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On the other hand designers now have seemingly limitless opportunities to promote themselves. On a portfolio site, a blog post or a Facebook page, designers are free to make their own assertions about their contribution to a given project. This was not the case when the only opportunities for recognition were only a handful of contests and publications each year. Now every designer has their own "catalog" site and design work circulates in a fairly unregulated way even within the design press.

In films, for example, credit is acknowledged once and for all and in detail at the end of a film. There is a great deal of horse-trading, arguing, and appeasement regarding the credits for any film project, but by opening night everything’s printed on film, the modern equivalent of being set in stone.

Film credits have been instrumental in codifying the labor hierarchy in the film industry, institutionalizing a shared vocabulary of job titles and responsibilities. No such standard has evolved in design — for example the term Art Director means something vastly different in an in-house design department than it does at an advertising agency.

Rather than wade into such ambiguous waters, it is easier to simply not credit anyone. Many large design studios have reached a similar conclusion and simply credit any work done at the studio to the studio entity. Frequently the mainstream press simply leaves works of design unattributed as if they were produced out of thin air.

Part of the problem is that attribution only becomes an issue after a work has become enduring or “important” and by that time it’s hard to recreate exactly how it came about.

In fact, the vast majority of graphic design is still done by unknown designers for unknown clients. It is a testament to the increasing influence of design that people care at all who animated a network interstitial or laid out a signage system. Perhaps this enhanced profile has made an unrealistic expectation that designers should get credit at all in a field with a blurry notion of authorship. Or perhaps the proliferation of design media channels simply offers more opportunities for half-truths and situational ethics when it comes to giving credit (and taking it).

Great post. It is a never ending battle to try to make sure that everyone who had some influence on a project be name-checked, and it is the right thing to do to give credit where credit is due, and we try very hard to do so. I recently scoured my records to try to credit a photographer for a project we worked on over 10 years ago. It was the one and only time our office ever worked with this person, and for the life of me I can not remember her name. I feel terrible about it, but there it is, I tried but came up short. If and when I come up with the photographers name I will certainly try to rectify the situation.As for work you're not especially proud of, I love the Alan Smithee idea. Posted by: Mark Kaufman on 05.20.08 at 01:20