How do you uncover opportunities for an authorial artefact through a reflection on your own skills and interests?
Lecture – Craig Oldman – the designer and authorial practice.
Office of Craig and Rough Trade Books.
Craig Oldman instigates projects that he is interested in – he thinks it is more than just graphic design. Graphic design is a service industry.
Graphic design is more communications – it is more to communicate a message using tools of design to convey it. What you think is often not that important to that. Therefore Graphic design is also often not a medium of self expression.
He believes that graphic design is for other people – the client, what they want to sell/ communicate to another audience. Your taste and opinion isn’t that relevant to the project.
“You don’t have to like the work for it to work.”
Craig Oldman
Instead he uses it as a tool to get where he wants to go. When he self authors work – he doesn’t feel like a graphic designer, but more an author or curator.
He also believes that we fear purely original things – so things are better if they are a derivative of other things. He pulls ideas from all the richness of the world and humanity. It’s the combination of these things that is the original idea. Craig then curates these ideas to make something which is his and aligns with his point of view.
Designers get frustrated being in the middle role and their opinion not mattering, so they have broken out of traditional model and tried to author their own work.
You can interchange the designer who writes or other way round – but do we need boxes at all? He believes they are important to know where you are, what you want to do and achieve but it is still important to cross those boundaries to create self authored work.
He asks himself these questions at the start of self initiated work:
- Why am I doing this?
- Who am I doing this for? Client, audience or yourself? Is there an audience for it? Can get commissions from the content of your work if it interests other
- Is it worthwhile doing? Can I use my creativity for better? For me or someone else?
Authorship is about content – not how you pull it together.
“The best design will not save you if you have nothing to say.”
Craig Oldman
The example he showed was a project where he looked at the books within a film that were integral within the film. Fictional books that don’t exist anywhere apart from inside the film. He made exact replica prop from the film, then brings links to culture at the time eg art from Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Guerrilla Girls as well as political angle.
What does the film have to say- what is the content -thats the important bit. Gender roles, art, culture, politics. Teach them something and inspire something . Collected other peoples views on the film, they contributed pieces to it.
“Writing is a creative act.”
Craig Oldman
The design is at the mercy of the content. Using design to break up the content and add something to it. The concern should come first and the design later.
Authorship often is a an object but it also can be a business – don’t have to be vain can be using creativity for good.
Analysis
Craig Oldman believes that graphic design is a purely service industry where you are never designing for yourself. That is why he likes to branch out of that and create self-authored work. I think his idea that you have to come up with a concern first and the design later is important as the work you create has to mean something and have a strong voice instead of simply looking good. Once you’ve worked out what it is you want to say, you can then use your design skills to make it beautiful, understandable and desirable. His process of asking, why am I doing it?, who am I doing it for?, and is it worthwhile? I think are a good starting point for any self authored piece of work.
Do The Green Thing
Craig Oldman mentioned Do The Green Thing in his lecture. Founded in 2007, Do The Green Thing has spent the last decade working with a global community of creatives including David Shrigley, Paula Scher and Sir Paul Smith to make films, posters, podcasts and products that have inspired more than 45 million people to live more sustainably. (Do The Green Thing 2021)
I love this example of creatives using their unique skills to try and improve the world in an area that they are passionate about.
Facing it
I watched an Its Nice That video about animator Sam Gainsborogh and a self-initiated project he created. Facing it is an animation about social anxiety that Sam made using a combination of claymation, pixelation and live action (Brewer 2020).
His passion for the idea is clear in the film and I think thats what makes it so powerful, it also allowed him to try out new animation styles.
Author and Maker
- Find two examples of designers who demonstrate authorial / making expertise in the delivery of a component of their practice. Is it their sole output, are they passion projects or are they opportunities where they saw a gap in the market?
Jessica Walsh
I have looked into Jessica Walsh for a few projects now as I find her incredibly inspiring and find myself really drawn to women who have found success in design.
Jessica Walsh creates a lot of self-initiated projects, she worked for a long time alongside Stefan Sagmesiter and he is another designer who seems to enjoy taking on self authored work.
Some of her self authored work seems to be explorations in creativity alongside her commissioned work, such as 40 days of dating and 12 kinds of kindness where she documents an experiment in a creative way. These projects are an insight into her personal life, her interests and thoughts. They are quite inward looking, however they also have positive outcomes. Out of her 12 Kinds of Kindness project, Jessica discovered that women can often be unsupportive of each other due to the competitive nature of getting a successful design role as a women. She felt a desire to change society and culture, so set up Ladies Wine & Design to help support women and inspire them to support each other in creative fields (Walsh 2021). Her projects are inspired by things that she is passionate about and sit alongside her commercial work.
