Design and Ethics/Morality
If you haven’t seen this video of Aaron Draplin talking about why ‘America is F-cked’ then by all means, do so now. He is clearly on the side of ‘good’ design and a sane person can’t really argue with the example he uses as proof of the downward spiral of ‘professional’ design. It ends up posing a rather interesting question: is there a moral code by which designers and design professionals should practice?
Now, I know that there are moral codes for designers out there. AIGA has one. The GAG publishes an entire tome on business practices and ethics each couple of years or so. So, no one can argue that ethics have not been covered. (They have.) However, their context seems to be rather blasé and business centered.
This is important. As a designer it’s nice to have something onto which I can fall back when getting into discussions about pricing, usage, rights, etc. My question—though—is why do ethics in design ‘end’ at professional relationships, business practices and contracts?
I’ve kind of touched on this myself, questioning the morality of allowing oneself to knowingly create ‘bad’ design. Mr. Draplin’s eloquently expounded anecdote is an even more horrifying example of this phenomenon; The Super 8 re-brand appears to be part of a Wyndham Hotels and Resorts’ overhaul of its budget brands (which included Days Inn). Draplin’s $15,000 Sunset Motel example appears to be more akin to forcing one’s younger sibling to give up his or her good Halloween candy just because he or she is younger and smaller and unexperienced in the ways that the world works.
I kind of think that we as designers should have some sort of Hippocratic Oath that has to be taken before becoming a professional designer. And, this oath shouldn’t just be about copyrights, fair usage and client relations; it should also cover ‘good’ design and perhaps there should be some sort of tribunal that those who break the oath would have to face. Or maybe they could run a gauntlet of design, kind of like the American Gladiators, only instead of Ice, Blaze and Thunder, the contestants would face-off against Sans, Baseline and Ligature.
Okay, that might be too much.
But, there are a few of us out there who struggle with the current state of professionalism in design. I’ve been in a lot of discussions on the subject (often stemming from self-doubt or bleak job prospective) both professionally and academically. Katherine McCoy of High Ground Design in Colorado presented an essay in 1998 arguing for higher professional standards in design (especially within education). It’s a little disconcerting, though, to find out that a crappy sign is worth almost half of my base yearly salary.
morality is such a slippery slope. How does one define moral, amoral and immoral, especially when related to design? I know that people who are amoral are treated differently in a court of law than those who act immorally. Was the company who re-designed the Sunset Motel’s sign acting without morals or against their morals? Did they knowingly take $15,000 from the motel owner in exchange for a sign that they threw together to make a quick buck, or was that literally the best they could do?
Either way, I don’t know that we’re necessarily f*cked. There definitely need to be changes, but I’m unsure as to what those changes need to be exactly. More pondering on this later.
Play me off, Keyboard Cat.
November 13, 2009 at 1:59 am | Branding, Design | 1 comment
You spelled fucked incorrectly—twice.