Okay, first of all, thank you for reading this far: I mean who reads appendices?

There is no English translation for the Grafills Etiske Retningslinjer. If you would like to read it in Norwegian, please visit www.grafill.no and find it there.

Speaking of Norway and how many small acts can build up to making a significant difference in the world... I promised to tell you the end of the story about the promise I made to that girlfriend. Here we go....

You’ll recall that, when we last left David, he was on his motor scooter on the way to a meeting, intent on naïvely asking that the constitution of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada be updated to incorporate a professional commitment to gender issues in specific, and social responsibility in general.

Freshly aware of the untidy nature of graphic design, I parked my scooter in the Byward Market and arrived at the annual general meeting of the Society’s Ottawa chapter. At end of the agenda, chapter president Mary Ann Maruska asked for any “Other Business.” I stood up and sheepishly read out my manifesto about feminism and ecology and every designer’s duty. First, the owner of one of the larger agencies in town responded saying that we designers just follow clients’ orders; that the content is not the fault of the designers. Lots of heads were nodding, and for a moment it looked like my quest would end right there.

Then his wife and business partner spoke up. She said she thought there was something to this: wasn’t it up to us to choose what we would or would not participate in? She related that this issue had been bothering her for some time, but she’d never voiced it. More designers chimed in and a heated debate raged for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann took me aside to explain that what I needed to change was the Code of Ethics. That had to be done nationally, and the place to start was in the local chapter – she was an excellent recruiter!

The next year, I found myself vice-president of the local chapter, while Mary Ann moved on to join the national executive.

When Mary Ann became national president, she lovingly lured me into setting up a national committee to work on the Code of Ethics with Robert L. Peters of Manitoba (who would go on to be a president of Icograda), pointing out that this would give me the opportunity to insert my ideas. And so the drafting began. By 1998, with the help of committed GDC leaders from across Canada, we had drafted a Code of Ethics for designers in Canada which recognized our responsibility to society and the environment.

Meanwhile, certification for designers was afoot in Ontario. In a meeting in Toronto, Albert Ng and Rod Nash asked if I would be willing to run for the presidency of the first elected Board of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario. “No way,” said I: already GDC vice-president now, and working on many other good projects; it was the last thing I wanted. He then pointed out that, as president, I could draft the bylaws of the first professional association of certified graphic designers in the world outside of Switzerland, and that would naturally include Rules of Professional Conduct, which could include my clauses. Hmm... okay: I agreed and served as president from 1997 through 1999.

In 1999, those Rules of Professional Conduct were legally vetted in Ontario, and bound to the laws of the province. In 2000, almost identical language was adopted nationally by the GDC. In 2001, Icograda, the world body for design, adopted the Canadian code as a template to be offered to other national bodies seeking to create their own.

Meanwhile, the GDC made me a Fellow for my work on both the code and certification for designers, which is likely what brought me to the attention of Mervyn Kurlansky, president of Icograda, who convinced me to join the board of that world body.

At the opening of Canada’s hosting of the world headquarters for Icograda in Montreal in May 2005, organizers asked me to speak later that year about professional ethics in Norway and Denmark at the Era 05 world design congress. They wanted to know about made-in-Canada design professionalism.

During the talk in Oslo, I threw down a challenge to the Norwegians: about having a code of ethics, and making it stick through government-sponsored certification. And a few people (and as we know, it only takes a few...) took it very seriously. Later that year, they contacted me about working from the Canadian template. Not long after, at a meeting in Hong Kong in 2006, AIGA executive director Richard Grefé asked me if we could together work the Canadian clauses into their revised Standards of Professional Practice.

Then, early in 2008, Grafill, the Norwegian association for designers and illustrators, adopted certification, including a code very much based upon on our Canadian solution. And so, in May 2008, I took great pride in speaking at the first meeting of certified graphic designers in Oslo – where their new code of ethics was released – to essentially tell them this story I have been telling you, exactly twenty years after the week it began.

As I hurriedly finish up this text in the darkened audience of a design conference, listening to a new generation of remarkable creatives speak of how they will change the world, e-mail arrives from Richard Grefé: AIGA’s China office has established our revised Standards of Professional Practice as a template for over half a million design students in China.

So, don’t tell me one person can’t make a difference.

One person: the girlfriend who cared about how design affects her world.

One person: the guy who agreed design is political, and wrote a manifesto.

One person: the woman who spoke up at the meeting once she heard she was not alone.

One person: what’s stopping you?