Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) AN EXEGESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS AT MASSEY UNIVERSITY, WELLINGTON NEW ZEALAND 2022 HAMISH BESLEY A graphic designer is not just a passive shaper of content, they are authors, producers, collaborators, parasites and much more. Building upon the debates of graphic authorship in the 1990s, A Coming of Graphic Age(ncy) investigates how a contemporary graphic design practice can discover agency by undertaking experimental modes of working. Using the writings of Michael Rock as a foundation this research first adheres to more conventional methods of design where client concern and graphic humility are prioritised. Eventually, the rigidity of these modes are found to be disadvantageous to a designer looking to grow their creative practice. In response, new modes of working are suggested. Embracing experimental approaches to conventional design processes it is discovered that there are in fact many roles/modes a designer can embrace. Each having a unique impact on the designer’s sense of agency. By revis- iting one of design’s most pivotal times, this story contextualises the contemporary graphic designer and uses this foundation to construct new outlooks. It is about the maturing that can happen when a way of practising is challenged – A Coming of Graphic Age(ency). ABSTRACT CONTENTS ABSTRACT LIST OF FIGURES INTRODUCTION HISTORY ADHERENCE SHIFT EXPANSION ABSTRACTION CONCLUSION WORKS CITED BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3 6 7 9 11 24 35 46 51 54 56 58 6 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Printed book with one of the paintings from Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey Figure 2: Digital spreads from Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey Figure 3: Digital spreads from Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey Figure 4. Cover of Someone is Starting to Bloom Figure 5. Double page spread from Someone is Starting to Bloom Figure 6. Single page with transparent paper from Someone is Starting to Bloom Figure 7. Double page spread from Baggy Pants & Butter Paper Figure 8. Cover of Baggy Pants & Butter Paper, Figure 9. Promotional image used for Baggy Pants & Butter Pape Figure 10. Cover of The New Dream Book and Personal Journal Figure 11. Spreads from The New Dream Book and Personal Journal, Figure 12. The Silver Bulletin, by Matthew Galloway, Figure 13. Room For Doubt, by Sarah Maxey Figure 14. The Best Design Awards, by Catherine Gri*ths Figure 15. The Best Design Awards, by Catherine Gri*ths Figure 16. The Best Design Awards, by Catherine Gri*ths Figure 17. Random.Comp, Figure 18. Submission by Callum Brookland for MASS>COMP>UNKNOWN Figure 19. Submissions by Callum Brookland, Caleb Delany, Louis Mackessack, Henry Mabin, Hamish Wilson, for CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN, Figure 20. Submissions by Caleb Delany for CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN, Figure 21. 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE, Figure 22. Author selfie with 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE, Figure 23. Meta-Ball form from P0EMS Figure 24. Double spread from P0EMS, Figure 25. Screenshot of Grasshopper interface used to createP0EMS Figure 26. P0EMS, Figure 27. Codex, Figure 28. Pages from Codex, Figure 29. Dataset - Mouse, 7HAMISH BESLEY In 1994, designer and writer Michael Rock published the critical essay The Designer as Author. This essay was a stand-out amongst a sea of writing produced by designers that questioned their role in a new world where design and production were now encapsulated within a desktop computer. To other writers like Ellen Lupton this o+ered a chance for designers to hold the means of production closer to their practice. With this new technology came a repackaging of the contemporary designer’s job description. No longer was graphic com- posing the graphic designer’s only responsibility. They could now become author, producer, publisher, director, artist, and more. My decision to undertake a master’s degree was driven by a feeling that beyond knowing how to formalise content to fit contem- porary graphic conventions Iwas at a loss. I realised that my lectur- ers did not establish their careers by being a passive intermediary between client and computer. They demonstrated a closer rela- tionship between form and content, a closer relationship between designer and author. Embedded in these contemporary design practices was the idea of a more critical way of thinking and working. Their work engaged techniques beyond typographic systems and grid struc- tures. This design was not the translation of other visions; it was hav- ing a hand in the making and shaping, that was more than execution of graphic standards. It was something more like producing, or facili- tating, or instigating, or… The practice of the 21st century designer is directly influenced by the debates in the 1990s over authorship. The contemporary ways of designing and the relationship these designers have with content and form are shaped by the agency and definitions that arose from this discussion. As a designer born mere days before the 2000s, edu- cated in the 2010s, and now practising in the 2020s, the world of an ‘all in one designer’ is all I have ever known. The continued prolifera- tion of accessible production technology has meant that the means of making have never been more in the hands of the graphic designer. INTRODUCTION 8 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Before revisiting this conversation, I was only capable of streamlining content, making it smooth and digestible by formatting it to graphic design conventions. This was in stark contrast to the agency displayed in contemporary design practices. Thanks to the democratisation of production equipment and the critical analysis of the discipline which followed, the contemporary designer is no lon- ger just a formaliser of content. Today they have a hand in all stages of production, from ideas and creation to production and publishing. The great designers, like those I saw around me, had the capabilities of an active designer — engaging with, shaping, and responding to content. This was my goal, I wanted to make outputs whose beauty extended past the graphic composition. But, I needed to discover the agency to do that. This exegesis is both a contextualization and a reflective exer- cise. My work and their precedents are distilled and exposed. I tell the story of how this work came to be and why. It is a story about finding a practice and the maturing that can happen when a way of working is challenged – a coming of graphic age(ency). 