Essay

Towards the rise of the Designer Auteur

The central premise for this essay is an examination of the expansion of on-line creative collectivism and it’s implications for the future of not only the professional graphic designer but anyone who makes their living within what would traditionally be called the commercial arts; illustration, graphic design and photography (Wordnet, 2009). However, through my research I have come to believe that to purely focus on the developments in our communications technology over the last twenty years just in the terms of its financial impact on professional graphic design is too narrow a remit which doesn’t allow for the placing of these developments within the bigger picture of the seismic changes, often called a digital or communications revolution, but which I personally think could be better described as a knowledge revolution, that we have seen over the last twenty years (McQuail,1983:19).

There can be no doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution that is being powered by the invention of the world wide web, but what exactly this revolution is and what it’s future implications are are still the subject of much speculation. To some it is a capitalist revolution where markets are finally set free to operate unhindered by political and geographical boundaries, or as Charles Leadbeater puts it in his book We-Think, ‘no less than a capitalist cornucopia’ (2009: xxvii), to others it heralds a return to a kind of Marxist utopia where the means and ownership of production are finally returned to the workers – a new ‘Digital Socialism’ (Kelly, K, 2009).

Traditionally the way we, society, gained our knowledge and information, be it political, academic, professional or social, has always been centralised and controlled by a few gatekeepers (Keen, A, 2007); the internet is, however, totally decentralised and beyond any form of central control (Weinberger, D, 2008:191), the impact of this democratisation of information (Blumler, J, Gurevitch, M, 2000:78-79) is summed up well by Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital when he states that;

The monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries …Media barons of today will be grasping to hold onto their centralized empires tomorrow’ (Jenkins, H, 2006:5).

It is worth pointing out, before we continue, the speed of the changes we are witnessing. ‘In June 1993 their were just 130 websites in the world. By mid 2007 there were 135 million registered host names and 61 million active websites’. In 2007 there were 75 million blogs with 175,000 new ones being created every day (Leadbeater, c, 2009: 31,33). Today just two years later there are 1,733,993,741 internet users (Internet World Stats, 2009) with Microsoft now putting the number of pages contained by the internet in excess of a trillion (News.com, 2009).

Information, ideas and knowledge are now disseminated through a myriad of sources, and, ‘this sea of information can be difficult to navigate’ (Leadbeater, C, 229:32). Many commentators such as Andrew Keen (fig 1) see this dissemination of information sources as an attack on authorship, with the ‘authoritative, accountable expert’ being replaced by ‘the anonymous amateur’, however It could be equally argued that is based on a flawed assumption that more information, more ideas, more opinions are somehow undesirable. I would argue that more information does not undermine any empirical truths, more ideas do not lead to poorer ideas and how can the free sharing of our collective knowledge ever be an undesirable thing.

Fig 1. Andrew Keen (left) in conversation with David Weinberger

This sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience was described as collective intelligence by the cybertheorist Pierre Lévy, who said;

None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills. Collective intelligence can be seen as an alternative source of media power.
(Jenkins, H, 2006:4)

A knowledge revolution has long been predicted with theorists such as McLuhan arguing in 1964 that ‘the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society’ (1974:11), however philosophically the idea of a collaborative, collective truth can be seen to hark back to Gerrard Windstanley the intellectual inspiration behind the Leveller movement (fig 2, 3) of the English Civil War which aimed to level the relationship between ‘power, knowledge and economics’ and as Christopher Hill puts it, ‘Windstanley’s ideal was a society of all –round, non specialists helping each other to arrive at truth through the community. Sounds a bit like the internet’ (Leadbeater, 2009:xxxii).

Fig 2, 3. Gerrard Winstanley and the Levellers produced may pamphlets portioning parliament for an even more radically egalitarian government

The philosopher Ivan Illich argued in his book ‘Tools for Conviviality’ that there was a ‘need to develop new instruments for the re-conquest of practical knowledge by the average citizen’ (Wikipedia, 2009) and went on to argue that when ‘people become too dependant on the expert knowledge of professionals they loose their own capacity to act’ (Leadbeater, 2009:44).

It was social philosophers like Illich that inspired the pioneers of personal computing such as Doug Englbart, Fred Moore and Lee Felsenstein which eventually lead to Moore forming The Home Brew Computer Club in 1975, a group of amateurs ‘interest in the social impact of computers’. The Clubs aim was to explore ‘an actively open information system, enabling direct communication amongst its users with no centralized editing or control over the information exchanged’ (Leadbeater, C, 2009:42)

Fig 4. Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak, founders of Apple Computers, were original members of the Home Brew Computer Club

Original Members of this club were Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak (Fig 4) who went on to found Apple Computers (EconomicExpert.com, 2009). Interestingly the young Bill Gates (fig 5) wasn’t and he viewed the group with suspicion famously publishing an ‘Open Letter to Hobbyists” (fig 6) in the groups Newsletter, expressing his dismay at the ‘open sharing of his software’ (Gates, W 1976). This differing position between Job’s interest in collaborative working and Gates protectionist stance is still evident in the publics perceptions of their respective brands to this day Gates views open source programmers with suspicion calling then ‘new modern day communists’ (Kelly, K, 2009).

