A CRITICAL AND PROCESS DOCUMENTATION PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF DESIGN EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN Ethical Sellout Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry By Kelly Small BDes, OCAD University, 2007 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Acknowledgements/ Thanks to the collaborators and participants who generously donated their time to the research that made this project possible. Thank you to my supervisor, colleagues, and instructors at Emily Carr University. A special thanks to Katherine Gillieson, Craig Badke, Garnet Hertz, Louise St. Pierre, Gillian Russell, and Helene Day Fraser. Thank you to my partner, Dahlia. I couldn’t have done this without your unwavering love and support through the ups and downs of this process. Likewise to Ashley, Pat and Myrna. Your supportive and enthusiastic feedback and eagle editing eyes have been invaluable. Finally, tons of gratitude to Winston, my floofy companion who has kept me company through the hours of writing and design and forced me out into the world when I was trapped in the zone. Love you, chicken. 2 To Dahlia “Designers need to recognize and take responsibility for the fact that designed things go on designing —or they fail to grasp the ethical implications and issues of designing and the designed.” (Fry, 2009 p. 3) Keywords: Design Ethics, Design for Sustainability, Social Impact Design, Social Innovation, Professional Ethics, Marketing, Advertising, Graphic Design, Communication Design idealistic manifestos (100 Years of Design Manifestos, 2014, Monteiro, 2017), organizations denouncing the unethical aspects of industry (Ico-D stands against This project aims to refine notions of ethical design crowd-sourced competition for the Tokyo Olympics within the commercial communications industry 2020 logo, 2016, Schwab, 2018, Time’s Up®/ and investigate the potential for actionable support Advertising, 2018), and publications celebrating to ethical practice. It intends to provide a unique aesthetics in visual case studies for public-sector aggregation and distillation of ethical design clients (Resnick, 2016, Simmons, 2016). wisdom in the format of a comprehensive, foundational guide to assist practitioners in This project explores a history of ethical design exploring their ethical potential and encourage discourse, popular publishing in the area of ethical the sustainable, dynamic development of a more design, and expert interviews and surveys with over socially and environmentally responsible practice. 130 practicing professionals. The research reveals an industry that has long focused on problematizing Though the “responsible design movement” design’s complicity in capitalist endeavour. It has continues to flourish, predominant perceptions of been said that for designers to effectively address the the marketing, advertising, and design industries world’s problems, design must first free itself from remain largely negative (Heller & Vienne, 2018, p.103). its position as a tool of advertising (Garland, 1964, A profit-above-all focus has resulted in Papanek 1971) and separate itself from the hegemonic public notions of an unethical industry complicit market economy (Fry, 2009, p. 80, Walker, 2013, in perpetuating gratuitous consumerism, reflexive p. 446). While there is probable partial truth to this media consumption (Harris, 2016) and gross racial suggestion, it is often impractical and, at times, and gender inequality (3% Movement, 2018). impossible for a practitioner to leave the industry Industry discourse indicates a heightened awareness altogether. Given the multi-billion dollar size of the about the perils of commercial work (Schwab, 2018) Canadian communications industry (Fuller, 2016), and employees are increasingly primed (Deloitte it is in our best interest to develop a means to Millennial Survey, 2018) to participate in efforts effectively support the thousands of industry- to address today’s most pressing issues, in and employed practitioners (Graphic Designers - Canada outside of the design industry, like diversity, ethics, Market Research Report, 2018) to realize an ethical gender equity, climate action and socially responsible practice within their existing work-life structures. consumption and production (AIGA Design Census, 2017, United Nations Sustainable Development Research findings have supported the development Goals, 2018). of ten ethical design archetypes under which over 130 actions toward ethical practice are organized. Arguably, however, design literature has had The book-as-thesis has been designed with an little to offer in terms of actionable support for the intention toward accessibility, inclusivity, and clarity employee’s desire for purposeful work (Garrotem, in order to provide practitioners of many ilks with the 2017). Ethics discourse in communication design practical knowledge to realize a more ethical practice. 6 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Abstract/ has largely centred on the dissemmination of “...isn’t it better not to walk away from jobs on ethical grounds, but to ask if there’s some way that you can have influence, something you can bring? The views won’t be challenged if I’m not there.” (Roberts, 2006 p. 47) 2 Acknowledgements 3 Dedication 5 Abstract 7 Table of Contents 9 Introduction 10 Context and Framing 12 Methodology 15 Contribution 17 The Book 19 Bibliography 19 Codes of Ethics 19 Design Manifestos 20 Ethics & Philosophy in Design 21 Industry Ethics 25 Ethics in Design for Technology 27 Popular Publishing in Design Ethics 28 Social Impact, Innovation & Activism in Design 31 Sustainability & Eco Design Appendices 8 i Appendix A: Ethics Certificate ii Appendix B: Literature Review Matrix iii Appendix C: Visual Research & Analysis - Data Visualization ix Appendix D: Visual Language Exploration xiv Appendix E: Affinity Diagramming Data Analysis xv Appendix F: Survey - Ethics in the Creative Industry xviii Appendix G: Industry Interview Questions xxiv Appendix H: Industry Interview Raw Data xxvi Appendix I: Industry Interview Data Analysis Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Table of Contents/ “Despite the growing success of the responsible design movement, the industry is still widely perceived as mostly irresponsible, prioritizing profit and market share in the attention economy over consideration or accountability for harmful social consequences” (Heller and Vienne, 2018 p. 103) contrast and legible typography and uncomplicated diagramming. Its content is BIPOC and LGBTQ+ inclusive. Designed for a primary audience for whom social justice topics may be new, the book provides readers with an introduction to important contemporary issues like decoloniality and gender without delving into deep academic content. Marginal notes containing resources and suggestions for further reading support readers to continue their education on topics that resonate. Most importantly, the book is crafted to ensure that readers have access to uncomplicated ethical guidance that is enactable within any existing work-life structure. The project aims to subvert a My master’s project is an industry publication that recurrent and arguably privileged position found in I have authored and designed. The book is written design academia and design activism by authors such for a primary audience of creative practitioners in as Tony Fry (2009, p. 80) who, at times, denounce the communications sector including the design, capitalist endeavour and encourage practitioners marketing, and advertising industries. My secondary away from industry in order to realize an ethically audience includes design-adjacent communications sound practice. Challenging this position, the project industry-employed practitioners that may include is designed with the knowledge that: those in strategy, production, project and account a) for many creatives it is a necessity to earn a management, and agency or client-side leadership. living within the commercial industry and, Throughout my process I aimed never to lose sight b) many of those creatives may be critical about of an industry-employed audience whose desire, the unethical aspects of the industry and share like my own, for actionable support in realizing a more a willingness to enact change. ethical commercial practice remains largely unrequited. The book takes on the stance that, collectively, The book is written and designed with an intention we may positively impact the system within which toward inclusivity and accessibility. I aim to avoid we operate by acting from the inside. The ethical complicated jargon and employ language consistent potential within each design practitioner represents with social and environmental justice organizations a significant opportunity to support the realization including AODA, CSJ, Decolonizing Design, of a more responsible industry. Depatriarchising Design, the UN SDG’s and World 10 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Introduction/ Charter for Nature. It is designed with large, high and innumerable others dedicate their careers to continuing this tradition of examining and, in many cases, attempting to redesign design’s role in society. Fry calls for design to become a ‘redirective’ practice and take responsibility for the fact that designed things go on designing (2009 p.3). Maeda educates industry about inclusivity and ethics at the intersection of design and technology (2018). Manzini has developed the DESIS Network1 in order to forge a collective of social innovation practitioners toward sustainability. Roberts has dedicated her practice to design ethics, accessibility, and a socially aware agenda. McCoy and Shaughnessy educate and Practitioners of design have dissented against the write prolifically about the imperative of socially implications of a burgeoning consumer culture and responsible design citizenship (Heller & Vienne, 2018 advocated for design’s potential as change agent since p. 189, Shaughnessey 2010). Finally, Walker, a vocal its early days as a distinct practice (Robers, 2006, opponent of the hyper-consumptive market p. 28). Fifty years ago, the Ulm School was founded on economy, chooses to write and design about mindful the notion that design must contribute to a “socially introspection that intends to engage with a reflective responsible construction of the world” (Spitz, 2015 spirituality that reunites his material world with p.7), in 1964 Ken Garland and 30 other designers meaning (2011 p.3). Further, with a notable range published First Things First to implore an advertising of global signatories, the 2017 Montreal Design saturated society to reconsider its priorities, and Declaration attempts to formalize the ethical pursuits Papanek’s famed Design for the Real World— of contemporary designers by developing “an action arguably the most widely read publication on plan for harnessing the power of design to address design—called on designers to create for human pressing global challenges” (Montreal Design needs and not unsustainable, manufactured wants Declaration 2017, p. 3). These examples represent a (Papanek, 1971, p. 234). These are only a handful zeitgeist alive with determination toward a more of examples of the design industry examining its ethical design practice. responsibilities in a rapidly transforming, increasingly complex world. Though these early Further indication of enthusiasm for responsible rallying cries remain largely unheeded as resource pursuits can be exhibited in the prevalence of creative depletion and exploitation accompany unrelenting agencies focusing on public good2, the flourishing of growth in technology and profits (Walker, 2011, pp. 1), design for social innovation in academia3, the AIGA’s the optimism of the design field toward a more just, 2017 Design Census4 which placed ethics as one of the sustainable world remains resolute. Theorists, industry’s top priorities, and a growing number of educators, and practitioners like Tony Fry, publications dedicated to sustainable design, John Maeda, Ezio Manzini, Katherine McCoy, social design, design activism and the like. My own 11 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Context & Framing/ Lucienne Roberts, Adrian Shaughnessy, Stuart Walker research into the top publications in ethical design, Further, a theme emerged that connected social an industry survey, and 18 practitioner interviews design and sustainability literature with themes indicate an eagerness to engage in the topic and of rejecting capitalist endeavour. For example, also a scarcity of comprehensive resources that Fry argues for an absolute separation of design from account for the unique challenges faced by the “hegemonic market economic system that has at commercial practitioners. its central focus the production of wealth rather than the production of quality of life” (2008, p. 80). Largely targeting design students and academics, Fortunately, branches of contemporary design such few of the assessed publications provide accessible, as design for sustainability, social impact design, actionable guidance to support industry creatives and design for social innovation have evolved to to work more ethically. The richest information become a guiding force and ally to the public good. supporting an ethical practice like those by D’Anjou, However, it is a current impossibility for much of the Dilnot, and Fry, were also the most scholarly, design industry to practice professionally if it were theoretical, and arguably the least accessible to a separated from the market economy. diverse industry audience. The aforementioned readings engage in critical discourse that links For better or worse, the creative industry remains traditional moral philosophy to ethics in design that, largely subservient to the dominant capitalist system. while valuable to the greater field, are challenging to As such, I argue for the convergence of the existing translate to a daily practice as shown below: dichotomy that appears to exist between design for the public good and commercial endeavour. With a To act is indeed to bring something into existence; significant contingent of designers working in but what is important is that action is intentional. industry with a desire to do more ethical work Sartre asserts that no action can be causally (Appendix F Fig. 6.4), this book aims to ensure that explained. Further, intention is to be understood absolutist notions about design’s role in commercial asseeing a lack and action implies as its condition endeavour do not preclude the opportunity to recruit the recognition of a desideratum (objective lack) a mass of industry allies in the pursuit of a (D’Anjou, 2010, p. 96). better world. http://www.desisnetwork.org/ Merriam Webster defines Public Good as “in order to help or benefit everyone”. In this instance, agencies who focus on public good intend to profit while serving a greater social purpose. Examples of agencies focused on public good: https://www.fastcompany.com/3057883/why-20-top-ad-agencies-joined-forces-forpublic-good http://forgoodintent.com/ http://publicinc.com/ http://www.weareloop.ca/ https://medium.com/global-shapers-new-york-hub/this-list-came-about-when-i-washunting-for-just-plain-cool-organizations-to-work-for-e88cd138169d 3 https://dsi.sva.edu/program/curriculum/ http://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/programs-and-courses/area-of-study/ community-building/social-innovation/ https://www.ocadu.ca/academics/faculty-of-design/social-innovation.htm http://www.desisnetwork.org/labs/ 4 https://designcensus.org/ 1 ...[averting system crises] cannot be achieved by a simple assertion—or by naive hope. Neither dogmatic assertion of “will” nor “greening” will suffice. No age (and our short industrial-economic epoch constitutes an age) allows itself to be superseded by will. If we are going to attempt to move from the nihilistic despair of self-interest we need a more structural look at the position we now inhabit (Dilnot, 2015, p. 166). 12 2 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Context & Framing/ capitalist endeavour which was, at times, incongruous with my project’s focus on an audience whose work is centred in the commercial world. As such, academic papers such as Walker’s 2011 Imagination’s Promise, quoted below, were foundational and supportive to my process but did not comprise the core of my literature review. Perhaps the most important role for design today is to explore ways of re-uniting our material world with a world of meaning – with ethics, inner growth and spiritual wellbeing. Currently, we are far removed from such a conception of design, implicated as it is in an aggressively competitive, profit-centred corporate system that not only seems to have lost its moral The research for this project is comprised of an compass but is also severely affecting the natural academic literature review, industry literature review systems of the planet. In this world of unrestrained, (popular publishing in design ethics), practice-led consumer-based capitalism, material ‘beauty’ has visual research, industry interviews, and a media become merely the façade of technological progress, scan. Methods including data visualization and affinity which is the dynamo of corporate growth. diagramming played a major role in supporting the This superficial version of beauty conceals a ruinous drawing of insights and development of book content. path. It is a shallow, debased beauty divorced from Book content authorship includes the creation of ten notions of goodness and right action; the outer aspect ethical design archetypes, book chapters, and design of a world of things alienated from perennial truths of the publication itself. (Walker, 2011, p. 1). In an effort to familiarize myself with the ways in While Walker asserts a necessary criticism about the which ethics are being addressed in communication ecological perils of superficial excess, his denegration design and adjacent design disciplines, the project of industry may be problematic. I argue that negating commenced with immersion in sustainability- the corporate industry’s potential (and therefore that focused literature, participation in environmental of its practitioners) toward a more righteous path, ethics courses and securing a role with the Emily risks alienating a significant contingent of designers Carr Univeristy DESIS lab. This period of exploration and potential allies. included scholarly readings by Tony Fry (2009, 2015), Ezio Manzini (2006, 2015), Donella Meadows (1999), Further, the highly theoretical nature of academic Louise St. Pierre (2014), and Stuart Walker (2011, 2014, work was incompatible with my goal of developing 2017) whose teachings have been indispensable in accessible support for practitioners of most the development of content in my book. Many of the education levels. 13 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Methodology/ writings, however, are founded on a criticality of I included 12 books considered ‘popular publishing’ The primary research for this project was to survey in the area of design ethics for my primary literature and interview industry practitioners. A preliminary review. Using a large matrix, I aggregated textual survey of over 100 respondents provided baseline information about each book’s content breakdown, knowledge about ethics in the industry, that there format, how the book advocates for ethical work, is significant interest in the subject matter, and the actions associated with ethical practice, and how connected me with potential face-to-face interview it references moral philosophy (Appendix B Fig 2.0). respondents (Appendix E Figs.5.0-5.5). I conducted 18 Through data visualization I began to diagram my face-to-face interviews with as diverse a cross section findings to glean deeper insights. I diagrammed of the industry as I could achieve. I asked 11 questions the popularity of each book using a Bayes ranking (Appendix F Fig 6.0) to age, ethnicity, and gender- equation (CFA Institute, 2018), the frequency of diverse designers, art directors, creative directors, key indexed terms such as sustainability, ethics, design entrepreneurs, agency leadership, design and social responsibility, core tenets per publication, strategists, creative account types and design and the various approaches to ethical practice educators from across Canada as well as one from (Appendix C Fig 3.0). The visual research provided the U.S. I first employed affinity diagramming to insight into the most popular ethical design content organize responses into core categories (Appendix (that which is actionable, accessible, and includes G Fig 7.0) and then mapped the most actionable short ‘bites’ of information), where gaps in ethical responses against the aforementioned ethical design design knowledge exist, and most importantly, archetypes (Appendix H Fig 8.0). affinities in publication content (Appendix C Figs. 3.1-3.3). The latter supported the development of A media scan of approximately 300 sites, surveys, ten ethical design archetypes on which the project social accounts, blogs, and articles rounded out the has been built (Appendix D Figs. 4.0-4.3): research. I then collected the most actionable content and plotted it according to the ethical design Ethical Essentialist archetypes diagram (As shown in Appendix H Fig. 8.0). Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Across popular publishing, interview responses and Ethical Design Educator a media scan, the diagrammed research data became Digital Ethicist the basis for the book’s core content. The visualized Ethical Entrepreneur data supported the authorship of a series of over 130 Social Impact Designer ethical design actions organized by archetype. Social Innovation Designer The visualized research data also supported the Eco Designer authorship of the front matter of the book, informed Design Activist the intentionally oxymoronic and subtly provocative title, and inspired the layout, typography, and design of the book itself. 14 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Methodology/ “...responsible design has not yet attained the visibility and propagation required to permeate the field and raise industry standards” (Heller and Vienne, 2018 p. 106) The book is a modest contribution to an evolving zeitgeist. Industries across the 21st century neo-liberal, capitalist world are witnessing a shift in which employees are increasingly striving for meaning beyond satisfying personal egos and the acquisition of capital. Millennials especially are establishing a working culture where spiritual fulfillment and high ethical standards are requisite (Deloitte Millennial Survey, 2018, Gallup, 2016, Garrote, 2017). It is my goal to provide digestible, actionable support to help industry-employed practitioners realize these goals. The book itself is intended to be the accessible, singular compendium of the project findings. It is my intention that the book is the first of a series of projects. Future work may include conference-based ethical design workshops and partnering with an existing corporate training company to develop ethical programming and education for in-house organizations, agencies and clients. The book was not written under the illusion that it will single-handedly change the world. It is, however, one voice of many that intends to contribute to the discourse of an evolving society. It is my belief that as practitioners responsible for mass communications and millions of impressions a minute, designers and design-adjacent creatives are a deeply worthy focus of ethics research and empowerment. 16 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Contribution/ “When this generation of designers forms a significant percentage of the population, then design will no longer be regarded as nothing more than the sweetly scented lubrication of consumerism.” (Shaughnessy, 2010 p. 101) The Book/ Section Title Kelly Small enacting change from within—or becoming ethical sellouts, so to speak. *** So, who am I? I was born into a family whose livelihood relied on the exploding consumer culture of the 80’s and 90’s. My father ran shopping centres. You could say that brands are in my blood. My childhood is inextricably connected to malls. Check out the famed First Things First manifesto and its Emigre-authored successors at designishistory.com/1960/first-things-first/ system altogether, even if we wanted to, so best to find ways of I played hide-and-seek in the labyrinth of corridors, indulged my family with cringe-worthy modelling in back-to-school fashion shows and the Sears catalogue, and spent my tween years buying mood rings, Guess jeans, Seventeen Magazine and whichever angsty album had just been released. And when I got my first job, I was learning to lubricate the purchase of fancy sunglasses—you guessed it, at the mall. Design was a fitting career choice. Like me at the time, its value and identity relied largely upon its proximity to the brands du jour. It’s entirely unsurprising that I landed in advertising while completing my first design degree at OCAD University. With my intimate understanding about the creation of desire, it’s even less surprising that I stuck it out until my mid-30’s. I rose to the role of creative director quickly, and before I knew it I was winning awards and developing strategies to flog the biggest brands in the country. 1 Copyright © 2019 by Kelly Small All Rights Reserved. All serif type set in Noe Display (2015) and Noe Text (2015) by Lauri Toikka & Florian Schick. All sans serif type set in Maison Neue (2017) by Timo Gaessner. Cover, diagrams, and book design by Kelly Small. Developed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. 2 Dedicated to the creatives who never start a project without asking if something bigger can be achieved. 3 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 4 About the Book Archetypes Diagram Dear Sellouts 06 09 10 Archetype Cheat Sheet Ethical Essentialist Conscious Compromiser 34 44 56 Ethical Entrepreneur Social Impact Designer Eco Designer 88 94 104 End Notes Glossary Resources 135 160 175 Table of Contents Industry Ethics Facing Issues Taking Action 16 22 28 Industry Activist Digital Ethicist Ethical Design Educator 66 74 82 Social Innovation Designer Design Activist Making it Happen 118 124 131 Gratitude 186 5 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck About the Book/ Book/ 6 About the Book Let’s start by setting an intention. This book aims to clarify the complicated business of ethics in design, marketing, and advertising. Written with the belief that when responsible action is made ultra-accessible and judgement is withdrawn, we creatives are empowered to make positive, incremental changes to our practice—regardless of where or for whom we may have worked and despite acts of questionable ethical merit from our pasts. The book is free from esoteric philosophical debate. Rigid codes of behaviour are not what this book is about. It is, instead, a collection of ethical actions learned from industry professionals whose practices include a daily dose of giving a f/ck. The actions in the book are an aggregation of wisdom from over 130 surveyed and interviewed industry professionals, and over 50 years of popular publishing in the area of design ethics, design activism, sustainability, and social innovation. The result is a diverse and comprehensive guide that intends to be a unique contribution to an evolving zeitgeist and support for the realization of our collective ethical potential. 7 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck The actions are organized by ten Archetypes of Ethical Design: Ethical Essentialist (pg. 44) Conscious Compromiser (pg. 56) Industry Activist (pg. 66) Digital Ethicist (pg. 74) Ethical Design Educator (pg. 82) Ethical Entrepreneur (pg. 88) Social Impact Designer (pg. 94) Eco Designer (pg. 104) Social Innovation Designer (pg. 118) Design Activist (pg. 124) The ten archetypes cover the spectrum of ethical practice. They ensure that each of us may identify the archetypes within which we currently fall and discover those we may aspire to become. Designed for maximum inclusivity, the archetypes and actions aim to leave none of us without an ethical action to carry out immediately. Presented on a continuum, the ethical actions start by providing simple, accessible support that fit within any existing work-life structure and end with actions that may require more lifestyle maneuvering. We do not have to leave our jobs to practice ethically. We do not have to fire our clients to practice ethically. Most importantly, no matter what corner of the industry we find ourselves in, each of us can do something. Right now. 8 About the Book F P F RO IT RY D AN / AG ES PU EN C TT RP O A OS F Y/ T TA IN E IRM / IN -HOUS E Conscious Compromiser IN DU BA ST LA NC E O SI L MP Design Industry Activist Social Innovation Designer US Ethical Entrepreneur AT I O N Social Impact Designer PUR E POS RI N PU RP O SE M MOST CHALLENGING SU / L TA VE DR AJ IV E OR EN -D EN VI R O Fig 1.0. The archetypes of ethical design practice S T R I C T LY NA AI ST NO TS AR IA M EM N AD N AC BIL OF PR N- Design Activist IT Eco Designer / Ethical Design Educator ITY / E FOC DUC Digital Ethicist SOCIAL SECTOR CO MM ER CI AL Ethical Essentialist 9 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Dear Sellouts/ Ethical Sellout noun An oxymoron. Relating to a commitment to right conduct where possible, avoids causing harm to people, animals, and the environment; the concurrent compromise of some moral principles, especially for money or career progression. 