Graphic Authorship
‘The notion of self-initiated briefs - graphic authorship, as it is often called - currently occupies a prominent position in design discourse. In my view, self-initiated projects and the notion of ‘pure’ graphic authorship are well intentioned but flawed as concepts.’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘Designers who work from briefs are still authors, but it’s authorship in the sense that they have created some-thing in response to a set of defined requirements and taken into account a number of relevant conditions (purpose, commercial considerations, budget, time, media channels, etc.).’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘After years in the somewhat thankless position of the faceless facilitator, many designers were ready to speak out.’ (Rock, 2013:48)
‘Perhaps the graphic author is actually one who writes and publishes material about design.’ (Rock, 2013:52)
‘The general authorship rhetoric seems to include any work by a designer that is self motivated, from artist books to political activism. But artist books easily fall within the realm and descriptive power of art criticism. Activist work may be neatly explicated using allusions to propaganda, graphic design, public relations and advertising.’ (Rock, 2013:52)
‘If the ways a designer can be an author are myriad, complex and often confusing, the way designers have used the term and the value attributed to it are equally so. Any number of recent statements claim authorship as the panacea to the woes of the browbeaten designer.’ (Rock, 2013:54)
‘Perhaps, in the end, authorship is not a very convincing metaphor for the activity we understand as design. There are a few examples of work that is clearly the product of design authors and not designer/authors, and these tend to be exceptions to the rule.’ (Rock, 2013:54)
‘If we really need to coin a phrase to describe an activity encompassing imaging, editing, narration, chronicling, performing, translating, organizing and directing, I'll conclude with a suggestion:
designer = designer.’ (Rock, 2013:56)
‘We are envious of the power, social position and cachet that artists and authors seem to command. By declaring ourselves “designer/authors” we hope to garner similar respect. Our deep-seated anxiety has motivated a movement in design that values origination of content over manipulation of content.’ (Rock, 2013:92)
‘Among design historians and critics the term ‘graphic authorship’ has been coined to describe the activities of designers who generate their own content and create work without the sponsorship of a client. It is also known as self initiated work.’ (Shaugnessy, 2009:127)
‘Many other designers produce books, magazine, websites, films, T-Shirts and music without a client and without a client brief.’ (Shaugnessy, 2009:127)
‘But how is this fundamentally different from the designer who designs the packaging for a pack of frozen burgers? For me, a graphic designer who creates a new visual entity where one didn’t previously exist is indulging in an act of authorship. Not only that, but working for a client doesn’t preclude the ability to have authorial intent.’ (Shaugnessy, 2009:127)
‘It might sound like ‘writing about graphic design’ but the term seems infinitely re-interpretable without one clear, agreed definition.’ (Newark, 2002:88)
‘The term carries with it an air of stridency and rebellion - a wish that graphic design play its part in putting the world to rights and for designers to break away from their restrictive commercial clients.’ (Newark, 2002:28)
‘The slogan ‘designer as author’ has enlivened debates about the future of graphic design since the early 1990s. Behind this phrase is the will to help designers to initiate content, to work in an entrepreneurial way rather than simply reacting to problems and tasks placed before them by clients. The word author suggests agency, intention, and creation, as opposed to the more passive functions of consulting, styling, and formatting.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘The avant-garde movements of the 1910s and 1920s critiqued the ideal of authorship as a process of dredging unique forms from the depths of the interior self. Artists and intellectuals challenged romantic definitions of art by plunging into the worlds of mass media and mass production.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘As an alternative to ‘designer as author’, I propose ‘designer as producer’. Production is a concept embedded in the history of modernism.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘In 1934, the German critic Walter Benjamin wrote ‘The Author as Producer’, a text that attacked the conventional view of authorship as a purely literary enterprise. He exclaimed that new forms of communication – film, radio, advertising, newspapers, the illustrated press – were melting down traditional artistic genres and corroding the borders between writing and reading, authoring and editing.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘Benjamin claimed that writing (and other arts) are grounded in the material structures of society, from the educational institutions that foster literacy to the publishing networks that manufacture and distribute texts. In detailing an agenda for a politically engaged literary practice, Benjamin demanded that artists must not merely adopt political ‘content,’ but must revolutionise the means through which their work is produced and distributed.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘Benjamin attacked the model of the writer as an ‘expert’ in the field of literary form, equipped only to craft words into texts and not to question the physical life of the work. The producer must ask, Where will the work be read? Who will read it? How will it be manufactured? What other texts and pictures will surround it?’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘Benjamin’s theory of the author as producer remains relevant today, however, even if one proposes more modest challenges to the existing structures of media and publishing, opening new paths of access to the means of manufacture and dissemination.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘Describing the relation of authorship to technology, Benjamin predicted that the writer will begin to compose his work with a typewriter instead of a pen when ‘the precision of typographic forms has entered directly into the conception of his books. One might suppose that new systems with more variable typefaces might then be needed’.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘…the term ‘author,’ like ‘designer,’ suggests the cerebral workings of the mind, production privileges the activity of the body. Production is rooted in the material world. It values things over ideas, making over imagining, practice over theory.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘How can schools help students along such a path at this critical juncture in our history?
