GDE 730

WEEK 10

Designer, Author, Maker: Exploring Trends and Outputs of Influential Studios 

This week we explore how a designer shows up in the world in the role of maker and author. 

The main question driving the week was:

 How do you uncover opportunities for an authorial artefact through a reflection on your own skills and interests? 

Guest Lecture: Craig Oldham — The Designer & Authorial Practice

GDE730_Week10Lecture_Header

I really actually have trouble with that as a signifier of what I do because I actually don’t believe it is graphic design. I guess what I mean by that is that when I instigate projects for myself and when I take things upon me to start projects that I’m interested in, that I want to do, that I want to put out into the world, I don’t see that as a graphic designer instigating that. I think it’s much more complex, and I think to call it just graphic design would be perhaps a disservice to the ambitions of the project, to the ideas of what I’m trying to do.

Craig Oldham

I really enjoyed the lecture by Craig. It really got me thinking about designer as author because usually the way I define graphic designer is as someone who is a problem solver, or rather a visual problem solver. The client wants to communicate something and we as designers really dive into that and solve it for the client in new and innovative ways. As a creative director working for other brands that is usually how I have seen myself as operating. 

Craig talks about this idea of self-initiated work, and the designer deciding to do and work on projects that they have an interest in. It made me think of Migrant magazine in one of our previous weeks' lectures and how they cared about a topic and then decided to create a series of magazines for it. 

Whenever I have thought about the idea of self-initiated work, I've always thought of it as being an artist. Because artists create work for the sake of something they want to explore and it is self-centred and based on their own thoughts and ideas and ways of expressing themselves. In that case, it's not something they are creating or solving for someone else. 

It was also interesting how Craig himself says he doesn't define himself and his work as graphic design because the term wouldn't work for the kind of work he does. This makes me question if I am a designer as an author and maker because I don't create work that is for myself or to explore my own interests, it's always for a market, for a client, for an audience that have specific, needs, wants and problems, that my designs help solve for. 

I am intrigued and really want to create and explore myself as author and maker of things that I would want to create, not because someone else needs it but because I want to put it out into the world. I question though if that's a selfish act and why would anyone care? How does one even go about being a designer-author and how does one market their work or even go about 'selling' the idea to others? 

Workshop Challenge

CHALLENGE: AUTHOR AND MAKER: Find two examples of designers who demonstrate authorial / making expertise in the delivery of a component of their practice. Is it their sole output, are they passion projects or are they opportunities where they saw a gap in the market? Think about a series of outputs you could make as an author. Generate 10 ideas for discussion, upload to the Ideas Wall and elaborate further on the blog. Please note, this is the first step of you considering one idea that will be researched and potentially launched as an authorised artefact through the last part of this module.

2 Examples of Designers-Authors

For the first part of the workshop challenge I explored a couple of designers-as-authors and what inspired me about their work. The two designers I chose for the first part of this assignment are Marian Bantjes and Jessica Hische.

I chose Marian Bantjes because I have loved her work since I used to be a designer in school, she is a Canadian designer and what really stood out to me is her love of pattern, her influences from Islamic art, her exploration with ornament as a design style, and her work with typography. I find her work very unique and different. When I was exposed to her work in school I always thought being a designer could mean developing your own personal style and being paid for it. As a student I engaged in more expressive work that I cared about. As I stepped into the world and field as a working graphic designer though I soon realized that commercial work cannot be as expressive and is more about what clients want and need from you. As this conversation came up about what a designer is as author I was pulled back into what my idealistic mindset used to be and one of the reasons I wanted to go into graphic design. Somewhere that got lost along the way and I see this masters as a way to tap back into that. 

I chose Jessica Hische because I share her love of typography and love how she 'plays' with letters. Although she now describes herself as a lettering artist. Back in the day when I was a student she was at a conference and I took a workshop with her titled "Playing with Type." She used to refer to herself as a graphic designer with a love of playing with type. She later changed this because she realized what she was doing was lettering and not typography in the proper sense.  

MarianBantjes
JessicaHische

10 Ideas for Design Authorship Artefact

Here are my 10 ideas that I brainstormed as artefacts I could produce as a design-author. Each of these ideas draw from my different skillsets and background as a designer and conceptually explore topics I am passionate about:

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Final thoughts and reflection

This week really threw me for a loop. I realized most of my life in the industry I've just been doing client projects and its work for the client and what's important to them. In that sense I bring their vision to life and am not really authoring anything. So I really stopped and thought about what kind of work I'd do if I didn't have to do client work. I ended up going down memory lane and looking into my design work back when I didn't have a job. Then I used to play alot with type and poetry I used to write. My work used to be a lot more expressive and somewhere I seemed to have lost the joy of a purely self-initiated project. I think this week has really made me stop and think about bringing that back into my practice and exploring where and what I could do with that.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. 

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