10 Dear Sellouts Ethical Sellout is for anyone in the creative industry who ever felt like they had to compromise their personal ethics for the sake of their professional practice. Quick survey: Have you ever had to sell a product that you would never buy for yourself or your own family? Been complicit in or experienced discrimination or unequal representation? Flogged questionable consumables? Crafted an experience that misled users into a click to buy? Worked with a client or company whose environmental practices made you cringe? Contributed to over consumption? Convinced an audience they weren’t quite good enough until they bought whatever you were selling? For those of us in the business of design, marketing or advertising, these ethical transgressions can happen on the daily. If you’re anything like my colleagues and I, the too-real jokes about selling our souls to make a living certainly weren’t coming out of nowhere. Some folks (including me) agree that communication design as we know it today was born out of a burgeoning “need” to advertise the mass produced wares of the industrial revolution.1 Since then, we’ve become impressively sophisticated in our approaches to persuasion and the lines between strategy and manipulation are increasingly blurred. So, is it true that asking designers not to persuade is like asking “fishermen [ahem, people] not to fish”?2 Or can we continue to do the work that we do and also exonerate ourselves from our roles in hyper-consumption and the environmental and psychological degradation that can accompany that? Are there small actions we can make 11 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Check out the famed First Things First manifesto and its Emigre-authored successors at designishistory.com/1960/first-things-first immediately to start enacting change in an industry historically preoccupied by our misdeeds3, but reticent to propose anything actionably different? I believe there are. Selling out may have always been in our blood, but practitioners have also been outspoken against the implications of consumer culture and advocated for design’s potential as a change agent since its early days as a distinct practice. Fifty years ago, the Ulm School was founded on the notion that design must contribute to a “socially responsible construction of the world”,4 in 1964 Ken Garland and 30 other designers published First Things First to implore an advertising saturated society to reconsider its priorities, and Papanek’s 1970’s Design for the Real World called on designers to create for human needs and not unsustainable, manufactured wants. The industry was dominated by a uniform demographic5 designing and dissenting but, arguably, doing little acting to shift design’s responsibilities in a rapidly transforming, increasingly complex world. Despite numerous calls-to-action and manifestos6, design’s early rallying cries remain largely unheeded in many sectors of the industry. Don’t get me wrong. There are a number of emerging and extremely promising areas of design that are founded on the pursuit of a more sustainable and equitable world. We’ll cover them. What I’m getting at here is that for better or worse, much of the creative industry remains largely subservient to the dominant capitalist system and the social and environmental perils that come along with that.7 Few of us have a choice to leave the system altogether, even if we wanted to, so best to find ways of 12 Dear Sellouts enacting change from within—or becoming ethical sellouts, so to speak. *** So, who am I? I was born into a family whose livelihood relied on the exploding consumer culture of the 80’s and 90’s. My father ran shopping centres. You could say that brands are in my blood. My childhood is inextricably connected to malls. I played hide-and-seek in the labyrinth of corridors, indulged my family with cringe-worthy modelling in back-to-school fashion shows and the Sears catalogue, and spent my tween years buying mood rings, Guess jeans, Seventeen Magazine and whichever angsty album had just been released. And when I got my first job, I was learning to lubricate the purchase of fancy sunglasses—you guessed it, at the mall. Design was a fitting career choice. Like me at the time, its value and identity relied largely upon its proximity to the brands du jour. It’s entirely unsurprising that I landed in advertising while completing my first design degree at OCAD University. With my intimate understanding about the creation of desire, it’s even less surprising that I stuck it out until my mid-30’s. I rose to the role of creative director quickly, and before I knew it I was winning awards and developing strategies to promote the biggest brands in the country. What was surprising, however, was the emergence of a new ethics and awareness about the perils of the ever expanding, ever-more-sophisticated (yay, data!) world of marketing that I was contributing to, passionately and avidly, every day of my life. Whether it was a health scare, my emerging mindfulness 13 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck The 3% movement was started in 2013 to address the fact that only 3% of Creative Directors were female. Since, that number has risen to approximately 11%: 3percentmovement.com practice, or just a freak flash of consciousness, I woke up from a lifetime of deep complicity in mass-consumerism. My once-impassioned approach to creative briefs that sought solutions for sophisticated persuasions became a painful slog. I was using the power of design to strategically manipulate literally millions of target consumers (a.k.a. people, citizens) to use toxic products, eat food devoid of nutritional value, beautify their less-than-adequate appearances, and upgrade their technology and vehicles needlessly. I also witnessed rampant discrimination and a painfully deep gender divide (I was one of only 3%8 of female creative directors at the time. Slash that number if we factor my queerness.) I had become aware of the extent to which my industry and practice were not contributing to the betterment of society and, suddenly, it was all I could see. My career crisis continued to escalate. On paper, I had a great job in a global firm. My clients at the time included the world’s most profitable toy company, one of Canada’s ‘big-3’ telecom companies, and a major automotive brand. Gratefully, I also worked on a lone not-for-profit client, the gender-equity brand of one of Canada’s largest charities. For years I had done my best to ensure I was working on at least one non-profit client. This one, like those before it, provided a soft place to land for my sullied ad-industry soul. It became respite from a world where bright minds make big money to invent the needs that sustain the beast of unbridled consumerism. As imperfect as the not-for-profit industry is, it offered an opportunity to think beyond single-minded financial return and design meaningful work that could support positive change. It also continued to affirm my sense of criticality and discontentment with the way things were. 14 Dear Sellouts I quit my job, sold and donated my stuff, and set off to figure out a way to put ethics at the forefront of my practice. I decided to pursue my Master’s degree at Emily Carr University where I used design research to explore the ways in which we may collectively subvert the more damaging aspects of our industry. My philosophy is rooted in an earnest belief about our inherent goodness as humans. I trust that, given the right opportunities, most people want to do better and that ethically-driven design methods can help to create those opportunities. Within these pages, I am attempting to address the big ethical questions that have been plaguing me. I’m not ready to forsake the industry I have spent my career in, but I do want to understand how it can adapt to be better. This book aims to provide the actionable support and resources that I wish had existed for professionals like me who may still choose to ‘sell out’, just a little more ethically. So, let’s get started. 15 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Industry Ethics/ 16 Industry Ethics No Pressure, but since we’re operating in an unregulated industry, the responsibility for ethical action rests squarely on our shoulders. Ethics in design can be very subjective. It is the conscience of the practitioner that determines the moral framework that will guide each decision1. So, for better or for worse it is critically important for each of us to educate ourselves on the topic of ethics and morality. Cue the crash course. Morality is concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour and the goodness or badness of human character. Ethics is the branch of philosophy dealing with that morality. The term ‘ethical’ has a few definitions. First: The discipline dealing with what is good and bad or with moral duty and obligation2. Second: morally good and correct. Third: To be ethical is to avoid activities or organizations that do harm to people, animals, and the environment.3 So, for our purposes here ethical design is design with the intent to be morally good and avoid social and ecological harm. Unethical design is its mindless or ill-intending counterpart. These are the basic definitions on which this book is predicated and about as deep as we’ll go into moral philosophy. I read an article in a popular industry magazine last year with an ironic but memorable title, Design is Inherently an Unethical Industry4. It featured reader-led discussions about morality and virtue in the industry with a special focus on design in tech. In it, a handful of contributors offer arguments that the design industry can never be considered ‘good’ as long as we prioritize client and financial interests over the needs of our users. 17 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Many regard social media as a pivotal tool in the 2011 Arab revolutions by supporting mass organization against authoritarian regimes in ways that traditional tools could not. However, as governments and militant groups have caught up with the so-called ‘social media revolution’, intentions to use Facebook to drive collectives of the oppressed are often thwarted Real talk, it wasn’t the feel good article of the year. It brings to mind the work of design theorist Tony Fry, who writes that if our industry is to achieve ethical status, it must separate from a market economy that values the production of sweet, sweet wealth (my language) over improving people’s lives5. I certainly can’t argue with the logic. I can, however, fall down a rabbit hole of crippling existential crises at having no idea how to continue paying rent while overthrowing the dominant economic system. But I digress. Other contributors in the Unethical article argue that we designers are just humans wielding tools that can be used for good or for evil, regardless of how complicit we are in capitalist endeavour. Practically speaking, this resonates with me a lot more than a theoretical pursuit of extricating design from the marketplace. In the article, one user shares a poignant example that for all the fake news Facebook helped to spread, it also enabled the Arab Spring and helps us to maintain meaningful connections with distant family and friends. It’s an important reminder that bringing something new into existence invariably results in unintended consequences.6 Neil Postman’s work Amusing Ourselves To Death contains fascinatingly accurate predictions and relevant discourse about our current relationship to emerging media technology 18 It also reminds me of media theorist Neil Postman’s declaration that our relationship with emerging technology is something of a Faustian bargain, where, “technology giveth and technology taketh away.”7 His point? For every advantage that a new technology offers, there are often a host of unconsidered societal changes and effects: some positive, some not-so-positive. So, the way I see it, in order to be an ethical creator, it is critical that we start Industry Ethics impacts of our creations—knowing that design giveth and design taketh away. It’s up to each of us, in every decision we make to maintain a conscious awareness to do our best to avoid those not-so-positive effects of the things that we create. Where this leaves me in the topic of design and ethics is with a steadfast belief that the notion of an inherently unethical industry with absolute ideals about goodness and badness simply does not exist. In a famous analogy, French philosopher Bruno Latour reminds us that it wasn’t Industry codes of ethics and right conduct can be found on page 176 by considering the social, cultural, political, and economic until Frankenstein neglected and abandoned his monster that it became truly monstrous8. If we follow Latour’s wisdom by compassionately tending to and nurturing our creations to mitigate their potentially harmful effects then we’re well on our way to a more ethical practice. Further, if cultivating a more conscious, nurturing practice is essential to responsible work then ethical design is a lot like the care we provide our loved ones—it is an organic, ongoing practice and not a rigid set of rules to be adhered to. This is a very good thing because, over the course of my research, I found that we industry practitioners show little interest in the rules associated with traditional codes of ethics. Collectively, the design, marketing, and advertising industries have somewhere around twelve non-compulsory codes of ethics9. Zero compulsory. Out of 130 people I interviewed and surveyed only 5 people actually referenced the existence of those codes. Not one person cited a specific rule. I don’t find this surprising. 19 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck RGD: Registered Graphic Designers of Canada GDC: Society of Graphic Designers of Canada Ad Standards: Non-profit self regulating advertising body ICA: Institute of Communications Agencies CMA: Canadian Marketing Association I spent about 15 years in the industry and not once did an employer, educator, or colleague make reference to a code of ethics. I have to confess, prior to my research for this book, I had never read the RGD or GDC or Ad Standards or ICA or CMA codes. Based on my research, I’m not alone. Is it that we simply don’t care? Or could it be that these codes aren’t particularly accessible or designed to fit smoothly into our everyday working lives? I choose to believe the latter and my research supports this too. In her book Good: An Introducion to Ethics in Graphic Design, designer Lucienne Roberts interviews philosopher Anthony Grayling who confidently shares that an ethical code of conduct is too awkward and inflexible for a complex and deeply subjective profession like design. Their conversation suggests that designers may do better with a focus on actionable examples of responsible design practice to support them in making ethical choices at the individual level.10 I’m partial to this example, because the actions in this book aim to do exactly that. Let’s close out this section with some light moral philosophy. Aristotle believed that moral behaviour is something we can get better at. According to him, an ethical life manifests through the actions we take and, lucky for us, the more we practice, the more we improve.11 20 Industry Ethics 21 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Facing Issues/ 22 Facing Issues I take issue with the suggestion that the most important ethical decision we creatives can make is whether or not we choose to accept a job.1 Certainly, there can be power in a boycott. Particularly in the case of consumer activism where mass moral outrage stands to tarnish an offender’s reputation2 or temporarily compromise economic stability. But in the case of walking away from a creative project on ethical grounds, don’t we risk passing the job on to someone less likely to challenge its morally questionable issues? Don’t we relinquish an opportunity to have influence or make change from the inside?3 Undoubtedly, there will be times when a project or client is so morally deplorable that declining the brief and speaking out is the best way forward. Making that decision is up to each of us in the moment. The average project decision, however, is often far less cut and dried. It’s important not to fall into the reductive view that anything in the arts, non-profit, or public sector is ethically a-ok and anything corporate is fundamentally corrupt. Public and private sector organizations, with things like tax funding and corporate sponsorship, can be deeply interrelated. It’s also impossible to know how ‘clean’ an individual charitable donation really is.3 The lesson? We need to do our homework. It’s important that we acknowledge the complexity of the issues involved when questioning the ethical merit of any project or organization. Often, it’s less about the type of business or organization and more about the practices within. 23 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Licensing: Payment for the use of fonts, images Piracy: Unauthorized use or reproduction of work, often programs, fonts Plagiarism & Appropriation: Passing off someone else’s work as one’s own Spec Work: Providing creative work without an agreed upon fee or contract Ethics in design can be broken down by legalities, integrity and morality4. By now, the former two are well-explored areas as they relate to professional practice. They’re the self-explanatory, common sense-type-things like licensing, piracy, plagiarism and appropriation, spec work (surely we all know this is on the naughty list), deceptive practices, and generally being a stand-up professional who takes seriously their responsibilities to clients, audiences, and fellow designers. The industry is saturated with resources on legalities and professional integrity5 and this book will cover some of the more pressing issues. But if I’m honest—which I really should be in a book about ethics—my interest lies in the category of morality and the actions we can take to start addressing our complicity in the social and ecological consequences of our industry. As creatives responsible for mass communication and millions of audience impressions per minute, we’ve got a lot of power to make an impact. We’ve all heard this before. This isn’t descending into another “design has participated in destroying the world but it, too, has the power to save it!” call to arms. What I’m saying is that, for better or worse, we deeply affect the way information is interpreted, brands and products are consumed6, and the ways that people experience the mediated and artificial7 world. Further, the strategies and delivery methods by which we accomplish these things are increasingly sophisticated, transparent, and seamlessly integrated into our lives. Surely, your attention span will agree. So, with this power to impact, it can be argued that the 24 Facing Issues the most pressing issues that society faces. Things like gender equality movements including Time’s Up,8 #MeToo,9 and Depatriarchising Design,10 addressing ableism and ageism, trans and queer visibility and inclusion, cultural diversity and decolonization11, hyper-consumption and sustainable practices, and the growing list of technology-related issues depatriarchisedesign.com decolonisingdesign.com timesupadvertising.com ethical designer has a responsibility to stay connected to around privacy, data, addictive experience design, and deceptive user interface design to name a few. According to Dr. Miriam Ahmed, in her equally optimistic and critical essay in the 2018 edition of Citizen Designer, academics and the public have an overwhelmingly negative perception of design and advertising today. Her writing covers the ways in which minority designers are leading a growing industry commitment to social responsibility. She laments, however, that: Despite the growing success of the responsible design movement, the industry is still widely perceived as mostly irresponsible, prioritizing profit and market share in the attention economy over consideration or accountability for harmful social consequences.12 That’s a bit of a downer, and also not entirely surprising. industry can do better. Saying that, there have been major strides toward a more ethical communications industry in the past few years. The list is exhaustive, but here’s a start. We’ve got the 50/50­ initiative and the 3% conference14 addressing gender diversity in the industry. Various social good awards15 and Cannes jumping on board to award brands who dedicate their 5050initiative.org rgd.ca/programs/sogood-awards canneslions.com/enter/awards/good We all know that we can do better just like we know that the 25 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Consider indulging in a more optimistic new source periodically. I’m a fan of www.positive.news marketing spend to address global issues16 (now if they would only address that oppressive dress code). Last year’s AIGA design census shows us that design ethics is now among the most important issues to current industry practitioners.17 We now have numerous conferences like Design Thinkers and SXSW with core content dedicated to design ethics and creative responsibility.18 Design schools are shifting away from abstract and commercial assignments to those that nudge students toward projects with a more critical social and environmental lens—much to the dismay of some traditional designers.19 And we’re seeing a significant ongoing conversation about the problem of racial diversity in the industry20 and the efforts toward inclusivity at every stage in the creative process. Beyond all of this movement, there are emergent areas of design like design for social innovation toward sustainability,21 social impact design, and design activism whose missions aim to rethink design’s role in society to become less of a tool of capitalism and more supportive to critical social and environmental problems. We will cover this in the coming chapters. As you’ve deduced by now, this book isn’t a deep-dive into the ways in which our society and industry are slowly imploding— we’ve got mass media for that. It is, instead, an introduction to the overarching issues that an ethical designer would benefit from understanding and the resources to know where to start. 26 Facing Issues 27 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Taking Action/ 28 Taking Action and collective declarations of possibility. They decry the most pressing issues of our industry and implore us to do better. Manifestos and design ethics are inseparable. They’ve been the go-to method for communicating our discontent and arguing for more socially and environmentally responsible ways of designing for more than a century1. From William Morris’ 1889 The Arts and Crafts of Today2, to 60 years of First Things First3 iterations, to Dieter Rams 10 Rules of Good Design4 to The Designers Accord5 to the recent Montreal Design Declaration6, manifestos have been essential to the dissemination of our most progressive design ideals. Inspirational and encouraging as they are, they also tend to designdeclaration.org/declaration/ backspace.com/notes/2009/07/design-manifestos.php I’ve always loved a manifesto; compact packages of inspiration conclude before giving readers any practical next steps to realize the messages they espouse. While outlining the ‘how’ may not be a manifesto’s job, its absence can mean that even the most widely shared texts can lose momentum before their values are implemented. We can see evidence of this in the hugely popular 1964 First Things First manifesto spearheaded by British designer Ken Garland, which got a lot of press but made little tangible impact on our industry. With 85+ design manifestos over 100 years, is it possible we’re at a saturation point for these impassioned proclamations? I tend to think so. What I believe we require now are a set of simple, accessible, and most importantly, actionable resources to support us in actually living our values in our everyday careers. This section provides exactly that. “Vision without execution, after all, is just a hallucination.” According to Edison, Einstein, and an ancient Japanese proverb7, anyway. 29 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck My research for this book had me poring over popular and academic publishing in the area of responsible design, design citizenship, and design ethics. From manifestos to industry publications and countless blogs, articles, social posts, and academic papers, I used exploratory visual design research techniques and data visualization to synthesize and understand the themes of what I was learning. The process was fruitful. As shown on page 9, I found that ethical design can be broken down into ten distinct areas of practice. They’re framed in the book as archetypes like the Eco-Designer or the Design Activist. The following pages describe the characteristics of these archetypes and aim to support us in discovering which areas of ethical practice might best suit our working lives. We might ask ourselves: Which ethical design archetype(s) resonate most? Which might I want to emulate? Which reflect my current practice? Which feel aspirational enough to inspire the future of my career? Within each archetype section are a specific set of practical actions that can be taken to achieve a more ethical practice. These actions are designed so that any of us, regardless of industry sector or which business or organization we work for, can find an action to carry out immediately. They’re organized to be easily adapted to everyday working life and the actions are listed loosely from the simplest and most accessible to the most challenging. The actions and archetypes can support each of us in fleshing out our individual value systems and help us to 30 Taking Action determine what kind of professional lifestyle is feasible as we embark on implementing a more responsible practice. It is my hope that these actions will empower us to enact change, and also to collaborate and support each other as we embark on our ethical journeys. I trust that, in time, our collective action can contribute to a critical mass that will make ethical practice a crucial requisite to careers in our industry. 