Language is a raw material. Enhance students’ verbal literacy, giving them the confidence to work with and as editors, without forcing them to become writers.
— Theory is a practice. Foster literacy by integrating the humanities into the studio. Infuse the act of making with the act of thinking.
— Writing is a tool. Casual writing experiences encourage students to use writing as a device for ‘prototyping,’ to be employed alongside sketching, diagramming, and other forms of conceptualization.
— Technology is physical. Whether the product of our work is printed on paper or emitted from a screen, designers deal with the human, material response to information.’ (Lupton, 2004)
‘The power of the term ‘author’ – its cultural authority – lies in its connection to the written text. In order for designers to take charge of the content and social function of their work, they need not become fluent writers, no more than an art director must become a professional photographer or illustrator in order to use these media effectively. In the business of film, a ‘producer’ brings together a broad range of skills – writing, directing, acting, cinematography, editing, and so on – in a work whose authorship is shared. For the designer to become a producer, she must have the skills to begin directing content, by critically navigating the social, aesthetic, and technological systems across which communications flow.’ (Lupton, 2004)
Artist & Artisan
‘It is fatal to assume that graphic design is a medium for self-expression.’ (Oldham, 2012:71)
‘Bunch A: Logical designers that use logic, utilise clarity and function, rationalise the communicative elements beyond any other means to present a formal and precise argument to their audience.’ (Oldham, 2012:70)
‘Bunch B: Emotional designers that use anything and everything available - intelligence, wit, humour, chance, etc - to create an emotional tie between the work and the audience. Get the idea and the design will come from that.’ (Oldham, 2012:70)
‘Craig Oldham is a designer, lecturer, writer, procrastinator, artist, publisher, film-maker, philanthropist, intervenor, letter-writer, theorist, website-up-putter, lamenter, conspiracist, and Yorkshireman.’ (Oldham, 2012:75)
‘’’Graphic design is a language. So, of course, I can go and learn another language, like film or music (the two holding the biggest interest for me), and after some significant training I’ll be able to speak them in a way other people understand (and hopefully find interesting enough to watch and listen to).
Or, instead of learning a new language, I can refine the one that I do know how to speak - graphic design - and, much more importantly, figure out if I actually have something to say. It would be maddening to spend ten years learning how to direct a film only to find out I have nothing to say. It might be more romantic to say “I love you” in French that it is in Cantonese; nevertheless, it is still possible to say it. It might be more touching to say it in a song than in design, but saying it in design should be achievable , too. And it is possible to say “I love you” even in architecture, as the Taj Mahal proves.”’ p1
‘**I have always found design produced for designers - similar to music for musicians and art for artists - sadly insular and consequently boring.’ (Sagmeister, 2008:2)
‘My favourite quote on the difference between the two comes from American minimalist Donald Judd: “Design has to work. Art does not.” (Sagmeister, 2008:2)
Steven Heller in Sagmeister:
‘He fervently believes - as did the late bad boy of graphic design Tibor Kalman, with whom he briefly worked in the early nineties - that design cannot be a neutral frame or decorative vessel but is an active ingredient in the comedie humaine.’ (Heller in Sagmeister, 2008:3)
Nancy Spector:
’Simply “blurring” the boundaries between art and design - a rather facile trend of recent years - would never have been enough for his agile and mischievous mind. Instead, with Things I have Learned In My Life So Far, Sagmeister uses design masquerading as art to expropriate a space that is rightfully its own. And in the process, his design absorbs art’s essential, connotative freedom.’ (Spector in Sagmeister, 2008:9)
‘Though Sagmeister emphatically, perhaps defiantly, describes the project as design, it intersects rather seamlessly with the kind of interventionist, public art, that it references.’ (Spector in Sagmeister, 2008:12)
‘In the process of creating Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, he has seemingly collapsed the difference between client and patron, privileging the latter as a supporter of the arts who would never presume to dictate meaning. Playing on the semantic distinction between work for hire and commissioned work, Sagmeister offers his clients a slice of his diary regardless of their respective product or venue - whether it’s the Dai Nippon Printing Company in Tokyo or the School of Visual arts in New York.’ (Spector in Sagmeister, 2008:12)