The projects don’t necessarily bring in an income on their own, but she shares her opinion on self initiated work in her blog. “Self-initiated projects are a great way to exercise your creativity, experiment with techniques & show the world what you’re capable of making. Sometimes, these ideas can turn into businesses. Even when the goal isn’t profit, these types of projects can often lead to people discovering your creative work & getting more work in the future”
https://andwalsh.com/work/all/ladies-wine–design/
Nice & Serious
Nice and Serious studio show a different perspective to this as they bring self-authored work into their studio practice.
The studio works on projects from charities and brands that are doing inspiring things that they really care about. They believe in the power of design and advertising, but that its power needs to be used to create good in the world, not push people to consume more. However, sometimes there isn’t a charity or work related to a subject they feel passionate about.
“You work on the briefs you’re given by charities and brands and you do the best you can to help them raise awareness of the cause in question, amplifying their impact. But there are some big, knotty problems that just won’t have a cause or a charity or a brand behind them, because there’s no financial or fundraising interest behind it.”
Nice and Serious
So they have an internal system they call ‘Nice Works’ where they give all their staff half a day a week to creatively respond to problems they care about. “We have a panel and anyone can pitch a creative solution to the problem and if the panel likes it we’ll give staff the time to work on it.” (Baines 2019).
One recent project is ‘Useless’ a map of Londons zero-waste shops.
Another project they created was an online “museums of optimism’ which was an archive of nice things seen and created during lockdown. They playfully designed the website to be like a museum with different ‘rooms’ you can visit. (Nice & Serious 2021)
I think bringing self-initiated work into a studio environment like that is really interesting and a great way to keep staff engaged and push them creatively. This is definitely a passion project but the way they treat them like any other project allows them to also possibly fill a gap in the market.
Creating self-initiated projects
Jessica Walsh’s blog about self initiated projects offers tips on how to get started. She starts by looking at things that bother her and starting there. To create a list of all the why’s?
““Why?” What are the struggles in your life? Start a “Shit List” notebook of everything that drives you mad. These could be things that bother you in your life, daily routine, things that bother you about yourself or things you think can be improved in the world. Pain, anger & frustration is where many beautiful ideas are born.”
Jessica Walsh
Then she makes mind maps and word association charts to try and work out what she could do about the issues.
“After you have your list of ideas of what you could create, hone in on the ones you think are most feasible with your time and resources.”
Jessica Walsh
Like Craig Oldman, Jessica highlights the importance of have substance over style, and how the initial idea and passion for the thing you want to fix is the important bit.
“From my experience, the people chasing fame and money rarely wind up successful. It’s the people who earnestly set out to change something and make a difference through their projects, products or work who most often succeed.”
Jessica Walsh
She also raises the idea of setting yourself constraints, which I think will be really helpful when you have such a big project.
“Setting up parameters and sticking to them will hold you accountable and make it easier to execute. The more constraints you have, the better.”
Jessica Walsh
Finally she gives the advice to pick three adjectives that describe your project, and think about them each time you chose a colour, a typeface or make any design decision (Walsh 2021b).
What are my why’s?
- Why does no-one talk about the menopause?
- Why do people keep buying so much shit even though our planet can’t handle it?
- Why does the cycling industry seem to be so aimed at men?
- Why is mental health still not thought of as important as physical health?
- Why is the news so horrendous and scaremongering?
- Why are we all so unconnected?
- Why can’t I stop looking at instagram?
- Why do we think being beautiful and having nice things will make us happy?
- Why shouldn’t women have hairy armpits?
- Why don’t we appreciate nature more?
- Why do people keep making new plastic?
- Why do I always want to buy new things?
- Why is it so hard to know how to help the environment?
- Why do so many people not have confidence in their skills and abilities?
- Why don’t we talk about PMS more?
- Why does it matter what we look like?
I also wrote a list of some of the things that I care about.
I then noted down ideas in a rough mind map style to see where I could go from these initial themes.
Initial ideas
I created some initial ideas for this and posted them on the ideas wall.
Then I looked into each idea I turn and thought about how I could expand in a little bit to create a project idea.
- Women in cycling
Archival project combing the history, present and potential futures of women and cycling. Contains old images and stories, current famous female cyclists, peoples experiences of modern day cycling and the issues, future ideas, speculative products.
Format: Book / exhibition - Mental health immersive experiences exhibition
exhibition building on my idea in week 7 using data from people with mental health conditions to create an immersive exhibition with sound and light to help raise understanding and awareness.
