Design & Society

It is impossible to exclude the design's effect on society and the society's effect on design. What differentiates them is the stand that a designer chooses. Either to be subdued by society or to decide to make a change, not only make good design but to make good.

The following visuals do speak louder than words, and through these examples we will understand more the power of messaging.

''Some of these drawings may look like the work of a war obsessed 14 year old kid but the crude, hand written style was calculated by the Central Intelligence Agency's Psychological Operations Division, to have maximum impact on the moral of Iraqi soldiers during the gulf war''
The message was either "Fight & Die" or "Surrender & See you family agian".

Through these campaigns, the message being sent made a huge impact on the society. These are only but a few campaigns done but their effect was amazing, they heavily damaged the fur industry, shops were boycotted and fur sales plummeted.



"Water for all Humanity''
The issue of drinkable water for everyone is fiercely political. This poster shows Sanitation, pollution, economic development. It fortells the future and provokes human awareness.

Postcards made for the plight of Sarajevo using reworked cultural icons. The more the postcards/posters the more people were aware of what was happening in Sarajevo, therefore, it became the satirical theme of reworked cultural and pop icons such as coca cola and absolute vodka.



Major battles were waged in the 1990's with heavy bouts of direct action.
Therefore, later in the decade tobacco industries were forced to pay compensation to health victims and also had to make reparation payments by financing anti tobacco campaigns.
Now most advanced countries, have banned the advertising of tobacco.


We have the power of messaging, design does in fact change the society's perception.
We designers educate, motivate, provoke and influence the society. Design affects life and death.

A simple example that David Berman uses in his speech is that of the increasing amount of deadly traffic accidents that happened in Melbourne Australia.
Many were color blind and therefore could not see at night if the lights were red or green. What design problem solved is the use of not only colors, but shapes to indicate "stop", "proceed".

Another example of how design could affect life and death decisions was the 2ooo USA elections, where the Ballot was badly designed, and the horribly failed info design made Bush win against Al Gore. With Bush winning, it was enough to see war waged on Iraq, and condoms being stopped to be sent to Africa.

We have to protect our society, we have to know and be aware of dangerous issues we have to keep on observing and educating people. Our obligation is not to do good design but do good.
We have a responsibility towards the environment, towards humanity.

Ethical responsibility in graphic design.

Every situation of human communication falls within the field of ethics. It can be ethical or unethical, but it cannot be a-ethical.

According to Jeorge Frascara in his book "User-centred graphic design", the basic principle of an ethical communication is the recognition of the Other (the receiver of the communication) as a person and not as an object.
Infact, recognizing the Other as a subject means that we recognize him/her as an independent, thinking person, with a specific way of understanding, evaluating and integrating experiences and information.

Summing up, in ethical communications, one communicates with someone about something; one does NOT communicate something to someone.
Ethical communication is the opposite of military communication, where a superior communicates something to an inferior – he trasmits an order that is received passively, and which is coded so as not to allow room for differing interpretations.

When we talk about ethical communication, we're unable to use the Shannon's popular terminology which define the poles of the communication chain as transmitter and receiver; it is more fitting to talk about producers and interpreters, in this way we allow room for context, history, expectations, goals, values, priorities, feelings, preferences and differences of intelligence.
Shannon's terminology describes a communication model where the receivers look up at the source of the message with passivity and reverence, and where communication becomes undirectional.
In ethical communications the producers has to speak a language that the audience can understand. If producers really want to communicate, they should remember that people can only understand things that relate to things that they already understand, using the language of the audience.
This is why the ideal form of human communication is dialogue.

John Frascara thinks that the ethical dimension in visual communication is something embedded in the engagment between the interpreter and the visual design.
A work of visual design proposes a mode of engagment, which might foster a more or less active participation of the interpreter in the construction of the message. These models of engagment can promote certain attitues and expectations, and influence the way people relate to other people.

Many codes of conduct published by professional societies of designer mention the notion of ethics, but in many case they only include ethical responsibilities to collegue and clients, and very rarely to the public. It is indispensable to relate to the public, and most important recognizing it as a group of individuals with different way of understanding, feeling and acting.
Imposition does not work in long term: that's why without partnership between the public and the message producer, the attitudes will not change.
When attitudes do not change, the need for repressive coomunications, legislation and enforcement constantly grows, quite likely leading finally to the collapse of the effort.

Ethical communication that recognize the complexity of people and the difficulties involved in generate attitude changes are the only promising approach when real changes are being sought.
In this situation, where relations become ethical, where the best talents of everyone concerned are pooled, where complex and ambitious projects become realizable, the designers can play a role as catalyst and contributors to a constantly developing conceptual and cultural environment.

Definition of Ethics

After searching for definitions of graphic design, we've decided that the next step of our research should be looking for definitions of ethics. We'll start by defining what ethics is, giving examples of areas where codes of ethics are applied and finally talk and discuss about ethics in graphic design.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary ethics is a system of accepted beliefs which control behaviour, especially such a system based on morals. It is the study of what is morally right and what is not.

A code of ethics is a set of guidelines which are designed to set out acceptable behaviours for members of a particular group, association, or profession. Many organizations govern themselves with a code of ethics, especially when they handle sensitive issues like investments, health care, or interactions with other cultures. In addition to setting a professional standard, a code of ethics can also increase confidence in an organization by showing outsiders that members of the organization are committed to following basic ethical guidelines in the course of doing their work. (here)

There are several professions that have codes of ethics (or codes of conduct) that the employees must sign and must follow. Here is an example of the code of ethics for Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians:
1. make the care of patients your first concern
2. exercise your professional judgement in the interests of patients and the public
3. show respect for others
4. encourage patients to participate in decisions about their care
5. develop your professional knowledge and competence
6. be honest and trustworthy
7. take responsibility for your working practices

In the design profession there isn't a code of ethics. Should there be one?

