How designers are dealing with COVID-19

We are living in extraordinary times. We are not doctors or essential staff. Many of us already work at home and are used to working alone. But like the rest of the world, none of us are used to the unprecedented events unfolding around us. We will continue to do what we are trained to do, help spread the message through visual communication.At the front line, graphic designers working for the CDC have created a package of graphics and images for download and distribution in English, Spanish and Chinese.Design educators are sharing information, ideas, and resources for moving to online teaching.Illustrators and cartoonists on "The Nib" are spreading the word through humor and political parody as is designer Jure Tovrljan who reimagined iconic logos to bring attention to the situation.Sometimes designers get it wrong though, as author, educator, and design critic Steven Heller points out in his article, "The Worst Magazine Cover at the Worst Moment." Heller calls out New York Magazine for triggering and enabling panic, instead of helping to stop it.Designers don't have a lot of power, but remember to use the power you do have wisely, and be well. 

Designing in the Age of Anxiety

Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic have recently reissued their book The Design of Dissent.In a recent interview with Fast Company's Creative Director, Florian Bacheda, they discuss how the anxiety and disorder of our time is changing design.The release of the book in 2005, which showcased socially and politically driven graphics from around the world, was pre-Arab Spring, the election of Donald Trump, and a plethora of other conflicts and events around the globe that have polarized our world even more.Many points about globalization are raised in the interview including the ubiquitous nature of design. Milton Glaser points out that because of social media, and certainly Google image search, some visual icons (ie. smiley face and the Guy Fawkes mask) appear everywhere.An interesting question is raised by Florian Bacheda when he asks the authors about an interview with design author Steven Heller who wrote, "Changing an established order is the goal of dissent." Bacheda asks that if established orders are typically governments and powerful industry special interests, will companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook become the new dominant order and will we see dissent against companies like these? We are already seeing push back from designers in the tech industry with movements like  "The Copenhagen Letter." The effort asks tech designers to take responsibility for the world and put humans before business. They've gathered 3577 signatures to date.The interview goes on to discuss the influence of social media, the introduction of new forms of media such as video, as well as showcase some excellent examples of posters designed for dissent over the past decade.It's also a disturbing trip through recent history and does a good job of encapsulating why and how we live in an age of anxiety. One can't help but see the link to a recent article in the NY Times about why American teenagers are suffering from severe anxiety now more than ever. We are not only designing in the age of anxiety, we live there too.Sources:https://www.fastcodesign.com/90146795/how-the-anxiety-and-disorder-of-our-time-is-changing-designhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.htmlhttps://copenhagenletter.org/

Citizen Designer

Throughout history graphic designers have written design manifestos and taken action to focus their energy on designing for good. Whether it’s a call to action to use our skills to create things like PSAs rather than products for planned obsolescence, to motivate designers to use environmentally friendly materials rather than toxic ones, or to create materials that support social justice efforts, there is a group of dedicated graphic designers who believe that design is meant for something bigger and better than simply contributing to the cycle of consumer consumption.In Ken Garland’s 1964 “First Things First” Manifesto, he states: “By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.”In David Berman’s book “Do Good Design,” he asks designers to consider their core values and mission and pledge to:1. Be true to their profession2. Be true to themselves3. Use 10% of their professional time to create a better place“Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility,” written by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne, includes more than 70 essays that look to answer what it means to be a citizen designer.The recent U.S. election has created a groundswell of activism against our newly elected leader, and graphic designers are among them. Resist is a free 40-page tabloid newspaper featuring political comics and graphics that was distributed at Women’s Marches across the country on January 21. The Smudge is a new monthly newspaper created in the spirit of the underground and alternative presses of the 60's and 70's to offer a unique voice and perspective on current political issues.The Citizen Designer Pledge from AIGA NY asks individuals to vote, choose at least one cause to champion, meet with fellow citizen designers, and attend a local governance session once a quarter. The pledge goes on to outline commitments for companies as well as the newly formed organization's commitments and their dedication to solving larger problems.If you want to get involved and merge your personal values with your work, take the pledge today.Sources:http://backspace.com/notes/2009/07/design-manifestos.phphttps://medium.com/aigany/the-2017-citizen-designer-pledge-38e236e26199#.10xmnanvshttp://aigany.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e990059e83&id=b83ab08179

