In my analysis I will discuss how points raised by Barthes do actually link to the the modern day graphic design practice referring to how it still appropriate to say that the meaning work is all surrounded by how it is perceived by the viewer, never one fixed meaning delivered by the author, but actually dependant on the viewer themselves. This relates further to the modern graphic design practice in the way that depending on the viewer in a piece of graphic design use of aspects like colour, type and layout could be perceived differently.
In Roland Barthes' essay he puts forward a debate in which he challenges the idea of authorship and its links to authority itself. In the texts he delves in to the theory that can be linked to other areas of life whether it be the circumstances he is discussing in the books or to many other areas of society and culture such as music and art, that contrary to popular belief that the author is the most crucial part of any piece of work and that theoretically it should be seen through their eyes to understand the work, actually he shifts the importance over to the viewer saying that the meaning is different depending on the viewer itself. This has been proved many times in the history "recent research has demonstrated the constitutively ambiguous nature of greek tragedy, its texts being woven from words with double meanings that each character understands unilaterally" Barthes, R (1977, p148). He wants us to reject the thought that the meaning of anything is solid and fixed and accept the fact that the meaning of work can be ever changing, dependant on the eye of the reader "In precisely this way literature, by refusing to assign a 'secret' , an ultimate meaning, to the text, liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse god and his hypostases - reason, science, law" Barthes, R (1977, p147).
In the second paragraph Roland says "The author is a modern figure, a product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation" Barthes, R (1977, p142). In this quote Roland is referring to the fact that although the author is an individual with their own belief at the point of creation, he says that all they are really are is an encompassment of everything that has happened in the past. He is implying that the person no matter how individualistic they might think their beliefs are have all stemmed in some way from the past before their life and the experiences in their own life. Therefore there can be no one individual correct belief but actually a different meaning depending on many different aspects such as the viewers social, cultural and political background. These points were further developed on in an Eye Magazine article related to the topic in which they say "The so-called 'death of the author', proposed most succinctly by Roland Barthes in a 1968 essay of that name, is closely linked to the birth of critical theory, especially theory based in reader response and interpretation rather than intentionality." Rock,M.(1996). This further reinforcing the validity of his more philosophical way to think and the fact that it actually fights against the norm of hierarchal understanding and actually put the subordinates in control of which Is a much more developed understanding of how we comprehend everything relying on our own solo experiences as human beings and not people who read and recite information unconsciously.
Bibliography
Barthes,R.(1977) Image-Music-Text, London, Harper Collins
Rock, M. (1996). Eye Magazine | Feature | The designer as author. [online] Eyemagazine.com. Available at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/the-designer-as-author [Accessed 19 Oct. 2015].
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