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CYRANO'S LAST LETTER:
IDENTITY AND STYLEIN GRAPHIC DESIGN
Barış Hasırcı
1. Introduction: Identity of the Graphic Designer
Where does the identity of a graphic designer manifest itself in her/his works?
In many sources, “graphic design” is described, in its most general sense, as the
organization and communication of messages [Heller, 1988: p. 9]. The identities
ofthree parties are involved in this process: the sender’s, the messanger’s, the
receiver’s, which correspond, in the business life, to; the client, the graphic designer
and the target audience, respectively. Therefore, it can be said that, graphic design is
“the communication of the client’s messages by the graphic designer to the target
audience”. In the planning and carrying out of a design project, the factors taken into
account include the identity of the client and the identity of the target audience. This
is due to the fact that, for the communication to be effective, who the client is and
how they should be best represented needs to be known as much as who the target
audience is and how the massage should be specifically engineered for it, so as to be
delivered with the highest efficiency. What is not taken into account is the identity
of the the designer. The graphic designer is expected to be invisible, totally immersed
in the message, hidden behind the identity of the client. If and when it is possible,
where the identity of the graphic designer shines through in a work is in the “style”
with which the work is carried out.
While in many fields of artistic endeavor, a distinctive style is of key
importance to success, as with painting, sculpture, fashion and architecture, one field
not necessarily welcoming of this phenomenon is graphic design. Artists and
designers in other fields are encouraged to be as personal and expressive as they can
bebut graphic designers are asked to fully comply to a client’s demands, to the point
of almost doing only what they are told. This situation is contrary to the system of
graphic design education in which, students are pointed in the direction of full
commitment to an idea or product and representing it as personally, expressively and
artistically as possible in order to achieve effective results. Such an approach
inevitably encodes the personality of the designer in the core of the work that s/he
produces. This personality, through a series of varying projects, may appear to
become a signature style that is recognizable enough to draw attention to itself. A
question may be posed at this point: would a piece of work benefit from a graphic
designer displaying a distinctive style? Or, would style overshadow the message
of the piece?
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Fig. 1. Three scenes from different Wes Anderson films that depict his framing
style: (1) Bottle Rocket(1996), (2) The Royal Tenenbaums(2001), (3) The Darjeeling
Limited (2007)
The hierarchical relationship between the “style” and “message” present in
works has been a point of debate for graphic designers, as much as artists in varying
fields of artistic creation, throughout time. The famous phrase, coined in 1896 by the
American architect Louis Sullivan, with the words“style” and “message” replaced
with “form” and “function”, aims at putting an end to the discussion: “…form ever
follows function” [Sullivan, 1896: p. 408]. Sullivan states that this is the law that
governs everything even though form and function often seem inseperably united.
He adds, “where function does not change, form does not change”. The
architect/author also uses the terms “matter” and “essence” when referring to “form”
and “function” [Sullivan, 1896: p. 407-408]. In an interview conducted at the Cannes
Film Festival in 2012, when questioned about whether his easily recognizable
filmmaking style that is clearly evident in all of his films has created a feeling of
repeating himself, auteur director Wes Anderson has gone on record as having said:
“That’s just sort of [like] my natural handwriting. My natural handwriting is neat
and it is like my personality. Somewhere along the way I made this choice: I can
force myself to not be what I feel I naturally am or I can just go with it and develop
it…[Repeating myself] is not something I think about. I really think about just the
world of this movie, and what this one is going to be”[Davis, 2013]. Cementing
Sullivan’s ideas, Anderson’s statement seems to be a longer version of “style ever
follows the message” and points out that the style is born by itselfwhile the
messanger is busy trying to relay the message.
The words the author of this paper picks and the sentences he forms with them
form his style of writing. He ponders on which words he should use to best describe
his research, however, he is mainly focused on organizing and communicating the
messages. While his mind is busy and struggling with the task of collecting thoughts
and sharing them, his style is born, with him barely noticing it. The situation is
reminicent of someone making doodles while speaking on the phone. When the mind
is elsewhere, the body makes free gestures and puts forth the natural character or
personality of the individual through her/his style. Steven Hellerdescribes “style” as
“a specific or characteristic manner of expression” and as a designer’s “signature:
his or her preference for a certain typeface or family of faces, for a characteristic
color palette, and for either a decorative or a functional approach” [Heller, 1988: p.
9]. The author alsonotes that everything has style since everything made by man
reflects the time and place of its creation. In this respect, if style maybe understood
to be a projection of individual character, the question on the importance of the
personal style of the graphic designer may be converted to a different yet similar