Format: exhibition - Designing with nature –Frogs
What can we learn from them or use them as inspiration for?
Format: Book - Typography letter ‘A’ book –
found examples of letter ‘a’. found type and making your own type – how many different ways can you make a letter?
Format: Book/ social media page - Happy news
Pushing back against shocking news stories and how we are bombarded with them. Celebrating the great things that have happened or people have done. Trying to balance out the bad with good.
Format: an exhibition, postcards? A book? Wine bottle labels? - PMS tracking project
Data visualisation of emotions and their link to hormones. Giving women more control over their hormones through understanding them?
Format: website or exhibition - Challenging consumerism
‘car boots are cool’ – poster project/ campaign pushing old and reused instead of new. Subverting advertising to try and convince people NOT to buy new things. Protest art? Can I make them by collecting old clothes and repurposing/embroidering them with a message? Print but without printing. Only using stuff thats already been made.
Format: Billboards and posters - Tiny, everyday joyfulness project
based on something I did during winter lockdown when the days were hard and bleak, we would all share the best part of our day at dinner, it was often so very tiny but it helped cheer us up a bit. The small things are often actually the big things. Can I create a project noticing all the tiny lovely things that happen in a boring regular week/month to make people feel more grateful and content?
Format: book or an exhibition or a website - Chalk stream conservation
Investing the importance of chalk streams and how climate change and pollution is affecting them. Create a riverside exhibition that people have to enter the river to view?
Format: Exhibition - Bringing nature into cities
Creating an exhibition space that evokes all the senses of nature, focussing on the light, colour, sounds, smells and textures of nature. Taking over a large deserted building? A space where people can relax and recharge, work and gain more of an understanding and appreciation of the importance of nature to our future and to our present wellbeing.
Format: Exhibition
Additional ideas
- Menopause awareness campaign – trying to break taboos by normalising menopause, raising awareness of it and making it something empowering and natural .
- Body image – ‘ugly’ parts of peoples bodies in an exhibition to show what people think is ugly about themselves isn’t ugly at all.
Reflection
The process of thinking about what issues really interest you seems to be a great way to ensure that you create work that really inspires you and matches with your passions. It seems that self-authored work is important to ensure you don’t always simply use design to fulfil someone else desires. As Craig Oldman says, when it comes to traditional client work, “You don’t have to like the work for it to work”. With self-authored projects however, it is all about what you like and what you care about. It is a chance to be completely original and make something just for you.
When creating self authored work however, it seems that the content or idea behind it is the most important thing, so that is where the most effort should be placed.
When starting to come up with ideas for a personal self authored project, I started by looking at what I care about and what issues I find within the world. I then started to expand these ideas into potential projects that I could create. I found coming up with ideas in such a short space of time difficult, as I find ideas often come to me best when I’m not searching for them, but instead appear out of the blue when looking at something or during a conversation. Trying to actively come up with a selection of ideas within a week was a challenge, but I tried to leave the ideas as often as possible and do other things in the hope that time away from thinking about them would allow more ideas to grow.
If I had more time I would have liked to get out and explore more, visiting little shops, museums and reading books, however due to the timescale and work commitments this wasn’t possible. I am quite excited by the ideas I have come up with regardless of this time pressure and there are a few I would happily progress further, but I’ve not yet decided which idea I would like to bring forwards into next week.
Reference list
BAINES, Josh. 2019. “Useless Is a Website Mapping out the UK’s Zero-Waste Network.” http://www.itsnicethat.com [online]. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/response-and-responsibility-useless-london-graphic-design-260619 [accessed 6 Aug 2021].
BREWER, Jenny. 2020. “Social Anxiety Manifests on Melty Plasticine Faces in Sam Gainsborough’s Facing It.” http://www.itsnicethat.com [online]. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/sam-gainsborough-facing-it-animation-310120 [accessed 6 Aug 2021].
DO THE GREEN THING. 2021. “About.” Do The Green Thing [online]. Available at: https://dothegreenthing.com/about/ [accessed 6 Aug 2021].
NICE & SERIOUS. 2021. “Museum of Optimism.” Museum of Optimism [online]. Available at: https://optimism.museum/ [accessed 6 Aug 2021].
WALSH, Jessica. 2021a. “Ladies, Wine & Design &Walsh.” andwalsh.com [online]. Available at: https://andwalsh.com/work/all/ladies-wine–design/ [accessed 6 Aug 2021].
WALSH, Jessica. 2021b. “Creating Self-Initiated Projects &Walsh.” andwalsh.com [online]. Available at: https://andwalsh.com/articles/all/creating-self-initiated-projects/.
Lizzie Wa Design 
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