31 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Archetypes 32 Archetypes & Actions & Actions 33 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ethical Essentialist/ An Ethical Essentialist is all about building the foundations of an ethical practice. An ideal starting place for anyone at the early stages of their ethical journey, the Ethical Essentialist can work for any organization, in any area of the design industry and simply seeks to get the basics right. Less likely to focus on deep questions of morality, they’re focused on keeping their practice legal and maintaining professional integrity at all times. They attribute images appropriately, follow contracts precisely, pay for every font, never pirate their programs, and ensure timesheets are accurately completed. • Seeks the foundational elements of an ethical practice • Applicable to any practitioner • Concerned with legalities and professional integrity Ethical Essentialist Design Industry Activist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator 34 Conscious Compromiser Design Activist Eco Designer Archetypes & Actions: Archetype Cheat Sheet Conscious Compromiser/ A Conscious Compromiser is committed to producing ethical work in the traditional (for-profit) commercial industry where possible. With little control over client base and agency politics, they accept a necessary level of moral compromise in order to maintain their position. This archetype resolutely adheres to the most reputable industry codes of ethics. The actions associated with the Conscious Compromiser support an industry practitioner who works in an agency, in-house, or anywhere in the marketing and advertising fields. • Seeking support to act ethically where possible • Accepts the ethical imperfections of industry, effects change where possible • Profit takes some priority over purpose • Strict adherence to industry codes of ethics Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator Design Activist Eco Designer 35 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Design Industry Activist/ A covert activist in the same commercial field as the Conscious Compromiser, this archetype seeks to subvert from within a business or industry to implement incremental change toward social, organizational, and environmental benefits. This challenger of the status-quo struggles to accept the ethical imperfections in industry and actively works to resolve them. The actions in this section support practitioners with an activist mindset to self-organize, speak up and make significant change within the workplace as well as the industry at large. • Activist mindset, challenger of status quo • Proponent of democratic participation within a business and industry • Leadership role, on the front lines of change Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator 36 Design Activist Eco Designer Archetypes & Actions: Archetype Cheat Sheet Digital Ethicist/ A Digital Ethicist is a self-proclaimed tech nerd who advocates for the ethical implementation of digital products and services across a variety of design and design-adjacent industries. Also present in academia, this role aims to educate and advise everyone from students to c-suites about the ethical perils of mindless technological design and development. An advocate for tech to support and strengthen civil society, the Digital Ethicist is also well versed in mitigating the environmental impacts of the connected world. The actions in this section support any practitioner whose work involves technology to become an effective proponent of ethical design in tech. • Advisor on the practical application of ethics in tech • Educator role, outspoken advocate • Leadership on the issues surrounding design in tech Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator Design Activist Eco Designer 37 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ethical Design Educator/ This archetype is a design instructor, academic, or researcher in a university or college. Their focus, regardless of which area of design they specialize in, is ensuring that students design mindfully and with an understanding of the relationality and impacts of their work. This role aims to equip students with a strong ethical foundation that will positively impact the types of roles they choose in the future and the behaviours that will form their practice. The actions in this section may inspire educators or future educators to incorporate an ethical dimension into their work. • Practitioner based in a college or university • Instruction has a consistent ethical dimension • Aims to develop students into responsible citizens Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator 38 Design Activist Eco Designer Archetypes & Actions: Archetype Cheat Sheet Ethical Entrepreneur/ compromise purpose, this entrepreneur maintains ethical control by running a business with positive impact at its core. The Ethical Entrepreneur is an independent freelancer or the leader of a social enterprise like a B Corporation with up to date knowledge about emerging areas of accountable capitalism. This business-minded archetype balance a social and/or environmental purpose with the need to earn money and aims for balance above all. The actions in this section offer insight into the foundations of ethical entrepreneurship and can benefit from the actions associated with the Social Impact and Eco Designers. • Balances profit and purpose • Self-employed or runs a social enterprise B Corps or Benefit Corporations are for-profit companies that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose With a steadfast belief that turning a profit doesn’t have to • Believes in the potential of accountable capitalism Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator Design Activist Eco Designer 39 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Social Impact Designer/ A Social Impact Designer uses the tools of design to address critical social issues and enact social change toward a more equitable and just society. Typically found working in the arts, for non-profits, or social enterprise clients, this humanist archetype places purpose firmly above profit. This archetype is considered morally aspirational to industry practitioners like the Conscious Compromiser and Design Industry Activist but is not always practical because of its lower financial reward. The actions associated with the Social Impact Designer support practitioners to work collaboratively with marginalized communities and enact meaningful social change. • Often found in the arts, non-profit, government • Prioritizes purpose over profit • Low ethical compromise, high emotional reward Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator 40 Design Activist Eco Designer Archetypes & Actions: Archetype Cheat Sheet Eco Designer/ archetype challenges human exceptionalism to place minimizing environmental destruction at the core of their practice. The Eco Designer advocates to design products and solutions to educate, inform, and mitigate negative impacts to the planet and regenerate compromised resources where possible. This archetype’s practice and philosophy acts in accordance with the triple or quadruple bottom line, meaning they aim to balance environmental, social, economic, and personal needs in order to establish a more holistically sustainable society. The actions of the Eco Designer support a philosophically environment-first practitioner to develop a balanced practice that supports sustainable change. Human exceptionalism or Anthropocentrism is the concept of human supremacy above other life forms Unlike the people-first social impact designer, this ecocentric • Challenger of human exceptionalism • Planet-first mentality • Educates, informs, and designs toward sustainable change Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator Design Activist Eco Designer 41 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Social Innovation Designer/ Transition towns are grassroots projects that intend to increase a community’s self-sufficiency and reduce the harmful potential effects of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability The innovative and grassroots fusion of the Social Impact and Eco Designers, the Social Innovation Designer’s practice facilitates social collaboration and activates participatory principles to address complex social, environmental issues toward sustainability. Largely existing outside of industry, this archetype strengthens civil society by activating community engagement. Sustainable societies are developed through interventions like transition towns, intergenerational knowledge exchange, emergency preparedness, permaculture initiatives and innumerable others. The actions in this section provide an introduction to this emerging area of ethical design practice. • Practices participatory principles to strengthen civil society • Addresses complex social and environmental issues • Grassroots/community focused • Designer as facilitator not top-down expert Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator 42 Design Activist Eco Designer Archetypes & Actions: Archetype Cheat Sheet Design Activist/ practices outside of commercial markets and uses design as a political tool to address progressive social or environmental issues and activate change. The Design Activist is an 'ethics above all' practitioner whose uncompromising moral character makes it tough to stomach work in a traditional commercial firm. Often found working in creative collectives, supporting various activism circles, and publishing in the likes of Adbusters, this archetype strives for moral consistency and dedicates their work to empowering the most marginalized. The associated actions support practitioners to channel their passion for purpose and resistance into generative solutions to challenge the status quo. • Uncompromising ethics, moral consistency • Largely practiced outside of commercial markets Adbusters is a Canadian-based not-for-profit that describes itself as a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age adbusters.org The most anti-establishment of the archetypes, the Activist • Aims to support the most marginalized Conscious Compromiser Design Industry Activist Ethical Essentialist Digital Ethicist Social Impact Designer Ethical Entrepreneur Social Innovation Designer Ethical Design Educator Design Activist Eco Designer 43 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ethical Essentialist/ 44 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Essentialist As a budding Ethical Essentialist, you’ll aim to start with the foundational elements of a responsible practice. As you dive into this section, try to keep a key question in mind: What really matters to me? As we’ve covered, when it comes to design, acting ethically is almost entirely a personal choice. Our industry has a handful of optional rules to follow, but there’s no governing body that mandates a specified level of ethical education. No studying. No exams. No certification1 like there is for architecture, even. There is no official hippocratic oath for designers, although attempts have been made2. Formal design education excels in developing critical thinkers, but often omits addressing the practical ethical issues that arise in working life. So we must actively choose to make ethical practice a part of our careers and make it an ongoing task to develop our own set of ethical parameters. The following actions, presented as a sort of ethical à la carte, can support that process. Aim to start small, develop achievable goals, and commit to the patience it takes to make sustainable change happen. 45 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Understand the Big Issues A helpful first step in deciding what matters to you is familiarizing yourself with the big, overarching issues being faced globally. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, are the global plan to establish peace and prosperity for all people and the planet3. These goals include eradicating hunger, poverty and unemployment, creating equal access to quality education and health care, establishing gender equality and mitigating climate change by putting an end to the degradation of our environment. Here in Canada4 we’re committed to implementing the SDGs with a special focus on our most vulnerable and marginalized citizens. This means showing sensitivity and paying respectful attention to the unique needs of indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, those who identify as LGBTQ2+, refugee and immigrant populations, and women and girls. Start by Soul Searching As we saw earlier, some say that the most significant decision a designer can make is whether or not to accept the job itself5. While it’s important not to decline every project or client with minor infractions as a knee-jerk response, doing some soulsearching and research at the outset of a job is beneficial to understanding what you may be complicit in by participating in a new project. Assessment may include the client’s manufacturing processes, supply chains, the safety of their products, and the responsibility of their marketing messages. You may also choose to investigate how sustainably they operate, their inclusivity practices, how they manage data...the list can go on. If you discover that an organization is engaging in less-than-responsible behaviour, it’s up to you 46 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Essentialist Sometimes the best action to take is accepting the brief and asking how you can work from inside the organization to make the change you wish to see. Talk the Talk The language we use can have a significant impact on our ability to understand the social and environmental issues we’re dealing with. Language shapes ideas, influences our Glossary of terms related to ethical design practice can be found on page 160 to decide if a hard decline is the best way forward. capacity to empathize, and contributes to our ability to be educated and engaged citizens.6 To be an effective ally in the collective pursuit toward a more ethical industry, we can equip ourselves with appropriate vocabulary to talk about the issues we face. The back of this book contains a glossary of terms related to design ethics to support understanding about the social, political, economic, and environmental facets of ethical work. Having the right language can support us in imparting our knowledge sensitively and eloquently. Make Ethics a Daily Practice Like yoga or meditation, ethics are a practice where the best results come from daily ritual or routine. In the way that toned muscles or mastering a yogic headstand won’t come from a single session, ethical action isn’t a one-time-thing and requires patience and a consistent commitment over the course of a career. The good news? Daily practices don’t have to be perfect—we just have to show up and act. Over the course of a career, our cumulative effort can have significant impact. 47 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck It has been shown that diverse teams produce more socially responsible work and that minority designers are currently leading the responsible design movement. 8 Keep It Legal Getting the legal basics right is core to any ethical design practice. Ethical transgressions to avoid at all costs can include plagiarizing other people’s work, not paying for fonts, pirating software, and using imagery without the appropriate rights. Easy, right? Most of us are already nailing this. Challenge Your Biases Designing supportive, ethical work environments and experiences means being conscious of our subtle, unintentional biases. These often show themselves as a preference toward likeness or sameness, so best to challenge ourselves to ask why we chose those particular personas to design with, why we requested feedback from one colleague and not the other, why we want to hire or promote a specific candidate and not another, why we invite certain people out for drinks, who we sit with at lunch,7 et cetera. Challenging our biases can help to create safer emotional spaces by maximizing inclusion of all ethnicities, genders, sexualities, and abilities. What’s more, teams will better reflect the needs and diversity of your audiences, the work is more likely to take on a socially responsible dimension,8 and we’ll foster a sense of belonging wherever we work. Brief with Bigger Objectives How do we get our audience to use our stuff? Buy more stuff? Look at our stuff? Love our stuff? Without careful attention, a brief can become single-minded wish list of client objectives where the needs of audiences and the public get largely ignored. Client objectives aren’t going anywhere, but we can start rewriting our briefs to add an ethical 48 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Essentialist dimension. We may advocate for an additional section of consideration on each creative brief we’re involved in by asking: who or what does this project help? This question ensures that we never start a project without considering how something bigger than our client objectives may be achieved. If the answer to the question is ‘nothing’, which it may often be, then it’s up to you and your team to change that. Let’s challenge ourselves to add a new layer of social or environmental objectives each and every time. Get Obsessed with Accessibility Over 4.4 million people in Canada are considered disabled9 and, with an aging population, this number is only set to rise10. It is an absolute necessity for any ethical design practitioner to ensure that each designed experience is as accessible as it can be. We can begin by familiarizing ourselves with the resources available through the GDC11, including government accessibility standards, accessible fonts, universal access symbols, and the principles of inclusive. An important aspect of inclusive design is ensuring that a diverse set of decision-makers are represented during the process. Champion Inclusivity The truth is that design discourse has been largely dominated by heteropatriarchal anglocentric/eurocentric ways of knowing, seeing and acting in the world12. In other words, the community of practitioners talking about design have been pretty homogenous—white, male, and straight. As an ethical designer, it’s critical to get real with ourselves to challenge our prejudices and assumptions as they relate to Heteropatriarchy describes the socio-political system where heterosexual cisgender men have primacy over other sexual orientations and gender identities inclusive design. Tip: Accessible design should also be 49 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck the richness (or lack thereof) of unique perspectives and cultural knowledge that influences our work. In order to design more inclusively, represent authentically, and approach issues with more empathy, we can aim to maximize diversity on project teams and start listening more deeply. We can actively notice cultural and experiential similarities and differences without making value judgments and be inquisitive when we encounter something we don’t understand. We can work to understand the nuances that exist in a culture or subculture and respect the unique worldviews that culminate from those experiences, rituals, languages, religions, histories, and politics that differ from our own. Doing so can have significant impacts on the sensitivity with which we interact with and represent people in our work. It can also mean the difference between perpetuating discriminatory practices or committing to reconciliatory13 speech and action. Tip: Take cues from social justice organizations and learn to make key cultural acknowledgements at work or school. At Emily Carr University in Vancouver, we vocally recognize14 the First Peoples Traditional Territory15 on which our classes or public talk is taking place. It’s a small but important step toward reconciliation, and one that acknowledges the social, economic, and physical violence committed in the name of colonization. Say No To Spec Since giving away work for free to wealthy corporate clients devalues our collective practice, avoiding spec work where possible is a great way to be a shining beacon of responsibility in the industry. If a no-spec practice is not immediately 50 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Essentialist realistic, consider advocating against it by respectfully informing leadership about the perils of the practice16 instead of refusing it altogether. What’s so bad about spec? Beyond losing money and time, spec often means a rushed and informal design process that can compromise the quality of creative work. This also can establish unfair and ineffective client/designer relationships and, all too often, it puts creative work at the risk of being plagiarized17. When faced with a client expecting spec work, consider pitching the job without including the expected speculative creative work. Instead, include a short, polite letter outlining why the practice is problematic. Challenging and bold as it may be, it is also an excellent way to determine if the client is worthy of you or not.18 Call Out the 'Ists and the Phobes' Calling out racist, ageist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, or sexist behaviour, regardless of where it’s coming from, is an absolute imperative to a responsible practice. Whether we tell HR, leadership, a coworker, or, ideally, whomever is uttering the problematic language, if we’re witness to discriminatory behaviour, it’s our responsibility to speak up and advocate for it to stop. Perhaps just as important is having a voice as it relates to the ethical actions we witness. If we see responsible work, call it out as well. Let’s aim to celebrate our colleagues, clients and suppliers who are taking action against injustice and working to make the world a little better. When it comes to our own practice, leading by example is great, but let’s not be afraid 51 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck to speak up and promote our own ethical actions. A well promoted responsible practice can be a memorable point of difference that supports our career goals. (Actually) Read the Codes of Ethics As we already know, there are many completely optional codes of ethics that relate to the design, marketing, and advertising industries.19 As thrilling as reading codes of conduct can be, knowing our industry’s suggested codes of ethics can be an important foundational early step in developing a more responsible practice. Tip: Consider using the codes as a starting point but not the entire ethical foundation of your practice; the research I’ve conducted for this book suggests that a large number of us believe that the rules are in dire need of an update. Challenge the Integrity of the Content There’s a long history of discourse that posits that design is not neutral or value-free and I couldn’t agree more. It has been said that “a design has no more integrity than its purpose or subject matter. Garbage in, garbage out.”20 So, it is imperative that we challenge the quality and substance of the content we’re provided by clients and colleagues. By doing so, we ensure the project doesn’t commit offenses like perpetuating harmful stereotypes, supporting unsustainable practices, or manipulating users with false claims. And what if you’re provided with content that offends? Speak up. Advocate for better. 52 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Essentialist Cultivate Empathy Cultivating empathy and aiming to understand and connect to the needs and aspirations of the people we work with is critical to successful design interventions. Design firm IDEO, in their Human Centered Design Field Guide, describe empathy as “the capacity to step into other people’s shoes, to understand their lives, and start to solve problems from their perspectives.21” This applies as much to those we design with as it does for our colleagues, clients, employees and students. One of our most significant opportunities as designers goes well beyond using empathy as a tool to solve problems through design. By committing to a depth of research, we may unearth key insights that can empower our designs to pass the experience of empathizing on to our audiences. We can, thereby, instill heightened levels of compassion, understanding and criticality for our viewers. Measure & Share your Ethical Successes For better or worse, we live in a world preoccupied by quantifying and measuring data. Emerging areas such as social impact design, social innovation, and the innumerable areas of sustainable design haven’t been around long enough to amass a great deal of data and case studies to support their successes. Further, as designers we’re not always the most data-hungry folks around the table. We can participate in the larger responsible design community by making a commitment to defining goals and reporting, widely, the results of our projects. Consider sharing your projects and results in programs like AIGA’s Design for Good,22 RGD’s Social Good Awards,23 and Cannes Good24 to get a wider audience inspired by and building upon our work. 53 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Design Without Deception Let’s use the example of photoshopping. It is so ubiquitous that, like Kleenex, it’s now a proprietary eponym independent of its Adobe roots. Designers and non-designers alike know what it represents: the removal of imperfections, beautification, enhancement, and the improvement of saleability—often at the expense of authentic representation. Heavily retouched, impossibly perfected images of bodies have been implicated in having a negative impact on body image and mental health25. In recent years, however, a handful of organizations26 are making a very public choice to ban the retouching of their models to reflect a more honest, accurate image of real people to their consumer. The data has yet to show whether this has a positive impact on sales, but the decision has been met with appreciation and brand love in social media. Redefine your Bottom-Line Ambitions Success is measured by the size of our salary, right? The industry—perhaps most industries—are still largely rooted in a ‘more is more’ mentality when it comes to cash.27 To establish a practice with social and environmental stewardship at its core can sometimes require a shift; priorities of abundant financial compensation are often replaced by those focused on the potential for impact. In expanding our purpose beyond bottom-line ambitions, we naturally have to rethink our criteria for success. This doesn’t mean we can’t earn a living, but sometimes it means making less in order to achieve more. Social good organizations have less cash than the automotive industry. Environmental projects aren’t funded like oil and gas. There may be less money in purpose, but benefits like 54 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Essentialist enacting change, job satisfaction, and living our values make it all worthwhile. Be a Citizen First We’re citizens first and designers second, so a balanced ethical practice requires considering more than just how and what we design. If we dare to look at the impact of our everyday lifestyle choices, we can bravely ask ourselves how we might do better by people, animals and the planet. We could begin to shop locally and take transit or cycle. We could consume fewer animal products or, if we do choose to buy them, support free range and choose products with high ethical standards. We might stop using one-time-use cups and plastic lids, cutlery and straws and get ourselves some reusable gear (so hot right now). We could trade, mend, and buy pre-loved clothing instead of buying new so we’re not supporting the unsustainable28 fast-fashion industry. Consider that storing less data means that our carbon footprint lessens significantly since data farms cause up to 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions29. That’s as much as air travel, one of the most carbon-intensive actions we can take. Perhaps the most important question of all is as simple as daring to ask ourselves how can we consume less and experience more? 30 55 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Conscious Compromiser/ 56 Archetypes & Actions: Conscious Compromiser As a Conscious Compromiser you’re an industry-employed ethics advocates whose principles may gently bend in order to keep your earning potential high. You’ll aim to accomplish this in a way that doesn’t completely jeopardize your moral principles, though you’re well aware that some compromise is necessary. You’ll generally start with a commitment to adhere to industry codes of ethics by reputable organizations like the RGD or AIGA. You’ll aim to make small, incremental changes toward social equity and environmental stewardship within your existing work-life structures (don’t quit your day job) where possible. Around the workplace, you’re the type that people look up to. You lead by example with a daily practice of making sound ethical decisions at the individual level. You may not save the world in one fell swoop, but by committing to a career with ethics at your core, you’re certain to make meaningful change over time. 57 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Acknowledge Your Role in the System Hi, my name is Kelly and I’m a tool of capitalism. A critical first step to an ethical practice is being aware of and owning our roles within a troublesome consumption-machine and the human and environmental consequences that come along with that. Being aware of the impact of our actions can empower us with an enriched understanding about the work that we do and, hopefully, (very likely, since we’re clearly interested) help us make change. There is a fine line between awareness of issues and being crushed by the weight of the problems we face. Aim for the former to stay in a headspace of action and empowerment and remember: we can’t single-handedly save the world in one profound act. What we can do is decide to carry out some of the actions outlined here, or develop some of our own, to bravely effect incremental change toward a better world. Ask: What If Everybody Did That? Simple yet fundamental to ethical work is imagining a world where everybody made the decision you’re about to make. What if everybody designed to cultivate empowerment? What if it was standard to hire with diversity in mind? What if every designer rejected the idea of exploiting a user’s psychological vulnerabilities to sell stuff? The same is true for the reverse. If you’re about to make a decision of questionable ethical merit, imagine the effects of that decision en mass. Decision-making becomes simplified when framed in this way. Advocate within your organization for folks to start asking themselves this question. Champion the idea of adding a layer of ethical consideration to the everyday decisions that you and your colleagues make. 58 Archetypes & Actions: Conscious Compromiser Give Every Job An Ethical Orientation Every job can be an ethical opportunity. If you’re committed, an otherwise soul-crushing brief can be subverted to cleverly infuse an ethical dimension. Aim to think beyond the needs of your client to examine the impact of your design on your audience, the public, and on the earth. Consider that you could advocate for improved accessibility, make sure all team members are treated fairly, use transparent and honest language, ensure your creative execution is environmentally friendly, work to remove misleading or inflated claims, or even suggest a partnership program where a percentage of proceeds go to a worthy cause. With practice, you will start to develop go-to strategies that help balance the objectives of your project so that every output can succeed on multiple levels. It goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that we shouldn’t use misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or racist language and, gratefully, work environments are becoming more aware of the importance of creating safe spaces. A refresher: Don’t assume to know a person’s pronouns. If you’re unsure, default to ‘they/them’ or ask. Don’t default the gender in a fictional or hypothetical situation to ‘he’. Don’t call things gay (unless you’re looking at a Pride float covered in unicorns and even then, if you’re going to call it gay make sure it’s a positive exclamation of how fabulous it is). Know the origins of the idioms you use so you’re not inadvertently using sexist or racist references. Avoid using Contentious as trigger warnings are, in order to foster safe, respectful spaces at work, consider educating yourself about the common topics that may contain potentially distressing content Learn to Avoid Triggering Language 59 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck A living wage varies across Canada, but in major cities like Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver at the time of writing (2018-19) living wages varied between approximately $18-$21/h ableist words like ‘crazy’, ‘psycho’ or ‘lame’, ‘dumb’ or ‘insane’. And you can take this a step further by avoiding militaristic language that