Superstar Graphic Designers

Outside of the Graphic Design world are there really any 'superstar' designers? (let alone female ones). This months issue of Grafik magazine (No.185 March 2010) opens with a letter from Angharad Lewis the editor titled 'Endangered species?'

The concept of the ‘superstar’ graphic designer is outmoded these days, but during recent discussions at Grafik mansions, we found ourselves lamenting the lack of charismatic personalities in UK graphic design. At a push we could come up with a handful that might pass—just—as household names, but only because of their connection with other fields (music, in most cases). All the proper design celebs, who open events, appear on TV and write newspaper columns, are in other fields of design. Product design has its very own Simon Cowell in the shape of Philippe Starck. Architecture has no shortage of memorable characters, from scary Zaha Hadid to dashing David Adjaye. Fashion, of course, is heaving with intriguing and flamboyant characters. Even knitting gets column inches.

Graphic design, meanwhile, remains a nerdy cousin, beavering away in a bunker by the light of a Mac screen, wearing a dodgy slogan T-shirt, with only an ironical ‘adult toy’ for company. Either that or they are moving about the Shoreditch savannah in herds, blending together in a camouflage of plimsolls and bad hair, busying themselves being ‘scenesters’. I know this doesn’t apply to the whole graphic design population, but if you do answer to any of the above descriptions—please stop, you’re giving graphic design a bad name.

I’m often asked by people not connected to work “what exactly IS graphic design, then?” It would be so handy to have a reliable famous name to cite as an example. Instead it’s always a case of giving examples of the type of work graphic designers do, and that is so broad as to sound almost random. Company logos, signposts, stationery... hardly glamorous or newsworthy. But that’s the thing about graphic design—it mostly functions as a conduit for other things—the medium, not the message, setting the tone of voice rather than composing the words. Take typography: it runs like blood through the veins of the visual world and at its best it’s unnoticed. It is rare for graphic design to overshadow or become more famous that the thing it is promoting, which might explain graphic design’s recent foray into making itself an autonomous medium with self-referential products, books and posters etc—graphic design for graphic design’s sake, rather than graphic design for the sake of promoting a telecommunications company or branding a restaurant.

If graphic design does make the headlines it’s for all the wrong reasons and probably because some piece of branding has caused ‘outrage’. Obviously the reporting of the 2012 Olympic logo springs to mind, but for me that’s trumped by a story in the Daily Telegraph in March. “Anger at plans to rebrand Northamptonshire as ‘North Londonshire’,” huffed the headline about a campaign to encourage people to move from London to Northamptonshire (as if). The campaign would be paid for partly by over half a million pounds worth of taxpayers’ money. Obviously this is a stupid, expensive waste and, as I write, I have no idea whether it saw the light of day (according to the report it was due to appear on the Underground, presumably in an attempt to lure commuters away from London’s ‘rat race’ to the delights of, er, Kettering). Let me know if you spotted it.

If graphic design only attracts attention when it’s ‘bad’ but is hardly noticed for being good, perhaps that’s had an effect on graphic designers themselves. There’s no shortage of fantastic work or brilliant, intelligent designers out there, but none who seems willing or able to get noticed for it—to do a Saville maybe. Couldn’t we have a few people self-assured, eloquent and well-turned-out enough to be ambassadors for graphic design and stir up a bit of public interest in the profession? Or perhaps ego and graphic design don’t mix. If they did you’d all be architects and I’d be writing about megabucks concrete erections and reviewing Grand Designs.

http://www.grafikmag.com/index.php?m=GR&sub=GRdetail&id=365

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Only certain pieces of graphic design have gained iconic status like the tube map for example yet most of the general public probably don't know who Harry Beck is. They probably are aware of Phillipe Stark, James Dyson, Zahah Hadid, suggesting that architecture and product design disciplines have far more celebrity designers.

The letter states that Peter Saville is probably the only 'superstar' graphic designer known to the general public today, for his work in the music industry, and most of his well known work is from around 30 years ago. So if the art of the record sleeve is something that provoked a connection with people as record artwork becomes more and more obsolete with digital downloading, these designers disappear from the mainstream with the medium.

A comment on the blog states "there don't currently seem to be the individual 'designer as icon' that we saw years back in the form of Müller-Brockmann, Hans Neuburg, Saul Bass, Alan Fletcher." Perhaps this is why there are no female 'superstar' graphic designers because back in those days woman just weren't working in the industry in the numbers they are today, and if "the concept of the ‘superstar’ graphic designer is outmoded these days" then we have no superstars be it male or female.