9HAMISH BESLEY A full history of design authorship could span over a hundred years. William Morris for example, in 1891 was heavily concerned with how The Story of the Glittering Plain combined text, image, and physical construction (Beckwith, 2013). And in the 1960s The Medium is the Massage ‘coordinated’ by Jerome Agel, intertwined the written con- tent of media analyst Marshall McLuhan with the graphic composition of designer Quentin Fiore in order to reflect the growing media satu- ration of the 1960s (Schnapp, 2010). However, it was the discussions of graphic authorship in the 1990s that began to coalesce and dissect this line of thought. The individual arguments in the writing that appeared during this time varied, but they were all linked by their critique of design’s old ways, and its future. It centred on the idea that designers, professionals, who until the mid-90s had remained in the background, were deserv- ing of more recognition for their work. Some claimed that as central figures in the formalisation of the visual world, they were —in part— originators, or creators of the work the public saw (Lupton, 1998). This discussion was partially a result of the personal computer being accessible to the masses. Processes that were once highly skilled to particular professions such as researching, writing, typesetting, photo manipulation, illustration, printing, and binding, could now be done by the designer all at one desk. (McCarthy, 2013). By the spring of 1996 the authorship debate had flooded design publications. In issue 20 of Eye Magazine, Michael Rock’s (1996/2019) essay The Designer as Author criticised the concept of designers being authors, arguing that it demands unnecessary control over content when design should instead aim for open reading and textual interpretation. Other critics like Ellen Lupton (1998) in The Designer as Producer concurred — authorship suggested agency, intention, and creation, whereas design incurred more passive functions like consulting, styling, and formatting. Design was a distinctly separate entity. HISTORY 10 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) So, if not “authorship”, what term best describes the role of the contemporary designer? Whereas Lupton’s argument was for designers to understand this distinction and embrace the totality of making by becoming Designer as Producer, Rock’s response to the call for design to legitimise itself was to o+er up three new defini- tions for how a designer may be engaged — Translator, Performer and Director. Rock’s titles didn’t stick, but the idea was planted that designers could (and should) seek a greater form of personal free- dom and expression. (Blauvelt, 2010). Gradually, these ideas of autonomy and agency filtered down from senior designers educated in the 1990s to the junior designers working and studying underneath them in the 2000s. The result is a contemporary landscape where it can often be overlooked how influ- ential a designer can be over content and its formalisation (McCarthy, 2013). 11HAMISH BESLEY As an emerging graphic designer looking to expand the ways I could operate, Rock’s systematic distilling of a designer’s involve- ment appealed to my logic-bound brain. Lupton’s wider definition of a Producer seemed too loose and undefined for me. It appeared that the linear scale of control in Rocks proposed modes o+ered a road map for discovering how to engage with graphic design beyond formalisation. The roles of Designer as Translator, Performer, and Director, each represent a state in which a designer has varying levels of input. In the Translator role, this is limited control over how another vision is executed. A Performer has greater free rein, handling the production whilst also influencing how the content will be formalised. In Director the wider composition becomes important. Here, everything leading, following and surrounding the graphic output is subject to the influ- ence of the Designer as Director. My first phase of research was a period of adherence to these modes/roles where I discovered how they functioned in practice. Designer as Translator Designer as Translator, as described by Rock (1996/2019), is based on the “assumption that the act of design is, in essence, the clari- fication of material or the remodelling of content from one form to another. The ultimate goal is the expression of a given content ren- dered, in a form that reaches a new audience“ (para.35). An exam- ple of a Designer as Translator operating between the concept of authorial intentions and software is Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey. As a Translator executing someone else’s vision my actions were much like that of an actor. I was under strict instruction from the director (author). My lines (text) and props (images) were given to me by the director (author), along with instructions on when to use each of them. As the actor, I decided exactly where on the stage (the page) I would stand and in what voice (font) I would speak. Michelanne Forster, a second year MFA student ADHERENCE 12 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) needed someone who could turn her generic ‘word file’ into the doc- ument she envisioned. The layout of text and image were prescribed by her in detail. What decisions were left to me were small technical details — paper size, margin size, and text size. The Crystal Goblet, Or Why Printing Should Be Invisible is a clas- sic essay written by Beatrice Warde in 1930. Both loved and revered in the world of design, Warde’s text employs the use of metaphor by comparing the page and type to a crystal glass, holding content in place. The designer needs to put their ego aside and make their presence barely felt. The written word and its author content was to be centre stage (Warde, 1956). She wrote that an understanding of ‘graphic humility’ is important to a successful designer’s prac- tice. However, Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery and its need for invisible typography reminded me of why I was striv- ing to surpass the role of Designer as Translator. Operating within the confines of conservative graphic conventions was something I had mastered in my Bachelor’s degree and it had provided limited opportunities for creativity. A practice capable of operating solely as Translator is confined to restricted opportunities in graphic design. Beyond refining small technical skills such as typesetting, executing others instructions didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. In order to grow my practice I need to have agency and claim greater influence on the design process. 13HAMISH BESLEY Figure 1: Printed book with one of the paintings from Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey, by Michelanne Forster & Hamish Besley, 2021. 