is often rife in agency environments. Think: target, war room, execution, postmortem, guerrilla tactics, blasting, pulling out the big guns, bait and switch, capture, convert…the list goes on. Inadvertently using violent language supports aggressive working environments and contributes to a culture of othering1 our audiences to create an ‘us versus them’ mentality. Advocate for Living Wages As in many other industries, design has a history of treating its interns terribly. The worst offence? Not paying them at all2. Exploitative and, arguably, elitist (since only those able to afford to work for free can accept such roles), unpaid internships are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Advocate within your organization for a collective understanding that everyone’s time is valuable and hire talent for a fair, living wage. An ethical practice ensures all colleagues, regardless of level, are treated fairly and respectfully. Add Ethics to Your Ethos Many designers have a philosophy or ethos that gets shared through portfolio sites, social channels, industry publications, resumes and even email signatures (although I don’t advocate for the latter). If your work has even the slightest ethical dimension, don’t be afraid to publicize that area of your pursuits. You’ll be generating necessary awareness about the responsible design movement as well as keeping yourself accountable. Think you don’t have a philosophy? Not sure how to describe it? Most of us follow principles or beliefs, it’s possible you’ve just never had to be 60 Archetypes & Actions: Conscious Compromiser specific about them. A good place to start is by looking into the philosophies and approaches of some of your design heroes3. Choose the ones that resonate most and see how your own ethical approach can figure into them. Reflect the Real Population Regardless of how ethically challenging your work environment is, there is often one thing a designer can maintain control over—visual representation. We can more accurately reflect Canada’s populations in the work we design by choosing to show people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ2+ communities, and folks with different abilities. Consider boldly challenging the gender and ethnic assumptions that can be rife in client-supplied personas and target groups. If they feel narrow, non-inclusive and inaccurately representative of the true composition of our country, speak up. Appoint yourself as an Ethics Educator Keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to educate and empower clients, account staff, and colleagues to act in ways bottom line. One of the most powerful places to start is by informing those around you about the business benefits of social and environmental pursuits. Did you know that social good initiatives are increasingly embraced by consumers?4 Companies that communicate a strong and meaningful purpose often realize increased brand loyalty.5 Did you know that making sound environmental choices is actually good for business? Eco-friendly programs are often shown to save companies money by reducing waste Studies have shown that over 25% of Canadian consumers would pay more for a brand that is socially and/or environmentally responsible that align with a greater purpose than simply affecting the 61 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck and improving efficiencies6. These are a handful of examples of many that can support your efforts to educate those around you about the merits of making ethical choices. Stay informed and spread your knowledge widely. Help your Audience Live Healthily Over the years there have been all sorts of sketchy ways the design industry has been complicit in manufacturing needs through marketing and advertising. The practice of manipulating audiences has become increasingly stealthy through the use of things like dark patterns (manipulative interface designs that trick users into doing things they may not have wanted to do) and addictive experiences in digital product design. Aiming to identify and avoid these modes of practice is a key step toward an ethical practice. It’s a questionable act to call ourselves ethical designers if we’re exploiting self esteem to sell a product, advertising nutritionally void foods to kids,producing experiences that capitalize on a dopamine/reward response, selling high fashion using violent, misogynistic imagery, or promoting mindless consumption. Design has been guilty of all of these things on a pretty significant scale. These transgressions aren’t always simple to avoid, however mindful awareness, positive intentions, and advocating for the promotion of healthy behaviours in our audiences are steps in the right direction. Sell the Power of Purpose This won’t always show up in the client-provided ‘target’ descriptions of your audience unless you’re specifically tasked 62 Archetypes & Actions: Conscious Compromiser USP (unique selling proposition). Truth is, however, a huge percentage of Canadians—92% according to one study7— are so conscious about the impacts of their food, clothes, products and services that they would switch brands for something with a more compelling purpose. Armed with the knowledge that purpose is a key factor in an audience choosing to support a company, urge your clients to make responsible choices8 and elevate social and environmental stewardship at the forefront of their business. Check the integrity of potential charitable partners at charityintelligence.ca with creating something with a green or social impact Commit to Volun-Team Building Agency leadership often loves a committee dedicated to company culture and fun (sometimes not-so-fun) team-building activities. A surefire way to take the eye-roll out of office outings is to build in legitimate purpose. Consider partnering with a local (vetted)9 non-profit or community group to collectively volunteer your support. Examples might include shore cleanups, supporting a local shelter or food bank, or helping build a home with Habitat for Humanity. Not only can colleagues collaborate over shared values and develop deeper levels of selfawareness, volunteering is also shown to improve employee engagement at work which can positively impact revenue10. Further, the average employee isn’t just in it for the money anymore. Studies show that many millennials are deeply motivated by altruism11. Consider how corporate volunteerism can support an ethical practice while also acting to fulfill employees and retain talent. 63 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Go Public with your Purpose There are many community avenues to bring forward the topic of ethics in design. Be a mentor to design students and get involved with local college and university programs. Take on the responsibility of getting the new intern up-tospeed. Volunteer with your local industry organizations. Get speaking gigs at conferences. Be present at portfolio night. Write in the industry publications. Have more face-to-face conversations. No matter how you do it, have a voice in the greater design community— each interaction as an opportunity to share ethical philosophies and find your allies. Design for Transparency Let’s say you’ve been tasked with designing something that sets off your ethical alarm bells. Let’s also say you don’t have the ability to turn the project down. What you can do is ensure that your creative output is honest, transparent, and provides your audience with the best chance of making an informed decision without the manipulative interference of misleading visuals, materials or language. We can avoid misleading with colour choice or imagery, ensure terms and conditions are clear and accessible, and avoid vague or inflated promotional terms. In cases where having an impact on claims or textual elements is impossible, we may use our unique visual sophistication to show the truth12 even when language doesn’t support our cause. This may be implicit instead of explicit, but every little bit helps. 64 Archetypes & Actions: Conscious Compromiser 65 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Design Industry Activist/ 66 Archetypes & Actions: Design Industry Activist A subversive and outspoken sibling of the Conscious Compromiser, you’re a weekend activist with dissent in your heart who can be found making change from the inside of your agency or in-house job. Never one to fear a little conflict, you’re an vocal employee whose expertise in subverting from within your organization equips you to implement meaningful incremental change in environments that don’t always align with your personal values. Your aim? Improving conditions for people, animals, and the planet on all sides of the work—coworkers, clients, customers, audiences, and more. You’re a tenacious type with education at the heart of your mission. You know that sharing the right information and starting accessible initiatives can help activate even the most dormant passions in the people around you. 67 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Luckily, it’s not easy for public companies to hide their ethical transgressions anymore. Thanks internet. A quick search (if you’re comfortable with Google having your search data) can reveal the world’s most unethical companies and industry sectors Predefine your Hard No Engagement in the responsible design movement comes with an inevitability of encountering ethical dilemmas in our work. It is best practice to have predefined what you will and will not work on with the people you report to. As we’ve covered, however, compromise is often necessary and the most beneficial thing we can do is accept the brief and subvert from within. Perhaps the client is a weapons manufacturer, cigarette company, or fashion house known to exploit child labour? Declining the work may be the only option that your values system can handle. Consider sending your employer a short and respectful email outlining your reason for declining the work and reinforcing your previous agreement about what you will and will not work on. Not only is this an opportunity to educate, but also protects your position. Tip: Satisfy your inner activist by getting involved and speaking out about the unethical practices of the company in question. Rally your Colleagues Tip: Start your email with the subject line ‘free lunch’ (request a budget for this) and offer healthy, delicious food in exchange for the attention of your colleagues for a workshop or seminar focused on improving ethical practices at your company. Whether diversity and inclusion, responsible experience design, volunteerism, or improved environmental practices, run the seminar yourself or connect with local organizations or businesses who specialize in the topic area you’re planning to discuss. Non-profits, ethical suppliers, and social enterprises are often more than happy to support your endeavour in exchange for visibility or potential future partnerships. 68 Archetypes & Actions: Design Industry Activist Does your company have a code of ethics? Is it visible? Accessible? Are employees educated on its content? Is it up-to-date on current issues? More than likely, no matter how you answered those questions, there’s a project ready for an internal activist to get their hands on. Consider using this book as a resource and carefully select a set of achievable goals that are relevant to your area of the industry. Don’t try to do everything at once, and, like any good company mission, clarify your goals. Consider conducting brainstorming sessions and workshops to gather, organize and visualize the information that is most critical to you and your colleagues. Once your ethical guidelines have been established, consider enlisting the designers to collaborate on creatively visualizing them for display around the company as well as for clients Build a Company Code of Ethics Be a Resource Position yourself as the resident expert on all things ethical. Stay current on the big social and environmental issues relating to your business. Have studies, articles, and books ready to share when colleagues express interest. Consider writing a weekly or monthly newsletter. Speak at conferences. Aim to make sure that everyone, at every level, internally and across the industry knows that your real or figurative door is always open for questions and support Self Initiate Ethical Projects If values-based work isn’t possible within your organization, consider recruiting like-minded colleagues to collaborate Jump to resources on page 176 relating to responsible practice. 69 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck outside of office hours. Forget the notion that clients are necessary to make ideas happen1 and pursue self-directed design projects built around advocacy of critical issues. Start your own non-profit, launch an ethical product, run workshops to co-design improved methods of activating communities, or contribute to activist publications. Campaign Against Spec Work Universally condemned as unethical by RGD,2 Ico-D,3 AIGA,4 GDC,5 and just about every other industry authority, spec work is the great under-valuer of the profession of design. We’ve been advocating against it since organizations began (and since the last chapter) and yet so many designers and agencies are still requested to give away work for free in order to secure clients or contracts. Often solicited without proper consultation or brief, this free work is often lacking in strategy, is mediocre and safe by its desperate nature, and perpetuates practices such as design contests in lieu of clients hiring professionals and fully engaging in the design process. The truth is, working on spec is bad for everybody’s bottom line. It drains time and resources from an firm’s paying clients and negatively impacts clients by compromising the potential for long-term agency relationships. Fire up your inner activist and go beyond declining spec work. Get vocal on social media, report clients to AIGA or RGD who solicit spec, and join industry advocates6 already campaigning successfully against it. Translate Ethics into Dollars Internal activism works most effectively when you’re speaking the same language as the key decision makers. 70 Archetypes & Actions: Design Industry Activist business? Will it save them money? Bolster their reputation? Forge strategic partnerships? Use the language of business and talk dollars. There is no shortage of proof that consumers are increasingly attracted to businesses who embrace a responsible role as it relates to social and environmental impact7. This often means reduced budgets, less waste, increased loyalty in customer bases and more efficient employees8. Share your passion for the idea that making money while doing good is entirely possible and consider educating yourself and your employer on the emerging area of accountable capitalism9. Amplify the Underrepresented The Accountable Capitalism Act (2018), led by Elizabeth Warren, argues that if corporations claim legal rights of personhood then they must also accept the moral obligations of personhood—that means their obligations must take on a social and environmental dimension and not just profitability Before making the case, ask yourself: What’s in it for the An activist’s role is often one of amplification. Aim to collaborate with and amplify the voices, in and outside of the workplace, who need the most support and are the most vulnerable. Look around. Do employee rights require protecting? Is there a group being underrepresented or discriminated against? How diverse are the voices around the decision-making tables? How is your organization protecting animals? The environment? If you choose to take on a social cause, remember that it’s best practice for the under-represented group to lead. Listen and facilitate without assuming yourself to be a saviour. Instead, provide support where it’s requested and never assume to understand a group’s unique experiences. 71 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Make ‘Professional’ Ethical Again The word “professional” can have problematic implications. At times, it can be a interpreted as a synonym for a corporate drone or dispassionate employee maintaining the status quo until the clock strikes 5 pm or a person who mindlessly carries out company work while detaching from personal beliefs and ethical and political values10. Rejecting that definition of professionalism means staying connected to the fact that we’re human. Aim to ensure your values and morality drive both your personal and your professional life toward meaningful change. 72 Archetypes & Actions: Design Industry Activist 73 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Digital Ethicist/ 74 Archetypes & Actions: Digital Ethicist You’re an ethical leader in your organization (or working toward it) with a unique focus on design for digital products and services. Considered the resident advisor on responsibility where design and technology meet, your role is particularly prevalent in tech companies but can be found in organizations of all ilks. Your knowledge centres around practical strategies for designing ethical experiences and advocating for the wellbeing of end-users. Things like making sure that design decisions don’t hijack a user’s psychological vulnerabilities1 or exclude anyone based on ability are a part of your daily practice. You’re an outspoken advocate for humanizing technology, ethical AI, diversity in tech, and net neutrality2. You’re particularly adept at spotting design decisions that, on the surface, can appear benign but may have significant and lasting consequences for society. 75 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Consider learning B.J. Fogg’s Behaviour Model to better understand design for behaviour change and persuasive technology: captology.stanford.edu/projects/behaviordesign.html Flag Problematic Projects As team members involved in the pivotal phases before a project launches, designers can act as gatekeepers who voice concerns and advocate against ethically questionable products or services before they go to market. Ask questions. Lead discussions. Generate consciousness around the issues at hand. Is a design solution exclusionary? Controversial? Misleading? Emotionally exploitative? You might not always stop the project from moving forward, but you’ll be generating critical awareness throughout your organization. Design to Empower, Not Exploit Among our highest motivations is the need to belong, feel loved, and be appreciated by our peers. Facebook is arguably one of the biggest perpetrators of using design features to exploit these motivations as psychological vulnerabilities. Succeeding in achieving its original goal to consume as much of our time and conscious attention as possible3, Facebook’s introduction of the “like” button initiates a rush of dopamine (sweet, sweet social approval) that feels so good that users can’t help but upload more stuff to get another hit. And just like that, they’re hooked. Cue Instagram and every other social platorm. The lesson? Doing the right thing means designing so your audience can make informed, empowered choices instead of acting on the urges of addiction. A great place to start is by learning the principles of behaviour design4 to better understand how it can be exploited at the expense of the user, and conversely how to use its principles for good.5 76 Archetypes & Actions: Digital Ethicist Design to Maximize Usability Usability is essential to designing ethical experiences. A lack of usability can, and often does, result in the use of ‘dark patterns’6. These ominous sounding interface elements trick users into doing something they didn’t want to do like adding extras to a shopping cart or inciting an unintended swipe7 or click8. Aim to use the Neilson Norman Group’s five quality components of usability to ensure you’re designing based on best practices: 1. Learnability: Ease of accomplishing tasks on the first try 2. Efficiency: The speed at which users can perform tasks 3. Memorability: The speed to reestablish proficiency after a 5. Satisfaction: How pleasant a design is to use Learn the Accessibility Legalities The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes web accessibility as a human right9. As ethical designers, we have a responsibility to design inclusively and do our best to understand the legal accessibility requirements of the cities, provinces, and countries in which we work. Made available for designers through the RGD10, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (among the most comprehensive web accessibility standards globally) which outlines “the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible11” is a resource that can support your intentions to create accessible designs that comply with government Essential Accessibliity provides an overview of Canada’s Accessibility Laws essentialaccessibility.com/blog/canadian-accessibility-laws period of not using the design 4. Errors: Number of errors, severity and ease to recover from 77 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck MultipleMedia has a comprehensive overview of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and Government web accessibility standards in Canada: www.multiplemedia.com/en/blog/wcag-government-web-standards-in-canada requirements12. Don’t let the legal stuff freak you out. There are many helpful tools available to help you meet those requirements.13 Advocate for Data Protection Since a significant number of the experiences we design require data collection, staying familiar with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA14 and its European equivalent, the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR will support you in advocating for ethical practices. These legally binding regulations can result in fines if an organization breaches user rights. Rights include the right to be forgotten, that data collection is only done with explicit consent, the right to access, data portability, and the right to withdraw consent or delete accounts at any time. Design to Curb Reflexive Consumption Consider the rabbit hole of endless scrolling that most of us have fallen victim to in our social apps of choice (is it still a choice?). Design decisions like incorporating ‘bottomless flow’ or autoplay keep people consuming well past the point of being hungry.15 The same goes for experiences that apply the psychology of a slot machine16 to keep users persistently checking their devices for new notifications. With innumerable studies17 linking excessive screen time to increased anxiety, depression, and even suicidality—especially in teens—it’s imperative, as ethical designers, to support healthy relationships with devices. Tip: Aim to conclude experiences once the user has accomplished the task they set out to do. Consider giving users the power to determine specific times of day to receive notifications. 78 Archetypes & Actions: Digital Ethicist There’s a growing community of design and tech leaders dedicating their careers to making sure that the stuff we design in the tech realm isn’t doing unnecessary harm. They’re advocating, raising awareness and actively designing solutions to mitigate the ways that culture, business, design, and organizational structures can drive technology to hijack our brains. Educating yourself and participating in the ongoing conversations of the Humane Tech19 and Time Well Spent20 communities (interestingly, reclaiming the Facebook platform to have these conversations) can expand your ethical network and inform ethical advocacy in your practice. The Centre for Humane Technology aims to “realign technology with humanity’s best interests” humanetech.com Get Involved in Humanizing Tech Advocate for Continued Net Neutrality The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) defines net neutrality as the principle that all Internet traffic should be given equal treatment by Internet service providers (ISPs)21. This means that as users we have full access to all online content and applications regardless of the source without the likes of Bell or Rogers favoring or blocking particular products or websites. Unlike the U.S., in Canada it’s illegal for ISPs to compromise user access. This doesn’t mean, however, that the big telecom companies don’t periodically push back. As recently as 2018, Canada’s major telecom companies attempted to censor sites in order to fight piracy. This attempt at censorship was viewed by many as a slippery slope toward compromising net neutrality. As such the Canadian government unanimously voted that “a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications 79 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck carried by it for the public”22. So, for now, our Canadian online space is transparent as ever but it’s important to stay connected to the cause and advocate when necessary to ensure it stays that way. Design with your ‘Edge Cases’ It’s been said that the difference between universal and inclusive design is that inclusive design is not a result, it’s a process.23 Core to that process is the act of designing with the people for which the product is intended. Best practice includes paying special attention to the users who may have previously been excluded because they’re considered ‘edge cases’, or users with atypical needs or abilities. It’s often impossible to predict the requirements of users whose needs differ from our own, so it’s imperative to include those users in the design process itself. 80 Archetypes & Actions: Digital Ethicist 81 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ethical Design Educator/ 82 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Design Educator You’re a values-driven educator at a college or university whose practice aims to inject a healthy dose of ethics into everything you touch. Masterful at adapting ethical ways of working into your existing teaching role, you advocate for improved institutional ethics, support those around you to clarify what matters to them, and build projects rooted in the world’s most pressing issues. You can be found pontificating about emerging areas in ethical practice, sustainability, or social justice, or critiquing design’s complicity in the environmental and emotional degradation associated with consumerism. You use your unique position outside of commercial markets to challenge dominant ways of being and actively support student-citizens and colleagues to expand their ethical design repertoire. 