OUGD501 - Study Task 01: Design & Authorship

I have been given the task to write a 500 word analysis on the work of a graphic designer. At the same time by comparing it to the Barthes text and similar text's by using quotes that fit in with my analysis.

Below is my completed analysis

As graphic designers it is our mission to treat the world with our own vision with that mixed in with the vision of people who don’t see the world of design in the same way as we do.

We take what is around us in the world, what we see and what we know and use that to help create designs and images that constantly change the world and how people see things. Design and image is a very strong tool that can be used to promote a message and have an effect on the state of our minds.

Similar to what ‘Barthes’ says in his book, how the idea of an author being seen by the reader as someone who represents the modern age/figure, how the idea of a current more relevant author can come across as a fountain of knowledge that the reader will want to listen to “The author is a modern figure, a product of our society in so far as, emerging from the Middle Ages with English empiricism..”, (barthes. R, 1968, 142-143).

When you look at the work of a graphic designer, whether successful or not, it is more likely that it is the design/art that makes the mind work and it is us that will begin to think because it has triggered something within us. From that point very little attention is given to the creator of the work except from acknowledgment, similar to barthes text on how It is the language and literature itself that the author creates, that speaks and has power, not the actual person creating the work. “For him, for us too it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through prerequisite impersonality, to reach that point where only language acts,’performs’ and not ‘me’, (barthes. R, 1968, 143).

We as creators of work are seen as the before product of the product we are creating, in a way that we are acknowledged that the work we created was that of the designers, yet the space in between the designer and the work that has been created is where little thought is given. The designer is the starting point for all work which is then consumed visually and mentally by the reader, yet it will only ever be the story of the work that is taken in, not the story of the designer. Similar to what is in Barthes text where the “the author is never more than the instance writing, just as/is nothing other than the instance saying/: language knows a ‘subject’ not a ‘person’ ” (barthes. R, 1968, 145).

The main point of this comparison between design practice and using Barthes text is that the designer to their work can strongly be related to the an author and their work. The idea of an author could be linked to anything that creates ‘something’, the creator which makes a statement by making the decision to catch the world’s attention, “The meaning of the word ‘author’ has shifted significantly through history and has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the last 40 years. The earliest definitions are not associated with writing per se, but rather denote ‘the person who originates or gives existence to anything", (http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/the-designer-as-author). This helps to give the idea again that the author is always the beginning of what is created, the product of what will make some sort of difference or message.

However going back to the idea of Bathes text ‘The death of an Author’ meaning the author or creator does not hold the same power as that of the work they produce. The author's story is not of importance to the reader but mostly what the reader is reading.

OUGD501 - Barthes, R. 'The Death of the Author' - Personal understanding

Barthes, R. (1968) 'The Death of the Author', Fontana, London

Was given to me as a task to read and understand

Below is my personal understanding of this chapter of his book

Barthes talks about the ‘author’ as someone who represents the modern age/figure how the idea that a current author may come across as the fountain of today’s knowledge. He explains how an author's work and literature describes the author himself, how the literature paints the image of the authors self and being..

It is the language and literature itself that the author creates that speaks and has power, not the actual person creating the work.

Barthes then goes on to talk about how the modern example of text is read in such a way that the author in the work is completely absent. There is no thought of the person who creates but instead the thought is only places on the figure and image that the work or words is creating.

The author or creator of literature is seen as the before product of the work or text which is the after product and it can be represented by putting this idea against the idea of that a father tends to his child, the child being the product of the father..

The last few pages of the chapter then goes on to say that a writer can not create something truly original but instead mixes together knowledge and text that has already been created, by taking bit’s of what has been and still is and molding it into the author's own image.

The birth of a reader is that which costs the death of an author.

So I read this chapter written by barthes to understand that the the reader of a literature shows their appreciation to the story behind the text and only that.. the mind of the reader will not think highly of the writer as they do for the literature, because it is the literature that is the product of interest, which creates this space of emptiness between the author and the literature, this space is responsible for the absence of the authors ‘being’ and existence in any text.