Preface

Self-initiated graphic design is an activity that has been around since the early stages of the profession. In education, the classic arena for self-initiated projects has been graduate thesis work, consolidating the student’s explorations on a chosen topic. More recently, this methodology of problem seeking and investigation is increasingly being incorporated into the undergraduate graphic design curriculum, as the value of exposing students to alternative modes of thinking and designing is proven in a rapidly changing world.

Nevertheless, one of the main dilemmas in teaching this approach is the balance between using existing models, such as the practical training expectations of a market-driven activity, or the annually published benchmarks of excellence so honored by the profession, or the pedagogy rooted in Bauhaus ideals, with new opportunities and challenges. These new opportunities and challenges have been provided by changes in design and communications technologies, shifting social and economic models, and such myriad emphases as multiculturalism, ethical professional practice, environmental concerns and critical theory. Students also bring a heightened sense of media immersion and pop culture to the educational exchange. During this last decade, a more inclusive attitude towards education in general and design in particular has paved the way for an intensified self-examination of the field and a move towards its renewal.

History

To view the historic canon, many pioneers have had some self-initiated or authorial venue. Examples abound from the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth. William Morris and the Kelmscott Press combined graphic design, illustration, typography and book publishing to advance certain ideologies about the art and craft of design while engaging in the entrepreneurial activity of creating works that would have commercial value.

Jan Tschichold, through his book New Typography, sought to further his philosophies of rationalist typography in both literal text and his advocacy of form with sans serif type and asymmetrical page layouts.

El Lissitzky, in collaboration with Hans Arp, edited the book The Isms of Art, in 1925; both individuals are cited as “publishers” in the book’s title page. El Lissitzky’s work comprised of editing the commentary on several early-twentieth century avant-garde movements, and designing an innovative book format that accommodated the multi-lingual text and large variety of photographs in an unified manner, reflecting the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of the moment.

Merz, the Dada publication created by Kurt Schwitters, served as an experimental forum for numerous designers and artists from the DeStyl, Dadaist and Constructivist movements. Merz also devoted editorial space to the discussion of advertising typography, and accepted underwriting from Pelikan, the German office supply and stationery company.

Willem Sandberg used his series of experimenta typographica booklets as a means of experimenting with type, language and form; created during and after World War II, they served as a personal resource for later commercial and cultural projects.

Alexy Brodovitch art directed Portfolio magazine, a short-lived, but influential, arts periodical that employed cinematic sequencing of photography and experimental printing techniques.

These examples demonstrate, that while not necessarily publishing their own words, many early modernist designers made editorial choices that were based on strong personal aesthetic and intellectual convictions. As evidence of the elevation of graphic designers economically and culturally in the middle part of the century, many European emigre and American designers began signing their works, accepting attribution, if not an authorial role, including Herbert Matter, Paul Rand, Herbert Bayer, Jean Carlu, Alexy Brodovitch, A.M. Cassandre, Lester Beall and others.

More evidence of self-initiation and authorship can be located in the work of American typography legend Herb Lubalin, co-founder of the International Typeface Corporation, who was involved in the editing and design of its journal, U&lc. Lubalin conceived much original headline copy for printed advertisements; in his own words: “The most intriguing thing about advertising is writing the headline. I think more about creating an idea, writing the headline than designing the ad.”

In addition, much of what is and has been written about graphic design has been done by designers themselves, unlike the long-standing role art historians have played in the criticism, analysis and research of fine art. The aforementioned New Typography from 1928, Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography from 1931 set in his typeface Joanna, Paul Rand’s Thoughts on Design from 1947, the Push Pin Studio’s Push Pin Graphic from the 1960’s, octavo, a journal of typography published by London-based Eight Five Zero in the 1980’s and numerous other examples, point to the involvement of graphic designers writing to advance their ideologies.

Education

As mentioned earlier, graduate programs have traditionally required their students to initiate projects, to seek problems or opportunities, and attempt to solve them or exploit them through visual communications. The graduate education experience varies from one institution to another, of course, but the act of initiation is central whether creating a designed object, exploring a process or doing research.

