Do Good Design:How Design Can Change Our WorldDescription |
In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman argues that global branding strategies are the most powerful tools used today to encourage over-consumption amongst growing Developing World populations, the largest long-term threat to global harmony and environment. He believes that communications professionals have more conspicuous power than they realize, and play a core role in helping some corporations mislead audiences in order to invent unfulfilled “needs” in larger and larger markets. In a World where design has become a recognized corporate asset, designers and their clients have the opportunity to use their persuasive skills responsibly and to accelerate awareness. Recent developments regarding professionalism and ethics offer powerful hope that there is great opportunity for designers and other professionals to choose what their still-young profession will be about: creating visual lies to help sell stuff or helping repair the World by bridging knowledge and understanding.  |
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Table of Contents |
Contents
vii Forewords
1 Introduction
4 The Creative Brief: disarming the weapons of mass deception
6 Chapter 1: Start now
20 Chapter 2: Beyond green: a convenient lie
30 Chapter 3: Pop landscape
48 Chapter 4: The weapons: visual lies and manufactured needs
60 Chapter 5: Where the truth lies: the slippery slope
72 Chapter 6: Wine, women, and water
84 Chapter 7: Losing our senses
102 The Design Solution: Convenient Truths
104 Chapter 8: Why our time is the perfect time
120 Chapter 9: How to lie, how to tell the truth
128 Chapter 10: How we do good is how we do good
134 Chapter 11: Professional climate change
146 The Do good Pledge
148 Chapter 12: “What can one professional do?”
159 Appendix A: First Things First manifesto
160 Appendix B: Excerpt from the GDC Code of Ethics
161 Appendix C: Excerpt from AIGA's Standards of Professional
Practice
162 Appendix D: The road to Norway and China
165 Notes
171 Index
177 Questions for discussion
178 Acknowledgements: a small group of concerned citizens
180 About the author
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Back Cover |
FOREWORD BY ERIK SPIEKERMANN
How did design help choose a president?
Why are people buying houses they cannot afford?
Why do U.S. car makers now struggle to compete? Why do we really have an environmental crisis?
Design matters. Like never before.
Disarming the weapons of mass deception.
Designers create so much of what we see, what we use, and what we experience. In this time of unprecedented environmental, social, and economic crises, designers can choose what their young profession will be about: inventing deceptions that encourage more consumption-or helping repair the world.
Do Good Design is a call to action:
It alerts designers to the role they play in persuading global audiences to fulfill invented needs. The book outlines a more sustainable approach to both the practice and the consumption of design. All professionals will be inspired by the message of how one industry can feel better about itself by holding onto its principles. In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman offers a powerful and hopeful message for all designers.
Today, everyone is a designer.
And the future of civilization is our common design project.
Do Good Design is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA. The author will make a donation of 10% of his proceeds to a not for-profit organization whose mission is in alignment with the goals of this book.
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Author |
David B. Berman is a strategic consultant with over 25 years experience in graphic, interface, and accessibility design. He has traveled to 20 countries as an expert speaker, serves as the Ethics Chair for graphic design in Canada, and as a vice president of Icograda, the world body for graphic design. Clients include IBM, the International Space Station, the Sierra Club, and Canada's largest federal government departments.
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Reader Review(s) |
"In Yiddish, a mensch is a person of integrity and honor and it seems David Berman fills the bill. His book is lively and humorous and sly too because while it makes you think and adjust your perspective, it includes the reader on several levels. Changing the world for the good never seemed more appealingly possible."
--Edward Asner
Past President, Screen Actors Guild
"Timely, relevant, and necessary. Well done!"
--Don Ryun Chang
President of Icograda
"I believe that the real value of this book does not reside in the plethora of data and information that it contains but rather in the compelling biographical account of the author's passionate journey to discover and advocate how design and designers can contribute to doing good in a fragile world."
--Jacques Lange
Former President of Icograda (2005-2007)
"David Berman, in this lively visual narrative, reveals for us the power of design to drive consumption and some of our unbecoming behavior of recent decades. Yet, more importantly, he speaks of the extraordinary potential to design to change the world, leading human behavior toward our aspirational destinies."
--Richard Grefé
Executive director, AIGA | the professional association for design
“...just the right measure of passion and reticence...excellent.”
--Ken Garland
Author, First Things First manifesto
"A fine read."
--Steven Rosenberg
Past President, Society of Graphic Designers of Canada
"I think the book is just great!"
--Mervyn Kurlansky
Co-founder, Pentagram UK
Past-President, Icograda
"It should be required reading, not only for all aspiring designers... but even more so for the established stars."
--Pete Kercher
Founder, EIDD - Design For All Europe
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