OUGD501 - Study Task 1 - Authorship & Graphic Design

Design & Authorship - 

Barthes.R. (1968) The Death of the Author in Image Music Text, Hammersmith London, Fontana Press,

Looking into Roland Barthes' The Death of the Author Barthes makes a theory which is known as the Auter Theory. This theory is accepting that a reader can understand the text written through the artist or writer and that no writing is original. "The voice loses it's origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins." This means that the reader gains more power whilst the author begins to lose power and therefore enter his own death. Therefore giving life to the interpretation of the reader, meaning it is created by the culture of the reader. "The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”

"Once the author is removed, the claim to decipher a text is quite futile" When relating it back to graphic design it means that the reader can have different thoughts. Therefore one person could interpret the meaning of a message differently to another. Relating it back to Massimo Vignelli's Canon which is a modernist book. Vignelli who is a modernist believes in function before form therefore the Auteur theory shouldn't be related to his work. Therefore, Vignelli's work should be easily understood. "Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt." This means that the Author doesn't carry his passion through the words/designs of his work/writing. The Author has its own stance to the reader although they may be related to each other. In simple it means that no design or writing is original as it has had inspiration from other artists/work.

However, this could be seen as a problem for someone like Vignelli. Vignelli work focuses on one meaning. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text”. Vignelli art work is very famous therefore the viewers opinion on his work is affected by the viewer knowing who Vignelli is. Therefore his art work is about himself rather than the viewer. This goes against the Death of the Author.

Notes on “Death of the author” an essay by Roland Barthes:

- Reader vs. Author

- Everyone different interprets text and writing, therefore the meaning could be different. 

- The reader has their own opinion rather than the opinion of the writer. 

- There is nothing original but actually an influence of something before. 

- We all have different intelligence

- What we might interpret something it will not be interpreted the same. 

- Eventually an author is a myth

The auteur theory, which was derived largely from Astruc's elucidation of the concept of caméra-stylo (“camera-pen”), holds that the director, who oversees all audio and visual elements of the motion picture, is more to be considered the “author” of the movie than is the writer of the screenplay. (As taken from www.britannica.com/art/auteur-theory) 

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