Design Activism

In Steven Heller's recent essay featured on Design Observer, "America's Big Design Problem," he discusses how now, more than ever, designers must be progressive thinkers and makers. While some feel design should not politicize, many feel that taking a stand for one's point of view is exactly what design is meant to do."RESIST!" is a publication on the theme of political resistance to the forces of intolerance. It will be published as a special issue of Gabe Fowler's tabloid newspaper, Smoke Signal. 30,000 copies will be distributed for free on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, in Washington D.C. Further distribution will occur at the Women's March on January 21st and throughout the United States. They are still accepting submissions for the newspaper on the theme of NOT OUR PRESIDENT. The deadline looms close though. You can still submit and view others' submissions online.In the video, "What is art for?" philosopher Alain de Botton gives his top five reasons why art is such a vital force for humanity—a force that stands up for the best side of human nature. The last one on his list is propaganda. Designers are born propagandists, trained in the art of persuasion. As Heller asserts, now is the time to dig even deeper—designing alternative streams for credible information—and making propaganda designed to bring out the best side of human nature.As our President-elect continues to build his new administration and choose cabinet members like Scott Pruitt—a climate change denialist for the E.P.A—it is more important now than ever to take a stand. As Heller states, before these political transformations become locked in stone.Sources:http://www.resistsubmission.com/http://designobserver.com/feature/americas-big-design-problem/39439https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/08/scott-pruitt-trumps-pick-for-the-epa-has-been-obamas-worst-nightmare/

A great big club with spikes

In a video interview with Hillman Curtis, graphic designer James Victore likens graphic design to a great big club with spikes on it, best used to hit people over the head with.Graphic Design Advocacy—International Posters for the Digital Age: 2001-2012, is a traveling exhibit that does just that. Curated by Elizabeth Resnick from MassArt, the exhibit features 122 posters spanning the first decade of this century that address some of the most controversial and heart-breaking issues of our time. War, 9-11, the Gulf oil spill, global warming, human trafficking, and the tsunami in Japan are just some of the moments captured. In an interview for Print Magazine with Steven Heller, Resnick talks about the effect the internet has had on poster design, “the Internet has enabled designers to make and post visual commentaries without concern for the costs of labor, printing, and posting their work to air their opinions.”The exhibit has traveled across the globe for the past year, both on site and online, and is still traveling. While many lament the disappearance of print, it’s comforting to know that one of the strongest visual vehicles for protest and dissent—the poster—is still a powerful agent of advocacy. It’s inspiring to see what graphic designers can create as they wield their great big clubs with spikes.Sources:http://graphicadvocacyposters.org/posters/http://www.printmag.com/design-inspiration/graphic-advocacy-takes-a-stand/

Does Super Tuesday = Super Branding?

Super (aka—very good; pleasant; excellent; extreme; huge; superficial)This Super Tuesday is "make it or break" for the Republican primary candidates. With elections in 10 states across the country they've pulled out all the stops and there's been a huge surge in branding for each of them.The budgets are definitely super — the ad spending alone has nearly topped $10 million with Romney having the most "super" budget with more than half that total coming from the Mitt Romney-backing Restore Our Future. (Read more about ad spending here.)But what about the design side of branding these candidates? Is it super, or superficial?Branding experts Steven Heller (author of Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State,) Debbie Millman (Sterling Brands, President Design Group), and Alice Twemlow (Design Critic) shared their thoughts on a School of Visual Arts Brief last month. All three offer humorous observations, especially Twemlow's comparison of the swash in Newt's logo to a slimy salamandar. Twemlow also remarks that the further right you get, the less care seems to have been taken with the visual presentation of a candidate’s image, with Santorum's logo looking like it could have been created by a DIY business card machine. (Read the full article here.)What do you think? Were the super budgets spent on super branding?Sources:http://jump.dexigner.com/news/24605http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/04/2674789/super-tuesday-ad-spending-nearly.htmlhttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/super-

What the heck is “good design” any way?

