The role of designers in communication and visual culture is evolving, from designers serving as commercial hired guns to assuming the more empowering roles of design authorship. It has become standard practice in design education to teach designers to develop their own voice and create self-initiated projects.

In this book, Steven McCarthy, a professor of graphic design at the University of Minnesota and an expert on the subject, provides an overview of the phenomenon of design authorship and interviews many international designers who have taken on different roles as authors or producers of their own projects.