‘Design is a deeply contradictory act,: the personal and public are inextricably intertwined. Designers make things and make systems that make things. But most of all they perform a narrow, yet essential function in the increasingly complex economy that is public speech.’ (Rock, 2013:34)
‘After years in the somewhat thankless position of the faceless facilitator, many designers were ready to speak out.’ (Rock, 2013:48)
‘…many great stylists don’t seem to make the cut, as it is difficult to discern a larger message in their work – a message that transcends stylistic elegance.’ (Rock, 2013:51)
‘Perhaps it’s an absence or presence of an overriding philosophy or individual spirit that diminishes some designed works and elevates others.’ (Rock, 2013:51)
‘If we really need to coin a phrase to describe an activity encompassing imaging, editing, narration, chronicling, performing, translating, organizing and directing, I'll conclude with a suggestion:
designer = designer.’ (Rock, 2013:56)
‘We are envious of the power, social position and cachet that artists and authors seem to command. By declaring ourselves “designer/authors” we hope to garner similar respect. Our deep-seated anxiety has motivated a movement in design that values origination of content over manipulation of content.’ (Rock, 2013:92)
‘As we enter the 21st century it has never been more clear that the definition of what designers do and who they are has never been more ambiguous.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘And then of course there’s the training and educational background of designers which sees them entering schools of ‘art and design’. This relationship with art is something that simmers away at the back of the minds of most designers.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘Their sense of themselves is bound up with the idea of being ‘creative’, yet this existential imperative comes face to face, on a daily basis, with the demands of the client.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘It is precisely because it is a discipline where art and commerce face-off against each other that it becomes a graphic benchmark of where society is.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘Most designers have some private negotiation with themselves about the contract they make between art and money. On the surface, they simply find a spot nearer one end or another on the ‘Job-axis’ between cash and culture. Some take dull big-paying jobs to fund the hours on more rewarding cash-poor jobs, or take the money to spend on their own work. The latter, design writer Rick Poyner calls a ‘Robin Hood’ tactic.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘Design has always been regarded as art’s cousin from the wrong side of the tracks. Tainted by commerce, it has to earn its way in the world in the way that aristocratic art doesn’t. The tradition of art is a cultural inheritance from which any artist can draw.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:128)
‘In any case, in very practical ways this crude distinction between art and design is increasingly untenable. Many contemporary artists actually rely on designers’ work as a crucial feature for their artworks.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘Jeff Koons used to farm out work to craftsmen and recently Damien Hirst has relied heavily on input from Jonathan Barnbrook. Barnbrook described his role for Hirst’s pharmaceutical series The Last Supper as being that of an art director.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘Often artists and designers play out the same topic.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘Experimental Jetset, Peter Davenport and Tony Linkson have all created work relating to the nature of time.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘“I’ve carved out this odd position where I’m still a graphic designer using graphic design but as an art practice…With these pieces I’m the subject it’s the opposite of graphic design, where the artist is never the subject. The designer is never the subject.”’ (Fella in Dougher, 2005:98)
‘Although he supported himself doing conventional graphic design for many years, Ed Fella’s work has been his most enjoyable, as well as his most successful and critically regarded.’ (Dougher, 2005:98)
‘One way of looking at design is to see it not as finished pieces, but the process itself.’ (Newark, 2002:14)
‘I suggest there are two fundamental activities that can be found in the practice of every graphic designer. The first I want to call ‘making sense’.’ (Newark, 2002:14)
‘The second I want to call ‘creating difference’.’ (Newark, 2002:14)
‘The designer wants her work to stand out, not only from the work of other designers, but also from her other work.’ (Newark, 2002:14)
‘The graphic designer then is someone who is always making sense of her material, and mediating it through the forms and codes of visual language.’ (Newark, 2002:14)