14 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Painting from the Barbaric Periphery 20 False Starts and their Benefits At the end of 2020 I proposed Painting and Exile as my exegesis topic. Josenhans, the editor of Artists in Exile: Expressions of Loss and Hope, states that we should move beyond the well-known story of male artists forced to leave Germany and other European countries because of Nazism. But for me, that story was a new one. I learned about the infamous “Entarte Kunst/Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich and the so- called degenerate artists who were mocked and banned, including Max Beckmann. Aided by the American Emergency Rescue Committee, artists who !ed Hitler were able to gain teaching positions in institutions across America, thus in!uencing a new generation of artists. Without investigating these artists I would have missed the historical context behind many paintings I admired. Over the summer of 2020 I began to have doubts about my proposed exegesis, Painting and Exile, because the topic didn’t speci"cally address Jewish identity as an artist. But how does one paint Jewish identity? I took a detour, reading Jewish Art: A Modern History which quickly deconstructed the idea that the Jews were a “nation without art” (Baskin and Silver 15). #e authors argue that after the Hezkalah (enlightenment) when European Jews moved out of ethnically homogeneous ghettos/shtetls, they were forced to negotiate the space between whatever dominant culture they lived in, and their Jewish identity. #is, they say, is the commonality in all Jewish art; an awareness of “otherness”, or what the black writer W.B. DuBois calls “double- consciousness” (11). I went to Te Papa and mulled over McCahon’s use of Christian symbols within our landscape. Why not, I thought, use a seven-branch menorah, planted in the New Zealand landscape? Ritual objects and symbols integrated into landscape painting would say Jews are a part of this country’s history, and that idea appealed to me. In February 2021 I proposed a new exegesis topic: Jewish Identity in the New Zealand Landscape. Painting from the Barbaric Periphery 22 A highly glazed menorah dominates a fantasy landscape. A mountain in the centre of the painting sits behind it, and further mountain ranges recede into a deep blue sky, animated by a yellow moon. Flowers, birds and unidenti!ed "ying shapes add an element of imaginative play. #ere is no solemnity in this painting. #is menorah is surrounded by an abundance of life. Paint roils and twists over the canvas. #is work, painted six months after I !rst started experimenting with the menorah shape, demonstrates my increasing con!dence with colour, glazes and composition. Chagall’s in"uence is evident in the use of perspective, free-"oating shapes and non-representational colour. Fig. 6 Mountain Menorah by the author. oil on canvas, August 2021. Michelanne Forster 21 Fig. 5 Blue Menorah by author, Acrylic on canvas, March 2021. Fig. 4 Red Menorah by author, Acrylic on canvas, March 2021. Red Menorah bursts out of Otago hills like a monster in a science-!ction !lm. "e seven-branched menorah, an important symbol of the Jewish people, is used as a life-force emerging from the landscape. In retrospect, the menorah looks cartoonish and #at, and doesn’t o$er the dignity and beauty I feel it deserves. Blue Menorah, which I consider a more successful work, is mysteriously rich. "e shape is ambiguous but alive; it could be a tree in a nocturnal landscape or a !gure reaching skywards. "e colour, a mixture of alizarin red, cerulean and primary cyan, is the painting’s strength. "e layered hues of blue suggest an eternal and natural unity. Satin gloss additive in the paint gives the hue of a religious icon. Consider Mountain Menorah Michelanne Forster 23 When investigating Jewish Identity in the New Zealand Landscape, I spent time at the Wellington Jewish Community Centre (wjcc) under the helpful guise of the archivist, to see if other ritual objects or memorabilia might provide shapes to work with. I placed a Kiddush cup, used to drink wine to welcome in the Sabbath, over Wellington Harbour. $e mountains capture a sense of land surrounded by the sea, but the Kiddush cup has a science- %ction &atness that sits uneasily next to the McCahon-style boulders on its right. At my %rst crit a classmate pointed out that I needed to consider the implications of viewing Aotearoa as an empty land or backdrop for my own cultural symbols. I realized then, that unless I grappled with the implications of colonization, a subject I didn’t feel con%dent about, I would not be doing justice to my topic, or to tangata whenua. In addition, landscape painting as a genre was proving problematic for me. Although I looked at New Zealand landscapes by, among others, Alfred Sharpe, A.J. Cooper, William Hodges, and Doris Lusk, I was already restless. $is country’s landscape lacks the patina of childhood memories and the cultural connectedness that comes with that. Simon Schama, in the prologue to his book Landscape and Memory, tells us landscape is a bearer of history, memory and dreams (8). He recounts how the forest of his ancestors in the Southern Lithuanian became a colony of death when the Germans occupied Poland in 1939. To create a Jew-free forest zone, 900 villagers were forced to dig a mass grave then massacred. Survivors were hunted down in the woods. $is part of Jewish history, long embedded in my inner landscape, was where my true interest lay. I realized I had to paint ‘there’ before I could paint ‘here.’ Consider Forest Fig. 8 Kiddish Cup by the author, Acrylic on paper, March 2021. Fig. 7 Torah crown and Bells, Personal photo by the author, March 2021. Figure 3: Digital spreads from Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey, by Michelanne Forster and Hamish Besley, 2021. Figure 2: Digital spreads from Painting from the Holocaust’s Barbaric Periphery — a Personal Journey, by Michelanne Forster and Hamish Besley, 2021. 15HAMISH BESLEY Designer as Performer I began to have a greater influence on the graphic composition in Designer as Performer. Rock (1996/2019) states that the Performer “transforms and expresses content through graphic devices. The score or script is enhanced and made whole by the performance. And so, the designer likewise becomes the physical manifestation of the content, not author but Performer, the one who gives life to, who speaks the content, contextualising it and bringing it into the frame of the present” (para.38). Laura Du+y is an artist who predominantly uses physical sculp- ture and A.I generation to explore queer theory. In mid-2021 she held an exhibition entitled, Someone is Starting to Bloom. Laura presented me with the idea of turning this exhibition into a book document- ing the show’s development whilst extending her exhibition and her ideas. Here I assumed the role of Designer as Performer, Just like an improv actor I was armed with a provocation (the context of Laura’s work) and props (the content). It was then up to me to turn these newfound props into a graphic performance that embodied the provocation. Informed by Laura’s use of A.I to create abstract video work, I designed the final book using a random number generator (RNG) to decide the book’s compositions. Using basic software each image and line of text was assigned a number corresponding to a specific page, grid