Crafting Authenticity

Authenticity is what we want from the world around us, from others, and crucially from ourselves and what we make. We search for it in the objects we own and the places we visit; this desire provides us with a drive to know who we are and motivates who we will become. We are aggrieved when we find it lacking in our relationships with others and aggravated when trusted institutions do not deliver it in the information, products and services they provide. As it relates to graphic design, I define authenticity as a match between form and purpose. For the designer, its quality is found in the process of simultaneously developing a concept and crafting the design/object. This project is an exploration of my personal design philosophy and how it may contribute to the dialog of how we design and communicate. In the words of D. F. Mckenzie from his 1985 Panizzi Lectures on bibliography, “My purpose is to express a need and stimulate discussion.”