‘“Consider the two radical positions in the arts today. One recommends the breaking down of distinctions between genres; the arts would eventuate in on art, consisting of many different kinds of behaviour going on at the same time, a vast behavioural magma or synthesis. The other position recommends the maintaining and clarifying of barriers between the arts, by the intensification of what each art distinctively is,” says Susan Sontag.’ (Sontag in Newark, 2002:28)
‘A constant magnet is the attraction of the artistic avant-garde – the attitude and set of ideas that set a small group outside the ‘mainstream’, and make their work constantly novel and risky. It also needs to be free of commercial compromise, and it helps if the political ideas are extreme. This ‘cutting-edge’ formula has underpinned much design criticism, and the pronouncements of many designers.’ (Newark, 2002:28)
‘Art is connotative, associative, implicative; it revels in ambiguity. Its function and its form are inseparable. Art is connotative, associative, implicative; it revels in ambiguity. Design is precise, denotative, explicit. It is a mediation, a structure, a method. It connects to its content like dance attaches to misc, or cooking to food.’ (Newark, 2002:28)
‘This rewrites the question: ‘Can design be as powerful, complex, emotive and enduring as the best art can be?’ The answer to this question is an unequivocal yes.’ (Newark, 2002:28)
‘Over fifteen years ago a shockwave was sent through graphics as designers put two fingers up to the 'big idea'/'problem-solving’ tradition and turned to self-expression, writes Michael Johnson. They proclaimed the processes they used almost as important as the product itself, and, if they had the chance they’d be re-incarnated as conceptual artists.’ (Sinclair, 2009)
‘Practising professionals took it elsewhere – Paula Scher began her typographic ‘map’ paintings at about this time, Stefan Sagmeister introduced his naked body as the canvas for a series of self-mutilation projects. Daniel Eatock has now taken it to new heights, coming the closest to tipping out of design and into conceptual art.’ (Sinclair, 2009)
‘Sometimes the level of profile achieved belies their youth: Craig Oldham's projects gathering handwritten letters from designers and ‘12 in 12 things you might learn in your first year as a designer’ publication have been linked everywhere, but in reality he’s just two and a half years into his working life at The Chase in Manchester.’ (Sinclair, 2009)
‘When I was approached to do this show [Jerwood Space’s first graphics exhibition], I didn’t want to do a show of “graphic design as art”. I wanted to look at the grey area between art and design – and I wanted to show some work that might never have been seen before.’ (Montegomery, 2013)
The Brief
‘Graphic designers need briefs.’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘A graphic designer who doesn’t need a brief isn’t a graphic designer: he or she might be an artist or a metaphysical poet, but they’re not graphic designers. The need for a brief is hard-wired into the designer’s psyche. In fact, although designers constantly demand freedom, they really crave constraint.’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘It’s a little recognised fact, but designers are only happy when they are battling with restraints Of course, many designers like to erect their own barriers and live by their own rules, and a natural offshoot of this is the desire for self authored briefs. But this shouldn’t be confused with pure authorship: all it means is that designers are combining the role of client and designer.’(Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘…there are inevitably some common themes that come up when you look at the work, and which arguably keep it closer to ‘design' than ‘art', or at least give a clue that the people behind it come from a design background. Perhaps the main one is this sense that, in the absence of a prescriptive brief, many designers tend to create their own.’ (Asbury, 2013)
‘I’m not decrying the notion of self-initiated projects. I am saying, however, that the graphic designer’s mentality is suited, thanks to education, temperament and tradition, to responding to a brief. Perhaps there will emerge a new superstrain of mutant designers who have evolved beyond the point of needing a brief; but I doubt it.’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘The commonly held view is that designers need briefs because designers are problem solvers. I don’t like the term ‘problem solvers’; it seems to play into the hands of those who see design as a purely mechanistic process - although it must be said that many of the best designers consider themselves to be ‘problem solvers’, and produce resonant and lasting work accordingly.’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘Designers need briefs like cars need fuel: they don’t work otherwise.’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘Designers who work from briefs are still authors, but it’s authorship in the sense that they have created some-thing in response to a set of defined requirements and taken into account a number of relevant conditions (purpose, commercial considerations, budget, time, media channels, etc.).’ (Shaugnessy, 2005:141)