position, and size. Each page was also assigned a number which defined paper size, and the original order of pages was then scrambled. Only a short text written in response to the exhibition adhered to any linear order, appearing sequentially throughout the book. With this shift in role and the resulting freedom, Designer as Performer o+ered me the opportunity to challenge my long estab- lished view of the graphic designer’s function. Before this I viewed my role to be exactly that of Warde’s Crystal goblet — invisible. However, without typography words have no form, and there is no voice to let those words be heard. A passive voice is not enough for a book to truly function. In the role of Performer, I was able to use graphic design that actively promoted meaning. Projects like Someone is Starting to Bloom come alive with a designer who can make the form 16 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) scream, shout and push. Then the content’s meaning is amplified in the most impactful way. As Matthew Butternick (2016) puts it “The reason we care about clothing and speaking style—and typogra- phy—is because they’re all part of the presentation of an argument. And presentation matters specifically because it’s not meaningless. It reinforces our core message by adding its own complementary meaning” (para.7). Graphic humility has its place but if content is given passive form then the designer has not done their job to amplify it. My practice grew when I took on the role of a Designer as Performer. I concluded that a successful graphic designer must have the ability to create a relationship between form and content that best serves its desired purpose, regardless of the author’s level of input. In a strange way, the act of honoring text by standing aside can be dishonorable. Beatrice Warde’s conservative approach argues that a good speaking voice is inaudible as a voice. My experience as a Performer taught me that letting an author’s words carry in an inaudi- ble tone is not fighting for their cause. A good designer can give them a voice that carries across a room, so that the content is digested in the most influential manner. Having claimed greater agency as Performer I was able to use my expertise as a graphic designer to create an e+ective visual output. Integrating a unique RNG compo- sition system, its graphic voice totally embodied the content. This outcome was obtained by the designer having great control over the process and influencing the vision. 17HAMISH BESLEY Figure 5. Double page spread from Someone is Starting to Bloom, by Laura Du#y & Hamish Besley, 2021. Figure 4. Cover of Someone is Starting to Bloom, by Laura Du#y & Hamish Besley, 2021. 18 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 6. Single page with transparent paper from Someone is Starting to Bloom, by Laura Du#y & Hamish Besley, 2021. 19HAMISH BESLEY Designer as Director Rock (1996/2019) defines Designer as Director as a mode concerned with the: “function of bigness. Meaning is manufactured by the arrangement of elements, so there must be many elements at play... In such large projects, the designer orchestrates masses of materials to shape meaning, working like a film director, overseeing a script, a series of performances, photographers, artists, and production crews. The meaning of the work results from the entire production” (para.40). Baggy Pants & Butter Paper (BP&BP) is a self-initiated, authored, designed and published magazine that collects interviews with design and architecture students from Victoria University. It is focused on disseminating student-led conversations about their creative prac- tices and university experience. Issue two, produced in 2021 included three interviews: Xanthe Copeland and Renati Waaka, two commu- nication design graduates and Hamish Wilson, an architecture grad- uate. The publication was distributed free on the BP&BP website and physical copies were made available at cost price through a print on demand service. As Director the entire output was my creative vision. Just as a director leading a play, it was my job to ensure that all of the parts of the wider composition came together in one cohesive work. In the creation of BP&BP, I organised a script (the interviews), cast actors (the interviews), organised the scenes into a larger composition (the magazine) and then oversaw its release into the world. I was con- cerned not only with the content or the final form but how these and other elements combined into a larger work. All general stages of the book design process — ideation, generation, formalisation, execution, and dissemination were under my direct influence. I embedded narra- tive and information into everything BP&BP touched, not just the mag- azine page. When making BP&BP engagement with the elements o+ of the page became more important. At the same time, so too did theories concerned with the wider function of graphic design. Directors are concerned with the large-scale operation and the whole of a project, rather than mere form. Until this time the physical qualities of graphic composition were all that had been relevant to my practice. Assuming 20 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) the role of Director I had created public facing work of my won design. I became a publisher. The most overarching definition of pub- lishing is as writer Michael Bhaskar defines “a set of historical pro- cesses and practices — composition, editing, design and illustration, production, marketing and promotion, and distribution — and a set of of relations with various other institutions — commercial, legal, edu- cational, political, cultural, and, perhaps, above all, other media” (as cited in Gilbert, 2016, p.11). As Director, suddenly I was using my graphic design practice to do more than make information look and function better. I was concerned with what the content actually consisted of and its purpose in this world. As I started to engage with the wider function of graphic design, reaching the final role in Rocks frame- work had succeeded in opening my practice to another potential of a graphic designer’s greater role in production. Figure 7. Double page spread from Baggy Pants & Butter Paper, by Hamish Besley, 2021. 21HAMISH BESLEY Figure 8. Cover of Baggy Pants & Butter Paper, by Hamish Besley, 2021. 22 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 9. Promotional image used for Baggy Pants & Butter Paper, by Hamish Besley, 2021. 