The designer as author
Michael Rock is an American graphic designer and a founding partner and creative director of 2x4, a design company based in New York City. He runs a wide range of projects, collaborating with brands like Nike, Prada, Miu Miu, Target, Hyundai or people like Kanye West. In 1996 he was awarded the Rome Prize in Design and received the National Design Award in 2006. His writing on design has appeared in publications worldwide and his critically acclaimed collection of essays and projects, “Multiple Signatures,” was published by Rizzoli International in 2013.
This reading is based on Michael Rock’s study named, “The designer as author”, written in 1996. “What does it really mean to call a graphic designer as an author”. Rock questions the reader what authorship means in terms of graphic design. He takes us down the lane, back in history to help us understand what authorship meant back then. Using various comparison between thoughts, examples and showing various perspectives from various designer’s point of view, he talks about various ways of authorship. He doesn’t speak only about graphic design as an author but generally auteur can be a writer, film producer, etc. He also outlines the development and complexities of this idea.
It implies that authorship might mean new approaches in communication rather the origination of message. It may also lead to conservative notions in terms of design production and subjectiveWimsett and Beardsley were the first one to tell that a reader could never really know the author from his or her writings. Michel Foucault raised the question who is an author in 1969. Outlining Michel Foucault outlines the basic characteristics and function of the author. He talks about how after the 18thcentury the relationship between the author and the literature has changed. In the past, literature use to be authorless while scientific texts demanded the author’s name to be considered valid. Nowadays, the situation has been reversed. Literature requires a connection to someone, someone who takes responsibility for his writing and can be punished.
Rock speaks about how the poststructuralist readings critique readings form not what it means but how it means.Further to this, the reasons for why the term “Author” has emerged in graphic design and whether it is desirable were stated. I agree with the idea that authorship is more about the unique approaches; new ways, in which the designer can communicate particular message. On this surface at least, the designers were moving away from the authoress scientific texts through which inviolable visual principles arrived at through extensive visual research were. After this it was revealed that due to existence and theory of the term authorship graphic designers could claim some level of ownership over the message they were trying to visually communicate with the society.
In today’s world authorship in graphic designing is very important. For example, the design is taken place in a collaborative setting and hence it’s all within a studio. This leads to make the origin of any particular idea uncertain. Any inner, meaning should come from the aesthetic treatments as much as form the work content. The difference between designers is revealed in the unique each individual designer approaches content, not the content they generate.
I would suggest this reading to everyone because it provokes you to think deeper on what should be the real purpose of the existence of authorship over anything you have worked on as designer or in your profession.
‘If you look at the span of graphic design, you discover not a history of content but a history of form.” Michael Rock, 2005











