For this prompt I chose to translate Michael Rock’s article, ‘Fuck Content’ from Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Reader and Users into the form of Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage. In translating a brief article on the ideas surrounding design authorship in today’s creative space regarding content production to the highly visual book on the power of media in a new age, much was revealed about the readings.
In translating ‘Fuck Content’ to a format where sentences are broken apart to provoke deeper meaning visually and paragraphs are grouped with visual queues it forced me to dissect the writing. I broke down key paragraphs that relayed main points by sentence and gave them an entire spread in the new booklet format and beyond that words were taken apart from the sentence to attempt to relay stronger / hidden meaning to the writing. In doing this I felt I began to understand the message in a new way and on a deeper level. I think in writing such as Rock’s where words carry such weight, reforming them with increased emphasis and visual aid enhanced the text.
I did find it a difficult process to assign hierarchy to the paragraphs, sentences, and words of the writing. I struggled with the knowledge that in doing so I am altering the writing into my perception of its message. Especially when adding in visuals which create new meaning in being paired with the writing – am I skewing this sentence and fully misunderstanding it, thus misleading the reader? Or is my perception valuable and a different way of thinking that could enrich the reader?
This was amplified in getting to the end of the article where themes around authorship and manipulating form come together. It felt I was actively participating in the acts and notions I was translating. Rock states in his penultimate paragraph “By manipulating form, design reshapes that essential relationship. Form is replaced by exchange. The things we make negotiate a relationship over which we have a profound control.” (Rock, 2009). I think this made for a deeper study of the translation of form and what that means to the designer as well as its impact.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MICHAEL ROCK
‘Fuck Content’
Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users
New York: Rizzoli
[1996] [2009] 2013
pp. 45–56, 91–95
MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND QUENTIN FIORE
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects
Berkeley: Gingko Press
[1967] 2001
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