23HAMISH BESLEY Reflecting on my time as a Translator, Performer and Director at the end of 2021 I wrote in my MFA thesis proposal: Based on a book’s needs, a designer can float within a spectrum starting at translator and ending as director, operating in the role required. I’m clear that I don’t want to be an author but I am open to expanding to a similar role like designer as director. I wish to be in a space where I can design with others’ work, acting as a director or performer, amplifying and filtering the content into a successful book that has a voice. I became aware of the di+erent stages within my design process and the definitions within Rock’s The Designer as Author framework appeared to fit them perfectly. Rock’s definitions seemed to o+er an all-encompassing scale of how I could be involved in creating work. With a greater involvement in the process of making, the roles of Performer and Director appeared to o+er a way towards graphic agency. By operating within this scale I built myself a safe space where things were categorised in a hierarchical structure. Whether executing mine or others’ vision it still ended with me fitting content to contemporary conventions. Nothing brings me more joy than a har- monious grid and some beautifully set body text — I did not want to let go of that. In this space I could remain involved with the graphic composition while controlling the slow expansion of my influence on making. 24 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Designer as Collaborator With the conclusion of the first year of my MFA, I had a sure sense that Rock’s roles were the answer to my research methods. However, with projects in which I would have once categorised my role as Translator or Performer, I began to understand these roles didn’t really fit. Working on The New Dream Book and Personal Journal I was Designer as Collaborator. Instead of being a distant figure who indif- ferently applied the fundamental rules of book design to a text, I was actively involved in shaping the contents as well as the form. The New Dream Book and Personal Journal is the memoir of Michael Curtis Forster. The book tells the story of Michael’s life as the son of a bohemian screenwriting mother and well-known but absent film director for a father. Following his life from being a young boy escaping pre-WWII Germany to America, it documents the journey of coming of age in a new country and the unique life that followed. After each chapter is a section describing a dream of Michael’s and his e+orts to interpret it. Each dream is paired with a painting by his daughter Michelanne Forster. At the beginning of the design process, Michelanne presented to me the manuscript written on a typewriter in the 1980s. Had I only been tasked with turning the printed manuscript into a refined printed document then I may have continued to work under the definition of Rocks roles. However, Michelanne wished to add paintings and family photographs. Together we worked to curate a list of paintings which she proposed to pair with each dream. In this role, I was not a passive formaliser for content to pass through on its way to digi- tal formalisation like a Translator. Nor was I a Performer taking the script and finding its greatest form. There was no function of bigness either. Instead, we sat together and discussed how to fuse Michael’s writing, Michelanne’s paintings, and various family photographs into one cohesive book. Perhaps we were both Performers and co-di- rectors, with Michelanne being a co-director, performer, writer and I being a co-director, performer, and set builder. Or, perhaps, the rigid SHIFT 25HAMISH BESLEY three-mode system as set out by Rock had exhausted its value and was no longer working. Maybe, there are infinite modes of working as a designer. I began to understand that to develop my practice I needed to find my own modes of working, my approach had to be adaptable and not restricted to the confines of predefined roles. Viewing the potential of my practice in these fixed roles was proving counterproductive as it restricted any innovation to my approach. Perhaps it would have been worth reading Michael Rocks’ later writings. In 2013, Rock published Fuck Content as a response to what he saw as a persistence by some to read The Designer as Author not as a call to shift their perspective on content, but to generate it themselves — “While I am all for more authors, that was not quite the point I wanted to make” (p.92). Something that designer and writer Andrew Blauvelt (2010) had also picked up, looking back in 2012, was that even if they were not generating content, designers had inter- preted Rock’s work as calling them to become zealous in claiming partial authorship or ownership because they were the form givers. Fuck Content calls for designers not to dismiss the core of their profession: “we don’t believe shaping is enough. So, to bring design out from under the thumb of content we must go one step further and observe that treatment is, in fact, a kind of text itself as com- plex and referential as a traditional understanding of content.” (Rock, 2013, p.93). It appeared that I was, like some of my forebears, falling into the trap of thinking that absolute control was key. However, just as Rock had reiterated in 2013, a closer relationship between form and content did not require me to create content from scratch or try and assert my dominance as form giver. The New Dream Book and Personal Journal had shown me that there was still another way I could evolve my methods of working. It just required a shift in perspective. 26 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 10. Cover of The New Dream Book and Personal Journal, by Michael Forster with Michelanne Forster and Hamish Besley, 2022. 27HAMISH BESLEY Figure 11. Spreads from The New Dream Book and Personal Journal, by Michael Forster with Michelanne Forster and Hamish Besley, 2022. 28 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Pushing Boundaries There were horizons beyond the safety of Rock. I was ready to grow, evolve and mature. Personal Journal and New Dream Book, showed that the roles Rock presented were not the whole answer, but only a starting point. Conversations in my MFA cohort pointed towards other contemporary practices, highlighting, in particular, the fine line that sits between art and design. Something beautiful could happen when approaching design, in an artistic manner. Spending time on both sides of the classroom (as student and colleague) with artists-de- signers, Matthew Galloway, Catherine Gri*ths, and Sarah Maxey has shown me what this dual practice looks like when established. All three trained in conventional design methodology. However, they have each wielded design as a tool for exploration into areas outside of graphic composition. Galloway employs disciplines outside of design to widen the scope of his practice. The Silver Bulletin, a publication produced by Galloway combines art and design alongside his practice of writ- ings, critique, journalism and curation. As a direct response to the Christchurch earthquakes and the disruption of community networks and discussion, The Silver Bulletin “acted as a kind of ‘stand in’ for these usual places of cultural exchange, that it would be a venue for writing, interviews, artist page-works, and other content that those in the arts community were still producing” (Galloway, n.d. para.2). Here Galloway was not using