Fig 5. Bill Gates always had a more commercial vision for personal computing
Fig 6. Bill Gate’s famous ‘Open Letter to Hobbyist”

This free sharing of knowledge and resources that underpins what has become known as Web 2.0 culture (Leadbeater, C 2009:32) has obvious parallels with Marxist theories and Kevin Kelly draws this comparison in his article ‘The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online’ for Wired Magazine that;
When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labour without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism. (Kelly, K, 2009)

It is against this background that creative collectivism is evolving and becoming an effective ‘third way’ for graphic designers to work collaboratively, sharing resources and materials, not just with fellow professional designers but also a hugely expanding community of creative amateurs, free to use at the point of need. It is this blurring of the distinction between the amateur and professional that worries commentators such as Andrew Keen and is the central theme of this book ‘The Cult of the Amateur’. He talks about ‘Infinite monkeys decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers’ (Keen A, 2007:16) and other commentators are equally as dismissive; the computer scientist Jason Lanier in his essay Digital Maoism: The Hazards of New Online Collectivism dismisses what he calls ‘the hive mind’ as being ‘for the most part stupid and boring’ (Lanier, J 2006).

However it could be argued that this increasing in amateur content creation can be seen as the fulfillment of a basic human need to create and be creative. Noam Chomskey tells us that humans need ‘spontaneous innovative, creative work’ to be fulfilled and later states that ‘free and creative activity is a basic human need’ (McGilvray, J, 2003:224). Leadbeater puts it nicely when he says that;
The experience of creative and productive freedom, for so long confined to just a few special people working in special places, is being made much more widely available (Leadbeater, C, 2009:221)

He also poses the idea that the collectivist ethos of Web 2.0 is actually taking us back to a ‘pre-industrial’ model of organisation where skills and services are bartered for mutual benefit but without any actual financial exchange. (Leadbeater, C, 2009:27)

Fig 7. Three billion photos are now shared by amateur photographers on Flickr.com

Probably the most visible example of the power of digital collectivism is Flickr (fig 7), the online photo-sharing portal. Kelly explains the power of Flickr well and it is worth quoting his description in full;

Not only have amateurs shared more than three billion photos on Flickr, but they have comprehensively tagged them with categories, labels and keywords. Others in the community cull the pictures into sets, and the whole thing is searchable. The popularity of Creative Commons licensing means that communally – if not outright communistically – your picture essentially becomes my picture. Anyone can use a photo once it’s posted, just as a communard might use the community wheelbarrow. I don’t have to shoot yet another photo of the Eiffel Tower, since the community can provide a far better one than I could take myself. (Kelly, K 2009)

The taking and reusing of images and content has became know as Remix which is today defined as the ‘global activity consisting of the creative and efficient exchange of information made possible by digital technologies that is supported by the practice of cut/copy and paste.’ (Remix Theory, n.d). There is nothing particularly digital about the concept of remix with artists as diverse as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Peter Blake and Jamie Reid (Fig. 8-11) all using the concept of copy, cut and paste to some extent within their work.

Fig 8, 9, 10, 11. Artists have always remixed objects and images to give them new meaning.
(From left to right) Marcel Duchamp–Fountain, Jamie Reid-God Save the Queen, Andy Warhol–Campbells Soup Can, Peter Blake –St. Peppers Lonley Hearts Club Band

From a theoretical standpoint remixing content involves re-authoring, removing it by one level at a time from its original meaning, every level of separation we add adds new means, whilst distancing it further from it’s original source and hence it’s original meaning. Barthes famously defines this as ‘The Death of the Author’ by which he means that it is the reader of content that gives it its meaning not its creator, stating that a ‘text’s unity is not in its origin but its destination. And only the reader can define that. It is the reader who completes it’ (Navis, E, 2008). He is not alone in his interest, the design theorist Ellen Lupton in an essay entitled ‘The Designer as Producer’ quotes Walter Benjamin saying;

Benjamin wrote ‘The Author as Producer’, a text that attacked the traditional view of authorship… he exclaimed that new forms of communication were melding down traditional artistic genres and corroding the borders between authoring and editing. (Lupton, E, 1998:159)

Deconstructionist theorists such as Bakhtin and Derrida both argued that ‘no one owns meaning’ (Honeycott, L, 1994) and that meaning wasn’t held within the object or narrative itself, the signifier as Derrida called it, but in it’s relationship with the things around it (Anderson, M.G, n.d).

