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Summary: Chapter 3 ( Advocacy, Social activism) of The Designer as Author by Steven McCarthy

Cultural Legitimacy

Graphic designers are much like artist and writers; whether in the working field or not, they are conceptual thinkers using their imagination, Visions, skills and craft and that requires strategic planning and conceptualization linking them to creative productions to communicate their message to the world. Frequently, designers are being judged based on their rights of cultural legitimacy; whether it is right or wrong to pursue the title of design authorship. Though, the discipline of graphic design is developed from the printing trade; designers are often looked up upon their technical skills in computers and not for their creativity. Nowadays, many graphic designers are given the opportunity to use their tools of communication to develop research and ideas collaborating with subcultures and other fields to enhance their inspirations to continue motivating their creative thinking.

Designers As Authors Activist

Designer as Activist is not the same as the normal act of activism; protesting and resisting. They are mostly idea generators in bringing a clear understanding of the problem to the table, rather than proposing towards a single right answer. Design Activists are given the opportunity to explore the question of the problem through a lot of research to identify a possible solution. However, examining the problem is as important as promoting solutions. Both subsidize towards building authority for making a change. Designers have the capabilities to make choices and influence decisions that can affect the audience. Importantly, designers have the competence for negotiating, whether for negative or positive implications and the authority to provide persuasive solution designs for a better society.

Nicholas Blechman

Shepard Fairey

Design Advocacy Across Media

Advocacy in design authorship is to enable designers to advocate for a certain cause that they initiate to pursue or represent a certain person or to advocate design authorship itself...

Spirited away posters by moi (me)

Tom Phillips- A Humument

Steve Mccaffery - Carnival, The Second Panel.

Summary: Chapter 2 ( Writing, Type, Text) of The Designer as Author... by Steven McCarthy

The first part titled Writing Needs Graphic Design:

Without graphic design, writing would not be as attractive and organized. The existence of Graphic Design has helped facilitate the understanding of text into information we can process. With their skills, Graphic Designers can manipulate and change these shapes into different styles that help deliver the message. Using creativity, they can create designs for enjoyment or specifically to the needs of their clients. However, for these factors to be successful and straight forward, they rely on the need to be both legible and have good readability. In other words, they must not cause discomfort or irritation when read.

The Second part titled Typographic Design Authorship:

This bridge between words and visual communication styles is not easily broached upon solely by the Graphic Designer, in some cases, the design process requires the effort of a team to properly deliver the writers message and intent to the proper audience. In this regard, a personality arises that may be influenced by many different aspects, such as cultural or national identity, personal approach etc., that will help create a tone of voice for the writer and its usage.

The Third part titled The Visual-Verbal Text:

With the advent of new technologies, the merging of media, Graphic Designers are now able to work on both visual and text projects, thereby flipping established traditional roles around allowing writers and others to work outside of creative boundaries.

Walt Disney's & Salvador Dali - Destino (2003)

John Maeda

"Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem."

Michael Bierut

"All of the good designers I admire have developed a conviction that the way they serve their clients the best is by bringing a strong point of view to the designer/client relationship. This doesn't always mean simply imposing a strong visual style on everything. It can also mean caring deeply about the meaning of the work, what the messages are, how they're directed."

#michael beirut

Felix Pfaffli

Monika Ciapala

#dope #obama #similarities

Anthony Burrill

Designer as Author by Steven McCarthy Chapter 1:

In the book Designer as Author by Steven McCarthy, the first part titled Design Authorship Explained, discusses the general concept and history behind design authorship in the Graphic Design field. The chapter gives brief ideologies and methods discussing the various tactics of professionalism in Graphic Design with different theories and viewpoints of authorships to further encourage a positive outcome socially, culturally, economically and politically. In mid-way, the chapter goes into great length discussing the history of design authorship in the past until this present day on how Critics from different perspectives debated, criticized, and devalued Design authors who were subjectively becoming “Auteurs” instead of working anonymously. Later on, provides tips on how to make decisions with client based relationships, and how to improve, and be more efficient in the message of the project instead of focusing on the design and how to prevent situations in advance before dealing with the consequence of debt. Conceivably, authorship is not the right term for the practice we understand as design. There are a small number of examples of work that is obviously the product of design authors and not designer/authors, and these incline to be exceptions to the rule. The second part titled Design Authorship Enabling Technologies, discusses the combinations of old and new tools that helped shape designer- authored works to further deliver their messages freely. In the chapter, McCarthy discusses the different means of communication with the addition of use and cost. The effectiveness and flexibility of personal computers are endless compared to an old typewriter that is very limited and inflexible, but effective in producing nostalgic typefaces. On the contrary, the letterpress and the silkscreen printing process require specific familiarity with craft and material process varied from the use of computers, which helped many design-authors produce various font styles, and helped the process of kerning and leading between letters easier than of letterpress. Photocopier is another tool marks to be inexpensive and limited format production, yet effective for design-authors to create self-initiated projects. Many design-authors use offset printing for excellent quality results and printing quantity for publication, but it’s fairly expensive. However, the uses of these old methods are very limited in productions and time consuming, but excellent with their limited cost. Lastly, this chapter explains how website design is a smarter way to save money rather than wasting money and paper. The design authorship is permitted by these tools of expertise that builds a strong relationship between the acts of creativity, visualizing, finally distributing design work. Thus, the ability to combine the old and new technologies together is empowering. The third part titled Timeline of Design, displays a timeline of Design Authorship profile picture and their work in chronological order from 1891 to 2010. The fourth and fifth part titled Interview: Rick Pynor and Interview: Ellen Lupton, displays a separate interview with two famous design authors discussing their interest, influence and contribution to the book “Designer as Author” by Steven McCarthy.

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