Thursday 14 November 2013

OUGD501 - Context of Practice: Ethics Lecture


Ken Garland. Manifesto which was signed by a lot of famous designers, advertisers and art directors of the time. It is produced in a boom time, the boom of consumerism, post war affluence. Thousands of products on the market. They generally felt frustrated that really creative designers were wasting their talents on marketing pointless trivial commodities. A call for designers to do more with their talent. Proposing a reversal of priorities. An ethical turn in a sense that they say it is unethical to waste talent, as creative people should use their talent in a much better way.


Replaced the 1964 manifesto which was republished by Adbusters. They think of themselves as a very political group. It is a journal. They decided to republish and redraft. In the redraft the tone changes to do something more useful with your talent. It gets more venomous. 


Somehow the techniques and apparatus of advertising (the market/capitalist system) is the sacred cow that we should go for. We should end up doing the big bucks jobs for the big companies, this is what designing is about. Within design schools and universities you are schooled in that way of thinking. Getting the job and getting paid.


They talk about graphic designers and advertisers as if we are all the same. All we do is make people buy things that they don't need. We are accused of allowing people to be locked in to a society of consumerism. Complicit in the exploitation of the people in the third world. Cigarettes are advertised which cause cancer and kill people. They are roping us all in as being guilty of global exploitation.



The question is how do you judge worthy and by what standards? The tone here becomes very dictatorial and preaching and judgmental. Far too simplistic. However nobody in the room would dispute that it would be good to get people involved with charities. 


What they are saying is that if you work to market or advertise or brand companies we make consumer items, in some way you are being unethical. What you are doing is perpetuating consumerism which is ultimately ruining the world. You shouldn't be perpetuating consumerism. You should start a revolution against capitalism. Use your talents to show the evil side of capitalism.


Just because you are working for a company you are fundamentally unethical - This is not the case at all. A lot of the designers who signed the second manifesto are really famous and rich designers who. Milton Glaser signed the 2000 manifesto. These people don't have to worry about paying their bills and where the next job comes from because they all have design studios. It is therefore easy to have ethics and look down on other people. It is much more problematic if you are just a designer wanting a job and you don't have the luxury of choosing who you design for and who you don't. This is an unfair blanket judgement.

If this is a call to try and re balance or create a fairer system than the consumer system then fair enough. However putting all of the criticisms of capitalism on their shoulders is unfair. 

By having a minor protest, you aren't going to make much of a difference. What is unethical is the system of exploitation that allows it to happen.

To be an ethical designer is to somehow try to aim to do more with your life and talents to just take a job mindlessly. 


Examples of culture jamming. Is this really overthrowing anyone? No, of course it isn't. 


Turn off TV week. Inform people about the evils of capitalism. They are in favour of visual communication. Meme Warfare is an idea that skips through the popular consciousness. They circulate through the world virally, effective forms of communication. Kalle Lasn is saying given that power, what happens if we do something really great with that talent. Imagine if that message was to overthrow capitalism then what could happen? In a way you could think that this is not exactly ethical in its own right. 



Adbusters stuff is a lightweight version for things that came out in the 70's which tried to formualate a broadly capitalist system of design. This is one of the most famous books by a really interesting writer called Victor Papanek. They are really passionately written. He is not an academic. In his book 'Design for the real world' he made the argument that a lot of design is wasteful and actually harmed the world and made the world worst. This book is a cry for ethics.


What he is crying about is the fact that he sees a grander purpose for us as individuals. He wants people to use their skills to do something more important. He has a sensationalist tone. He comes up with some really weird ideas.


This is a bumper for a car made out of beer cans and a plank of wood. The reason he made this was because a motor company (American) basically said that they weren't putting bumpers on which were going to be more safe because they would have to pay more money to do this ($500). He designed a bumper and put it on his car which cost him about $5 and drove it in to the building in the city where he lives and then got arrested for it. They still said it was impossible to design something cheaply. His idea is not just people's talents are being wasted but people are ignoring design solutions.


If you think of all the problems in the world, designers, advertisers, graphic designers basically just play with the tip of the iceberg when actually there is a whole raft of problems in society that need attention, that if we put our minds to we could solve. It is a cry for ethics. The first things first manifesto is arguing the same thing as this. Things that we could be doing. All very well and good but it is very difficult because you can't just escape capitalism because it is a society in which we live. 



As designers and creatives ultimately we are going to have to work in this consumer culture. This doesn't make us bad people but there is a way of working in this system which is ethical and a way that is unethical. 


It is up to us to decide what is good and ethical. Subjective relativism is basically people doing what they want and go about the world in a way that they see fit.


If everyone believed in relativism then the whole fabric of society breaks down. It is a variant of what everyone thinks at some point or another.


Another theory is cultural relativism. You consider all of the following and then consider whether something is good or bad. This is flawed because it doesn't take much of a critical mind to spot the flaws in this.


The society that you live in will have shared values. The problem is that not all cultures have the same, so you can't marry differences between cultures. In a globalised world we have to have shared values because we share the planet and interact.


Divine command is following the scriptures and what God thinks is good and what God thinks is bad. All of these different theories are not really workable. 


You could however get something from Kant. He fundamentally argued that the thing that distinguishes us from animals is our instinct. If we are angry at someone we don't take irrational decisions. He was the first person to formulate what is ethical and what is not. You should follow a system of general rules and this was called the Categorical Imperatives. Whatever you do, if you think before you act you can decide if you are being ethical or not.


You should extract the maxim. When you are thinking of the meaning of the act that you are doing, if you can universalise and take that rule then think would that be ok or would that be wrong. If you could logically argue that what you are doing would be fine for other people to do then it is ethical.

If we don't give to charity then the maxim becomes that 'I will never give to charity' if everyone thought the same then charity would become redundant. This is unethical and is against reason.

If we use other people (lie or manipulate) then this is not ethical. 


The amount of pleasure or pain. Something is right if it increases pleasure and something is wrong if it decreases pleasure. If you are doing something and you can see a broad outcome then this is ethical and vice versa.

This is flawed like every other theory though because in some situations we could do something bad and everyone would benefit. Something might be ethical but it isn't desirable.


If everyone did whatever they want then you are left with a society where everyone is competing against each other. To be ethical is to think about the common good rather than individual gain.



By thinking about the idea of a social contract and the consequences of our actions, you have a way of thinking about whether what you do is good or not. Morality that comes from a logic or reasoning way of thinking.



By thinking about this you are acting ethically.


He was about design for benefiting all. This is a radio that he designed. The designers role is to go and help the underprivileged and under developed that they could use to help themselves. There is a subtle ethical difference. A workable radio that could be made from just rubbish that was around the streets in Africa. Made out of an old tin can that can be powered from elephant dung.


A lot of famous designers do this. What people get wrong is they think he is trying to say all advertising is evil. But this is not what he means, he is talking about the fact that there is more stuff we can do. So what he suggests is that designers should devote 10% of our time to really with ethical causes (charities etc) and if everyone did that then the whole world would improve. It doesn't matter how you take this 10% of time just as long as you do it.

I think this is a really manageable way of being an ethical individual. This is a very utilitarian way of thinking and working.

It is ethical in the sense of Kant's categorical imperative because if you universalise this when it is a fair society.

It is ethical in the social contract because it is helping to stabilize society.

This is a much more productive way of changing society.

Tithe (giving something away for free)


Some ethical facts:

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