Fig 12. Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

This remixing of content also makes question are ideas of originality and copyright. Can a professional graphic designer who incorporates content created under creative commons licensing by amateur designers, photographers, illustrators and typographers then claim copyright and intellectual ownership on the finished work? Stanford law professor and chair of the Creative Commons (fig 12) project Lawrence Lessig has written extensively on copyright and intellectual property law and puts the problem we are facing down to the fact that copyright law was drawn up to cover the publishing and republishing or original work not, the ’building upon or transforming of that work’ (Lessig, L, 2005:19). He goes on to say that;

Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building upon the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now. That building is always and everywhere at least partially done without permission and without compensating the original creator (Lessig, L, 2005:29)

There are several notable examples of when copyright and protectionism could have changed the course of not only creativity but the whole of history namely photography and the internet. Had the French Government not gifted the process of Daguerreotyping (fig 13) to the world would we have photography as we know it today (Hubbard, R, 2009). Had Tim Berners Lee (fig 14) created the internet on a ‘for profit’ model would we have World Wide Web. It can even be argued that if all academic writing became tightly copyrighted would future academics be able to freely build upon this knowledge.

Fig 13. Louis Deguarre sold the patent to his photographic process to the French government who then gifted it to the world
Fig 14. Tim Berners Lee didn,t try to patent his ‘Global Hypernet’ instead allowed anyone to create content freely

There are obviously differing views with Andrew Keen denouncing remix culture as ‘digital thievery’ (Keen, A, 2008) but this binary view of ownership is becoming less and less viable as the internet is forcing us to rethink our relationship to the ownership of content, be it words, sounds or pictures. Keen fear that ‘writers are (being) transformed into sales and marketing reps of their own brands’ is to some extent warranted but unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your standpoint we are, as I stated earlier, in the midst of a knowledge revolution and revolutions bring change and to quote the English novelist Arnold Bennett, ‘Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.’ (ThinkExist, 2009). David Weinberger sums this issue up well in a debate for the Wall Street Journal when responding to Andrew Keen’s comment that intellectual authority is being endangered by our new relationship with authorship and ownership, saying;

I certainly do agree with your concerns about how we’re going to pay talent. I don’t have any answers or predictions, but I suspect every institution whose value rides on the scarcity of information or the difficulty of distributing it will face this issue eventually. There are whole classes of professionals who may find themselves without work. That’s a frightening prospect. On the other hand, delivering this value on the Web is a business opportunity, so it would be premature to declare defeat (Weinberger D, 2007)

The implications of this knowledge revolution are wide ranging, but in concluding this essay I will again focus on my primary interest, namely the implications that digital remix culture have for the future of graphic design. It is now no longer possible to see the designer in the sole role of author, but more as producer because as Ellen Lupton puts it, ‘authorship is a provocative model for rethinking the role of the graphic designer, as it hinges, however, on a nostalgic ideal as the writer or artist as a single point of origin’ (Lupton, E, 1998:159) and as she later goes on to say, ‘For the designer to become a producer, he or she must have the skills to begin directing content, by critically navigating the social, aesthetic and technological systems across which communications flow’ (Lupton, E, 1998:161).

Fig 15. Film director and critic François Truffaut first proposed the concept of ‘The Auteur’

The idea of the designer as director has interesting parallels within Auteur Theory. The theory, originally proposed by film director and critic François Truffaut (fig 15) that even though motion picture is the product of a collaboration between, a writer, a director, an art director, an editor and many other creative professionals, the director can be seen as the sole author of the work if he or she meets certain criteria. American film critic Andrew Sarris defined the criteria as being;

Directors (who) demonstrate technical expertise, have a stylistic signature that is demonstrated over the course of several films, and, most importantly, through choice of projects and cinematic treatment, demonstrate a consistency of vision and evoke a palpable interior meaning through his work. (Rock, M, 1998:152)

Michael Rock goes on to say that;

The interesting thing about auteur theory was that, unlike literature, film theorists, like designers, had to construct the notion of the author as a legitimizing strategy, as a method of raising what was considered low entertainment to the plateau of fine art. (Rock, M, 1998:152)

So I propose in conclusion that what we are seeing is not the death of the designer, to parody Barthes, but the rise of the ‘Designer Auteur’. The designer who through his training has the skills and vision to combine the products of many creative collaborators, be they professional or amateur, into a piece of work that contains his unique signature and as such can be seen as the product of a single author. So far from this ‘new digital abundance leading to intellectual poverty’ (Keen, A, 2007) as Keen would have it, it is far more likely to lead to the rise of what Leadbeater has christened ‘a new craft aristocracy’ (Leadbeater, C, 2009:83)

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