Tue
Apr 8
2008
How a better understanding of our profession can help us make this world a better place.
I want to take this moment to talk about social responsibility in the graphic design discipline. This is important because it’s something few people understand, especially among my younger generation.
Regardless of whether we work with print or the web, as graphic designers, our job is to facilitate communication. Clients have information that they want to share with other people, and people will consume this information to varying degrees based on accessibility, need, want, and emotion. Ideally, our work establishes a dialogue between the speaker and the audience, such that information is not only shared, but also exchanged. With this understanding, it’s our professional responsibility to help people communicate while maintaining an objective mind.
But being objective doesn’t mean distancing ourselves from the social effects of our work. Because we’re in the business and art of communication, we need to realize that we have a huge impact on how people perceive information. And this information will be interpreted differently depending on how we present it. It’s not about making something look or work a certain way just because we like it. It’s about making the presentation honor the content.
This is how we respect people—by letting the original intent of their message shine through, uninhibited by the medium that supports it. Graphic design is just a vehicle for transferring ideas from point A to point B. Nothing more, nothing less. What matters are the ideas contained within.
Because it’s a very efficient, far-reaching vehicle, we need to be careful with what we’re communicating. While it’s important that we don’t manipulate the ideas, we need to make sure that the ideas we communicate cause no harm. In this sense, being a graphic designer means more than just creating visual work that meets the objectives of our clients. We also have an obligation to make sure that our work contributes to the greater good of society, however small or great the effects might be. It means inquiring about the meaning and intentions of the messages that we work with. Because we’re responsible for the communication of ideas between people, we have a corresponding responsibility to be a good citizen. From there, we can start making steps towards making this world a better place.
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Vincent
Wed, Apr 9, 2008
You pretty much said exactly what I was going for in my Hubris post, much more succinctly than I did.
I agree though. It’s important to realize that what we do as designers can have a direct impact on the rest of the world.
Some might call that egotistical, because we’re ultimately here to answer a brief and make our clients happy while at the same time keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads. But design has such a serious effect on the human psyche — effective design does, anyway — that we need to be careful as to what, exactly, we’re doing with our billable hours.
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Dickson Fong
Thu, Apr 10, 2008
Vincent: Thanks for pointing me to your Hubris post… I hadn’t read that one yet, and you bring up some good points.
After writing this post, and also having just read yours, I’m starting to think that there’s a flaw in this kind of thinking. While I still think that we should have some responsibility to make a positive change in this world, I’m wondering if we should really be the Communications Police. Seems rather idealistic in a totalitarian greater-than-thou kind of way. In other words, it just seems wrong, don’t you think?
I think I need to work on a follow-up post…
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Virtual assitant 08
Thu, Apr 10, 2008
I totally agree with you…… You know what, this post should be read by those companies and designers who mess so much with designing to the extent that they actually impart negative values and attitudes to the people viewing the image…. For instance, in billboards, there are so many obscene images that are posted in highways and busy streets such as sensual and lewd ads of under wears and alcoholic beverages. The designers are responsible in badly facilitating the creation of the end product. Hence, that should remind them that they should exercise social responsibility with regards to their work… >:/
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Dickson Fong
Thu, Apr 10, 2008
Virtual: I agree that some design work imparts negative values on the audience, but I think this is where it becomes a sticky subject. How do we decide between these positive and negative values? Should we really even be deciding for people? For example, I have nothing against alcohol and sexy lingerie advertisements. In the end, they’re just products that we use. However, if they’re advertisements that encourage drunk driving or promote prostitution rings, then yes, I do have an objection. But even so, that’s just my opinion. Someone else may have different ideals.
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neoGT
Mon, Jul 7, 2008
i agree with both of you. Humbly id like to add that i believe our work is to effectively inform whichever product and/or service our clients has to offer to their costumers, if we succeed on doing that i believe our job is done. Of course that the more appropriate the message is to the given target market our clients goal is the better we are. The thing is ive seen so many “graphic design” work pass as “great” just by being surprising or even tacky that ive found myself dumbfounded after analizing if the visual representation of that designer on the clients product hasnt been on my cirtique the best. Yes, people might remember those campaigns cuz their were subversive but was it really effective? I believe that by using the internet as the tool it is and researching the old, current and future trends we can have a better impact on the clients sales or needs therefore “the company” and their product and/or service being the one having the impact on the final consumer. Design is just a medium (an important one :D). What designers need is more honest constructive critique and less praise.
(let me know what u think and ill post back)
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