John Vassos (1898-1985), designer, believed that design could only succeed if guided by an ethical view.
But every designer has his own point of view.
There is no way to be ethical as a designer and probably no one designer who is 100 percent ethical. ("Conscientious Objectives: Designing for an Ethical Message" - John Cranmer and Yolanda Zappaterra, Rotovision 2003).


This was the image that most got our attention and that made us decide to discuss ethics in graphic design.
This poster was designed for the anti-minaret campaign in Switzerland. It shows a burka-clad woman against a backdrop of minarets sticking out of the Swiss flag. The leftist opponents of the campaign, in their hysterical reaction to the poster, have already generated more publicity than the SVP (Switzerland’s Swiss People’s Party) ever could. (here)

Should we judge the graphic designer who did this poster? Did he forget about ethics and just made what he was asked to?
Here is what he had to say about it: "...our job is just to think about how to make the strongest image, then let the lawyers tell us whether it's racist." Do we really need a lawyer to tell us what racism is?

Is the design of this poster less ethical than the design of a package for a chocolate bar that is full of sugar and calories that will be sold in a vending machine?


In the 1970s John Lennon and Yoko Ono posted huge billboards in some locations around NYC stating: "War is over! (if you want it)". Is this a good use of design? An ethical one?


Milton Glaser believes that good design is good citizenship.

Definition of Graphic Design

While reading through different articles, i came across this quote of Victor Papanek, and it really startled me and made me think. The quote is:

"There are professions more harmful than design, but only a few"

At first search, one can immediately find such definitions about graphic design:

- it is a visual communication used by a skillful combination of text & pictures for advertising, magazines and books;

- it represents ideas and messages

- a branch of visual art concerned with aesthetics, production of layout design and typography.

But is design only concerned with these issues? What is Papanek really talking about?
While going deeper in my research, i found other comments, ideas and points of views about this discipline... or is it not a discipline? I divided them into to parts, cause what i found was a dichotomy in their descriptions.

The first said that:

- graphic design is a talented and seductive industry that effects brainless mass consumption.

- it creates artificial needs to persuade people to buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like.

- graphic design is affected by marketing oriented development process that deprives it to think or act by itself

- graphic design serves consumerism, and someone well known once said that "It is greasing the wheels of capitalism in a stylish way".

The other opposing definitions were these:

- design is Power, it influences people's needs and wants, it promotes not only consumerism but human activity;

- it Compels readers to notice and remember , while educating them and presenting real solutions;

- it is a Cultural Democracy, most of the time it plays a propagandist role in society, influencing political thought and popular opinion;

- not only it is entertaining and persuasive but also it is rhetoric, common sense & logical, through all these it makes its designers Intuitive provocators;

- graphic design is Creativity.

Art can be wonderful without much change in ideas and perception. However, design through its evaluation, organization, deconstruction, interpretation and synthesis builds, challenges defies and excels. This is why it becomes a problem solver.
According to Carole Gruvin "creative people are often the last resort descramblers"; she adds that designers love problems, they make it a career while feeding and soaring on them.
Designers are experts in this field and usually major problems in the world will not be solved by further analysis but by design.

Hanna Arendt said that design is a Action. In her book "Vita Activa" she divides human activities into three parts:
1. labour
2. work
3. action

Action i the only activity that goes directly between man without any intermediary of things to the human condition.
Acting is by far the only way to bring something new to the world. It is the final cause of things. It does not wait for orders. Through action and creativity graphic design becomes also a rebel with its designers as rebellions.

"All creative people need something to rebel against, it is what gives their lives excitement"
Paul Arden

After finding all these definitions i guess what we can say is that graphic design is a melting pot of all these actions and definitions. It is a mixture of all. What makes it different each time is the choice that it's designer's choose to take and therefore the image they give.

One half of wisdom.

"A prudent question is one-half of wisdom".
Francis Bacon
(1561 - 1626)

It was reading this quote and interrogating ourselves about the meaning of questioning as an act that we've decided to entitle this space "one half of wisdom".
Bacon, in fact, established and popularized the scientific method, also called 'Baconian method' in his honour, which consists in a planned procedure of investigating all things through scientific inquiry. He created a new kind of methodology approach, applying the method of agreement and the method of difference in his scientific research, with a large use of the logical argument of the syllogism.

We consider it our premise. But not the "question" of the matter.

Our mission is the investigation of ethic, with a special focus on existing Codes of Ethic in design, finding out what are the characteristics that differentiate ethic and moral. We will not only try to understand how design reflect the contemporary culture, but we would also like to know more about design as a social act, reflecting particularly about the role of the graphic design nowadays. Finally, we would like to give our point of view, finding a efficient way to communicate it.

"Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing".
Euripides
(480 BCE - 406 BCE)

We will use the method of questioning as we deeply believe that the question itself is not just a functional analytical tool, but could be also an extremely powerful instrument to "make people think" and to shock the consciences.

"It's a very good question, very direct, and I'm not going to answer it".
George W. Bush
(1946 - )

Design can only succeed if guided by an ethical view

John Vassos (1898-1985)