The recently developed body of criticism, analysis and historical research, much of it published over the past two decades in essay books, academic and professional organization journals, self-published ventures like Emigre magazine, corporate-sponsored projects like Mohawk Paper’s Rethinking Design, edited by Pentagram partner Michael Beruit, and to a degree, the professional design press, has helped to revise assumptions about designers’ roles in the communications process and to provide a foundation for a more engaged approach to the discipline. Fertile ground for self-authored works has been plowed by broadening the discourse from professional concerns of aesthetic form and business practices to concerns of cultural and social impact. The ever-increasing access to publishing and communication technologies, combined with the identification of niche markets and subculture audiences, has enabled designers to pursue projects outside of the commercial mainstream, frequently more attuned to their personal value systems. On the other hand, the sole premise of graphic designers as neutral agents in the transmission of the client’s message to the intended mass market or audience, with the hope of economic rewards, still persists in much of the profession.

Current undergraduate graphic design education is influenced by these intensified contradictions. Should educators prepare students for a pre-established set of circumstances, as emulators, or should educators challenge students to become critically thinking initiators? In the US, a university education normally presupposes an emphasis on critical thinking achieved through exposure to liberal arts disciplines. This round-up model of instruction partly helps to define higher education as differentiated from vocational training. In the case of graphic design education the dichotomy tends to become apparent. While students learn to question and reconsider their milieu during their general studies classes, once in the studio, those considerations tend to be put aside and the focus is turned towards professional methods and practices. This compartmentalized approach tends to discourage connections among disciplines even though the package or logo being designed in the studio is a direct consequence of the model analyzed in the economics seminar and will affect the same cultural groups identified in the anthropology class. Gunnar Swanson argues, “...that we not only increase the augmentation of design training with more liberal studies, but also reconsider graphic design education – as a liberal arts subject.” (Design Issues, vol. 10, no. 1, 1994)

The integrative character of graphic design, rather than being ignored, should be further explored in the studio if the discipline is to advance beyond the mere repetition of pre-existing patterns. Rather than choosing between emulation or initiation, expanding the range of possibilities between both can be a way of better equipping our students to have a clearer understanding of the field’s inter- and intra- dynamics.

In an undergraduate educational context, self-initiation can be approached by encouraging students to develop their own content through problem-seeking, writing, and personal exploration. Exposing the students to historical examples within and beyond the official graphic design realm (concrete poetry, conceptual art, artists’ books, protest posters, vernacular idioms, etc.), and focusing on communication strategies as determinant of stylistic choices, can be helpful to bring in a variety of perspectives while placing the practices of the field into a broader context. Showing contemporary investigative projects, including the instructor’s, can also be a way of stimulating discussion. In these works, students see their faculty experimenting with visual and verbal language, and graphic forms that attempt to amplify meaning. Students can be inspired to initiate and create works of profound insight and commitment, given the opportunity.

The publication output, produced initially by students at the Herron School of Art as a means of “establishing a communicative network” with other students and designers, added to the discourse on visual form and deconstruction of texts. The subject of the work explores logic, eastern philosophy, and chaos theory. The designer Bruce Mau, who juried output into the 1991 American Center for Design 100 Show, commented “The interesting thing is the designer moving toward content.” (American Center for Design 100 Show catalog, 1992)

Writing

One of the quintessential models of initiation mirrors conventional literary authorship. In this case, the designer is the main individual responsible for the creation of content as well as form. Often, the creative process can start with the development of an idea through writing. Integrating writing into the studio is an important step toward engaging the students to think about literary meaning with typographic form, because the interpretation and interrogation of texts becomes more within their grasp. They feel empowered to revise and edit the text throughout the design process, unlike the traditional model of text dominance and immutability. Anne Burdick states in her Eye magazine article, What has writing got to do with design? (Eye 9, 1993): “Students can use writing to build intellectual muscle and to provide themselves with the mental tools to evaluate ideas, allowing them to adopt from the outset a responsible position of questioning and analysis.”

The designer can use the written work to assert individuality or ideology, while investigating specific issues in their area of interest. As an example, student Justin Bowen researched and wrote a 48-page honors thesis on the history and cultural impact of the comic book, and designed the publication that contains his writing.

In another instance, student Claudia Ellert had a strong interest in the history of type and utilized her senior project as a way of furthering her understanding of the subject. In this series of books, she combined research with her own reaction to the aesthetic approaches that favored the development of specific typefaces.

