Authorship, Entrepreneurialism and Experimental design

Abstract

This paper responds to recent calls in design literature for a return to design authorship, and the appropriation from fine art of theories of relational aesthetics (Poyner 2005, Mermoz 2006). I suggest that before looking to art as a model, it is useful to retrace various divergent moments in the authorship and entrepreneurialism debates in graphic design. This paper describes how these debates polarise the designer-as-author as antithetical to the designer-as-service-provider, and as such omit a third term, experimental design. I discuss an example of experimental design, Re-magazine by Jop van Bennekom, in terms of how such design challenges the promises of “total control” or autonomy that is identified by many as a key motivation in practices of graphic authorship and entrepreneurialism (Heller 1998, 2006, Lupton 2003, Margolin 2003, Tremlow 2006). I interpret issue nine of Re-magazine as an allegory that questions design’s pursuit of autonomy. Rather than confuse the distinct specificities of fine art and design practices in an unexamined adoption of relational aesthetics, as Poyner and Mermoz suggest, I propose that design must first reflect on its own products and practices.