Ethics in design is an interesting subject, I recently started reading ‘Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design’ by Lucienne Roberts. I am literally a few pages in and I already finding it truly inspiring. The ideas she bases on fact and history is amazing, she looks as religion and art, politics and philosophy. She combines all these things together to form a coherent thesis on ethics in design. Ethics in design does exist, but to what extent? I have spent a lot of time researching this area of the industry because I believe that it is important for our future(as designers) to look at the whole picture, the effects on society, the way  that a company is perceived in society and what the real message is.

My aim is to make young designers aware of ethics in design or more aware of ethics in design, we tend to see the brief or job as ‘the big sell’ when we should be looking at the long term effects of the message a company wants to sell to the world. At the moment I am reading and researching and do not know the whole story but in a few months will be in full swing of producing well thought out ideas and solutions. I am not saying that I will be able to save the world, or make design better, but what I want is to understand the industry and where is stands in terms of ethics to  be able to change the way I design, and perhaps others for the better.

As designers we have done a lot for society, we have not only produced ways of communicating with each other, but destroyed some companies and built others up. I believe that a designer can input their style and creativity but the underlining message and audience perception is controled by a higher being(the boss). What I am trying to get at is, we often think we have freedom in our designs, when really every small piece of design is already being controled by something or someone else.

Design is based on what people want other people to think about a certain issue or company, not necessarily what it true. This does not go for all design and designers, and I am no exception at some point or another we have all been told to do something we do not agree with. It could have been a colour decision, a typeface decision,  a character design, shape, word, absolutely anything. But its for certain that we have all had to deal with this at some point or another. But the idea behind this is that should we stand up for what you believe in, whether its a colour change or whether we think the project is totally unethical?