An effective manner for encouraging content development is to ask students to draw content from personal experience and interests. The motto “you write best about what you know more,” frequently advocated in beginners’ writing classes, finds its equivalent here in design. This also conforms to many universities’ Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives, whereby all disciplines are encouraged to integrate writing into their courses. Short projects involving issues of self-discovery and personal observation can be a way of achieving this in the lower division courses. This can range from instances where they are asked to visually and verbally record specific events, to examination and analysis of graphic communications in their surroundings, including vernacular examples. While they are introduced to the basic principles of visual articulation they are summoned to bring in their own meaningful encounters and utilize the formal principles of design to synthesize their gathered materials.

In this example, as a final project in an introduction to typography class, students are asked to examine an instance in their surroundings in which type has an important presence. They are asked to analyze how the typography affects the messages portrayed and how it is affected by them. Then they develop a visual response that will frame the developed text. Another example is this project from a introductory graphic design class. The students have to design an accordion book containing the sensory record of a trip, using images and words. They are asked to apply strategies borrowed from rhetoric figures in order to convey their concepts. This gives them a chance to explore the many overlapping areas between verbal and visual language. This junior-level typography project introduces the students to concrete poetry and allows them to experience the acts of designing and writing as one, thus raising their awareness to the aesthetic and semantic potential of written language.

It has long been accepted that writing is used to chronicle personal events through maintaining a diary, or to tell a story through literary narrative. Graphic designers, however, can also accomplish those endeavors, using images and graphic strategies to record or describe in a visual journal of their complete design. Student Julie Mader employed her own photography, found graphic objects, a color copier, and hand lettering with colored pencils to document a trip to London. The uniquely structured book combined some typical tourist scenes with her observations and thoughts about the British culture and language.

Having advanced students define their own problems for visual communications facilitates entrepreneurial activity and responsible professional practice. The Kabuki comic series, a project that began while David Mack was a student at Northern Kentucky University, has become a nationally published and distributed venture with critical acclaim and lucrative financial rewards. Mack conceived of the character, does all the writing, illustration and design of each issue, and has so far rejected offers from Hollywood studios to turn Kabuki into a motion picture, because he does not want to give up control over the content of the comic. (Note: Mack eventually signed an option agreement with Fox Cinema).

Editing

Alternatively, the designer can assume responsibility for editing or supplementing content rather than generating it. Many times this activity is carried through entrepreneurial venues such as the establishment of private presses or magazines. While not necessarily generating the words, decisions concerning what will be published and how it will appear can be similarly reflective of an individual’s personal agenda. A successful example of this approach is Plazm, a magazine founded by a Portland-based design group, that acts as a catalyst for projects involving other designers, writers, and fine artists.

In numerous occasions the designer’s input becomes an essential part of the editorial agenda of a publication. This can result in a synthesis of content and form, as in this example of the LA-based magazine Now Time designed by Lorraine Wild and Reverb, or in a supremacy of the designer’s aesthetics, where the form becomes content, as in this example of Raygun magazine, originally designed by David Carson.

In this example of student senior project by Bill Rabe, a visual/verbal essay on the theme of face piercing was developed from photographs taken by Cincinnati photographer Michael Wilson. The student utilized selected passages from the bible making direct reference to human physicality as verbal material. The student used the opportunity of art directing the photo-shoots as well as editing and organizing the contents into a book format, to forge a new relationship between the biblical passages and his visual content.

Developing one’s own content can also be a way of coming to grips with traumatic events, resulting in a simultaneous exercise of formal and personal discovery. In this senior project, student Roya Jonkar created a visual and verbal record of her experience growing up in Iran during war time. Here she juxtaposes mass media imagery with her own auto-biographical images and recollections weaving the narrative from this dual perspective.

Collaboration

Other approaches involve diverse forms of collaboration with other professionals around specific ventures or causes. In this case the work becomes the product of a collective body of authors and initiators. Yale University’s graduate collective Class Action has initiated projects for social and political change, as this particular example shows. Through a subversively distributed pamphlet they questioned the use of a female image as the symbol for the 1994 International Design Conference in Aspen in order to “initiate discussion... about the representation of human bodies.” (Statements, vol. 10, no. 2, 1995)

School of the Art Institute of Chicago educator Kali Nikitas’ curatorial project And She Told 2 Friends has defined new ways of collaboration. Articulated both as a publication and an exhibition, And She Told 2 Friends was generated by a network of women designers who invited other women designers to submit work for inclusion.