83 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Support Students to Clarify Their Values Supporting students to clarify their values, as well as giving them the resources and tools to recognize when to act on them is essential to your role as an ethical educator1. Have them ask themselves that big question we covered earlier: What really matters to me? And support them in learning to align their work to their values. Consider conducting seminars or workshops to introduce industry codes of ethics, ethical philosophies of key design thinkers and to tease out the individual guiding principles of each student. Provide reading materials and resources that introduce authors like Tony Fry, John Maeda, Ezio Manzini, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Lucienne Roberts, Stuart Walker, Victor Papanek, Adrian Shaughnessey, Cheryl Heller, and other design thinkers for whom responsible work is important. Aim to assign projects that evaluate a student’s depth of understanding around critical issues and not just the skillfulness of their craft. There’s power in this unique position to impact the thinking of a generation of new designers. Advocate for Institutional Ethics Ethical practice requires going beyond an individual teaching role to advocate, at an institutional level, for better on-campus ethics. As an active and ethically-minded faculty member, aim to support practices such as fair pay for teaching assistantships and academic research, as well as the importance of reliable teaching contracts and job security, fairness of 84 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Design Educator student governments and institutional boards of directors, and the accessibility of resources for student and faculty health and well-being. Further, keep your eyes peeled for the ever-popular practice of lending out students for free labour and advocate for fairness in payment for work, regardless of level. Educate yourself on Social Justice As an ethical practitioner, it is crucial to stay on top of emerging frameworks for research that are rooted in social justice. Educate yourself on intersectional feminism and the ways in which design has been complicit in oppressing women and girls2. Advocate for design justice, an approach supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism and settler colonialism and aims to provide a more equal distribution of the benefits of design3. Be familiar with the movement to decolonize design which acknowledges how discourse has been almost exclusively dominated by anglocentric/eurocentric ways of “seeing, knowing and acting in the world, with little attention being paid to the alternative and marginalized discourses from the non Anglo-European sphere”4. Connected to this is the aim to indigenize curriculums, a critically important step toward reconciliation that introduces indigenous ways of knowing into education. Build Citizenship-Centric Curriculums Student designers, or soon-to-be citizen-designers will benefit from programs that nurture passion toward participatory democracy, social change and environmental Designjusticenetwork.org is a network focused on creating design practices that “center those who stand to be most adversely impacted by design decisions” This includes indigenous peoples, communities of color, poor and working class people, the sick and disabled, migrants, LGBTQ+ people, and women and femmes that challenges the matrices of domination like white 85 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck stewardship. As curriculum designers, we have a crucial choice: cultivate self-awareness and action toward positive global impact or continue the age-old tradition of educating students using formal exercises, void of content, borrowed from the Bauhaus and Basel schools5. Some believe the latter is a dangerous practice and that steering students away from the reality that design can never be divorced from content6 results in a lost opportunity. By incorporating citizenshipcentric critical issues into our curriculums, we can actively engage students in an enriched understanding about things like poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation and justice. Truth is, there will always be content in the professional world. Students must learn to choose it wisely and navigate the ethical implications of those decisions. Lead by Example As an instructor and faculty member our behaviour is on display. This can be an excellent opportunity to make responsible lifestyle choices that educate students and colleagues by example. As also discussed in Eco Designer, consider asking: How responsible are my transportation choices? Do I use single-use cups and cutlery? Am I outspoken about critical issues? Do I actively participating in local politics? Equity is about fair treatment based on respective needs. Equality, however, is about treating all people exactly the same 86 How sustainable are my design interventions? Are the projects I assign rooted in responsible citizenship? Every decision is an opportunity to educate by example. Create Safe Spaces Start by knowing the difference between equity and equality. Aim for the former to achieve the latter. Ensure you’re leveling the proverbial playing field of the classroom by accounting for unique needs and Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Design Educator differing abilities; things like language barriers, cultural and learning differences, and visible and invisible health issues. Provide supplemental support where it’s needed most, stay informed on your school’s accessibility policies, and help students access the institutional help that they require. Creating safe learning environments also means using the names and pronouns that students and colleagues prefer. Best practice? When you introduce yourself share your preferred name and your pronouns and suggest that group introductions proceed in the same way. Start an Ethics-Based Research Lab If you feel passionately about a particular area of practice or design ethics as a field of study, consider applying for funding to start a research lab within your institution. Publicize your lab and its research by attending conferences, mentoring research assistants, publishing in academic journals, staying active in social media, running seminars, and developing compelling projects that will get students and faculty excited to participate. Build an Expansive Ethical Bookshelf As an expert on all things ethical, a diverse bookshelf full of moral philosophy, the history of ethical thought, and readings on responsible design is essential to your role. Staying connected to the ever-expanding modes of values-based design like those outlined in this book will also help to establish you as the expert you are. The resources on page 176 are a great place to start. 87 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ethical Entrepreneur/ 88 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Entrepreneur Whether through freelance or running your own social enterprise, you’re a business-minded creative with a commitment to profiting with purpose. You’re an expert in benefit-based business models like B Corporations1 and you understand deeply that while money makes the world go ‘round, there are myriad justifications for a more accountable form of capitalism2. Driven by a commitment to social and/or environmental change, you masterfully sell your clients on the increasingly quantifiable profitability of responsible work3. You skillfully balance turning a profit with acts of generosity. By valuing alternative returns on design investment like testimonials, improved networks, talent recruitment and retention, and, of course, impact, you ensure that profit never compromises your purpose. 89 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Clarify your Purpose Today’s young employees want a job with purpose and meaning; they have high standards, demand equitable treatment and look for opportunities to become a part of something bigger than themselves. 4 With cash increasingly taking a back seat to these desires, the time is right to start a business based on benefits that go way beyond the bottom line. Begin by understanding the difference between a mission and a purpose: your mission is what you’re trying to accomplish and the purpose is the larger why.5 Ask yourself more than what you can do to fulfill a social benefit to the world and start by focusing on the larger driver of your personal purpose. You’ll solidify your value proposition, enable values-based connections with like-minded suppliers, clients and employees, and establish the foundation on which you can develop a meaningful mission. Sell Responsibility As we know by now, organizations with a social and environmental conscience relating to factors like climate change, labour rights, and public health issues have proven to be more stable and profitable6 than those whose focus rests solely on the bottom line. Increasingly, discerning consumers are more loyal to organizations with shared values: social responsibility is perceived as a competitive edge. Employees want to be connected to purposeful businesses. Purpose incentivizes clients and consumers to pay a premium.7 Some argue that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is no longer just an option. It has become a critical 90 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Entrepreneur factor for consumers and shareholders in their choices about whether to support a business.8 Communicate Your Purpose Making your purpose central to all of your communications efforts, both internal and external, will ensure that potential/ employees and potential/clients alike are aware of your ethical intentions. Depending on personality, this can be a tough task. Challenge yourself to interpret promoting your purpose as different to bragging or shameless self promotion. By sharing your intentions with the world, you recruit support for the mission and increase your potential for impact. Tip: studies have shown that consumers actually want to hear about a company’s social and environmental achievements.9 Demand Diverse Teams Want to maximize your potential for impact? Hire as diversely as possible. Recent studies investigating social impact in the design10 and tech industries11 show that diverse teams made up of minorities and women are significantly more likely to carry out work that has a social good dimension than homogenous, single-demographic teams. By establishing equal vestedness in project successes, a worker-run co-operative can lay the foundation for success in building a socially responsible, democratic, equitable business11. Values-driven and hierarchy-free, co-ops12 keep the decision-making power in the hands of its members and often result in a more engaged staff, increased productivity, and even enhanced potential for innovation.13 Learn more about co-operatives, organizations operated by members who also use its services. canada.coop Design a Democratized Workplace 91 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Donate Work Through A Grant Process Donating pro-bono work can support local communities, build credibility in the non-profit space, and establish future business connections. Plus, as an Ethical Entrepreneur, an ethos of generosity is an excellent addition to your ethical business model. In addressing questions like not knowing where to start, who to help, or how to effectively promote the donation, consider establishing a grant process. With a formal application process reviewed by a panel of professionals, organizations are given a fair chance to apply to become the recipient of your donation. Hire People Who ‘Get It’ Craft is nothing without a passion for greater purpose. Aim to hire people whose lives are steeped in community participation, volunteerism, political engagement, and consciousness as it relates to social and environmental issues. Portfolios are important, but consider a 50/50 interview approach where hard skills are given as much attention as a candidate’s fit within the ethical culture you’re establishing. Help For-Profits Support Non-Profits Traditional pro-bono is great, but what if your for-profit clients support you to donate even more work to companies who really need it? The agency VeryNice14 developed a “give half” model, where half of the work they do is given away for free to companies who, otherwise, wouldn’t be able to afford quality design. They fund this through traditional work for corporate clients who know that by employing this 92 Archetypes & Actions: Ethical Entrepreneur with their generous approach, the model is open source.15 Make Your Methods Open Source Another approach to a generous practice is making your tools and methods available and open source. Not only is this an Access VeryNice’s Give Half model at givehalf.co agency they’re actually doing some good in the world. In-line excellent mode of self-promotion, but it supports and empowers anyone, regardless of income, to benefit from the research and knowledge coming out of your organization. Create a Safe Office Space As we know by now, ethical work is way more than the clients we choose. The cultivation of a supportive, responsible work environment that is safe for all employees regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, or ability is an essential aspect of ethical entrepreneurship. Consider making company values central to all interaction and ensure the office is a safe space to share any issue, from interpersonal to mental health. Lead by example with respectful, sensitive conduct and a zero tolerance policy on ethics violations. Speak out about your personal values, problems you contend with and encourage others to share their own. Provide ethics workshops and diversity training. Actively praise ethical conduct. And finally, ensure there are protective mechanisms in place to support employees who encounter problems16. Tip: Issues are inevitable. What matters is that your organization is proactive and has established systems in place to effectively address problems when they arise. 93 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Social Impact Design/ 94 Archetypes & Actions: Social Impact Design You’re community focused and in pursuit of the public good. You may have experience doing corporate work, but you’ve chosen to work predominantly in the public sector for governments, non-profits and community organizations. You use the tools of design to support humanitarian causes and effect social change toward improved well-being and a healthier, more supported society. Advocacy and amplification are core to your work; you get deeply involved with underrepresented issues and communities. You’re all about empathetic storytelling, co-designed solutions, and using the power of design to educate the public. Compassionate and collaborative, you’re a friend to the people whose greatest foe is working solo. 95 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Start Small The social impact space can be riddled with life’s big questions and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the seemingly unsolvable, intensely complex problems. A good place to start is to (try) not to get weighed down with the gravity of the problems society faces. Start small. Contribute at a local level with the people you know and trust. Take it one project at a time, starting with the problems your community faces and work collaboratively to make change where you can. If you’re feeling energetic once you address all the problems at a local level, move on to the big, global initiatives.2 Include More Women & Minorities The importance of diverse teams is critical across every sector of the design industry. Whether you’re the one doing the hiring, advocating from within an organization, or have any impact on the makeup of the teams, clients, or suppliers with whom you collaborate, making diversity a priority means projects are far more likely to take on a social good dimension. As we’ve covered, studies show that in design and design adjacent industries, responsible work is many times more likely to be made a priority by women and minorities.3 It’s speculated that the creative work of systemically underrepresented and stigmatized groups is impacted by their unique experiences and power struggles. The result is an enhanced level of empathy and passion “to seriously commit to ethical design advocacy”. 4 Reminder: Inclusive design can only happen with diverse stakeholders at the table.5 96 Archetypes & Actions: Social Impact Design Keep the Social in Social Impact In her book Citizen Designer, Cheryl Heller said it simply and said it best: “...the essential nature of social impact design is that it’s social.” Community collaboration is key to success in this area of design. The easiest place to find your collaborators as a Social Impact Designer is to get a job within an organization that has already taken up the causes6 you aspire to support. If you plan to freelance, aim to get involved with other solo creatives, build your own teams, and make sure your practice remains active and rooted in community. Consistent engagement within local governments and communities not only increases quality of life, but also provides an insider understanding of hopes, needs, and opportunities of the folks within it7. That can positively impact your ability to design with them effectively. Tip: Consider joining local boards, offering internships, teaching locally, and volunteering whenever possible. Choose Your Causes Wisely In the same way we assess potential clients, it is essential to partner. Since transparency is a legal requirement for all non-profits, their annual reports are readily available for your critical perusal. An easier place to start, however, is with Charity Intelligence8 in Canada or Charity Navigator9 in the U.S. These third party organizations are dedicated to reviewing non-profits for the quality of their impact, overhead costs, need for funding, accountability to donors and overall transparency. Tip: if you’re looking for a partner and don’t know where to start, both sites boast top 10 or top 100 lists. If animal testing is a potential risk factor, as it can Consider vetting the organizations you choose to partner with by examining their ratings: charityintelligence.ca, charitynavigator.org, research the causes and charities with which we choose to 97 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck humanecharities.ca be in the case of medical organizations, assess your potential partner at Humane Charities Canada10 before concluding your research. Partner, Don’t Parachute Getting deeply involved in the communities with whom we collaborate can be the difference between designing for and designing with. (Hint: aim for the latter.) Immersion in communities to effectively incorporate and mobilize the skills and strengths of its members and resources can add a critical dimension of authenticity, accuracy, and empowerment to your work.11 Avoid the often-critiqued ‘parachute design’, a typically well-intentioned but “paternalistic and misdirected”12 form of design intervention that ‘parachutes’ in to high-need settings without taking time to understand the real problems faced by those people. This is especially prevalent in design interventions for the developing world. Best practices indicate that if you can’t fully immerse yourself in a community, it’s best to stay local and find a community to work with where you can. Represent with Dignity In the social good space, we’re often working to lessen the impact of significant and sometimes systemic issues. As such, it’s hard not to focus our designerly intentions on the massive, looming problems before us. Certainly, we need to understand the complexity of what we’re up against but when it comes to executing a design intervention, focusing on the strengths of the people we’re working with instead of the shortcomings they face means a more dignified 98 Archetypes & Actions: Social Impact Design representation. Search hard for the strengths of the people you’re representing, whether it’s style, local language, or a certain skill set.13 By doing so, your intervention will inspire change in your audience without compromising the empowerment of those being represented. Be Mindful of Literacy & Language Arguably, all design work has a voice. In the case of social impact design, it typically shouldn’t be that of the designer. Working at the same level of literacy, languages and cultural norms14 of the groups we design with is absolutely critical to responsible representation and accessibility. Apply for Grants & Microgrants Awarded by governments, institutions, corporations, or the exists to support non-profit initiatives to address needs or issues in communities. Do your research and search for a list of grant opportunities15 related to the area you’re working in. Write a compelling proposal that outlines your mission, approach, and how you’ll measure success…and cross your fingers. Grant writing takes time to perfect. Be persistent and don’t get discouraged if at first you don’t succeed. If you’re looking for a less intensive application process, consider applying for Microgrants. They are smaller, non-repayable sums of money are often awarded directly by a group of local donors. Check Your Privilege Most of us are carrying around some sort of privilege. Privilege arises from society’s tendency to value certain Check out these federal level resources for finding grant opportunities. Tip: search at a provincial and local level too. Innovation Canada: ic.gc.ca/eic/site/080.nsf/eng/home Canada Council for the Arts: canadacouncil.ca/funding/grants foundations of wealthy individuals or families, grant money 99 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ideas about privilege are rooted in intersectionality and are defined in the Oxford dictionary as: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage things over others.16 It means that some of us get advantages in life that others don’t. Whether it’s our gender, ability, race, education, class, religion, sexuality, or neuronormativity,17 it’s important to acknowledge the ways in which your social status has offered you a helping hand. So, why is this important? Compassion. Empathy. Not only are these traits critical to developing the sensitive and respectful relationships necessary to design effectively, but they don’t hurt your pursuit of being a solid person in the world either. Checking your privilege means designing with the knowledge that a community’s plight can only be truly known by that community. It means respecting the challenges and experiences that shape that community or individual’s unique worldview and their position on issues. Tips: Don’t present stories or experiences that you have not received explicit consent to share. Consider actively breaking out of your echo chamber18 to expose yourself to the issues and ideas of groups outside of your own closed circle. Design to Pass the Torch Since funding is rarely flowing for local community groups and non-profits, it’s best to design with legacy in mind. Legacy is about making sure your design or intervention can live on without you. Start by asking: how might this client and audience continue to benefit from this design when I am no longer present to implement or modify it? Think about how your work can be easily replicated and modified without you. This may mean providing frameworks, 100 Archetypes & Actions: Social Impact Design written methodologies, or designing using easily accessible and open source programs. Consider trying not to think of it as putting yourself out of a job, but as being a good partner and strengthening your relationship. By supporting organizations selflessly, you’re more likely to obtain valuable referrals and get a call for the next project. Design for Democracy Since, as Milton Glaser says, “good design is good citizenship”, ask what you can do to support your local democracy to function optimally for its leaders and constituents. Getting involved in local governments to use the power of design to increase civic participation through ballot design,19 advocating for voter turnout, and working to make government/citizen interactions easier to understand and more transparent is a deeply worthy cause for a social impact designer. Start a Non-profit Consider dedicating funds from your for-profit design organization, freelance business, or sole proprietorship to the development of a non-profit branch branded specifically for its dedication to social impact initiatives. Bonus: tax breaks. Go Pro Bono Get generous. Sometimes the best way to get involved is to volunteer your services. Consider, in the case of pro bono work, that there are many ways to be compensated for your work that don’t involve the exchange of money. You can barter for services, develop your network by working with charity boards of directors, secure future paid work or 101 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck bidding privileges, receive invaluable testimonials, build your portfolio with work that aligns with your values, and cultivate industry credibility. Whether you’re just starting out or making a late-in-the-game switch, doing values-based work free of charge can support your social impact goals. Design with Gratitude in Mind Research shows that reminding people about who and what helped them along their path to success increases gratitude and empathy for those who didn’t have similar support.20 This is an absolutely critical insight for the successful design of donor communications in the non-profit space. Downsize Your Lifestyle Shifting away from commercial work to dedicate yourself to social impact is no small feat, and can be financially burdensome. Consider challenging yourself to work slowly toward a leaner lifestyle. This action comes with a bold set of questions: What we if you switched neighbourhoods? Live in a smaller city? Sold your car and instead took public transit or cycled in the summer? It can be a terrifying, exciting, and deeply satisfying ongoing project to challenge the idea that success is determined materially.21 102 Archetypes & Actions: Social Impact Design 103 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Eco Designer/ 104 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer You’re a passionate proponent of an ecosystem-first philosophy. After all, what do we have without a functioning planet? Your work has a consistent and, at times, hardcore focus on not just minimizing environmental impact, but aiming to renew natural resources by incorporating regenerative approaches.1 You challenge hierarchical notions that place humans above other life forms and every aspect of your work-life has an eco-dimension. Beyond cycling to work and unfailingly aiming to reduce your personal impact, you design self sustaining solutions, always choose local resources and suppliers and use clean energy where possible. Regardless of the brief, you’re advocating for ethical environmental practices; you believe that waste is a design flaw2 and there’s no excuse for mindless decision-making about everyday tools like inks, papers, and technologies. When it comes to the business side of your work, you adhere to a triple3 or quadruple4 bottom line that ensures your practice balances benefit to people, the planet, the personal, and not just shareholder profits. 105 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Solidify your Stance On Eco-Issues I said it before and I’ll say it again, defining your position is absolutely essential to an ethical practice. As an Eco Designer, you’ll have to decide where you draw the line on key topics. What do you consider to be clean energy? What are your thoughts on animal welfare? Water conservation? Which materials do you consider to be ethical for use in design? What about the impact of companies in the dirtiest industries like oil and fashion? Who is mitigating those impacts successfully? Once you’ve established where you stand, speak up. The inner values of the leaders and employees in an organization has been shown to have a strong connection to the success of a company’s sustainability programs.5 In other words, it takes a whole lot more than scientific knowledge about the impacts of climate change to spark action and change within an organization. Commit to Self-Care Counter to the utilitarian argument that positions ethical practice as the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people, it is believed by some that in order to achieve a sustainable ‘good’ in the world, it is absolutely imperative to, first, be good to yourself.6 Consider that without the sustainment of your mental, emotional, and physical health, it may not be possible to continue your actions toward environmental change. Further, wading into the treacherous waters of environmental degradation can be emotionally harrowing­­. Self-care supports a sustainable, healthy practice. 