"Fuck Content" Michael Rock proclaimed in the title of his 2009 essay. The radical rhetoric continues in this monograph of the work of the mighty Rock, design heretic, enthusiast, theorist...
Anyone familiar with the career of the New York based graphic designer Michael Rock and the diversity of output of his studio, 2X4, would guess that, faced with a task of producing a monograph of their work, the outcome would be anything but standard. Hence Multiple Signatures – On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users, published by Rizzoli, arrives as the second statement in a tale of two halves.
Multiple Signatures is a coda to a previous exhibition (and accompanying book) it is what it is, which was a predominately visual attempt (1000 images-strong) to represent the work of 2X4, with an emphasis on process rather than the “often thin final results” that are delivered to the client. “We must”, Rock insists, “seek gratification in the thinking as well as the making.”
Taken out of context, these comments might give the impression that the designer is some sort of graphic heretic, an apologist for his own discipline, but that is far from the reality. Rock is an enthusiast, and it is the power of that enthusiasm that has driven him over the course of the last twenty years to deliver — as teacher, writer and critic — some difficult truths to the graphic design community. More making, yes, but much more thinking first. This book stands in representation of that part of Rock’s self-diagnosed “multiple-personality disorder.” This is not exactly a manual, but it certainly aims to be instructive. Four years on, while Multiple Signatures manages to be somewhat smaller than the previous picture book, at 400 pages it’s still a substantial publication. Composed predominately of text rendered in three judiciously chosen fonts (Garamond, Akzidenz-Grotesk and Century Gothic) there is a clear emphasis on legibility, with just enough graphic and photographic embellishment to soothe the transition between essay, interview and Q and A. Some images are allowed at full bleed but most are constrained to thumbnail sized illustrations. This is not exactly a manual, but it certainly aims to be instructive.
The book’s (loose) organising principle is, in Rock’s own words, “the essential challenges facing the contemporary design thinker” – questions of authorship, the role of criticism, critical practice and user defined objects. Now canonical stand-alone essays such as his Designer as Author, Fuck Content, and Deprofessionalization give an introduction to Rock’s long-term intellectual preoccupations, while a diverse range of texts from the likes of Jean-François Lyotard, Lucia Allais and Rem Koolhaas, as well as multiple interviews between Rock and his peers, create an expansive internal dialogue. On the one hand then, the title refers to the academic ground out of which Rock’s career was born, particularly the debates in postmodern cultural theory of the 80s and 90s. But the dialogue that exists within and between the individual texts are, as a form of inquiry and methodology, a fundamental component of understanding how 2X4 operates. In the first section of the book, Talking Over, the three founding studio partners summarise the core tenants of their practice as “manifesting debate”, promoting “active dialogue” and provoking “relationships”, and in that respect Multiple Signatures’s broad range of voices and the convivial but relentlessly questioning tone are a truer representation of the studio’s practice than could ever be achieved by images alone.
The book has secondary significance in its status as critical document existing within a discipline that still has an unstable relationship with systemised forms of self-analysis. Throughout his career Rock has been concerned with the transformative value of criticism, of the ability of a certain type of writing to overcome some of the intransigencies facing the graphic designer as individual and the graphic arts as a whole, often lamenting that a rich critical tradition to match that of other creative disciplines isn’t being built. In a conversation with the design writer Rick Poynor titled What is this Thing Called Design Criticism from 1995, they sketch out their hopes that the graphic design community will become both more accepting of the practice of criticism and more enthused about developing appropriate forms of address. Multiple Signatures is evidence of much success in that regard, but it is also a spur to further action, voices and signatures.
The texts collected here pursue a variety of incisive and engaging modes of discourse, and collectively form a project far more ambitious, and ultimately far more valuable, than a standard set of thematic essays or typical monographic treatment could have proved. As a hybrid object it doesn’t fit easy classification, but it is not without precedent. One thing that you will immediately notice on scanning the contributor list is that most of the personalities have a background based not in graphic design but in architecture. The reason for this is, on one level, that 2X4’s portfolio contains a lot of work that extends into that realm, many of their most successful projects encompassing environmental design, way finding solutions, signage and building identities.
It’s also useful to note Rock’s close relationship with the architect Rem Koolhaas. Their studios have a long history of collaboration, and both men take the stewardship of their respective fields particularly seriously. Like graphic design, architecture draws many of its commentators from within practice, and Koolhaas is arguably one of the most challenging thinkers on contemporary architecture, with a history of using radical publishing projects to not only alter the conversation but make new types of discussion available. Take the visual excess of S,M,L,XL, for instance, or the literary genre-swapping of Delirious New York, these were ultimately attempts to create something usefully disruptive – Multiple Signatures feels strongly of a piece with these books, and is just as eager to find new critical tactics with which to challenge its own discipline’s status quo.
2x4.org
Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users, ed. Michael Rock
Published by Rizzoli, £22.95