design for the sake of graphic composition but rather as a tool to facilitate community communication. Galloway employs disciplines outside of design such as historical research and installation art practices to widen the scope of his practice. The Best Design Awards by Gri*ths is a three poster series illustrating the glaring gender imbalance of the Designers Institute of New Zealand’s (DINZ) Best Design Awards. These posters imper- sonate the DINZ’s branding to create typographic infographics show- ing the overwhelming proportion of males receiving the Black Pin award and sitting on judging panels. Ensuring New Zealand designers remained conscious of “historic and real-time issues and concerns” (Gri*ths, 2018. para.5), the blog Designers Speak (Up) was also estab- lished. Research and activism are just some of more tangible actions represented by Gri*th’s poster series. There are also fewer tangibly 29HAMISH BESLEY ‘design’ activities like networking and outreach connected to this project to allow it to function. Similarly, Maxey has used graphic composition for discussion of place and self. Room for Doubt is a series of ‘uncommunicative’ quotes derived from diversionary word games. Attempting the oppo- site of what most graphic outputs wish to achieve, these messages are deliberate and amusingly unclear, reserved or aloof (Maxey, 2020). From the perspective of an established career, Maxey combines design processes like typesetting and production with creative writ- ing and poetry in her expanded practice. Research and Destroy by Daniel van der Velden (2006/2009) explains that “an ‘important graphic design’ is one generated by the designer himself, a commentary in the margins of visual culture” (p.17). Producing work like this is rarely by means of the support of a bene- factor. Mostly it is possible only by mobilising the resources at the designer’s disposal. When this happens, the designer steps outside of client service transactions and instigates projects where they can create new roles for themselves. Modes of working are no longer determined by client needs, but they are determined by the designer claiming agency. What makes these precedents relevant, in part, is the removal of client expectation, allowing freedom to use graphic design to address issues and ask questions. They embody the e+ec- tiveness of using design for reasons outside of the client/designer relationship while still displaying prowess in typography conventions and formalisation process. Perhaps, I too can wield design as a tool for exploration. I realised that self-initiated projects could enable me to test new modes of working through experimental outputs. 30 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 13. Room For Doubt, by Sarah Maxey, 2020. (Reproduced by permission of Sarah Maxey) Figure 12. The Silver Bulletin, by Matthew Galloway, 2012, (Reproduced by permission of Matthew Galloway). 31HAMISH BESLEY Figure 14 and Figure 15. The Best Design Awards, by Catherine Gri$ths, 2018. (Reproduced here with permission from the Catherine Gri$ths) Figure 16. The Best Design Awards, by Catherine Gri$ths, 2018. (Reproduced here with permission from the Catherine Gri$ths) 32 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Designer as Bystander Random_Comp was my first response to the challenge of designing experimental processes that created new modes of working. Text and images from a friend’s architecture assignment were assigned position, colour, scale, and font by a random number generator (RNG). The resulting composition was one of complete disorganisation, lacking any logic or consideration. This immediately challenged the logical approach Rock stipulated. This was a shift from my previous period of adherence to explicitly expanding beyond it. Prioritising my mode of work, the final product had little to o+er the world in a functional sense. Instead, it was a pure representation of the process. Its graphic composition stood not to communicate the content, but rather its method of creation. Form represented process. Process became composition. I wasn’t comfortable with having little influence over the final output — that was the core of my profession. The final result left me disgusted. This ‘design’ is the ugliest thing I have ever made. However, I was beginning to understand and playfully explore the importance of embracing the process. As graphic design is a tool not a moral compass. Figure 17. Random.Comp, by Hamish Besley, 2022. 33HAMISH BESLEY Expanding beyond Rock’s selection of roles, I started to conceive projects that required me to work in unfamiliar ways. Explicitly pri- oritising the process in which a graphic output was generate. This period of expansion moved me away from just formalising content within the confines of graphic conventions. My interpretation of Rock’s framework placed too much importance on the graphic out- put. In order to push my practice into new areas I had to let go of old expectations. Shifting from projects with clients and stakeholders to self-initiated experiments, I embraced process as composition and began to find new modes of making. Designer as Catalyst Seeing the promise in the uncomfortable position Random_ Comp placed me in, I quickly followed it up with another proj- ect that engaged the graphic designer in a removed role. MASS>COMP>UNKNOWN and CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN are the results of the designer becoming a Catalyst. Replacing the ran- dom number generator with individuals, both of these projects assign the physical act of formalising content to five external subcontractors (sub-designers). MASS>COMP>UNKNOWN consists of single page composi- tions created by the sub-designers combining random phrases with a selection of digital assets which were randomly selected from my computer. The brief asked for two submissions. Firstly, a one-page composition using nothing but the resources provided. Secondly, a composition that followed the same rules except using resources from the sub-designer’s computer, rather than ones provided. Outside of these parameters, everything was left to the sub-design- ers’ judgment. CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN followed a similar creation process. Except, instead of text taken from randomphrases- dotcom each designer received one page from the play Ka Mau, Ka Muri by Jacob Banks. EXPANSION 34 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) As Designer as Catalyst, I assumed a role similar to a client, delivering my business (text and assets) to the service provider (designer) with a brief. Armed with resources, the designer returned with a brand identity (composition). Commonly the benefactors of design, clients often employ the services of a designer to take their provocation and repackage it — formalising it. However, unlike a cli- ent I did not harbour expectations. There was no dialogue other than the brief. This interaction was as Australian graphic designer Mark Gowing (2017) called the perfect client/designer relationship — a “call and response”. Both actors keep to their fields of knowledge. Usually with client as problem finder and designer as problem solver. Until becoming a Catalyst I had only practiced on the side of the response. Suddenly, I was the call. My usual concerns like: ‘Do these fonts match? How wide do I need my margins?’ turned into ‘How would they read the provocation? Would they understand the content? Becoming Designer as Catalyst was to assign the actions I was com- fortable with to external sub-designs and to concern myself with new areas of the design process. At the time I disliked swapping typesetting for writing. It leaned too close to the actions of an author. My artist-designer precedents had displayed the e+ect that comes for conceptualising an entire project, not just content. Becoming a Catalyst had isolated me from the actions I enjoyed - formalisation and execution. Similar to Rocks Fuck Content I formed the conclusion that going forward I wanted to remain involved with the actual making. My practice didn’t need any more writers. 35HAMISH BESLEY GoldFools fools gold .indd 5fools gold .indd 5 23/03/22 9:54 PM23/03/22 9:54 PM Figure 18. Submission by Callum Brookland for MASS>COMP>UNKNOWN, by Hamish Besley, 2022. Figure 19. Submissions by Callum Brookland, Caleb Delany, Louis Mackessack, Henry Mabin, Hamish Wilson, for CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. 36 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 20. Submissions by Caleb Delany for CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. 37HAMISH BESLEY Designer as Mediator Designer as Catalyst and Bystander had been successful in mak- ing me explore unfamiliar modes of working within graphic design. However, they also removed me from influence over the final graphic output. I needed to find a space where I could explore new modes of working without losing sight of the core concern in graphic design — visual formalisation. 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE introduced me to Designer as Mediator. The result being a 1500x3000mm poster composed of the play October O!ensive by Jacob Banks. Just like Random_comp each line of the play was assigned a unique num- ber before being placed in a colour, font and position. However, instead of choosing from my entire library of fonts and colors, I pro- vided a curated list. The final poster was a composition defined by a random number generator operating within perspectives limits. Ensuring that it could still be understood by external audiences the poster was paired with a small booklet including the title of the show, author, blurb, and the calculations that were used to generate the composition. Without instructions from the original author, I was not execut- ing any authorial vision, nor was I embellishing or amplifying the con- tent. The random number generator (RNG) took a lead role while mine was secondary. In the role of Designer as Mediator, I supervised the RNGs interaction with the content and guided its outcome. Between us we maintained a restricted collaborative workflow. To invoke my theatre metaphor, I set the stage (page), brought in the producer (random number generator) and asked it to put on a particular show (the script). I then left it to these digital tools to discern the final per- formance. On opening night, I put out the posters and handed out the programs (supplementary booklet). Someone is Starting to Bloom and Random Comp had been created in a similar manner. However, both served distinctive purposes. Instead of being the embodiment of an artist’s practice or a thought experiment, 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE was pushing me out of my normal roles. I was not leaving out all consideration for the final output but I was prioritising its means of making. Interestingly, the comments made about 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE at a studio visit were positive. Guests drew similarities between the 38 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) chaotic layering of discourse and the confused communication of a chaotic battlefield (where the original play is set). There were also the analogies of the single page referring to a stage where a whole story takes place. Despite leaving aesthetic control behind in favour of process, this new approach seemingly still o+ered something to the dissemination of content. This was working proof that going to extremes still meant you could discover useful things. It was import- ant to remember that when focusing on process as composition that the output had to link back to this in some way. Graphic designs core purpose is the organising of information into easily digestible form. By relinquishing too much control in Bystander and Catalyst I had discovered new ways of working but lost touch with the basics of graphic design. I began to regret dismissing Ellen Lupton’s (1998) The Designer as Producer earlier in my research. Referencing the Marxist writings of German critic Walter Benjamin’s Author as Producer, Lupton drew parallels to Benjamin’s belief that the method of creation should be under the writer’s control. Her argument was that by becoming mas- ters of new technology, designers could become greater amplifiers of meaning whilst also making the public better at engaging and responding. Authorship and its roles in content creation is predomi- nantly an activity of the mind, while design is an activity of the hand. Lupton had advocated for a more holistic approach to design where the lines between roles and modes are embraced, rather than rein- forced. Bringing these two facilities together allows for a final result that loses nothing between idea and execution. The benefits to the ‘reading public’, also benefits me — the ‘designing private’ because a better outcome is most likely one where I have been able to design every element. Likewise, a composition that focuses solely on method of creation can end up with similar issues for the designer as I had found with CONT.KNOWN COMP.UNKNOWN. I concluded that leaning too far in either direction would disrupt the subtle balance graphic design manages between form and content. Designer as a Catalyst and Mediator had sacrificed my consideration for content in favour of process/production. To avoid loosing sight of what I enjoyed about graphic designer I needed to re-engage with content. 39HAMISH BESLEY Figure 21. 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. 40 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 22. Author selfie with 0CTOBER 0FFENSIVE, by Hamish Besley, 2022. 