The Enabler

Graphic designers as objective service providers.

Neutral transmitters of client information.

Service Providers

Aleksandr Rodchenko: All Fields of Knowledge, 1924

Herbert Bayer: Kandinskys Birthday Exhibition 1926

El Lissitzky: For the Voice 1923

Josef Mller-Brockmann

Karl Gerstner

Wolfgang Weingart: Poster for the 18th

Didacta/Eurodidac, 1981

April Greiman: Sci-Arc Poster, 1988

Ellen Lupton: DesignWritingResearch, 1996

Designer as Author runs counter to

the role of the graphic designer that
evolved during the early 20th century.

20th Century

90s to present

Think blogs
Google rankings,
Flickr, Facebook,
youtube, LuLu

Collective Authorship

Designer As Author

Prosumerism

Simultaneous
Production and Consumption

The Templated Mind

All of this is very Web 2.0.

Content driven design.

Design has become

a broad and inclusive
social movement.

Andrew Blauvelt:
Relational Design

Daniel Eatock, Utilitarian Poster, 1998

Catalogtree, poster for logotype series for Monadnock

Luna Maurer and Jonathan Puckey,

kits for poster-making, 2006

Lust, Poster Wall, Graphic Design Museum, Breda, the Netherlands, 2008.

Walker Art Center Identity, 2005

Relational Design: the

role of the designer is
closer to that of an editor
or a programmer, not an
author but an enabler.

Designer as enabler

How do we succeed in
a prosumer culture?

collaboration

and co-creation

generative

systems

integration

of context

social

networking

the new universal

Designs for Making Designs