my Creations - #2

On December 15 2007 13:18 thedeadhaji wrote:
really cool vid!
But I have no idea what it meant!

I propose three alternative models for design that, rather than glorify the act and sanctify the practice, attempt to describe the activity as it exists and as it could evolve.
Designer as translator
Designer as performer
Designer as director

The first model, designer as translator is based on the assumption that the act of design is essentially the clarification of material or the remodeling of content from one form to another. The ultimate goal is the expression of a content rendered in a form that reaches a new audience. (I am drawn to this metaphor by Ezra Pound's translations of Asian Character poetry. Pound translated not only the literality of the character but the visual component of the poem as well. Thus the original is rendered as a raw material reshaped into the conventions of Western poetry. The translation becomes a second art.)

Translation is neither scientific, nor ahistorical. Every translation reflects both the character of the original and the spirit of the contemporary as well as the individuality of the translator. (A 1850 translation of the Odessey will be radically different from a 1950 one.)

In certain works of design, the designer remolds the raw material of given content, rendering it legible to a new audience. Like the poetic translator, the designer not only transforms the literal meaning of the elements but must translate the spirit as well. For example Bruce Mau's design of a book version of the Chris Marker's film La Jette attempts to translate the original material from one form to another. Mau is certainly not the author of the work but the translator of form and spirit. The designer is the intermediary.

The performer metaphor is based on the traditional performing arts of theater and music. The actor is not the author of the script, the musician not the composer of the score, but without actor or musician, the art cannot be realized. The actor is the physical expression of the work. Every work could have an infinite number of physical expressions. Every performance recontextualizes the original work. (Here imagine the range of interpretations the plays of Shakespeare.) Each performer brings a certain reading to the work. (No two actors play the same role the same way.)

In this model, the designer transforms and expresses content through graphic devices. The score or script is enhanced and made whole by the performance. And so the designer becomes the physical manifestation of the content; not author but performer; the one who gives life to, who speaks, the content; who contextualizes the content and brings it into the frame of the present.

Examples abound, from early dada, Situationist, and Fluxus experiments to more recent typographic scores like Warren Lehrer's performance typography or experimental typography from Edward Fella or David Carson. The most notable example is perhaps Quenten Fiore's performance of McCluhan. It was Fiore's graphic treatment as much as McCluhan's words that made The Media is the Massage a world wide phenomena. (Other examples include any number of "graphic interpretations" such as Alan Hori's reinvention of Beatrice Warde's Crystal Goblet essay, or Scott Makela improvisation on Tucker Viemiseters lecture both originally printed in Michael Bierut's publication ReThinking Design.)

The third model is the designer as director and is a direct function of bigness. This model is possible only in projects of a scale large enough to imagine a meaning which is manufactured by the arrangement of elements. It is only in large scale installations, advertising campaigns, mass distribution magazines and very large books that we see evidence of such a paradigm.

In such large projects, the designer orchestrates masses of materials to shape meaning from given content. Working like a film director, overseeing a script, a series of performances, a photographers, artists, and a production crews, the meaning of the work is a product of the entire production. Large scale, mass distribution campaigns like those for Nike or Coca-Cola, are examples of the approach. Curatorial projects such as Sean Perkin's catalogue Experience which creates an exhibition of other design projects is another example of the model.

But perhaps the clearest paradigm is Irma Boom's project for SHV corporation. Working in conjunction with an archivist for over five years, Boom shaped a narrative out of a undifferentiated lump of raw data. The meaning and narrative of the book is not a product of the words but almost exclusively the function of the sequence of the pages and the cropping of the images. It is a case of the designer creating meaning almost exclusively through the devices of design. The scale of the book allows for thematic development, contradiction and coincidence.

The value of these models is they accept the multivalent activity of design without resorting to totalizing description. The problem with authorship is that it encourages both a-historical and a-cultural readings of design. It grants too much agency, too much control to the lone artist/genius and discourages interpretation by validating a "right" reading of a work.

On the other hand, work is made by someone. And the difference between the way different subjects approach situations, the way different writers or designers make sense of their worlds, is at the heart of a certain criticism. The challenge is to accept the multiplicity of methods that comprise design language. In the end authorship is only a device to compel designers to rethink process and expand their methods.

If we really need to coin a phrase that describe an activity that encompasses imaging, editing, narration, chronicling, performing, translating, organizing and directing, I'll conclude with a suggestion:

designer=designer.