41HAMISH BESLEY Designer as Parasite Reconnecting myself with a conscious interaction with content I was aware that honoring content had been the goal of Designer as Translator and Performer. In order to avoid repeating old modes of working I adapted the process and became Designer as Parasite. Reliant on the information within to create an experimental poetry book, P0EMS contains thirteen di+erent formless clusters randomly generated by an algorithm interpreting and remodeling their typo- graphic data. These individual forms appear on a page alone, while the poem of origin peeks through French-folded pages. Taking the numerical value of line length, longest line, shortest line, average line length, and word count, I plotted these properties into a custom script built with the rendering engine Grasshopper. This software then used the poems typographic values to control the position, size, density, and amount of round forms and render them into ‘Meta-balls’. As each data set is entered the varying typographic information changes the properties of the ‘Meta-balls’, generating new forms. Catalyst and Mediator had pulled me further away from the treatment of content. P0EMS did the opposite by making me a Parasite reliant on the content to create a specific graphic composi- tion. As Parasite, I attached my body (rendering software) to the host (poems). Through a process (the script), I drain the host of resources (typographic data), growing my own form. The forms have little to do with the text visually, yet their physical properties are direct results of the typographic information. My ‘contribution’ is not to execute the original authors vision, nor to give it voice; instead the poets text gives physical form to the process I enforced upon it. Actions that give content physical form and allow it to be public facing are at the core of both graphic design and publishing. Intrinsic to these actions is the idea of filtering and amplification; filtering in the traditional sense of gate-keeping and amplification as actions that lead to increased distribution and consumption of content (Gilbert, 2016). My processes bring the original poems out into the world, but do not amplify or filter in favor of the original content. They do not honor the text by protecting its meaning either. With di*culty one can relate the changing form to the typography data by using the guide bound to the back of the book. No relation exists between 42 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) the poem’s original narrative and the meta-ball forms. By mu,ing the voice of the original poems, I let the meta-balls take control. With growing confidence to play and leave behind prior conventions I had successfully created a work where I engaged with content but didn’t fall under its control. In P0EMS content honors form. P0EMS arguably abstracts the final graphic output too far for the audience, but that’s the point. My adherence to Rock’s roles proved that little would be gained by sticking within a rigid system. I had to be careful not to do something similar when moving beyond them. Designing as a Parasite solidified what ‘Catalyst’ and ‘Mediator’ had alluded to. I was an active, lively participant in the design process. I was capable of digesting content and through either direct action or a convoluted process, transforming it. I find confidence in this. Just as great leaders don’t want to be surrounded by ‘yes men’, future col- laborators don’t want a passive graphic designer. Figure 23. Meta-Ball form from P0EMS, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. 43HAMISH BESLEY Figure 24. Double spread from P0EMS, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. Figure 25. Screenshot of Grasshopper interface used to create P0EMS, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. 44 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Figure 26. PO3MS, by Jacob Banks and Hamish Besley, 2022. 45HAMISH BESLEY My period of expansion demonstrated that I could engage modes of working that either separated themselves from the content, or were heavily reliant on it. Rather than only being the physical form that brought design techniques into the creation of a work, as an active participant I could move between roles using design as a tool where necessary. P0EMS was the precipice of this research. As a Parasite reshaping content so heavily the unavoidable was taking place. Despite stating in my MFA proposal back in 2021 “I’m clear that I don’t want to be an author” my work began to take on notions of author- ship. Mirroring the evolution of the design authorship debate in my own practice, this development brought me in line with contempo- rary practices. In his essay Tool (Or, Post-production for the Graphic Designer) Andrew Blauvelt (2011) noted that today’s designers were a new generation who “produce now and ask questions later” (p.26). The old world of design was concerned with the technical craft of reproduction, paste ups and typesetting. Now, with production so easily obtained, designers could focus their attention on other activ- ities. Utilising randomness along with found and contributed con- tent. Previously, I had kept my notions of authorship at bay. Because P0EMS output was such a dramatic repackaging of the original con- tent I had no choice but to submit to the title of co-author. At first glance this claim of authorship flies in the face of the theories of Rock and Lupton which I have closely aligned myself with. However, as Rock (2013) stated in Fuck Content “Our content is per- petually design itself” (p.95). My addition to the existing content was not more writing, but something like graphic authorship in a strictly visual sense. My contribution as co-author of P0EMS was ‘reinter- pretive’ graphic design. Suddenly my practice had now touched all general stages of the graphic design process. I had moved from static formaliser, to active participant, and now I am creator. This was the key in my search for engaging with graphic design with greater agency. I had to get comfortable with the fluid ways of working that a contemporary graphic designer needed to have. I was discovering agency by testing my practice’s relationship with content. 46 A COMING OF GRAPHIC AGE(NCY) Designer as Content With the discovery that I could approach the thin line of authorial graphic formalisation without becoming a writer I was elated. By designing new processes I had slowly built up my agency to the level of co-authorship. However, I wanted to keep pushing my level of involvement. The works Codex and Dataset use the designer and their artifacts as content. The composition — design — as a physical act becomes the basis composition. Intangible metrics and artefacts generated in the pursuit of graphic composition are given form to cre- ate the Designer as Content. Codex presents the reader with a conventionally printed and bound volume. However, the original graphic composition has been translated from image into text by the HTML coding language. This is achieved by laying out the original poetry in a conventional graphic composition and then using open source software to translate its for- matting information into the text inputs used for HTML. Phrases like

(paragraph), (emphasised text), and