C101 Article

Self and others

Graphic authorship: what does it mean, does it exist and is it any use? Jane Austin explores the hot but tenuous issue of what happens when designers try to put more of themselves into their work.

The notion of the designer as author has been knocking around for some time now. But over the last year the term 'graphic authorship' has had considerable column inches devoted to it in design journals. Is this because design critics are desperately trying to start a new movement? Or is there validity to this editorial, that graphic designers are genuinely pursuing the accolade of author in their work whether it is commissioned, personal or in nontraditional media such as furniture or exhibition design? Further, the way that the term 'graphic authorship' is used in a lofty, almost élitist manner, implies that creating design for a client - and not using the medium or the client's budget to promote the 'voice' of the designer - is somehow not worthy.

The way in which the term is currently being pushed implies that design critics and some designers are still searching for a true definition of what design is and where its boundaries lie. This implies that the design industry is still in a state of flux and is searching for a true definition akin to the era of Ken Garland's First Things First Manifesto, which questioned the role of the graphic designer in '60s Britain. Ultimately the document was vital, and a parallel can be drawn with the 'graphic authorship' debate in its social aspiration and the way it queried the role, purpose and the meaning of the graphic designer.

 

First Things First manifesto as it appeared, updated, in Adbusters, No. 27, Autumn 1999; courtesy Adbusters; legible text and intro here.

 

But is the debate purely hot air? The majority of the designers I recently interviewed for a book on authorship and originality admitted that they were unsure what the term actually meant. Many suggested that true authorship could only be achieved in personal projects such as Bruce Mau's book Life Style, M&Co's watches and Stefan Sagmesiter's pin to commemorate September 11th. When it comes to commissioned work, it was frequently mooted that authorship could only be achieved when the client had more of a patron-of-the-arts role than the traditional client/designer relationship. Examples of this include the Eames and IBM, Tibor Kalman and Colors, and Reid Miles with Blue Note.

Further, there are many designers who use text they haven't written and pictures they haven't taken in layouts that seem quite similar to layouts produced by regular graphic designers, and claim authorship. Michael Bierut of Pentagram New York sees this work as editorial and the designer as editor. He cites his work for Mohawk Paper Company as an example of this.

It's a requirement of paper companies that they have to have the graphic ammunition to sell their paper to designers, he explains. Paper design jobs are perceived as being ideal projects as the briefs tend to be very wide and the audience solely consists of designers. I'm more interested in being an editor so in a more self-effacing position in a way, rather than in taking a starring role to feature my own virtuosity.

He continues: So I created a design journal, Rethinking Design, that was very self-referential. To stand out amongst the plethora of paper company mailers, I thought it would serve the business best if the content wasn't purely from Mohawk's point of view. The resulting editorial covered topics such as environmental issues, as designers are frequently overwhelmed by in-coming garbage. My aim was to design something that wouldn't be thrown out, so I created literature in the format of an 80-page journal, the first of a series of five. I selected essays by well-known writers and devised different designs for each piece. The work positioned Mohawk as a company for thinking designers, distancing the company from the huge amount of eye candy that designers get presented with.

Considering Bierut's editor stance, it could be argued that to achieve true authorship in design, the designer has to have self-initiated his/her own typefaces, illustration or photography to justify the title? David Gentleman's travel books are true examples of graphic authorship, as Gentleman researches the country, takes photographs, produces the illustrations, writes the texts and is responsible for the artwork.

Bruce Mau: Life Style, page images from book; courtesy Bruce Mau Design

 

Design critic Steven Heller sees that authorship is

The new buzzword for intellectual graphic designers looking for new ways to broaden the scope and increase the relevance of their cultural contributions...Authorship is a redistribution of graphic designers' talents and energies in a product-orientated rather than service-orientated arena. Authorship is more than 'mutation': it allows the graphic designer to have a larger, and more accepted, role in popular and commercial cultures.

Alternatively, Rick Poyner states: "If they (designers) want to engage and enlighten others, graphic authors need - just like any author - to have pressing, original or penetrating observations to make about their experiences of the world and the conviction to express them in public." A rather idealistic and romantic proposal considering that the vast majority of contemporary designers' work has become commodified into an ingredient of that loathsome phrase 'the marketing mix'. So opportunities for designers to 'engage' and 'enlighten' are few and far between.

An alternative way for a designer to experiment with their creativity and passion is by exploring other mediums or disciplines. But this exploration of other compositions is nothing new; for example, Herbert Bayer taught at the Bauhaus, designed banknotes, posters, magazines, logotypes and typefaces. He also wrote, took photographs, and was significant in montage. He was also a noted architect, painter and sculptor. Gert Dumbar of Netherlands' Studio Dumbar recently wrote, designed and staged a mini-opera starring flies to comment on the spiralling costs of tickets and the snobbery associated with the form. Javier Mariscal of Studio Mariscal in Barcelona works across design, animation, sculpture and now landscape gardening.

These are just a few examples of designers who work beyond both the brief and the medium, but why the renewed interest that this is something 'of the moment'? - after all design courses called visual communication have been in existence since 1951. However, there are topical factors that have encouraged designers to reconsider how they work and who they work for. Many designers speak of hoping to achieve a balance between corporate, well-paying work that allows a business to survive, and work that allows a designer to more freely explore mediums and ideas, and occasionally 'give something back'.

Also, designers working presently have more command of technology that allows them to control the craft and final artwork more intensely than 20 years ago. Technical innovation has changed the face of graphic design. As each graphic design craft becomes easier to execute, designers are able to produce more diverse types of work. Therefore it could be argued that technological innovation has forced a reassessment of what graphic designers do and, as Steven Heller says in his essay The Attack of the designer authorpreneur:

Today there are two kinds of graphic designer. One is primarily production orientated, the other primarily idea orientated. Although the two are not mutually exclusive, one by-product of the digital revolution is a clearer distinction between those with skill and those with imagination.

Bruce Mau: Life Style, page images from book; courtesy Bruce Mau Design

 

Anxiety has arisen between two notions of design: the originality of design and the reproduction of the product. As Max Bruinsma says in his 1999 essay, The World must Change - Graphic Design and Idealism:

If a design is reproduced in surroundings which may go very much against the designer's vision, what then is the value of that vision? Or what is wrong with the reproduction channels if the reproduction refuses to stick to the design?...Design can be realised in more ways than one and still be 'original'. What matters then is that the design indicates a possibility, an as yet unrealised way of tackling a problem. Designers seem to exult in individuality as if in a last up-welling of self-expression before everything is finally absorbed into a pool of existing images and languages.

While many refute the notion of authorship in fee-paying work, the point that needs to be addressed is why designers feel the need to produce 'original' and 'individual' work in this postmodern culture where resampling of existing forms is the norm. And, indeed, the growing momentum of the graphic-authorship debate illustrates how those designers with ideas, as opposed to style and form, are striving to find an 'appropriate' voice in a consumer- and product-led society. Or, at the very least, produce work that is unique.

The term 'graphic authorship' offers innumerable definitions, but for the majority of designers working for commercial clients, such a title or work philosophy is unachievable. The term 'author' indicates that the originator has complete control over the content of the work, and this can never exist while a designer is being paid to serve a client's commercial interests. In this case, does the designer have the right to implicate his/her own message through a paid-for piece of design?

Jane Austin is a journalist and author.