106 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer Design In Moderation Eco Design is a less-is-more affair so start by lowering your resource consumption and mitigating your impact. Look for environmental certifications like Forest Stewardship Certified FSC paper,7 and products that use biodegradable and compostable materials. Seek out labels that indicate reduced carbon impact, no ozone depleting substances, recycled and recyclable materials, and chlorine free production. Familiarize yourself with Energy Star,8 Ecologo,9 and Rainforest Alliance Certified.10 To design in moderation means thinking smaller with fewer frills and materials that break down over time. It means aiming to make your creations last and avoiding planned obsolescence at all costs. Creativity can be maximized by designing within constraints like using only repurposed and local materials, or avoiding excess embellishment. Say Goodbye to Greenwashing Greenwashing happens when marketers jump on the eco-is-trendy bandwagon and overstate the eco-friendliness of a product.11 Buyer-and-designer beware. The marketplace is rife with misrepresented toxicity levels, environmental performance facts and over-inflated (or all-out untrue) ‘all natural’ claims. It has been argued that without doing our due diligence in ensuring the accuracy of claims, we are complicit in the deception of our audiences.12 It’s critical, therefore, to investigate13 the products or services you’re being asked to promote. Ask the hard questions about things like GMOs, energy use, and whether products harbour chemicals that 107 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck thinkdirtyapp.com greenerchoices.org fairtrade.ca might be dangerous to human health. Consider going even further to scrutinize a product’s ingredients,13 the methods used for harvesting or extracting those materials, and the associated supply chain. So what if you’re being asked to greenwash? Push back and don’t misuse words like ‘organic’ and ‘all natural’. Avoid excessive use of the colour green, healthy-looking imagery, and natural motifs. Use your creative prowess to do the job and get paid without misleading the public into believing that something is cleaner and safer than it actually is. Do your best to show the truth and support consumers to make informed decisions that support larger sustainability goals.14 Favour Fair Trade A Fair Trade15 certification means practices that include environmental sustainability and empowering opportunities for all stakeholders, especially marginalized women. The certification ensures fair, honest and ethical approaches for the environment and humans alike. This certification is especially important if you’re working with organizations whose business involves coffee, sugar, tea, flowers, cocoa/ chocolate, cotton, bananas and more. These industries can have devastating human and environmental impacts like slave and child labour, reductions in biodiversity, soil erosion, and chemical contamination. Assess your Project’s Impacts Design philosopher Tony Fry suggests that something must be destroyed in order to bring something new into existence.16 Always consider what must be destroyed in order 108 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer to create. Start every project by asking yourself: what are the human and environmental impacts associated with this job? Take a look at the holistic impacts of the products or services you’re selling and the suppliers you’re connected to. Do your research. Some of the worst environmental offenders aren’t so obvious like cheap t-shirts17 and avocado toast.18 Take time to accumulate some knowledge before accepting any brief and support your colleagues by sharing that knowledge. Further, design work can be a messy venture and excess waste can be a consequence. Further, a responsible Eco Designer knows the rules and constraints of their local waste disposal, compost, and recycling initiatives so as to make informed choices about how to move things like design tools, paper, and disposable products on to their next life. Consider that local sourcing is typically less ecologically destructive than its globally sourced counterparts, and it often ensures a certain level of awareness regarding the human impact of production. Choose Your Clients Wisely Investigating the impact of our clients in order to ensure we’re not complicit in environmentally destructive practices is a critical step to becoming an Eco Designer. Choose your clients wisely—with the caveat we discussed earlier in the book. Some people believe that the best way to effect change is to subvert from within an ethically questionable organization. Ask: Can I add value to a business whose practices are currently less than ideal? Enacting change is a worthy uphill climb but it is also perfectly acceptable to decline working for a client whose values don’t align with your own. If you have strong feelings about industries like oil, fashion, 109 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck mining, development, or industrial agriculture consider conjuring your inner activist. Stay current on your knowledge about the issues associated with certain industries and speak out and educate your colleagues. Consider channeling your energy into partnerships with organizations that share your values and can support the work you want to achieve. Choose Your Suppliers Wisely Being mindful about our environmental impact means considering the practices of the entire network of people and organizations with whom we work. Aim to understand a partner’s approach to things like energy conservation, manufacturing, and printing processes. Suppliers with a commitment to environmental stewardship typically make it a point to market themselves as such, but don’t let that dissuade you from doing your due diligence. Ask about recycled content, emissions and energy efficiency, attempts to produce products with fewer toxins, product lifecycles, and approaches to disposal and reuse. Sell Sustainability Clients and consumers alike react favourably to intentions toward environmental stewardship. Fact: the average consumer is more attracted companies who acknowledge and address their environmental impact.19 Another fact: companies with an environmental action plan are proven to be more financially stable and attractive to investors.20 That means there’s a bottom-line benefit to designing with sustainability in mind. Sell it. 110 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer Trade & Share Resourcefulness is in the blood of designers. Trading with colleagues or sharing resources like physical supplies and technology can save a new purchase and reduce our overall impact. If you’re in a larger city, look for barter groups like Bunz21 or try buying second hand. Of course, we’ll eventually have to buy some supplies to support the work that we do. Best to ask ourselves whether or not something is essential. When a purchase is necessary, making well-researched decisions about the tools we choose to purchase can save us from a 500-years-to-break-down landfill contribution or supporting manufacturing practices that have dire environmental consequences. Tip: As many of us are Apple users, we’ll be pleased to know that Greenpeace named Apple among most ecofriendly companies globally22. Apple is committed to sustainable practices, but they’re still working to stop the environmentally destructive mining of rare earth metals to make their technologies. As ethical consumers of products, we can stay connected to the environmental initiatives23 of the comanies we support and do what we can to keep them accountable to their goals. Start an Eco-Initiative Most companies understand the value of operating in a way that supports environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, however, those companies don’t always have resources at the ready to spearhead their initiatives. Put on your leadership pants, pitch an idea to management, and initiate prgrammes with sustainability at their core. If your company doesn’t buy your idea, consider starting an initiative within your 111 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck local community. You might organize folks to start upcycling otherwise landfill-bound products or design communications that promote low-waste lifestyles and empower consumers to buy chemical-free. You could support ‘binners’ in your neighbourhood who collect glass and cans for recycling, get involved in parks projects or community gardens, or become a member of your local Transition Town.24 With a willingness to take a leadership or organizational role, the list of opportunities is nearly endless. Assess your Personal Impact Fact: 20% of people (mostly in wealthy countries like ours) consume in excess of 80% of the world’s natural resources.25 If you’d like to start putting a dent in that number, aim to make small, incremental, and balanced change as a starting point. Remember: decisions that border on ascetic won’t be conducive to long-term, sustainable change. Some people practice meatless Mondays to reduce their consumption and contribute to both environmental sustainability and improving their health. Others aim to alter their idea of entertainment in a way that fosters more experience and less shopping and consumption. Making a shift in your overall impact doesn’t have to mean a total lifestyle overhaul. Start small. Drive a little less. Turn off the lights. Take a shorter shower. Stop using single-use plastics.26 Make your clothes last a bit longer. Buy organic and fair trade. Research ways to reduce your impact27 and aim for balance above all. 112 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer Detox from Dirty Data No, not that kind of data. Studies show that communication technologies may account for approximately 3.5% of global emissions by 2020. This mean our connected devices are effectively dirtier than both aviation and shipping combined.28 As companies work to make the switch toward renewable energy (currently 80% of our power still comes from fossil fuels) do your part by being smart about your data use. Start by reminding your colleagues and organizations that paperless is not necessarily more eco-friendly. Consider sending less email. Store only the data that you absolutely need. Use green hosting solutions that tout renewable energy resources. Disconnect your devices and indulge in a digital detox wherever possible. Your brain will thank you too.29 While you’re at it, spread the word that the seemingly infinite capacity of that nebulous data ‘cloud’ is in fact a series of big, metal data farms emitting greenhouse gasses all over the world. Insist On A Triple Bottom Line Working to a triple bottom line means that your clients, employer, and/or suppliers consider social and environmental as well as economic impacts related to the work. Insisting that every project begins with measurable objectives that include this triple bottom line30 can ensure that a company’s financial needs and decisions don’t compromise its social and environmental goals. 113 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Check out Walker’s most recent books Design For Life and Designing Sustainability Consider a Quadruple Bottom Line If you’re feeling particularly keen, you might follow the lead of sustainability designer and philosopher Stuart Walker who argues to expand the triple bottom line beyond the social, environmental and financial to include personal fulfillment. He argues that the path to sustainability starts at the individual level where a focus on personal meaningseeking is critical to achieving the ethical perspectives and conscience necessary to realize an ethical practice. Capture True Costs The nerdy sibling of the ‘triple bottom line’, ‘True Cost Accounting’ is an approach that ethical designers and the businesses they’re involved with can benefit from. It ensures environmental, social, and economic impacts are identified, quantified, and made transparent. By accurately reporting on the holistic impacts of an initiative, businesses can ensure that future projects account for more than just economic costs and mitigate any potentially damaging effects. We may not be expected to do the math (thankfully), but knowing what to advocate for is key. Champion Nature’s Rights Across the world and under most legal systems, nature is considered property with no rights of its own.31 As such, nature’s treatment—and the choice to destroy or compromise its ecosystems—is entirely up to whoever owns that property. To champion the rights of nature is to unlearn these philosophies that dominate western society and consider nature as an independent entity with the right to flourish.32 This radical shift in understanding to our dominant 114 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer any chance against climate change. Educate yourself on the history of this thinking starting with the U.N.’s 1982 World Charter For Nature33 and get involved in the emerging Nature’s Rights Movement.34 Design to Reduce Consumption This challenging action falls toward the end of the list for a reason: much of our everyday work involves and end-goal of supporting consumption. Let’s attempt to challenge that. One way to reduce a desire for consumption in our audiences is to design in such a way that fosters conviviality35 and discourages competitive relations between people that can inflame envious feelings toward each other. Consider this when assessing the quality of the content you’re designing World Charter for Nature: un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm Nature’s Rights Movement: celdf.org/rights/rights-of-nature/ paradigm is one that many argue is critical if we are to have with and the subtle visual messages within your work. Studies have shown that competitive consumer behaviour is associated with anxiety and depression and that there are significant social benefits to reducing consumption. Dissuade your audience from mindless consumption by instead encouraging behaviours that are core to human well-being like harmony with nature, fun and leisure, healthfulness, and friendship.36 Offset Your Carbon Use Carbon offsetting is a mechanism that allows individuals and companies to mitigate the impact of their greenhouse gas emissions.37 Let’s say you have an opportunity to fly to Beijing for a design conference. Start with the questions: Do I really need this flight? Can I do this in a way that is more energy 115 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Less.ca Carbonzero.ca efficient? Are there greener travel alternatives? If you decide the conference is essential and there is no viable travel alternative, then carbon offsetting will allow you to effectively neutralize the greenhouse gasses associated with your travel plans.38 Take advantage of programs that can support you to invest in renewable energy projects whenever you feel it’s necessary to offset your actions. Don’t Just Sustain, Regenerate Regenerative design takes sustainability a step further and aims to build systems that naturally regenerate lost resources back into existence. This means deep consideration for the ways in which humans and the environment coexist. Consider the popular example of ‘for every purchase you make, we’ll plant a tree!’ This is a restorative (not regenerative) measure that can certainly have its benefits, but developing naturally regenerating ecosystems (as in permaculture) restores a deeper level of social and ecological resilience. We can consider regenerative methods when pitching eco-friendly partnerships or promotions to clients or aim to get involved in regeneration efforts outside of office hours. 116 Archetypes & Actions: Eco Designer 117 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Social Innovation Designer/ 118 Archetypes & Actions: Social Innovation Designer A comparatively fresh area of design, you can be understood as the Social Impact Designer’s less traditional, even-morecollaborative sibling. You’re passionate about the power of participatory design and use it wisely to strengthen civil society. Your approach to community engagement is non-hierarchical. You see yourself on equal footing with those you’re designing with and, together, you design the sorts of interventions that are holistically beneficial and enhance society’s capacity to act.1 Citizen empowerment is at the core of your practice. Your ideas are local in scale, sustainable, and centre on enhancing community resiliency2. Perhaps, most importantly, you innovate based on social needs rather than the needs of the market. You can be found toting a copy of Design, When Everybody Designs by Ezio Manzini or as a member of a local DESIS3 or social innovation network. 119 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck First, Listen Stop. Breathe. Best to quiet the unrelenting voice of the designer-mind that urges: ‘change something!’ or ‘do something!’. 5 Listening is arguably the most critical part of the design process. Without it, we can miss out on identifying vital connections or taking the time to truly understand the needs, goals and aspirations of the people we’re designing with. Don’t Be An Expert A Social Innovation Designer aims to transform the age-old approach of the omnipotent ‘design expert’. We rethink the top-down approach of telling people what they need, to instead become facilitators and collaborators in co-design processes. Think workshops instead of cubicles and participatory community co-design sessions instead of agency-only brainstorms. Direct interfacing with local populations instead of impersonal surveys and traditional focus groups. This shift in perceptions about the role of a designer will empower you to truly become a member of the teams and communities with which you collaborate. Be Socially Engaged In her book ‘Good’, Lucienne Roberts wisely said “The first step toward trying to be ethical is being socially aware and engaged.”6 Yes! An effective Social Innovation Designer is, first, an active community member. 120 Archetypes & Actions: Social Innovation Designer Understanding community needs from the inside is an amazing way to ensure you’re not designing with a top-down mentality. Attend community meetings. Stay informed and active in local politics. Volunteer. Have more conversations. Ask people what matters to them. Every chat is an opportunity to better understand the hopes and needs of the people you call neighbours and will invariably inform your design interventions. Share Project Ownership Collaboration and shared ownership are core to developing the sort of strong, long term and mutually beneficial relationships that make community projects successful. Make sure the experiences of the communities you’re working with are at the centre of your design process—it is their insights, after all, that will enable the project to flourish. Design Self Sustaining Interventions Design with the future in mind. Ask: how can this design live on, autonomously, in this community? How might they continue to benefit over time by modifying and duplicating this project as they require? Consider designing in such a way that makes your project easy to implement without a designer present and include things like easy-to-follow methods and instructions with your final output. Make it Analogue If you’re designing with objectives toward developing strong and connected communities, consider leaving your technology 121 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Check out Manzini’s essential book about Design for Social Innovation, Design, When Everybody Designs at home. Social Innovation designer Ezio Manzini believes that a community’s reliance on digital connectivity can actually weaken a once-solid social fabric.7 This replacement of authentic, real-world connections with those based in superficial, digital realms can, arguably, compromise a community’s resilience. If technology is necessary in your design, ensure it plays a supporting role and never replaces face-to-face human connection. Connect to Social Innovation Networks Design for Social Innovation Toward Sustainability or DESIS is a values-based non-profit cultural association and network of research labs largely based in academic institutions. Its purpose is to use the power of social innovation as a driver toward sustainable change and aim to innovate around social demands instead of those of the market. Connect with the network to learn more about this emerging philosophy,8 partner with a local lab,9 or find out how to get involved in social innovation in your community.10 Design at a Local Scale Aim to design small scale innovations that are specific to the needs of local communities. Your networks will be tighter, projects will feel manageable, you’ll use fewer resources, the communities you’re designing with will be better represented, the voices of all constituents will be heard. Think big but design small. Democratize Information When working with a diverse group of local co-designers, keeping the project information open and accessible is 122 Archetypes & Actions: Social Innovation Designer absolutely essential. Best practice is to use your design superpower of visualization as a tool to organize, democratize, and spark critical social conversations.11 Expand your Definition of Social When thinking about social innovation and its intention of “working to meet social goals”, it’s important to consider asking who “social” really includes. Are we only supporting humans, or should we expand our definition? The research conducted by Emily Carr University’s DESIS lab, for example, aims to include social relations with more than humans. The team looks at the integrated relationships between animals, the environment, and people to support the development of more holistic project priorities that benefit the entire natural world.12 Recombine Existing Assets All too often ‘innovation’ is synonymous with the sort of newness that pristine, fresh out-of-the box technology has. In the world of social innovation, however, where the aim is to lower resource intensity, we aim to find ways to innovate without increasing consumer volume. Your greatest tool for achieving this is to recombine existing assets wherever possible. Predominantly applicable when designing physical products, this action can manifest for communication designers as creative solutions for repurposing old print executions, offcut paper and promo materials. 123 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Design Activist/ 124 Archetypes & Actions: Design Activist An outspoken proponent of design ethics, Milton Glaser, famously said, “It is our responsibility to question, challenge and communicate dissent wherever necessary to protect those freedoms we so value.”1 As a Design Activist you’re an anti-establishment type whose dedication to moral righteousness keeps you working outside of commercial markets. Design is your tool to address, advocate for and activate progressive social, political, economic and environmental issues toward a more equitable and just existence for all. You’re more than a traditional activist who often uses the act of resistance to instigate reform. Design activism is a generative act. You create positive alternatives to the status quo2 that go beyond manifestos and rallying cries (those are great, too) to raise awareness and offer powerful, viable solutions to some of society’s most critical problems. 125 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Do The Work You Wish To See Self-initiate. Seek out supportive resources.3 React to local and global issues. Just start designing. Create the work that you wish clients would pay for and do it for causes that could benefit from your support. You’ll build your portfolio and accumulate a vital network of ethically-minded fellow activists. Show Up & Skill Share Effective activism isn’t a solo sport. Being an active community member and showing up both online and in-person to contribute to the causes you’re passionate about is critical. Whether climate change, gender equality, queer issues, wealth distribution, decolonization, labour justice or something else entirely, do your part by working to enhance communication, organizing workshops, or participating in protests. Whatever your cause: show up and share your skills. Tell A Compelling Truth In the attention economy and post-truth world, hard facts devoid of emotion can lose their lustre. When advocating for underrepresented groups or critical issues, aim to communicate evidence and experiences in the form of compelling stories that act to counter false perceptions. Infusing facts into inspired storytelling can give your ethical work a better chance of contending with sensationalism and the dreaded ‘fake news’. Share Your Work & Resources As a Design Activist, you’re likely to be an open source kind of person whose more-the-merrier ideals celebrate free access 126 Archetypes & Actions: Design Activist to resources and information. Using a Creative Commons4 license enables free distribution for the work you create and means that other creatives can share, use, build upon, and distribute the work too. With 16 variations of licenses, you can stipulate terms like requiring attribution if someone uses your work, or allow users the right to distribute it globally as long as the purpose is non-commercial. Get Vocal Aiming to be as vocal as possible about the causes you believe in is an attribute of any activist and an essential action that can be enacted immediately. Turn up your injustice radar and call out the issues you encounter. Write a blog, be active on social media, and have face-to-face conversations. Any small step toward expression is worthy. Try to mitigate fear that your public actions will negatively impact your career path. If you’re honest and respectful in your public communication, you’ll be sure to attract the organizations and companies you would want to work with and, hopefully, filter out the ones you don’t. Embrace Peaceful Design Resistance There is often an incongruity between an activist’s peaceful ideals and the violent-looking, dark and radical images that get used to communicate messages.5 Consider that effective activism doesn’t always promote clashes of power but can resist in a way that is visually non-violent. Design to promote collaborative, respectful relationships with the folks your messages address. By doing so, you’re more likely to foster the dialogue and open-mindedness that is necessary for inciting change. 127 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Get Political Designer Ken Garland once said that his vote and political actions were more valuable than anything he could do as a designer.6 Stay informed. Read the news. Watch CPAC, even. Know where you stand on political issues municipally, provincially, federally, and globally. Most importantly, get involved. Participate the action that supports your political beliefs. Align Your Career with Your Values As an uncompromising Design Activist, you may find that full time employment in a corporate organization is impossible if you are to stay true to your ethical ideals. Instead, choose to work as a freelancer, within a collective or co-op, a social enterprise or in the non-profit sector. There are innumerable options outside of traditional agency and in-house roles that can support your values. Use Your Design Superpowers This can be as simple as designing content for social media that illuminates critical issues or as in-depth as conducting co-creation workshops to radically transform the way an organization or community operates. As Design activists we have a unique set of practical and conceptual skills that take our activism role way beyond resistance. As designers, we have the capacity to develop the sorts of innovative, transformational ideas that can fundamentally change how people live—even in cases where reform seems out of the question.7 128 Archetypes & Actions: Design Activist Say No To Unethical Clients As an uncompromising activist, this may be among the most challenging and crucial actions. Saying ‘no’ to paying clients whose practices grossly misalign with your values is a glorious privilege and one that, let’s be real, can be financially burdensome to obtain. Living small is one way to alleviate some of that burden. However, optimistically speaking, the ethics of the industry are beginning to shift. Securing an ethical client base may be easier now than it ever has been. Don’t Expect to Solve The Problem Consider yourself hereby released from the crushing responsibility of having to solve the world’s complex and systemic problems. Though many of us have been told over the course of our design-lives, that ‘designer’ is synonymous with ‘problem solver’, we now know a little better. The popular belief of many a modern design thinker is that assuming we can solve problems is a bit, let’s just call it like it is…arrogant and can lead to design becoming a figurative band-aid for social or marketing issues. Instead, we can now be content with a goal to respectfully research the problem, aim to accurately present its issues, and engage the public to promote meaningful, ongoing dialogue.8 129 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Making it Happen/ 130 Make it Happen We made it. Consider step one to becoming an ethical practitioner complete. From the agency-employed Conscious Compromiser to the community-centric Social Innovation Designer to the politically-motivated Design Activist, we’ve made it through an à la carte of over 130 ethical actions. This book is a modest contribution to an evolving zeitgeist where ethical pursuits are of increasing importance in the face of the today’s most pressing social, political and environmental issues. Now, the rest is up to each of us. There will be actions we choose to implement today and there will be those which resonate but may not feel immediately possible. Both are important. We can act now while also collecting a set of aspirational goals to fuel the future of our practice and develop a unique, values-based 131 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck roadmap for our careers. Ethical Sellout or full blown Ethical, whether we continue to work in industry, making small compromises while advocating for ethical action where possible, or forsake it altogether to pursue design for public-good full time, the point is that we’re doing something. I believe that every action, regardless of size, has the capacity to have meaningful impact and I have a great deal of belief in our collective power. May we continue to act and evolve this industry into a leading model of ethical practice. And as for me? Am I ready to acquiesce and re-enter the industry? Am I ready to accept my role within a troublesome and sophisticated system of persuasion? Am I prepared to face the realities of discrimination, questionable products, and unreasonable beauty standards? Do I miss the dynamic people? The passion? The openness to outrageously creative solutions and the big budgets that enable them? I believe I am. I am also prepared to address the issues that I face head-on. I am prepared to have a voice, to get involved, and to support others like me to work in ways that support safe, supportive, and sustainable practices. I am prepared to choose my clients and agencies wisely and to subvert from within when I, inevitably, find myself in ethically-questionable settings. I will commit to mindful action. I will never write or accept a brief without asking if something bigger—something more meaningful—can be achieved. I will remember that ethics is a daily practice. I will set achievable goals. 132 Make it Happen Most importantly, I have learned to find the dialectic. I am committed to being ethical and I am also a member of a problematic industry (and the human race at large). Both things can coexist. What matters is right action, as the Buddhists put it, and that can happen anywhere. 133 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck References 134 End Notes & Notes 135 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Dear Sellouts 1 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. 2 Kane, E. M. (2010, August 8). Anthony Grayling - Ethics in Lausanne: AVA, p. 28. Graphic Design. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://www.ethicsingraphicdesign.org/tag/anthony-grayling/ 3 Garland, K. (1964). First Things First Manifesto. London: The Guardian 4 Spitz, R. (2015). Design is not a Science: Otl Aicher’s Constitutional Putsch at the HfG Ulm and His Credo for the Social Responsibility of Designers. Design Issues, 31(1), 7-17. 5 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 6 100 Years of Design Manifestos. (2014, March 5). Retrieved November responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 103. 10, 2018, from https://backspace.com/notes/2009/07/designmanifestos.php 6 Glaser, M. (September 2002). A Designer’s Road To Hell. Retrieved November 10, 2018, from https://newwaydesign.com/miltonglasers-a-designers-the-road-to-hell/ 6 Barnbrook, J. et al. (1999). First Things First 2000 Manifesto. Retrieved March 8 2018, from http://www.eyemagazine.com/ feature/article/first-things-first-manifesto-2000 7 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 8 The 3% Movement. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 103. https://www.3percentmovement.com/ Industry Ethics 1 MacAvery Kane, E. (2013, April 19). Summary. Retrieved November 22, 1 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists 2018, from https://ethicsofdesign.wordpress.com/summary/ handbook: how to change the world (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books, 19. 