This project developed by junior design student Tonya Schuster utilizes a text written by an English major for a literature class. This gave her the chance to discuss with the writer the relevant aspects of the verbal content as they were visually translated. The final format reflected the collaboration between designer and writer while adding a visual layer of meaning to the narrative.

Interactive

In other instances, the designer acts as a catalyst of ideas and the process of authorship is shaped by the interaction between the work and the audience. This is a strategy particularly well-suited to the electronic environment, where information can be arranged through complex networks of links allowing for the same content to be experienced in multiple ways. The reader then becomes a co-author as decisions are made about which paths to follow. This can also take place in the material world as designers propose projects where the audience is invited to complete the work. In Maurice Rickard’s What is the Problem? project, the viewer is posed a question on a letter-sized sheet with a space allocated for a written response; the act of authorship becomes complete when the originator receives the answers from the respondent.

It is important to expose the students to all these instances. They have in common the condition that the designers were involved with the content of the work in a openly biased manner, rejecting the ideal of neutrality in favor of an engaged attitude towards the message. The exhibition Designer as Author: Voices and Visions, held at Northern Kentucky University in 1996, and curated by professors Cristina de Almeida and Steven McCarthy, provided a venue for the myriad forms of exemplary self-authored design being done at that time. Linked by this common approach to working, the integration of the self with the message, the exhibit displayed not a style of design, but evidence of the designer’s voice and vision as a crucial part of the semantic process.

Conclusion

The outcomes of teaching self-authorship and initiation in graphic design are positive: basically, students become more sensitive to content. On a deeper level, their understanding of graphic design is amplified as they realize the potential for generating and answering questions concerning language, identity, and perception. As they experience how graphic design contributes to frame themselves and their milieu, their capacity for discovery and interpretation is expanded. This animates them to see beyond the immediacy of the current practice and to look for alternative directions where they can bring together their various intellectual interests.

Encouraging students to develop their own content and messages in their work, to taking a proactive stance which augments the standard client-driven model, and to draw upon personal interests in creating original imagery and text empowers them to be self-authoring designers. This control gained over content and how it is presented should bring with it a renewed sense of responsibility towards the profession’s concrete and latent audiences (as clients, users, readers, consumers, citizens, visitors, passers-by – all peoples and contexts that are in one way or another transformed by visible language). As recent technological developments have dramatically challenged the traditional categories of knowledge and operative roles, the paradigm of communications is rapidly evolving, or mutating, depending on one’s perspective. The meaning of design in this new model is put into question, and the meaning of authorship itself is laid open for reassessment. As Edward McDonald writes in his article The Education of Young Design (Eye 12, 1994): “The notion of design as a form of authorship with an important bearing on perception and culture will become more real as the old passive positions, readers, end-users and target-audiences, find themselves in the active role of having to design their own information environments. With everyone becoming a designer of sorts, society will no longer be able to ignore the discipline’s central role in education and living.”

An example of a commercial relationship with a visible degree of self-authorship is Rick Valicenti’s work for Gilbert Paper; the paper is promoted to its market of designers and printers, while Valicenti’s personal vision is in the forefront. While this type of relationship is still an exception to the rule, and therefore at risk of maintaining the current celebrity-driven system where only a select group of designer-stars reigns, it can establish a precedent for other types of active collaborations between clients and designers.

In the future, perhaps the economic model will shift from clients’ problems being solved to opportunities for meaningful communication through different media, and varying voices, initiated by designers, authors, interpreters, articulators, whichever names this synthesis of activities will assume. Denise Gonzales Crisp advances the term “designist”, with the suffix “ist” referencing early twentieth century movements and manifestos (Emigre 43, 1997). Or perhaps designers themselves will contribute, as initiators (in the primordial sense of the word), making the shift to a more inclusive economic model actually occur. As educators, we can only hope for the highest common denominator. Authorship in design is not a heroic act, but a step in the evolution of the profession and of society in general. It amplifies the discourse of graphic design from a formal analysis of usable styles to a broader, interdisciplinary discussion on the social, cultural, and economic aspects of the field.