“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?” | ||
| --BRUCE MAU | ||
EVERYBODY: Please read this final chapter. Think about how these principles apply to your work even if you do not call yourself a designer.
Imagine what would be possible if designers did not participate in the export of overconsumption and the unbridled fulfillment of greed. No one understands the powerful mechanism behind these manipulations better than design professionals, and we have the creativity and persuasiveness to make a positive change. We must act, be heard... and sometimes simply say no by designing a better yes.
Some of us choose to pursue design purely as an exercise in the aesthetic. I know that simply creating beautiful objects or surrounding yourself with beautifully designed things can help create a fulfilling and comfortable life. However, that is only the surface of the potential good and sense of accomplishment you can achieve with your creative skills.
Go further: recognize the interdependence, power, and influence of your role as a professional, and let it resonate with the world around you and within you.
Designers ask me, “So what can I do?” My answer: take this three-part pledge, with its components of professionalism, personal responsibility, and time.
For a couple of millennia now, doctors have been taking a pledge. Imagine if, instead of following the Hippocratic Oath, doctors only focused on the wealth to be had from cosmetic surgery... or shaking down dying people for their entire inheritance in exchange for a remedy that would extend life by a few weeks.
Design professionals have built their own oaths. Join a national or regional association of design professionals that has a code of ethics (sometimes known as standards or rules of professional conduct).
Your professional association should have a code of ethics that includes a commitment to social responsibility (and many other good things: licensing, authorship, competitions...). If not, use Icograda’s template or call me: we’ll work together to get that remedied.
If there isn’t such an organization in your region, you can start one (we can help!), become a Friend of Icograda, or become a member at large of a professional organization in a nearby region (such as AIGA).
By joining, you’ll have made a public professional commitment to abide to a minimum standard of ethical conduct. (There will be many other benefits to joining as well.)
A commitment to professional ethics implies a minimum standard of conduct: a combination of your personal and public principles. The personal commitment you make to yourself, in the form of your mission, morals, and beliefs. The professional commitment is a promise to uphold a common set of published minimum standards of behavior, which you make when you join a professional body. Professionalism implies a 24/7 commitment, a recognition that your profession is part of who you are.
[You can go further as well: there are issue-specific public professional credos that you can commit to regarding particular issues within the field of design. Here are some examples:
the Design Can Change pledge at www.designcanchange.org
the Designers Accord at www.designersaccord.org
Catherine Morley’s No-Spec site at www.no-spec.com...or visit www.davidberman.com/dogood for a longer list.]
Be guided by what you know is right.
People ask me what constitutes doing good. I can’t answer for you whether a hybrid SUV is part of the solution or part of the problem. However, I do know that if all designers simply looked in their hearts, chose to be their best selves, and did only work that was in alignment with their principles, then we’d be 90 percent there.
Be aware of your principles. Part of what designers do as professionals – just as is expected of doctors, judges, or engineers – is to strive to maintain our principles all the time. So when it comes to the question of what is right or wrong in the professional world, simply ask yourself, “How would I deal with this on a personal level? Would I recommend this product to my children? Could I look my daughter or my best friend in the eye while speaking this message or pitching the product I’ve designed, or would I have to look away?”
I don’t have all the answers. I do know that if each one of us forbids ourselves from doing anything or helping to say anything that is out of alignment with our personal principles, then that will be more than enough to change the world.
Saying no at times is a big part of it. But it is often more powerful to propose an alternative solution that aligns with the principles of all parties. If we all do that, we’ll get the shift required: we’ll be contributing more than we’re taking away; doing more good than harm.
“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” | ||
| --TYLER DURDEN | ||
I am not asking you to sell your firm. I am not asking you to quit your job. I am not asking you to work pro bono (well, maybe a little bit, but that’s another story).
Here is what I am asking...
Christians call it a tithe. Muslims have something similar: zakat. Jews call it ma’aser. For the Chinese, it is ci shan.
And since time is money, I’m asking that you commit 10 percent of your professional time to help repair the world.
That’s four hours of a 40-hour professional work week (and I’m clearly giving you a break here by pretending that you only work a 40-hour week). Four hours of design for an organization, a company, or government clearly acting for the social good.
There are close to 2 million designers in the world.[126] If each of us were to take just 10 percent of our professional time, imagine what would be possible. Close to 8 million hours a week of designing a more just, more sustainable, more caring civilization.