2 Ethic | Definition of ethic in Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (n.d.) Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/ethic 136 End Notes Ethical | Definition of ethical in US English by Oxford 3 Dictionaries. (n.d.). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/ethical Schwab, K. (2018, July 10). Design Is Inherently An Unethical Industry. 4 Retrieved September 2, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany. com/90138470/Design-is-inherently-an-unethical-industry 5 Fry, T. (2009). Design Futuring: Sustainability, ethics, new practice. 6 Idem, p. 4. 7 Postman, N. (1998). Five things we need to know about technological 7 Winner, L. (2014). Technologies as forms of life. In Ethics and 7 Feenberg, A. (2010). Ten paradoxes of technology. Techné: Research 8 Latour, B. (2012). Love Your Monsters: Why We Must Care for Our University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, p. 80. change. Retrieved November 16, 2016. emerging technologies (pp. 48-60). Palgrave Macmillan UK. in Philosophy and Technology, 14(1), 3-15. Technologies As We Do Our Children. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/ issue-2/love-your-monsters Refer to page 176 Codes of Ethics 9 10 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. 11 Nicomachean Ethics: Books I to IV. (2018). Retrieved November 11, Lausanne: AVA, 36. 2018, from https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/aristotle/section8/ Facing Issues 1 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. 2 Samuelson, J., & Reed, A. (2017, February 07). When Do Consumer Lausanne: AVA, p. 192 Boycotts Work? Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2017/02/07/when-doconsumer-boycotts-work 3 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. Lausanne: AVA, 47, 127. 137 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 4 Kane, E. M. (2010). Ethics: a graphic designer’s field guide. 5 See page 182 Publishing in Design Ethics 6 Berman, D. B. (2009). Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our 7 Dilnot, C.(2015). The Artificial and What it Opens Toward., Design Campbell Hall, NY: Eileen MacAvery Kane. World. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p. 1. and the question of History., Fry, T., Dilnot, C., & Stewart, S. C. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 165-203. 8 TIME’S UP™/ADVERTISING. (2018). Retrieved June 28, 2018, from 9 Me too. Movement. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https:// http://timesupadvertising.com/ metoomvmt.org/ 10 Depatriarchise design. (2018). Retrieved September 23, 2018, from 11 Kiem, M., & Ansari, A. (2018). Decolonising Design. Retrieved Sep- 12 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 13 Let’s Make the Industry 50/50 Initiative. (2018). Retrieved October 14 The 3% Movement. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 15 So(cial) Good Design Awards. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, https://depatriarchisedesign.com/ tember 18, 2018, from http://www.decolonisingdesign.com/ responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 103 10, 2018, from http://5050initiative.org/ https://www.3percentmovement.com/ from https://www.rgd.ca/2015/03/02/social-good-design-awardsreturns-in-2018.php 16 Cannes Good Awards. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 17 AIGA Design Census 2017. Retrieved July 9, 2018, from 18 Design Thinkers. (2018). Retrieved October 22, 2018, from 18 Roth, A. (2018, January 26). Ethical Design - 2018 SXSW https://www.canneslions.com/awards/good https://designcensus.org/ https://www.designthinkers.com/ Programming Trends. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from https://www.sxsw.com/film/2018/ethical-design-2018-sxswprogramming-trends/ 19 Simmons, C. (2011). Just design: socially conscious design for critical causes. Cincinnati, OH: How Books, p. 4. 138 End Notes 20 Teixeira, F. (2017, June 01). Diversity by Design: Our role in shaping a more inclusive industry. Retrieved July 6, 2018, from https:// rgabydesign.com/diversity-by-design-our-role-in-shaping-amore-inclusive-industry-4efccd99e1c9 20 Rees, B. (2017, September 03). Diversity and Design: How we can shape a more inclusive industry? Retrieved August 08, 2018, from https:// uxplanet.org/Diversity-and-design-how-we-can-shape-a-moreinclusive-industry-3b12999962e 20 Snoad, L. (2018, March 08). How to encourage diversity in the design industry. Retrieved April 21, 2018, from https://www.creativebloq. com/features/How-to-encourage-diversity-in-the-design-industry 20 Vinh, K. (2018, March 09). Creative careers elude people of color. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://qz.com/1216574/ creative-careers-elude-people-of-color/ 21 DESIS Network Design for Social Innovation Toward Sustainability. (2016). Retrieved May, 2018, from https://www.desisnetwork.org/ Taking Action 1 100 Years of Design Manifestos. (2014, March 5). Retrieved November 10, 2018, from https://backspace.com/notes/2009/07/ design-manifestos.php 2 Morris, W. (2015). The Arts and Crafts of To-day 1889. Retrieved April/May, 2018, from https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/ works/1889/today.htm 3 Flask, D. (2013). First Things First. Retrieved June 13, 2018, from 4 Domingo, M. (2018). Dieter Rams: 10 Timeless Commandments http://www.designishistory.com/1960/first-things-first/ for Good Design. Retrieved April 15, 2018, from https://www. interaction-design.org/literature/article/dieter-rams-10-timelesscommandments-for-good-design 5 Casey, V. (2007). The Designers Accord. Retrieved March 09, 2018, 6 Montréal Design Declaration. (2017, October). Retrieved March 09, from http://www.designersaccord.org/ 2018,from https://worlddesignsummit.com/ 139 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Kraigie, A. (2015, May 10). ‘Vision Without Execution Is Just a 7 Hallucination’. Retrieved February 4, 2018, from https://today.duke. edu/2015/05/kragie Ethical Essentialist 1 Distinguish Yourself as a Certified RGD. (2012). Retrieved March 27, 1 CGD™ Certification. (2016). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 2 Dempsey, S., & Taylor, C. (2016). Designer’s Oath. Retrieved June 4, 3 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (n.d.). Re- 2018, from https://www.rgd.ca/rgd-certification/certification https://gdc.design/cgd-certification/about 2018, from https://designersoath.com/ trieved August 1, 2018, from https://sustainabledevelopment. un.org/?menu=1300 4 The Sustainable Development Goals in Canada - #SDGsForCanada. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.globalcompact.ca/sustainable-development-goals/ 5 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. 6 The ARC Foundation. (2016-2018). Social Justice Vocabulary. Retrieved Lausanne: AVA, pp.192 May 2, 2018, from https://bc.sogieducation.org/social-justicevocabulary/ 7 Moran, G. (2018, September 27). Are microaggressions trashing your companys productivity? Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/90236557/are-microaggressionstrashing-your-companys-productivity 8 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 103 9 RGD Accessibility. (2012). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.rgd.ca/resources/accessibility/access 10 Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. (2017, August 24). Standard on Web Accessibility. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www. tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=23601 11 Accessibility Design. (2018). Retrieved May 4, 2018, from https://gdc.design/accessibility-design 140 End Notes 12 Decolonising Design (2016, June 27). Editorial Statement. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://www.decolonisingdesign.com/ statements/2016/editorial/ 13 Guide to Acknowledging First Peoples & Traditional Territory (2018). Retrieved October 12, 2018, from https://www.caut.ca/ content/guide-acknowledging-first-peoples-traditional-territory 14 Aboriginal Gathering Place Resources. (2018). Retrieved September 15 Reconciliation Canada | Background. (2017). Retrieved June 14, 2018, 2, 2018, from http://aboriginal.ecuad.ca/resources/ from http://reconciliationcanada.ca/about/history-and-background/background/ 16 RGD Resources | No Spec. (2012). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 16 10 reasons why Spec work is bad for your business. (2012, December https://www.rgd.ca/resources/no-spec 01). Retrieved September 5, 2018, from https://www.williamjoseph.com/blog /10-reasons-why-spec-work-is-bad-for-your-business/ 16 No!Spec. (n.d.). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www. 17 Javaid, R. (2017, June 25). Should you do speculative (spec) work? – UX nospec.com/ Collective. Retrieved October 27, 2018, from https://uxdesign.cc/ spec-work-sucks-it-must-die-70ad096bae13 18 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists handbook: how to change the world (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books, pp. 62. 19 See page 176 Codes of Ethics 20 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 21 The Human-Centered Design Toolkit | IDEO. (2015). Retrieved 22 AIGA (2016). Design for Good. Retrieved August 29, 2018, from 23 So(cial) Good Design Awards. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 192. November 7, 2018, from https://www.ideo.com/post/design-kit https://www.aiga.org/design-for-good from https://www.rgd.ca/2015/03/02/social-good-design-awardsreturns-in-2018.php 24 Cannes Good Awards. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.canneslions.com/awards/good 141 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 25 Moon, E. (2017, September 28). The Research Behind Getty Images’ Ban on Photo Retouching for Body Shape. Retrieved September 4, 2018, from https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-research-behindgetty-images-Ban-on-retouching 26 Feldman, J. (2017, March 30). Fashion Brands Really Don’t Care Whether Un-Retouched Ads Rake In Cash. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.ca /entry/brands-no-photoshop_us_58dab41ce4b0546370629f88 27 Millennial Survey 2018 | Deloitte | Social impact, Innovation. (2018, August 23). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www2. deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html “The Millennial workforce is beginning to place social good and ethics above the desire for bigger titles and more money.” 28 In Apparel, It’s Fast Fashion Versus Sustainability. (2018, March 09). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://lifestylemonitor.cottoninc.com/in-apparel-its-fast-fashion-versus-sustainability/ 29 Vaughan, A. (2015, September 25). Data centre emissions rival air travel as digital demand soars. Retrieved April 2, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/25/ server-data-centre-emissions-air-travel-web-google-facebookgreenhouse-gas 30 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists handbook: how to change the world (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books., pp. 24. 24 Cannes Good Awards. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 25 Moon, E. (2017, September 28). The Research Behind Getty Images’ https://www.canneslions.com/awards/good Ban on Photo Retouching for Body Shape. Retrieved September 4, 2018, from https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-research-behindgetty-images-Ban-on-retouching 26 Feldman, J. (2017, March 30). Fashion Brands Really Don’t Care Whether Un-Retouched Ads Rake In Cash. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/brands-nophotoshop_us_58dab41ce4 142 End Notes Conscious Compromiser 1 See Othering on page 168 2 Ministry of Labour. (n.d.). Are Unpaid Internships Legal in Ontario? Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.labour.gov.on.ca/ english/es/pubs/internships.php In many provinces and states unpaid internships are illegal. Do your research. 3 Weyenberg, A. (2016, November 21). The ethics of good design: A principle for the connected age. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://medium.com/swlh/dieter-rams-ten-principles-for-gooddesign-the-1st-amendment-4e73111a18e4 3 10 of the Best Design Philosophies of All Time. (2015, August 05). Retrieved October 4, 2018, from https://blog.proto.io/10-of-thebest-design-philosophies-of-all-time/ 3 Schwab, K. (2017, September 26). 8 Design Principles To Live And Die By, According To Facebook, IBM, Pentagram, And More. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/90143505/8-design-principles-to-live-and-die-by-according-to-facebook-ibm-pentagramand-more 4 44% of Canadians are Socially Responsible Consumers. (2017, July 7). Retrieved August 3, 2018, from https://www.crop.ca/en/ blog/2017/190/ 5 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 227. “The modern consumer adds environmental impact to the perceived cost of consumption and is attracted to companies who acknowledge their responsibility by embracing incremental improvements in environmental impact.” 6 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists handbook: how to change the world (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books, p. 127. “Doing the right thing often reduces budgets because it usually leads to less waste, more loyal customers and even more efficient employees” 143 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Report: Social Purpose Now a Key Driver in Canadians’ Purchasing 7 Decisions. (2018, April 30). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/business_ case/sustainable_brands/Report_social_purpose_now_key_driver_canadians_purch Antoniadi, E. (2018, April 19). Purpose eh? How Canada can lead the 8 way. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from http://www.kinandco.com/ purpose-eh-how-canada-can-lead-the-way/ Charity Intelligence Canada. (2018). Retrieved September 2, 2018, 9 from https://www.charityintelligence.ca/ 10 Gay, W. (2016, November 14). 4 Reasons Why A Corporate Volunteer Program Is A Smart Investment. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/wesgay/2016/11/03/4reasons-why-a-corporate-volunteer-program-is-a-smartinvestment/#3906e8f93364 Gallup, Inc. (2016, June 01). Paycheck or Purpose: What Drives Mil- 11 lennials? Retrieved June 27, 2018, from https://www.gallup.com/ workplace/236453/paycheck-purpose-drives-millennials.aspx 12 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. Lausanne: AVA, p. 133 “…you have to be careful about telling the truth. I can’t change the world, but I try to show what is happening in a direct way.” Design Industry Activist 1 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists handbook: how to change the world (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books, pp. 85, 96. 2 RGD Resources | No Spec. (2012). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 3 Ico-D stands against crowd-sourced competition for the Tokyo Olym- https://www.rgd.ca/resources/no-spec pics 2020 logo. (2016, February 11). Retrieved September 12, 2018, from http://www.ico-d.org/2016/02/11/tokyo-logo-story.php 4 AIGA position on spec work. (2012). Retrieved November 11, 2018, 5 GDC. (2015). Dealing With “Spec” Work. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.aiga.org/position-spec-work from https://gdc.design/article/national/dealing-with-spec-work 144 End Notes 6 Mroueh, Z. (2015, November 6). Time for Us All to Ditch Spec Creative Pitches. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from http://www.zulualphakilo. com/saynotospec/ 7 Riley, C. (2018). The Cultural Influence of Brands—In Defense of Advertising. Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility. Heller, S., & Vienne, V. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 219-227 8 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists handbook: how to change theworld (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books, pp. 127. 9 Warren, E. (2018, August 14). Opinion | Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-shouldnt-beaccountable-only-to-shareholders-1534287687 10 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 187 Digital Ethicist 1 Harris, T. (2016, May 18). How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind - from a Former Insider. Retrieved August 30, 2018, from https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-Technology-hijackspeoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-S-design-ethicist56d62ef5edf3 2 Government of Canada, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, & CRTC. (2018, January 26). Strengthening net neutrality in Canada. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/internet/diff.htm 3 Solon, O. (2017, November 09). Ex-Facebook president Sean Parker: Site made to exploit human ‘vulnerability’. Retrieved May 3, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/ facebook-sean-parker-vulnerability-brain-psychology 4 Leslie, I. (2016, October 20). The scientists who make apps addictive. Retrieved September 10, 2018, from https://www.1843magazine. com/features/the-scientists-Who-make-apps-addictive 5 Stolzoff, S. (2018, March 20). Addicted to your Smartphone? This Formula is Why. Retrieved July 19, 2018, from https://www.wired. com/story/phone-addiction-formula/ 145 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 6 Nielsen, J. (2012, January 4). Usability 101: Introduction to Usability. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.nngroup.com/ articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/ Shanghaiist.com. (2017, December 15). Chinese shoe company 7 tricks people into swiping Instagram ad with fake strand of hair. Retrieved October 5, 2018, from https://medium.com/shanghaiist/ chinese-shoe-company-tricks-people-into-swiping-instagram-adwith-fake-strand-of-hair-54d8a2d8ec1d 8 Dark Patterns Hall of shame. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, 9 Enable, U. N. (2009). Convention on the rights of persons with from https://darkpatterns.org/hall-of-shame disabilities and optional protocol. NY United Nations. 10 Accessibility Resources RGD. (2012). 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Retrieved August 30, 2018, from https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-Technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-googleS-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3 16 Weiner, S. (2018, July 09). Applying The Addictive Psychology Of Slot Machines To App Design. Retrieved September 8, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/3046149/applying-the-addictivepsychology-of-slot-machines-to-app-design 146 End Notes 17 Maras, D., Flament, M. F., Murray, M., Buchholz, A., Henderson, K. A., Obeid, N., & Goldfield, G. S. (2015). Screen time is associated with depression and anxiety in Canadian youth. Preventive medicine, 73, 133-138. Garcia-Navarro, L. (2017, December 17). The Risk Of Teen Depression 17 And Suicide Is Linked To Smartphone Use, Study Says. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2017/12/17/571443683/ the-call-in-teens-and-depression Twenge, J. M., Joiner, T. E., Rogers, M. L., & Martin, G. N. (2018). 17 Increases in depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide rates among US adolescents after 2010 and links to increased new media screen time. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(1), 3-17. 17 Twenge, J. M. (2018, March 19). Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? Retrieved September 28, 2018, from https://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphonedestroyed-a-generation/534198/ 17 Nauert, R. (2018, April 12). Survey: Heavy Smartphone Use Tied to Anxiety, Loneliness, Depression. Retrieved September 1, 2018, from https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/04/12/survey-heavysmartphone-use-tied-to-anxiety-loneliness-depression/134590. html 19 Center for Humane Technology. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, 20 Friends of Time Well Spent. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018 21 Lord, F. (2018, September 20). Net Neutrality in Canada | Canadian from http://humanetech.com/ from https://www.facebook.com/groups/FriendsofTimeWellSpent/ Library of Parliament. Retrieved November 28, 2018, from https:// hillnotes.ca/2018/09/20/net-neutrality-in-canada/ 22 Ibidem 23 Wilson, M. (2018, July 10). What You’re Getting Wrong About Inclusive Design. Retrieved November 24, 2018, from https://www. fastcompany.com/90166413/whatYoure-getting-wrong-about-inclusive-design 147 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Ethical Design Educator 1 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 2 Depatriarchise design. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 3 Design + social justice. (2016). Retrieved November 25, 2018, from 4 Decolonising Design (2016, June 27). Editorial Statement. Retrieved responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, pp.193-195. https://depatriarchisedesign.com/ http://designjustice.org/ November 11, 2018, from http://www.decolonisingdesign.com/ statements/2016/editorial/ 5 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 6 Ibidem. responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 100 Ethical Entrepreneur 1 Certified B Corporation. (2018). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from 2 Yglesias, M. (2018, August 15). Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save https://bcorporation.net/ capitalism. Retrieved September, 2018, from https://www.vox. com/2018/8/15/17683022/Elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations 3 Parrish, S. (2016, February 04). The Profit Potential In Running An Ethical Business. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www. forbes.com/sites/steveparrish/2016/02/04/the-profit-potential-inrunning-an-ethical-business/#62b6838c7687 4 Millennial Survey 2018 | Deloitte | Social impact, Innovation. (2018, August 23). Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www2. deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html 5 Clendaniel, M. (2018, April 02). Want A Purpose-Driven Business? Know The Difference Between Mission And Purpose. Retrieved October 4, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/40552232/ want-a-purpose-driven-business-know-the-difference-betweenmission-and-purpose 148 End Notes CFA Institute (2018) CFA Program Curriculum, 2018, Level II, Volume 6 3. Corporate Finance. WILEY The long-term prospects of a company are also affected by environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. These factors include climate change, labor rights, public and occupational health issues, and the soundness of the company’s governance structures.” 7 Zwilling, M. (2017, January 02). 8 Reasons Why Being Socially Responsible Is Good For Business. Retrieved October 4, 2018, from https://www.inc.com/martin-zwilling/8-reasons-why-beingsocially-responsible-is-good-for-business.html 8 Innovation, Science and Development Canada. (2018, May 08). Corporate social responsibility. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://canadabusiness.ca/managing-your-business/ day-to-day-operations/managementleadership/corporate-social-responsibility/ 9 MacCarthy, L. (2017, May 18). New Report Reveals 86% of US Consumers Expect Companies to Act on Social, Environmental Issues. Retrieved May 20, 2018, from https://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/marketing_comms/libby_maccarthy/new_report_reveals_86_Americans_expect_companies_take 10 Ahmed, M., M. (2018). Minority Designers—Leading the Charge Toward Responsible Design, in Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility, Heller, S., & Vienne, V. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 103-107. 11 Paynter, B. (2018, April 13). The Next Wave Of Tech-For-Good Companies Are Being Built By Women And Minorities. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/40554684/ the-next-wave-of-tech-for-good-companies-are-being-built-bywomen-and-minorities”Most traditional tech company founders are white and male, while comparatively far more women and minorities go the social good route, according to a new report...shows that 47% of all tech nonprofit founders are women, compared to just 17% at traditional startups. Minorities make up 30% of all tech nonprofit founders compared to 13% in the for-profit field.” 12 Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved October 5, 2018, from http://canada.coop/en/values-principles 149 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 13 The benefits of co‑operatives. (2017). Retrieved September 2, 2018, 14 Verynice.co. (2018). Retrieved November, 2018, from http://verynice.co/ 15 givehalf.co (2018) Retrieved November 10, 2018 from http://givehalf.co 16 Nguyen, S. (2017, April 06). 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Retrieved November 24, 2018, from https://www. fastcompany.com/90166413/what-youre-getting-wrong-aboutinclusive-design 6 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 7 Simmons, C. (2011). Just design: socially conscious design for critical 8 Charity Intelligence Canada. (2018). Retrieved November 24, 2018, 9 Charity Navigator U.S. (2018). Retrieved September 3, 2018, from responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 91. causes. Cincinnati, OH: How Books, p. 13. from https://www.charityintelligence.ca/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/ 10 Humane Charities Canada. (2018). Retrieved November 24, 2018, 11 Shea, A., Drenttel, W., & Lupton, E. (2012). Designing for social change: from https://www.humanecharities.ca/ Strategies for community-based graphic design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 97. 150 End Notes 12 Chick, A., & Micklethwaite, P. (2017). Design for Sustainable Change: How Design and Designers Can Drive the Sustainability Agenda. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. 13 Shea, A., Drenttel, W., & Lupton, E. (2012). Designing for social change: Strategies for community-based graphic design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 83. 14 Shea, A., Drenttel, W., & Lupton, E. (2012). Designing for social change: Strategies for community-based graphic design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 111. 15 Sappi Ideas That Matter (2018). Retrieved May 2, 2018, from 15 Canada Council Funding. (2018). Retrieved August 5, 2018, from 15 Best Global Social Good, Sustainable & Ethical Marketing Campaigns https://www.sappi.com/ideas-matter-call-entry https://canadacouncil.ca/funding | D&AD - Home. (2018). Retrieved November 24, 2018, from https:// dandadimpact.com/ 16 MediaSmarts. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2018, from http://medi- 17 Definition for Neuronormativity on page 167 18 Grimes, D. R. (2017, December 04). Echo chambers are danger- asmarts.ca/diversity-media/privilege-media forms-privilege ous – we must try to break free of our online bubbles. Retrieved November 24, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/science/ blog/2017/dec/04/echo-chambers-are-dangerous-we-must-try-tobreak-free-of-our-online-bubbles 19 AIGA Election design tools and resources. (2018). Retrieved November 24, 2018, from https://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/why-design/ design-for-democracy/election-design-tools-and-resources/ 20 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 21 Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012). The design activists hand- responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 68. book: how to change the world (or at least your part of it) with socially conscious design. Cincinnati, OH: HOW Books, p. 24. 151 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Eco Designer 1 See Regenerative Design Page 102 2 Thomas, S. (2013, July 13). Waste is a Design Flaw - Sophie Thomas. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://opentranscripts.org/ transcript/waste-design-flaw/ 3 Jedlička, W. (2010). Sustainable graphic design: Tools, systems, and strat- 4 Walker, S. (2014). Designing sustainability: making radical changes in a 5 Walker, S. (2014). Designing sustainability: making radical changes in a 6 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. 7 Forest Stewardship Council. (2018). FSC. Retrieved November 21, 8 ENERGY STAR Canada. (2018, October 30). Retrieved November 21, egies for innovative print design. Hoboken (NJ): John Wiley & Sons. material world. Routledge, p.32. material world. Routledge, p. 111. Lausanne: AVA,p. 36. 2018, from https://www.fsc.org/ 2018, from https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/products/energystar/12519 9 ECOLOGO Product Certification | Industries | UL. (2017). Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://industries.ul.com/environment/ certificationvalidation-marks/ecologo-product-certification 10 Rainforest Alliance. (2018). Retrieved October 6, 2018, from 11 White, P., St. Pierre, L., & Belletire, S. (2014). Okala practitioner: 12 Shaughnessy, A. (2010). How to be a graphic designer without losing 13 Support for investigating the cleanliness and eco-friendliness of 13 Think Dirty Inc. (n.d.). Think Dirty App. Retrieved November 21, 13 Greener Choices Home – Organic Watch & Safe Food Practices. (n.d.). 14 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. (n.d.). Re- https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/ integrating ecological design. Phoenix, Ariz. : IDSA, c2014, pp. 21-22. your soul. Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 108-109 products. 2018, from http://www.thinkdirtyapp.com/ Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://greenerchoices.org/ trieved August 1, 2018, from https://sustainabledevelopment. un.org/?menu=1300 152 End Notes 15 Fairtrade Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http:// 16 Fry, T. (2009). Design Futuring: Sustainability, ethics, new practice. 