Hopefully, the final proposal Texxt

Cover

Abstract

Synopsis

Design so far:

Ethics In Graphic Design

 

Abstract:

 

“Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.”

-       Paragraph from the First Things First Manifesto, 2000

 

“Our discussion on the ethics of designers always gets impaled on the issue of whether a client’s desire for profit can be reconciled with our ethical desire to do no harm or, put another way, can we serve a client and the public at the same time. The difficulty of these questions explains why the AIGA and other design based organizations have found it so difficult to define a designers obligations to the public.”

-       Since Then, Milton Glaser

 

 

This report shall deal with the subject of ethics and their role in the graphic design industry. In the course of the report topics relating to how designers feel about the nature of the business – if they feel it is too commercially driven and if they feel it produces enough socially aware work – and it’s relation to ethical practice will be discussed. In order to do this individual designers and design studios would be contacted to find out their feelings on ethics and opinions on how (if at all) they incorporate them into their professional practice. 

The report will also aim to find out how different designers feel about the role of ethics in their commercial work and also if they undertake pro bono work or actively seek ways to use their design skills to produce work for social benefit. Personally, I believe that ethics are important to design companies in the form of an ethos on which they run their business. Generally a design company will have a set philosophy that becomes emblematic of the spirit of the studio. This would provide another angle from which to investigate the topic of ethics in graphic design practice.

Further to this, the report would also look into how clients and companies feel about the ethical positioning of graphic designers – does it bear relevance to their selection, do clients actively seek designers that have an ethical standpoint?

 

Chapter Headings

 1: Ethics today 

The report would aim to, in this section, use the information from gathered research to establish how different designers feel ethics feed into their practices. This section would aim to show just how important companies feel their philosophies/ethics are to their business. 

It would be interesting to show if they feel ethics are relevant to clients and can how hard/easy it is to stay true to your ethics in industry and maintain a successful profession. This section would also like to investigate how clients and the commissioning companies feel about the role of ethics for graphic designers. Do clients consider a designers ethical standpoint when they commission him/her, do they look for someone to fit in with their own corporate ideology. A possible topic could be do Unilever (who are actively promoting how they have become more green and sustainable) want to associate themselves with green and sustainable designers? Or do charities like Oxfam and Concern look for designers with a track record of socially relevant projects?

 

2: Historical Context

 

This section would give a brief over view of previous art and design movements (Modernism, the Arts and Crafts movement) that had ethical pursuits at the core of the philosophy. A historical context showing the relationship between consumerism, globalization and the role of graphic design in society could also be shown in this section (possibly through use of info graphics). This section would be brief but informative, showing how ethics have been applied in the past and the way they have changed over time.

  

3: Pro Bono/Socially Aware work

 

This section would focus on Pro Bono/Socially Aware work to see if designers undertake any jobs outside of their commercial practices. Stefan Sagmeister made the graphics for a Ben and Jerry’s campaign to lower military spending; he also began a charity for homeless people in New York. Milton Glaser produced the “I LOVE NEW YORK MORE THAN EVER” symbol post 9/11 to give New Yorkers something to take pride in. It would be interesting to see what unknown designers are undertaking similar work. 

This section could also include opinions from designers on ethics, if they feel elated by the consumerism that drives their work or do they feel slightly depressed that their skill set is used mainly to produce high quality work for low quality ephemeral products.

 

4: Conclusion

 

In the conclusion, the report shall go back over the information in the body of the report and summarize what was said. Based on the feedback from designers and clients, the conclusion would either express just how relevant ethics are in industry.

Personally, I believe that ethics are very important to lots of people, especially with the green campaign and sustainability issues and also how people are becoming more aware of the dark side of globalization, indicated I think by the rise in popularity of Fair Trade food stuffs and ethically sourced products.

 

Action Plan:

 

Primary research would be gathered by getting in contact with graphic design companies/designers and asking them questions about their ethics and company philosophies, their feelings about graphic design and it's social relevance. The aim would be to contact as many as possible so as to assure that there would be a significant body of information to work with. 

Questionnaires would be developed for students who may give feedback on how they feel about what ethics means to the graphic design industry. These questionnaires may also be relevant to non-designers, to see how they feel ethics should effect how designers work and assess their work.  

Research in books would provide a solid bedrock of research for the project – books like Citizen Designer by Steven Heller or books on professional conduct and practice may help. For the cultural/historical context there would be a need to research books on various disciplines that were ʻsocially awareʼ. Essays by designers such as Milton Glaser or Stefan Sagmeister would also be relevant research.

 

The philosophies/purported ethics of designers/studios could be analyzed through a website such as wordle.com. This website creates a graphic based on inputted text (via the user). Popular words are displayed in large typefaces whilst less repeated words are shown as smaller – effectively showing the most prominent themes across a variety of philosophies. 

Relevant images may be the use of examples of widely acknowledged socially aware design, or even widely accepted examples of graphic design that has no social relevance at (if even possible). Or the pro bono projects of designers could also be shown.

 

Bibliography:

 

Below are a selection of books and website links that I have encountered so far which cover the areas of ethics, social responsibility, pro bono work and essays on “good” or “ethical” design. As I encounter more articles/essays these will also be added to the bibliography.

 

Heller, S. (2003) Citizen designer. New York: Allworth Press

 

Shaugnessy, A. (2005) How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul. London: Laurence King

 

Lucienne, R. (2006) Good: an introduction to ethics in graphic design. Lausanne: Ava Academia

 

Hall, P. (2001) Made you look, New York : Harry N. Abrams

Glaser, M. (2006) Design of dissent. Gloucester, Mass: Rockport

 

http://miltonglaser.com/pages/milton/mg_index.html

 

http://www.typotheque.com/articles/how_good_is_good.html

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/philippe_starck_thinks_deep_on_design.html