If you decide to look up “good” in an online dictionary the first listing that comes up shows 55 different definitions. Morally excellent, righteous, high-quality, well-behaved, kind, educated, refined, healthy, cheerful, skillfully done, and financially sound are just a few.When looking at how the word "good" is used in graphic design a wide variety of interpretations also arise.In 1975 IBM legend Thomas Watson began his lecture at the Wharton School of Business with these words, “Good Design is Good Business.” This principle has led many successful businesses to make creating strategic branding and design a priority and ultimately may have helped in them their success.Apple's founder Steve Jobs place in the business world is legendary and was founded in part on relentlessly building beautifully designed, useful things that anyone could use.Dieter Rams offers 10 Principles of Good Design for product design that include innovation, usefulness, aestethic, honest, understandable, unobtrusive, and more.David Berman's book, Do Good Design, addresses the issues of morality in graphic design. The book is an excellent resource for looking at the power that graphic design has on cultural influence.Lucienne Roberts, author of Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design, also explores issues of morality, drawing readers into a debate about professional "goodness" versus personal "goodness" and the relationship between ethics and design practice.The magazine Good and website Good.is describe good as something that works—what is sustainable, prosperous, productive, creative, and just—for all of us and each of us.AIGA’s “Design for Good” initiative provides tools and resources for designers who work on projects that focus on addressing community needs. Their tagline says, “Changing the world may or may not work, but wouldn't you rather design trying?”In a recent post for the Daily Heller, “Design for Good or Bad,” Steven Heller raises the question of what good design is. Heller asks why designers can't practice "public good" as an integral part of design's mission without labeling it as just "good." He also brings up the point that some "bad design" may be due to lack of talent rather than an issue of morality. What does it mean if this type of "bad design" is done for good causes? Is it good, or is it bad?How should we define good design? Maybe the best thing that graphic designers can do is to delve further into each of these topics and come up with new and more specific ways to classify “good design.” If they don't, the catch-all phrase may end up diluting the message in its wake.Sources:http://www.definitions.net/definition/goodhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/06/steve-jobs-world-more-beautiful?INTCMP=SRCHhttp://www.amazon.com/Good-Ethics-Graphic-Required-Reading/dp/2940373140http://imprint.printmag.com/branding/design-for-good-or-um-bad/http://www.good.is/category/art-and-design/

Crowdsourcing (aka how low can you go?)

Crowdsourcing is not unique to graphic designers; it's any sort of outsourcing that involves a large group of people actively participating in the project. At it's best it encourages open-innovation models and collective intelligence.(1) The Netflix Prize is an example that worked. In October 2006 Netflix announced that it would pay $1 million to the contestant who could improve the movie recommendations made by Netflix’s internal software, Cinematch, by at least 10 percent. The contest lured experts worldwide not only because of the prize money but also because it offered a daunting challenge. The ultimate key to success was when expert teams joined forces.(2)For graphic designers though it has become a contest about "how low can you go?" It basically means that clients can send a project "out to bid." This means that they say how much they are going to pay for a design, and any number of designers can submit work for consideration. Clients can then decide after time and effort have been spent by one, or many, which design they like and are willing to pay for. The graphic designers whose work has not been chosen receive no compensation at all. Graphic designers aren't joining forces; they are being pitted against each other.Steven Heller's blog post for Imprint, "Crowd-Sourcing Design: The Last Frontier," speaks directly to the idea of joining forces, or conversely, not joining forces—with either other designers or the client. Designers read a mail-in brief and have no opportunity to meet or talk with the client about needs or wants. The discovery process is truncated at best.In Steve Douglas' recent blog post "The grim realities of spec work and crowdsourcing" he analyzes how graphic designers fare financially with crowdsourcing. His results show that 9.5% of work done through crowdsourcing is paid work. A whopping 90.5% is unpaid.Proponents of crowdsourcing argue that it’s a free trade system and actually gives young designers who don’t have a big client list or portfolio filled with work a chance to be judged on merit alone. In an article for Communication Arts, creative arts management consultant David Baker says, “I have a client with 64 employees, all but 4 of whom are in Colombia doing web development for Fortune 500 companies. All the while making roughly one‐third of what their U.S. counterparts make, and twice what their fellow citizens make.”(3)What do you think about crowdsourcing? Does it open up opportunities for designers and clients or is it taking design to a new low?Sources:(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/technology/internet/19unboxed.html(2) http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/how-the-netflix-prize-was-won/(3) http://www.commarts.com/Columns.aspx?pub=2836&pageid=1125

