Steven McCarthy - The Designer As..

What is design authorship?

Design authorship = Authorship acknowledges subjective methodologies such as personal expression, ethnographic observation (study of people and cultures) and literary criticism 

Expanded and more meaningful role for graphic designers

Self initiated projects - without a client
Engaged with content
Innovative collaborations - musicians, software engineers, actors, scientists, architects, artists, etc

To further the message designers integrate writing, editing, designing and publishing

Designers drive for authorship:

• The desire to affect positive social, cultural, economic and political change 

• The designer recognises a particular sub-culture which helps them make a nuanced and appropriate solution - Usually based on the designers interest. 

• Developing entrepreneurial ventures has been a way for designer-authors to produce innovative new products and services - This is often done to participate in an alternative economy, a system shaped by design. - Find an example. This could also be a reaction to globalisation?

• ATTRIBUTION

Theories of design authorship emerged in the early to mid-1990s - 'contesting notions of neutrality and objectivity - designers as authors seek enhanced meaning in their designs'.

Against design authorship:

Designers are service providers so therefore shouldn't be involved with content, rather just visual form

Critics question the idea of authorship, claiming that it's a vehicle for 'designers to exert their rapidly expanding egos'. 

'Rather than work behind the scenes, discretely and anonymously, designer-authors 'forget their place' and strive for glory as cultural producers, as auteurs'. 

Task Newsletter #2

http://www.tasknewsletter.com/

Designer/educator Jon Sueda states:

'Only a small group of graphic designers have positioned themselves in contexts where they are able to pursue explorations built on risk and uncertain ground. This could be the result of numerous unsympathetic conditions deeply rooted in traditional design practice..'

For most clients, 'what if?' is not the most comfortable starting point - For this reason, speculative projects tend to exist as self-initiated efforts by designers acting as their own clients

Design authorship has had a positive impact on the field of graphic design:

Enriched

Enabled

Expanded

Empowered

Designer/Critic Michael Bierut:

'All of the good designers I admire have developed a conviction that the way they serve their clients the best is by bringing a strong point of view to the designer/client relationship. This doesn't always mean simply imposing a strong visual style on everything. It can also mean caring deeply about the meaning of the work, what the messages are, how they're directed.' 

Example of this could come from Paula Scher in 'Abstract' (Netflix) when pitching to her client

Signature

Authors sign there work like artists - Some use a 'signature style' or a 'brand name' that identifies the work but very few designers actively claim credit for their client-oriented designs. 

Paul Rand is an exception

Only when ones designs are chosen in an annual competition or published in a magazine is attribution known. 

Should credit be given to designer-authors, the producers of content?

Increased agency in design authorship comes increased responsibilities - social, economic, ethical, cultural..

Inform, entertain, persuade 

When designers fail they are contributing to the waste stream; not just resources like paper, plastic and ink but wasted consumption as consumers go deep into debt for unnecessary goods. Harder to quantify, but still a concern, is wasted goodwill 

Direct mail can be used as an example - A 5% response rate is considered successful, however it is usually around 2.77%. The remaining 97% will go in the bin

100 million trees are used to produce junk mail

ANONYMITY is desired when designing for direct mail, who wishes to be credited with creating waste or ill will?

Technology, p.15

*Refer to this for practical

Central to design authorship has been a heightened engagement with production and distribution

• PC
• Letterpress and moveable type
• Silkscreen
• Typewriter
• Photocopier
• Offset Printing
• Web
• Interactive media

Anthony Burrill's "Oil and Water Do Not Mix"

Powerful graphic and conceptual statement

Timeline of Design Authorship

1928 - Jan Tschichlold, The New Typography

p.33
Visual inspiration
Franz Roh and Jan Tschichold. Foto-Auge - Combining text and image (Typophoto) + collaboration + pushing boundaries

1931 - Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography 

*1945-1945 - Willem Sandberg, Experimenta Typographica

http://indexgrafik.fr/willem-sandberg/

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/willem-sandberg-warm-printing

1949-1967 - Herbert Spencer, Typographica 

Typographica was a print magazine for typography and visual arts

1957-1980 - Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel)

Push Pin Studios was a revolutionary force in the field of graphic design. The celebrated partnership began when the foursome met as students at the Cooper Union in New York City. What followed was twenty years of collaborative graphic expression, as Push Pin redefined and expanded the imprimatur of the designer, illustrator, and visual culture at large.

