks at the 20th anniversary conference of the Wisconsin Association for Behavior Analysis (WisABA)

Award presented in memory of Dr. Corrine Russell Donley for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of ABA in Wisconsin on Saturday, October 5, 2024.

Good morning everyone,

I am really pleased to be here and very proud, of course, to accept this award from the Wisconsin Association for Behavior Analysis on behalf of my late mother, Dr. Corrine Russell Donley.

I first wanted to say that I am here this morning with my beautiful wife Sally and my wonderful granddaughter Aliyah. We arrived from Michigan late last night and we are pleased to join you this morning and be a part of this program.

We are here actually also to represent the extended Donley family. My mom was a mother, grand mother, great grand mother and great-great grand mother, so we have a very large family.

Some of you in attendance today may have known her and I would suspect, after 20 years of this organization, that perhaps many of you did not have a chance to meet her.

So, I wanted to say a few words about the person you would have referred to as Corrine or Dr. Donley. She always insisted upon being referred to professionally as Dr. Donley. She was very proud of her academic accomplishments.

I just want to say her life contains many, many lessons for all of us regardless of what field you work in or what profession you have pursued.

Before arriving here in Wisconsin in the 1990s, she worked for 25 years in the public school system in New Jersey, which is where my three siblings and I were raised. She was a special education teacher in the Howell school district.

She was a pioneer in that field in bringing the students who had special needs into the school environment and allowing all of the other students to interact with them. She had a special classroom with all of the appliances of a standard kitchen and also a washing machine. She taught life skills to a broad range of ages of children and they would go shopping and so forth.

I had the opportunity on several occasions to go to school with her and I met many of these students and became familiar with what it was like to be around people with special needs.

As Megan Sellers was explaining, from her earliest days my mother developed a love for music. She was an accomplished pianist. She played violin in The Ohio State University symphony and it was there that she met my dad, Loren Donley.

Now, after she finished and retired from the public schools in New Jersey at the age of 50, she decided to pursue a higher degree and received two masters and then her doctorate at Columbia. It was after this that she relocated here to Wisconsin to work at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

I would say throughout her life, whatever she was doing, she was always thinking of others and helping those in need. This took many forms, I cannot really go into it, I now receive all of her mail [laughter] and there were many, many organizations that she donated to and supported.

As I said, as I was growing up, I had many opportunities to both meet the students that she worked with and also the families and I saw the impact of her efforts on those families, which were life changing.

No matter what the difficulties were, no matter what the challenges, she was determined and always sought to find solutions, even if they were the smallest things, as you know, like learning how to speak. It was through those accomplishments that she found success in her professional work.

I also want to mention that she said to me many times later on that if she had learned about Applied Behavior Analysis earlier she would have raised us quite differently. There were many spankings, [laughter] I will say that and I do not think that this would have been done if she had known back then what she learned later on.

She passed a deep sense of social responsibility onto all of her children. I believe that if this world today were run by people like my mom and all of you, that we would have a society which would be much more equal.

So, from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of the Donley family, I want to thank you for keeping the memory of my mother alive and presenting us with this award today.

Thank you very much.