RESEARCH_PRECEDENTCOMPARISONS

I put together a document that would compare 3 examples of authored work. I chose these examples as I had a wider range of research on each of these. While there are a lot of precedents for self -set projects, I have found that research into designer’s projects is not quite of use to me in the formation of the essay. From the 3 above, I will pick two to include as a case studies in my essay. Producing a table like this allows me to visualise and compare the attributes of each and see which would provide a good comparison to one another, and also represented the theories of authorship that I will put forward in my written component.

RESEARCH_ALLPOSSIBLEFUTURES

Curated by Jon Sueda and featuring 37 projects by Bay Area and international artists, All Possible Futures is the first of three SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency exhibitions in 2014. The group exhibition explores the potential of graphic design and celebrates a questioning of boundaries regarding concepts, processes, technologies, and form. Contemporary speculative pieces take the form of both physical objects and restaged installations.

What happens when graphic designers extend the boundaries of their discipline and initiate creative explorations built on risk and uncertain ground? Exhibited conceptual proposals, critical provocations, and experimental works that exist on the margins of graphic design or in parallel to professional projects, as well as proposals that were initially rejected by a client and remain unrealized, position All Possible Futures at the intersection of design and fine art.

The exhibited work highlights different levels of visibility and public-ness within the graphic design process. Some projects were made for clients and exist in a real-life context, while others might otherwise have gone unnoticed: failed proposals, experiments, sketches, incomplete thoughts.

“PenJet” is a collaboration between graphic designers Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld. The project originated from experimenting with the movement of printer heads. This result was a modified printer which records the movement of the print head using an attached pen. “PenJet” shows the handwriting of the machine, some fine and straight, others messy and fluent. The final result has both the imperfections of handwriting and the preciseness of a machine. However, no matter much control there is, the printed result remains unpredictable and every page is unique.

Self-proclaimed “Exit-Level Designer” Ed Fella will exhibit “Potential Design for Bygone Eras,” a series of collages and sketches created over the past 20 years that confronts his past and future. He describes it as a design methodology situated in the present but using or reworking bygone eras as a pretend “future.” The project itself is a total contradiction, but to Fella, that’s what gives it potential to lead to so many interesting “formal speculations and mixed-up possibilities.”

“Roller Ball,” created by ResearchCenteredDesign is a dimensional poster, which in this case includes a series of phrases and alphabets. Depending on how you roll the object it creates different compositions and sequences using the phrases and alphabets extruded on its surface, leaving the layout or composition of the imprinted message open to the viewer’s interests and decisions.

In the spirit of the show’s title, the exhibition itself shifts and evolves over the course of the visitor’s experience. Some works are traces of pieces. Others adapt. Still others must be manipulated or engaged in order to become fully apparent. All Possible Futures also looks at how graphic designers have expanded the parameters of the field by consciously taking a transdisciplinary approach, and by considering physical interaction within an art-gallery context.

MONIKER’s “Polychrome Fungus” is a generative participatory installation that should be executed by a large group of people. Participants affix provided stickers on the exhibition floor according to a simple set of rules, working to form an image as a collective during gallery hours and public events. Participants receive instant visual feedback and, with a simple intervention, they change the shape and, potentially, the course of the developing installation.

“Untitled (Narcissus 2),” by Jeremy Mende and Bill Hsu, is an installation that uses a wireless sensor to capture a viewer’s pulse. The viewer hears their own heartbeat and watches that same rhythm drive a series of typographic animations. The animations are representations of an organism— a simple group of cells or, perhaps, an entire community.’

Invited Designers

Åbäke
Bob Aufuldish
Ludovic Balland
Rachel Berger
Peter Bil’ak
Catalogtree
Dexter Sinister
Daniel Eatock
Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld
Experimental Jetset
Ed Fella
General Working Group
Hansje van Halem
David Karwan
Mr. Keedy
Na Kim
Jürg Lehni
Willem Henri Lucas
LUST
MacFadden and Thorpe
Karel Martens
Jeremy Mende and Bill Hsu
Metahaven
Mevis & van Deursen
Moniker
Lesley Moore
Karl Nawrot & Walter Warton
Radim Peško
Practise
Project Projects
PSY/OPS
ResearchCenteredDesign
Joel Stillman
Sulki and Min
Martin Venezky’s Appetite Engineers
Volume Inc.
Zak Group