1964 - Ken Garland, First Things First

1967 - Lorraine Schneider, War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things

1966-1968 - Ralph Eckerstrom (Writer) and Massimo Vignelli (Designer), Dot Zero

1970 - Tom Phillips, A Humument (Artist book)

1971-1974 - Wolfgang Weingart, Typography as Painting

Reappropriating typography 

Experimental

Pushing boundaries of letterforms 

1978-1982 - Rick Vermeulen and Hard Werken, Hard Werken

http://www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/show/rotterdam-cultural-histories-8-hard-werken/

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-rick-vermeulen

‘I don’t think anything designed should be considered as art. It’s not only about the experimentation with form. There is always a client’

'Each designer supervising his own projects.'

'Hard Werken is viewed as one of the more influential design companies. It showed a different attitude towards the existing design world, and it has definitely left its mark'

*1984-2005 - Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Licko, Emigre

Emigre magazine (1984–2005) was a provocative fusion of self-initiated publishing, critical writing and experimental typography. Emigre published 69 issues in a range of formats, from tabloid to paperback book, before closing in 2005, and it was probably the most admired, influential and criticised design magazine of its era.

Highlighted as an ideal example of authorship

Going to the Emigre exhibition at the University of Reading

1985 - Guerrilla Girls, Women Artists Earn Only 1/3 of What Men Do

Feminism 

1986 - April Greiman, Does it make sense

April Greiman is regarded as one of the most influential designers of the digital age. She has been called a pioneer in this regard, making it acceptable for a graphic designer to explore their craft using a computer.

“Design must seduce, shape, and perhaps more importantly, evoke an emotional response.”

Goes against Modernist ideals of neutrality

1986-1992 - Simon Johnston, Mark Holt, Michael Burke, Hamish Muir, Octavo
http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/8vo-type-and-structure

‘It is only about ordering information,’ says Muir. ‘So if it’s a nightclub audience you do it one way, and if it’s Thames Water you do it in another, but you still have fun. It’s about language, it’s about communication, it’s about presenting information.’

1987 - Warren Lehrer, GRRRHHHH

Exhibitions

• 1996 - Cristina de Almeida and Steven McCarthy - Designer as Author: Voices and Visions

Our goal was to find out existent avenues for self-authorship in graphic design and to assess how this kind of practice, which has frequently run in parallel to mainstream graphic design, is currently taking place. We were looking for projects in which designers were involved as thoroughly with literal content as they were with visual form.

Further info from McCarthy: http://faculty.design.umn.edu/mccarthy/designer-authored-histories.pdf

• 1998 - Johanna Drucker - The Next World: Text and/as Image and/as Design and/as Meaning

• 1999 - Kali Nikitas - Soul Design

• 2001 - Kenneth FitzGerald - Adversary: an Exhibition of Contesting Graphic Design

http://www.ephemeralstates.com/adversary/index.html

Adversary presents graphic design that challenges and/or expands common conceptions of design's purpose, content and process.The participants cover a range of positions within the field, including professional practitioners, academics and graduate students, to beyond and between.

Essay: http://www.ephemeralstates.com/adversary/statement.html

• 2004 - Maya Drozdz - Outside In

• 2004 - I Profess: The Graphic Design Manifesto

• 2006 - Jacqueline Thaw - Trigger: Projects Initiated by Graphic Designers

2007 - Daniel Jasper - Products of our Time

2011 - Tom Starr - We The Designers invitational exhibition

Rick Poynor interview
Eye magazine

'The personal, artistic and authorial dimension of their designs seemed natural to me; if I had been a graphic designer that's what I would have been doing too.'

'Many older designers were extremely dismissive of approaches that they saw as unacceptably self-indulgent and a denial of design's 'problem solving' purpose.'

p.99 - 'the degree of authorship in graphic design is expanded when designers have the ability to negotiate discursive functions into carefully reexamined expressive patterns and graphic mediums.'

p.139 - The Art-Design Zone

"All art is quite useless' - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890
Art has no function - Not practical
It is superfluous - a luxury enjoyed by a leisure class or elite

However, Roth made art more available and affordable due to his democratic approach
Turned art into a functional tool