Ethics: Graphic Design In-takes

Sérgio Neves (aka Chazzy) is a design student from Lisbon who has written a thoughtful and creative collage and narrative on ethics in graphic design. He references findings from my thesis along with thoughts about ethics from Milton Glaser, Steven Heller, Helen Armstrong, Mário Moura, and Lucienne Roberts.You can see his work here: http://hausofcat.blogspot.com/2010/12/ethics.html

What are the most important ethical issues graphic design students will face in their careers?

As part of my research for my thesis I polled graphic design educators and practitioners and asked them the open-ended question "what do you think is the most important ethical issue is that graphic design students can expect to face in their careers?" The answers were wide and varied, some I had expected and some I hadn't even considered.Steven Heller, author, editor, and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department at SVA (School of Visual Arts), gave an answer that captured the range of responses I received. He said, "Every individual will face different concerns with issues of ethics in graphic design. Some will be asked to serve a client they might not like or a product they might not care for while others might be faced with whether or not to undercut a competitor. There are no universal answers.”Designer and author Jessica Hefland's answer focused on honesty, kindness, and boundaries:“Being clear about boundaries — between friends and clients, money, and its perception being the complication that thwarts all successful achievement in collaboration.”“Honesty — because it is the single most important prerequisite for success in life AND work.”“Kindness — because you can, and must endeavor to be famous and successful and STILL BE NICE (an overstatement, but I'm serious) which is not only possible, but mandatory for true happiness.”Hefland said “It never ceases to amaze me that women, who continue to struggle, in millions of ways, to achieve equal status and pay with their male counterparts, do not help and support other women more than they do: worse, they prevent other women from achieving, when they should be mentoring them, period.”Other issues mentioned through email, phone, and social networking sites with over 60 graphic design professionals and educators included copyright, non-payment for services, font licensing, spec work, crowdsourcing, kickbacks, corporate sponsorship, sustainability, and working for someone you don’t like or whose product or service you don’t believe in. The responses were passionate and also filled with anecdotes about personal experiences and as Steven Heller noted in his response, there really were no universal answers.If you would like to see all the results please fill out the contact form or write me directly at info@ethicsingraphicdesign.org.What do you think are the most important ethical issues that graphic designers will face in their careers?

Political Branding—Masterful or Monstrous?

The 2008 Obama branding campaign has been deemed one of the most successful branding campaigns for a political candidate and cause. In an interview by Steven Heller for the NY Times, branding expert Brian Collins asserts it’s because they used a single-minded visual strategy to deliver their campaign’s message with greater consistency and, as a result, greater collective impact.The design strategy focused on multiple platforms— cell phones, mobile devices, websites, e-mail, social networks, iPods, laptops, billboards, print ads and campaign events. Using shape, type, and color, the design team created a campaign successfully visualizing emotional messages that conveyed “hope” and “change we can believe in” across the nation and subsequently gained mindshare of the American people.In his book Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State, author Steven Heller asks, “how did a practice as vile as branding become so valued, indeed, the very mark of value?” Heller writes how in the past branding was used for slaves and criminals. Today, cities and colleges have joined toothpastes and soft drinks in the battle for “brand loyalty.”Heller compares corporate branding strategies—slogans, mascots, jingles and the rest—to those adopted by four of the most destructive 20th-century totalitarian regimes: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, and Mao’s China. Heller asserts that design and marketing methods used to inculcate doctrine and guarantee consumption are fundamentally similar.What do you think about political branding and how can you tell if it's masterful or monstrous?Sources:http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/to-the-letter-born/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/arts/31iht-IDLEDE2.1.14885119.html?_r=2