Week 10 - Designer, Author, Maker
Case studies exploring trends and outputs of influential studios
You will be working towards achieving the following learning outcomes detailed in Brief 3:
LO1: Research – select and deploy appropriate research methodologies to inform the needs within a project.
LO4: Distil – position a creative strategic insight that has been distilled and refined through an informed investigation
LO5: Imagine – deliver appropriate and innovative ideas that embrace risk, have contemporary relevance and question the boundaries of the discipline.
LO8: Design – realise a final solution that evidences its strategic journey and clear relationship between form and function.
LO9: Communicate – communicate effectively in a range of contexts and situations to specialist and non-specialist audiences.
Lecture Introduction - Susanna Edwards
This weeks lecture explores the widest definition of the designer as an author, and examines the different poles that exist between applied practice and art.
Michael Rock in his essay on ‘Designer as Author’ suggests that: “…authorship [in one form or another] has been a popular term in graphic design circles, especially those at the edges of the profession: the design academies the murky territories that exist between design and art.”
From examining selected works, we will see work driven from observation and engagement with an individual’s own selection and understanding of the world around them, through to ideas where a specific need has been identified. The role of this work can often be defined by the way in which it is viewed, exhibited or bought. In this context we see the likes of Daniel Eatock, who you’ve seen before, who, whilst trained as a graphic designer, is involved in an ongoing critique of the visual culture around him on a daily basis. Equally, we may consider more naturally, the work by artists like Ai Weiwei in the same light. Although it is engaged potentially with the more political and provocative commentary on more weighty questions associated with the artist’s life and cultural experiences.
Another example would include practitioners whose work sits at the very heart of the origins of graphic design and lettering, in the work of lettering craftsmen, like Tom Perkins, David Kindersley and John Neilson, who alongside commissioned work, are often involved with personal narrative exploration of word and form. Further development in this field includes designer-makers, like Alan Kitching or Kelvin Smith, and collaborations they have worked on with Jim Sutherland. Jim has also, through recent design studio development, always included personal projects around coming to 2 terms with grief, designing games and books associated with his own personal interests or family.
This got me thinking about the environment around me. Could I combine this brief with a personal project? I might have an idea in mind…
Week 10: Guest Lecture - Craig Oldham
This week’s lecture material is about Craig Oldham, a designer based in Manchester at Office of Craig, and the current director of Rough Trade books, which is a sister company to the record label, Rough Trade.
How Craig sees his role as a designer…
“My role as a designer I feel, is that I curate these ideas and I pull these things together to make something which is mine, which aligns with my point of view. I am the cord that binds them together.”
Printed artefacts examples
Craid discusses the printed artefacts from the films Beetlejuice, Donny Darko, The Shining and Mandy. All of these film examples have books or printed elements, or the manuscript in The Shining that are essential within the script.
We see a video from 1988 John Carpenters They Live about the main character in the film, picks up a newspaper at this newsstand, where he’s realised, using magic sunglasses, that the world is actually being taken over by those alien ghouls and we’re all being lulled into a sort of sense of sleep in order to consume. It was a political film, and Craig designed an exact replica of the newspaper based on design work influences like Jenny Holzer and Barbera Kruger and her use of consumerist iconography and imagery within her work.
So Craig took the theme from the film and worked with it into a replica newspaper/magazine piece. He also hid messages in a ghost UV ink throughout the book, which hid some of the subliminal commands throughout the book. They also printed an entire essay on the power inherent in the language in the aliens’ typeface, which is just glyphs which you can’t decipher. This is a great example of adapting your entrepreneurial skillset and creative authorship based on your interests.
Read | Watch | Listen
Eye magazine - The designer as author - what does it mean?
I read the article in Eye Magazine about Authorship and thought it was really good at clarifying what the term ‘authorship’ meant.
The term "authorship" has gained popularity in graphic design circles, particularly in design academies and the intersection between design and art. It conveys notions of origination and agency, but the process of designers becoming authors is complex and dependent on how one defines the term and qualifies for admission into the category. The concept of authorship may offer new perspectives on the design process, typically associated with communication rather than origination.
“The meaning of the word ‘author’ has shifted significantly through history and has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the last 40 years. The earliest definitions are not associated with writing per se, but rather denote ‘the person who originates or gives existence to anything’.”
This was great in validating not what it means but how it means it. I just need to explore more to find out what I want to be the author of…
References:
Rock, M. (1996) ‘The designer as author’ [online], Eye Magazine, Spring.
Available at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/the-designer-as-author [accessed 30 July 2023]