‘…the designer has never been more crucial to commerce and business. In the last 20 years the designer has been promoted up the order from being the tea-boy of business, fetching a brief and running with it, to being on the front line.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:8)
‘…about designers reflecting on what they do and on how they imagine themselves. It’s about how the conflict of commerce and creativity is played out. An ultimately it’s about the existential brief they set themselves.’ (O’Reilly, 2002:9)
‘There is a minute amour of design work where the designer herself is the client, a kind of ‘acts gratuit’. But this self-publishing does not alter design’s recognisable conventions’ (Newark, 2002:28)
‘A chance to create work unfettered by client constraints, to push boundaries, or just to feed that creative compulsion, the appeal of personal projects to designers is obvious.’ (Montegomery, 2013)
‘This instinctive aversion to "prettification" and tendency to gravitate towards rules and structure is arguably a classic designer trait. According to Johnson, "We're so used to limitations that we build them in when they're not there.”’ (Asbury, 2013)
‘When designers aren't creating their own limits, they're often looking for problems to solve. And you don't need a client or a brief to find a problem – they're everywhere.’ (Asbury, 2013)
‘But they are undeniably there, and it gives the exhibition an extra appeal that you don't always find with art shows. There are ideas to ‘get', messages to ponder, things to smile at, hooks that draw you into the work.’ (Asbury, 2013)
The Importance Of Self Set Projects
‘I studied at Falmouth College of Arts. It was a problem-solving course that encouraged self-directed study in order to develop us (A) so that we could develop the highest-quality, and most flexible form, of creative thinking (B) so that we could begin to understand that we are responsible for ourselves, and (C) so that we could analyse the world around us and identify the problems which we needed to solve with our skills. Which meant that, overall, we were looking for opportunities and real problems out there - not just waiting for a brief.
And for me, it’ these educational principles that illustrate the best use of the pro-active self initiated project.’ (Oldham, 2012:50)
‘Self-initiated projects serve as a creative output that offers personal growth… As long a Designer is aware of their contact, and the problem they’re trying to solve.’ (Oldham, 2012:50)
‘A self-initiated project (like mine) can even be used to educate the many instead of the self, perhaps passing on knowledge or insight, or simply just being of use to people instead of an isolated experience.’ (Oldham, 2012:50)
‘The only question that truly matters is why? And the answer should always be - because it’s worthwhile.’ (Oldham, 2012:50)
‘Self-initiated work is the stuff you create in your free time.’ (Basford, 2012)
‘Because the stuff you don't get paid for, leads to the stuff you do.’ (Basford, 2012)
‘Tasters’, ‘Diversity’, ‘Free Reign’, ‘Time Management’, ‘Profile Raisers’, ‘Dream Clients’’ (Basford, 2012)
‘Forget advertising, subscription folio sites and agents. Self Initiated work is my most powerful marketing tool.’ (Basford, 2012)
‘It should be work that you love and that tells us something about your personality. Less is more. We feel that self initiated projects, sketchbooks, or something that reveals your passage of thinking is much more exciting than normal university work.’ (Konig, 2012)
‘On a good day, I’m 90% satisfied, which is fine; I don’t think one should ever be 100% satisfied because then there is nothing left to aspire to. I always like to have that 10% that keeps me moving and thinking about the next project that I want to do.’ (Fili, 2011)
‘I believe that every designer has to have personal projects—it’s the only way to grow and find a unique voice. At any given point in time, I’m working on an independent project in the studio and that’s very important to me—it’s what defines me as a designer.’ (Fili, 2011)
‘Perhaps these ‘me-projects’ are just another form of ‘me-promotion’, after all.’ (Sinclair, 2009)
‘A chance to create work unfettered by client constraints, to push boundaries, or just to feed that creative compulsion, the appeal of personal projects to designers is obvious.’ (Montegomery, 2013)
‘The show also demonstrates the reasons for developing personal projects. Obviously there is this desire to create, and in some cases a desire to communicate personal issues in a way that can only be done in a more ‘artistic’ fashion.’ (Montegomery, 2013)
‘So it strikes me that a lot of this personal work – while not being constrained, commercial or client-led in any way – is about exploration, about solving problems, about experimentation and ultimately about making you a better designer.’ (Montegomery, 2013)
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