Let me be clear: I am not asking you to work for free. I am simply asking you to make sure that at least four hours of each professional week is spent on projects that are socially just.
When I sold my design agency, and decided to rededicate myself to working on projects that matter while sharing what I know, I expected to take a pay cut. I was surprised to discover that working exclusively for clients who are doing good in the world actually pays well. I suspect it is because they have products and services that truly fulfill on their promises. And clients like that tend to be stable and healthy organizations that also value my ethical practices. I also know that when I am working with integrity, I produce better work.
Sometimes it’s a bit of a Robin Hood thing: the wealthier clients, who get to be the most demanding, effectively subsidize the less-wealthy clients, who allow us more creative and deadline flexibility. It’s healthy cross-pollination that nurtures everyone involved.
Are we too late? Not at all. The time is perfect. Because of the increasing visual literacy and networking in our society, I believe we can design a scenario where we avoid running the ship aground. 15 years ago, if you said you were a designer, people asked, “What is that?” Today, they tend to already know. Instead they are now asking, “What are designers really about? Are they tradespeople? Are they craftspeople? Are they artists? Professionals? Are they ethical?” What’s our answer going to be? It seems the perfect time to be able to declare, “We’re about this, and we’re definitely not about that.”
If not now, then when? I was invited to speak on ethics at one of the largest design schools in the U.S., Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond – the heart of Tobacco Country. The talk was mandatory for design students, and in a huge campus auditorium I made a point of using example after example from the cigarette industry. When it was over, I wasn’t sure if I’d be shown the door or embraced. After the Q&A, a student came up to me and said, “Thank you so much. I’m from a tobacco family, and until today I assumed I’d be taking a job in the tobacco industry.”
Young designers often promise me they’ll change: later, once they’ve established themselves and gotten a foothold in the industry. More experienced designers will tell me that they wish I would have reached them years ago, but that right now they have a mortgage and kids to feed: they claim the right time will be “someday.” I tell both younger and older designers the same thing: our time is now.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is most important is invisible to the eye.” | ||
| --THE LITTLE PRINCE | ||
commit
Each one of us has a choice: We can spend the best years of our careers helping to convince people they don’t belong, that they don’t smell right, that they’re not thin enough or famous enough or tall enough or red enough or white enough or rich enough or smooth enough... and all they have to do to belong is to satisfy manufactured needs by buying more stuff.
Or we can remember that we all belong, and that each of us has an important role in working together, making the world better.
Design is a very young profession, without a long history that’s impossible to uproot. We’ve barely begun. The role of design need not be defined by selling ideas and things through deceit.
Over 95 percent of all designers who have ever lived are alive today.
Together, it is up to us to decide what role our profession will play. Is it going to be about selling sugar water and smoke and mirrors to the vulnerable child within every one of us... or helping to repair the world?
It should be about embracing a responsible and honored role in society – as it is with medical doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Society will then truly recognize the power of design, and the special role that designers will play in a brighter future.
I know that if we fulfill the gifts of our professional skills by recognizing our power and the stewardship responsibility that accompanies that power, we can make a real difference. And since we can, we must.
Perhaps 100,000 lifetimes of human history preceded yours, and hopefully at least more than that will follow. Do you ever wonder why your life is taking place right now, at this remarkable turning point in human history? I know that we can continue to work together to create an environment where our children and our children’s children will be able to fulfill their needs as easily as we are able to today. The future for humanity lies in the decisions we will make in our lifetimes.
Our first 6,000 years has been civilization’s collective childhood. From here on, it’s one civilization for all – or not. So in this post-Darwinian world, it’s up to us: the product designers, the message designers, the specialists in the transportation of things and ideas over great distances and time. We must make sure that our inventions are not just clever but also wise; that they don’t just do cool stuff, but are also in alignment with a sustainable future for humanity.
And, should civilization survive and thrive, perhaps 100,000 years from now people will look back at this “teenagehood” of civilization and admire the legacy of how we chose to spend our creative energies... of the ideas we chose to propagate.
So choose well: don’t just do good design, do good.
We need you:
Take the Do Good Pledge right now.
I meant it. If you haven’t taken the Do Good Pledge, visit www.davidberman.com/dogood and do it now.
Go further: visit www.davidberman.com/dogood for recommendations of books and Web sites to visit, and for more things you can do.