RESEARCH_JONBLAND

Throughout 2013, designer Jon Bland has been posting seven posters by seven different creatives, all featuring the phrase “No Fly Posters,” onto an abandoned Manchester Pub. Submissions have ranged from friends and family to (most recently) high-profile creatives such as Anthony Burrill, James Joyce, and Pascal Anson. No Fly Posters is a project that adheres to the ‘Design for Art’s Sake’ model of Almeida and McCarthy (2002). The project has taken a form of advertising and turned it upside down, creating an open gallery in the public domain.

Flyposting is a guerrilla marketing tactic. Bland found the fly posters amusing during his daily commute, “the idea of replacing them quickly escalated in my head.” In January of this year, he did just that. Since then the project has grown, allowing Bland to swap the posters monthly.

Bland’s work is interesting due to his curational exploits outside of being a graphic designer. The outdoor gallery of No Fly Posters fit’s into the ‘Design for Art’s Sake’ model in Almeida and McCarthy. Bland completes the project as an exercise of his skills and creativity, and invites others to question an every day irony, through the use of design.

I asked Jon Bland some questions about his projects. I asked how the projects specifically affect his professional practice at the studio, and what he learns personally by conducting personal projects. 

While I am unsure if this particular research will be able to inform my essay, I will be able to use the research in the practical element. In the wider context of this research, speaking to Jon about the project has really increased my own understanding of what a self-set project can do for the individual, and for other people. Self-set projects do not always have to be ‘personal work’ but they can involve others, and be for others also. This is vital to understanding in my practice in future, and will definitely translate into my professional practice after I leave the course. 

RESEARCH_GRAPHICDESIGNFORUMS

I posed some questions in the graphic design forums in order to get a wider context for my work. At this point I am unsure how responsive the forum will be to deeper question on graphic design criticism, so I wanted to activate a an open discourse in order to understand what tone was appropriate for the forum. Ideally it would be good to get some view points regarding the authorship theories that will be used extensively in my essay, but due to the nature of the topic, there may be some uncertainty as to what it is, and this would not generate responses. 

I started my inquiry with a rather broad question in the hope to bring the conversation in. I asked who does self set projects, and what their motivations are. While this is very broad, it may give me some answers that I can analyse in reference to the authorship theories put forward by Almeida & McCarthy (2002). 

The first forum gained a few responses that I was able to take something from. One of the responses was from the owner and created of The Print Handbook. I bought a copy of this book last year for the Design Production module, and I was surprised to be in touch with the creator. As I had hoped, this has provided me with a precedent for the Almeida and McCarthy model ‘Entrepreneurial Opportunities’. The response in the forum also alluded to this idea. The creator, as a designer found a gap in the market for a product, and then created that product, generating the content and producing the outcome. It is valuable to get precedents that reinforce these models, as it gives them more resonance in my understanding of the research. 

Responses from other forums were good in terms of highlighting problems with self-set projects, and also highlighting the benefits. Many of the responses, unlike other projects I have mentioned on my blog, are purely for the self and do not seem to involve a wider audience/contributors of the design sphere. These are not really the type of self-set projects I am interested in as they have an insular take on the potential of these projects. While I fully endorse doing these types of projects for the self, as they may be useful for learning new things or promoting oneself, I am interested in how these projects can progress the profession of graphic design, and expand its boundaries academically, socially, and culturally. 

RESEARCH_RICKPOYNOR_GRAPHICDESIGN&POSTMODERNISM

I decided to buy this book due to it’s roots in post-modernism. Having watched Ellen Lupton’s lecture I found that authorship is a term that was born after post-modernism. I did some research to see if the book contained anything on authorship, and I was pleased to see that it did. 

I read the chapter on authorship, and the text was extremely helpful in highlighting the various view points and the emergence of the term. Unfortunately this can only help me so much, as I want to learn more about how authorship can be implemented. The essay in Almeida and McCarthy are criticisms with a proposal for progression. The Poynor book only highlights the inaccuracies and fails to propose a mode of progression. I think I will use this book as a reference for my developing argument, as opposed to using it to contrast opposing theories.