Design authorship emerged as a subject of intense interest to the field of graphic design in the mid 1990s. Essentially the confluence of designing, image-making, writing, editing and self-publishing, design authorship has expanded the agency of graphic designers from compliant form-givers to engaged content-producers. With the Designer as Author: Voices and Visions exhibition, essays about design authorship in key publications (particularly Eye and Emigre), and numerous follow-up articles on the topic, select academics and maverick designer-authors established theories of design authorship as worthy of debate.

As a consequence, the activity went from avant garde production to mainstream awareness, with eventual diffusion into undergraduate and graduate curricula, and into critically informed professional practices. Over a dozen years later the subject of design authorship has found fresh expression with newly published writings – the 2006 issue of the journal Visual:Design:Scholarship for example – and symposia like Designism 2.0, wherein designers are encouraged to “instigate social change”. Additionally, design authorship shares an intellectual allegiance to the related field of ‘critical design’, itself enjoying current buzz through a robust discourse.

Despite the influence of the debates about design authorship and its legacy of reframing the discipline of graphic design, little recognition is provided and inadequate knowledge exists about the eras before and after the pivotal years of 1993 to 1996. Has the relative obscurity of conference presentations and journal articles failed to elevate the topic to a wider audience? Is it due to some who accept the conventional wisdom of the graphic design trade press and fail to investigate primary sources?

Using self-published design ventures throughout the latter two-thirds of the twentieth century as historical record – including Portfolio, Push Pin Graphic, Octavo, Dot Zero, Emigre and Fuse, among others – a case for design authorship’s roots is made. Major writings and conference presentations on the topic are cited, and exhibits and selected works of design authorship populate the timeline. Consequently, a trajectory is drawn to contemporary projects like Dot Dot Dot, the School of Visual Arts’ Designer as Author MFA program, the blog Design Observer, and several recent exhibitions of critical design as evidence of design authorship’s offshoot branches.