17 Ramchandani, N. (2018, July). Nice ad, shame about the planet. fairtrade.ca/ University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, p. 4. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://dothegreenthing.com/ issue/nice-ad-shame-about-the-planet/ 18 Blythman, J. (2016, August 12). Can hipsters stomach the unpalatable truth about avocado toast? | Joanna Blythman. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/12/hispters-handle-unpalatable-truth-avocadotoast 19 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility. New York: Allworth Press. “The modern consumer adds environmental impact to the perceived cost of consumption and is attracted to companies who acknowledge their responsibility by embracing incremental improvements in environmental impact” 20 CFA Institute (2018) CFA Program Curriculum, 2018, Level II, Volume 21 Bunz | Trade Local with People in Your City. (2018). Retrieved No- 22 Sharma, R. (2017, January 10). Apple Is Most Environment-Friendly 3. Corporate Finance. WILEY, p. 45. vember 21, 2018, from https://bunz.com/ Tech Company. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www. investopedia.com/news/apple-most-environmentfriendly-techcompany-aapl-goog/ 23 Schlanger, Z. (2017, April 20). Apple wants to try to “stop mining the Earth altogether” to make your iPhone. Retrieved September 3, 2018, from https://qz.com/964862/apple-says-it-will-stop-usingrare-earth-minerals-to-make-iphones/ 24 Transition Towns | The Circular Economy. (2018). Retrieved Novem- 25 White, P., St. Pierre, L., & Belletire, S. (2014). Okala practitioner: 26 Goodall, C. (2017). How to reduce your carbon footprint #Global- ber 21, 2018, from https://transitionnetwork.org/ integrating ecological design. Phoenix, Ariz. : IDSA, c2014. Warning. Retrieved 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2017/jan/19/how-to-reduce-carbon-footprint 153 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 27 Footprint Calculator | How many planets does it take to sustain your lifestyle? (2018). Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www. footprintcalculator.org/ 28 Climate Home News, part of the Guardian Environment Network. (2017, December 11). ‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/tsunamiof-data-could-consume-fifth-global-electricity-by-2025 29 Doucleff, M., & Aubrey, A. (2018, February 12). Smartphone Detox: How To Power Down In A Wired World. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/sections/healthshots/2018/02/12/584389201/smartphone-detox-how -to-power-down-in-a-wired-world 30 Berman, D. B. (2009). Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our 31 Rights of Nature (2016). Retrieved November 21, 2018, from 32 Boucher, T. (2016, February 04). World Charter For Nature (1982) World. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p. 133. http://therightsofnature.org/frequently-asked-questions/ – Tim Boucher – Medium. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://medium.com/@timboucher/world-charter-for-nature1982-93cc3d41ff79 33 United Nations. (1982, October 28). World Charter for Nature. Re- 34 Champion the Rights of Nature | Community Environmental Legal trieved from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm Defense Fund. (2018). Retrieved November 14, 2018, from https:// celdf.org/rights/rights-of-nature/ 35 White, P., St. Pierre, L., & Belletire, S. (2014). Okala practitioner: 36 Walker, S. (2014). Designing sustainability: making radical changes in a 37 Carbon offsets | David Suzuki Foundation. (2017, October 5). integrating ecological design. Phoenix, Ariz. : IDSA, c2014, p. 13. material world. Routledge, p. 91 Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://davidsuzuki.org/whatyou-can-do/carbon-offsets/ 38 Langechenier, M. (2018, May 23). Carbon offsetting: A different way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Retrieved October 4, 2018, from https://treecanada.ca/blog/carbon-offsetting-a-differentway-to-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions 154 End Notes Social Innovation Designer Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs : an introduction to 1 design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press. 2 St. Pierre, L. (2016). DESIS: Design for social innovation /brand sustainability. Retrieved November 24, 2018, from http://current. ecuad.ca/desis-br-design-for-social-innovation-and-sustainability 3 DESIS Network. (2016). Retrieved September 14, 2018, from 4 Transition Towns | The Circular Economy. (2018). Retrieved 5 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design 6 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. 7 Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs : an introduction to https://www.desisnetwork.org/ September 5, 2018, from https://transitionnetwork.org/ responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 106. Lausanne: AVA, pp. 65. design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, p. 33. 8 Tassinari, V. (2018). DESIS Philosophy Talks. Retrieved November 24, 9 DESIS Network Labs. (2016). Retrieved September 14, 2018, from 2018, from http://www.desis-philosophytalks.org/ https://www.desisnetwork.org/labs/ 10 We are the Social Innovation Exchange. (2018). Retrieved November 11 Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs : an introduction to 24, 2018, from https://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/ design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, p. 123. 12 St. Pierre, L. (2016). DESIS: Design for social innovation/brand sustainability. Retrieved November 24, 2018, from http://current. ecuad.ca/desis-br-design-for- social-innovation-and-sustainability Design Activist 1 Glaser, M., Ilic, M., & Heller, S. (2017). The Design of Dissent, Expanded Edition: Greed, Nationalism, Alternative Facts, and the Resistance. Rockport Publishers. 155 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 2 Thorpe, A. (2016). Design as Activism: To resist or to generate? Retrieved August 29, 2018, from http://current.ecuad.ca/design-asactivism-to-resist-or-to-generate 3 Do The Green Thing Resources. (2018). Retrieved November 24, 2018, 4 Creative Commons. (2018). Retrieved September 2, 2018, from 5 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design from http://dothegreenthing.com/resources/ https://creativecommons.org/ responsibility. New York: Allworth Press. “Activists tend to be generous cheerful life loving people who tend to make sad, sectarian radical images that value a form of violence - if we want to encourage protest and resist it is counterproductive to create images that glamorize clashes of power” 6 Roberts, L. (2006). Good an introduction to ethics in graphic design. Lausanne: AVA, p. 177. “The reality for me is that my vote and my political actions are probably more valuable than anything I can do as a designer” “we have to take a pragmatic view. Start with the real world, not the ideal world, and we’ll see how we can approach an ideal world” 7 Thorpe, A. (2016). Design as Activism: To resist or to generate? Retrieved August 29, 2018, from http://current.ecuad.ca/ design-as-activism-to-resist-or-to-generate 8 Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018). Citizen designer: Perspectives on design responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, p. 121. 156 End Notes 157 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 158 Glossary Glossary 159 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck A Archetype Ableism A prototypical model of Discrimination in favor beliefs and behaviours that of able-bodied people others may emulate. Accessibility Attention Economy The quality of being easily Attention economics is an reached, entered, or used by approach to the management people who have a disability of information that treats A very typical example of a certain person or thing. human attention as a scarce Activist commodity. Particularly A person who campaigns to relevant in the internet age bring about political or social change Analogue B Not involving or relating B Corporation to the use of computer Certified businesses that technology, as a contrast meet the highest standards to a digital counterpart of verified social and environmental performance, Anglocentric public transparency, A worldview centred on or and legal accountability considered from an English to balance profit or Anglo-American and purpose perspective Bias Appropriation Prejudice in favor of or The action of taking against one thing, person, something for one’s or group compared with own use, without the another unfairly owner’s permission 160 Glossary C Co-operative Capitalism by its members, who share An economic and political the profits or benefits A business, or organization that is owned and run jointly system in which a country’s trade and industry are Colonialism controlled by private owners The practice of acquiring for profit, rather than by full or partial political control the state over another country, occupying it with settlers, Carbon Offset exploiting it economically A reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or greenhouse Consumerism gases made in order to The preoccupation of society compensate for or to offset with the acquisition of an emission made elsewhere onsumer goods Clickbait Copyright Online. hyperbolic or Exclusive and assignable misleading content whose legal right, given to the main purpose is to attract originator for a fixed number attention and encourage of years, to print, publish, visitors to click on a link to perform, film, or record a particular web page literary, artistic, designed, or musical material. Co-Creation/Co-Design Participants (putative, Creative Commons potential or future) are One of several public invited to cooperate with copyright licenses designers, researchers and that enable the free developers during an distribution of an otherwise innovation process copyrighted work 161 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Corporate Social Formerly considered a Responsibility (CSR) formalized process of A business model that handing over government supports companies to control, it is now recognized be socially responsible as a long-term process to itself, stakeholders involving bureaucratic, and to the public cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting Crowdsourcing of colonial power The practice of obtaining information or input into Democratize a project by enlisting the Make (something) services of a large number of accessible to everyone people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet Dissent The expression or holding D of opinions at variance with Dark Patterns context of activism those previously, commonly, or officially held. Often in the In user interface design. A design that intentionally tricks users into carrying out a task they might otherwise E not do. Examples can include Echo Chamber unknowingly signing up for Describes a situation where recurring payments or ideas or beliefs are reinforced including expensive through the repetition of a add-ons to a purchase closed system that does not allow for the free movement Decolonization of alternative or competing The process of a state ideas or concepts withdrawing from a colony, leaving it independent. 162 Glossary Eco-Efficiency Ethics Goods and services are eco- Moral principles that govern efficient when they satisfy a person’s behavior or the human needs and improve conducting of an activity quality of life, while progressively Eurocentric reducing resource intensity Focusing on European and mitigating negative culture or history to the ecological impact exclusion of a wider view Ecosystem regarding European A biological community of culture as preeminent of the world; implicitly interacting organisms and their physical environment. Also a complex network or interconnected system F Fair Trade Elitism The practice of directly The advocacy or existence benefiting producers in of an elite as a dominating the developing world by element in a system or soci- buying straight from them ety. The attitude or behavior at a guaranteed price of a person or group who regard themselves as belong- Fake News ing to an elite Refers to fabricated news. Found in traditional news, Equity social media or fake news The quality of being fair websites, has no basis in and impartial. Supporting fact, but is presented as based on individual need being factually accurate. rather than that treating everyone identically First Things First Manifesto Reacting against an affluent Britain of the 1960s, this 163 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck famous manifesto rallied Genetically Modified against consumerist culture Organisms (GMO) tried to re-radicalise a Any organism whose genetic design industry which the material has been altered signatories felt had become using genetic engineering lazy, uncritical and dedicated techniques. There is debate to working for the about the long-term effects advertising industry to human bodies and the planet from the creation and Font Licensing consumption of GMOs End User License Agreement (EULA) that defines what Grants usage of a font is legally al- A sum of money given by lowed. It is important an organization, especially to read the EULA and a government, for a understand its restrictions. particular purpose For example, some licenses may allow a font to be used Green Hosting on a single computer, some Web hosts that actively work may stipulate that the font is to carry out eco-friendly for web-use only and some initiatives that mitigate the may allow any use in impact on the environment perpetuity that results from the high energy use and carbon G dioxide (CO2) output of the Gender Equity through the use of renewable Provision of fairness and energy or carbon offsets data centres they use. Hosts typically mitigate their impact justice in the distribution of benefits and responsibilities Greenhouse Gasses between women, non-binary Any of various gaseous identities, and men compounds (such as carbon dioxide or methane) that 164 Glossary absorb infrared radiation, Hippocratic oath trap heat in the atmosphere, The ethical oath taken by and contribute to the medical professionals to Greenhouse Effect. The main “do no harm” greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are carbon Homophobia dioxide, methane, nitrous Irrational fear of, aversion to, oxide and ozone. or discrimination against Scientific evidence homosexuals/homosexuality indicates that these gasses have potentially Human Centred Design dangerous impacts to A design and management water levels and earth framework that develops temperatures solutions to problems by involving the human Greenwashing perspective in all steps of the Intentional disinformation problem-solving process disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image I Income Inequality H The difference found in Heteropatriarchy among individuals in The combination of a group, groups in a male (patriarchal) and population, or countries. heterosexual dominance Economic inequality essentially describing the sometimes refers to income sex and gender bias inequality, wealth inequality, prevalent among the elite or the wealth gap various measures of economic well-being ruling classes of nation-states 165 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Inclusive Design Design that is usable by and M accessible to the maximum number of people without Misogyny the need for special A hatred of or discrimination adaptation or specialised against women design. Design which includes as diverse a team Morality of stakeholders as possible Principles concerning the distinction between right Indigenous Peoples and wrong or good and bad In Canada, a collective noun behavior or the extent to for First Nations, Inuit and which an action is right Metis. The original settlers of or wrong a given region, in contrast to groups that have settled, oc- Moral Philosophy cupied or colonized the area The area of philosophy more recently concerned with theories of ethics and the study of L human conduct and values LGBTQ2+ Combining or involving Also described as several academic the queer community. disciplines or professional An evolving acronym, specializations in an LGBTQ2+ includes lesbian, approach to a topic gay, bisexual, transgender, or problem Multidisciplinarity queer and two-spirit people. The + aims to include the identities for which language does not yet support or that 166 N the abbreviated acronym Natural Capital does not directly include The planet’s natural assets Glossary including geology, soil, neurologically atypical air, water and all living patterns of thought or things which make human behavior including mental life possible illness. Having a brain that falls within the dominant Nature’s Rights Movement societal standards of ‘normal’ An ecocentric movement recognizing that nature Non-Government (including trees, oceans, Organization (NGO) animals, etc) has rights as A non-profit organization that humans have rights. It aims operates independently of to balance what is good for any government. One whose human beings with what is purpose is to address a social or political issues good for other species and the planet as a whole and Non-Profit Organization recognizes that all life on (NPO) earth is intertwined Organization dedicated to advancing social or Net Neutrality environmental causes that The principle that internet uses the surplus of its service providers treat all revenues to achieve its data on the Internet equally, purpose, rather than and not discriminate or distributing income to the charge differently by user, organization’s leadership content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication O Open Source Neuronormativity Denoting something for Opposite of neurodivergent. which the original source Not displaying/characterized code, information or file is by autistic or other made freely available and 167 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck may be redistributed Paternalism and modified Paternalism is action limiting a person’s or group’s liberty Othering or autonomy which is View or treat (a person intended to promote their or group of people) own good. Paternalism can as intrinsically different also imply that the behavior from and alien to oneself is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also P that the behavior expresses Parachute Design Patriarchy/ Well-intentioned but Depatriarchisation paternalistic form of A system of society in design intervention that which men hold the power ‘parachutes’ in to high-need and women are largely communities, especially in excluded from it/ the developing world, The undoing of that without a depth of system of society understanding necessary toward more equitable to effectively contribute structures of power an attitude of superiority toward resolving the problems faced by the people in those communities Personas A persona is a fictional character created to Participatory Democracy represent a user type that Individual participation might use a site, brand, by citizens in political or product in a similar way decisions and policies that affect their lives, especially Personal Information directly rather than through Protection and Electronic elected representatives Documents Act (PIPEDA) Canadian law relating to data 168 Glossary privacy. Governs how private emotion and personal belief. sector organizations collect, 2016 Oxford Dictionary Word use and disclose personal of the year information in the course of commercial business. Prejudice Prejudice, or bigotry, is an Piracy affective feeling towards The unauthorized use or a person or group member reproduction of another’s based solely on that person’s work. The creators of fonts, group membership films, and computer programs are often victims of piracy Privilege A special right, advantage, Plagiarism or immunity granted or Taking someone else’s work available only to a particular or ideas and passing off as person or group of people one’s own Pro Bono Planned Obsolescence Denoting work undertaken A policy of producing without charge, especially consumer goods that rapidly work for a client with become obsolete and so a low income or a require replacing, achieved non-profiting entity by frequent changes in design, termination of the Proprietary Eponym supply of spare parts, and the A ubiquitous brand name use of non-durable materials or trademark that is used to refer to its generic class Post-Truth of objects. Kleenex is Relating to or denoting a popular example circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to 169 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Protest based on rights, respect, A statement or action cooperation, and partnership expressing disapproval of or objection to something Reflexive Consumption Q The repeated use of a Quadruple Bottom Line without conscious thought resource or product performed as a reflex, Aims to balance monetary profit with environmental, Regenerative Design spiritual and social benefit. A process-oriented systems The term was first coined and theory based approach to introduced into mainstream design. It describes usage by Ayman Sawaf in a processes that restore, bid to factor in the return to renew or revitalize their one’s spiritual self as an ad- own sources of energy ditional, fourth bottom line and materials, creating sustainable systems that R integrate the needs of society with the integrity of nature Racism Prejudice, discrimination, or Renewable Energy antagonism directed against Energy from a source that someone of a different race is not depleted when used, based on the belief that such as wind or solar power one’s own race is superior Reconciliation The restoration of friendly 170 S relations. The Government Single-Use of Canada is working to Made to be used once advance reconciliation with only. Often used to indigenous populations describe single-use plastic Glossary packaging and the value of or a designed product before opting for environmentally agreeing to pay a fee friendly products instead Status Quo Social Enterprise The existing state of affairs, A social enterprise is an especially regarding social organization that applies or political issues commercial strategies to maximize improvements Stigmatization in financial, social and If someone or something is environmental well-being. stigmatized, they are unfairly This may include maximizing regarded by many people social impact alongside prof- as being bad or having its for external shareholders something to be ashamed of Social Impact Sustainability The effect of an activity Meeting the needs of on the social fabric of the human beings and nature community and well-being in the present without of the individuals compromising the ability and families of future generations to meet their own needs. Social Innovation Considers sustainability The process of developing of natural resources as and deploying effective well as social equity and interventions to address economic development systemic social and environmental issues Systemic Problems in support of A systemic problem is sustainable progress. a problem due to issues inherent in the overall Spec/Speculative Work system, rather than due Any job for which the client to a specific, individual, expects to see creative work isolated factor 171 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck T U Transition Town United Nations 2030 Agenda Transition initiatives and for Sustainable Development transition models refer to The UN SDGs are a plan for the grassroot community peace and prosperity for projects that aim to increase people and the planet. self-sufficiency to reduce They recognize the the potential effects of peak relationality between oil, climate destruction, and ending poverty and other economic instability deprivations like health and education with addressing Transphobia climate change and Intense dislike of or environmental preservation prejudice against transsexual or transgender people Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Triple Bottom Line A marketing concept first A triple bottom line broadens proposed as a theory an organization’s focus on to explain a pattern in financial return to include successful advertising social and environmental campaigns of the early considerations. It measures 1940s. The USP states a company’s social that such campaigns made responsibility, economic unique propositions to value and environmental customers that convinced impact. The term was coined them to switch brands in 1994 by John Elkington 172 Glossary Universal Design The design of products, W services, and environments Wicked Problems to enable accessibility, Complex problems with comprehension, to be solutions that are difficult used to the greatest extent or impossible to realize possible by all people due to contradictory or regardless of age, size, changing requirements such ability or disability as climate change and public policy like health care and Usability education. “Wicked” Connected to the term denotes a resistance to “user experience” it is the solutions and complexity ease of access or ease of use of interdependencies that of a digital product or service. make solutions extremely The level of usability is challenging without determined by how readily innovative approaches a user may realize their like design thinking intention in an experience V Virtue Behavior showing high moral standards 173 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck 174 Resources Resources 175 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Codes of Ethics Academy of Design Professionals | Code of Professional Conduct designproacademy.org/code-of-professional-conduct.html The Canadian Code of Advertising Standards adstandards.com/en/standards/cancodeofadstandards.aspx AGDA | Australian Graphic Design Association Code of Ethics agda.com.au/about/code-of-ethics The Canadian Creative Industries | Code of Conduct to Prevent and Respond to Harassment, Discrimination, Bullying and Violence readthecode.ca/ Chartered Society of Designers | Code of Conduct csd.org.uk/about/code-of-conduct Canadian Marketing Association | Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice the-cma.org/regulatory/code-of-ethics Graphic Designers of Canada | Code of Ethics gdc.design/ethics/code International Council of Design | Best Practice ico-d.org/resources/best-practices RGD Rules of Professional Conduct rgd.ca/ethics 176 Resources Design Manifestos 100 Years of Design Manifesto backspace.com/notes/2009/07/design-manifestos.php First Things First 1964 Manifesto designishistory.com/1960/first-things-first First Things First 2000 Manifesto eyemagazine.com/feature/article/first-things-firstmanifesto-2000 First Things First 2014 Manifesto dpya.org/wiki/images/e/e2/First_Things_First_2014.pdf The Designers Accord designersaccord.org Designer’s Oath designersoath.com Dieter Rams: 10 Timeless Commandments for Good Design interaction-design.org/literature Ethical Design Manifesto 2017.ind.ie/ethical-design Milton Glaser | A Designer’s Road To Hell newwaydesign.com/milton-glasers-a-designers-the-road-to-hell Mike Monteiro | A Designer’s Code of Ethics muledesign.com/2017/07/a-designers-code-of-ethics 177 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Montréal Design Declaration worlddesignsummit.com William Morris | The Arts and Crafts of To-day marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1889/today.htm Ethics in Industry 3% Movement 3percentmovement.com AIGA | Design for Good aiga.org/design-for-good Cannes Good Awards canneslions.com/awards/good Decolonising Design decolonisingdesign.com/statements/2016/editorial John Maeda | Design in Tech Report designintech.report Depatriarchise Design depatriarchisedesign.com Design Justice Summit https://colloqate.org/design-justice-summit Design Justice Network http://designjusticenetwork.org 178 Resources GDC | Accessibility Design gdc.design/accessibility-design RGD | Accessibility Resources RGD rgd.ca/resources/accessibility/access Let’s Make the Industry 50/50 Initiative 5050initiative.org TIME’S UP™/ADVERTISING timesupadvertising.com So(cial) Good Design Awards rgd.ca/programs/sogood-awards Notable Agencies Advocate advocatedesign.co.uk And Also Too andalsotoo.net Barnbrook barnbrook.net Civilization builtbycivilization.com Co: Lab colabinc.com 179 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Firebelly firebellydesign.com HyperAkt hyperakt.com Inkcahoots inkahoots.com.au Intent forgoodintent.com Justin Kemerling Design Co justinkemerling.com Loop weareloop.ca Manifest manifestcom.com Memefest memefest.org Minute Works minuteworks.co.uk Nice and Serious niceandserious.com Ohyescoolgreat ohyescoolgreat.com 180 Resources Partner & Partners partnerandpartners.com Rally Rally rallyrally.design ThePublic thepublicstudio.ca The Work Department theworkdept.com Public Inc. publicinc.com Sadie Redwing sadieredwing.com Thomas.Matthews thomasmatthews.com Verynice verynice.co Yoke thisisyoke.com Zerofee zerofee.org Publishing in Design Ethics Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility Heller, S., & Vienne, V. (2018) 181 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World Fuad-Luke, A. (2013) Design and Ethics: Reflections on Practice Felton, E., Zelenko, O., Vaughan, S. (2012) Design and the Question of History Fry, T., Dilnot, C., & Stewart, S. C. (2015) Design for Life: Creating Meaning in a Distracted World Walker, S. (2017) Designing for Social Change Shea, A. (2012) Design for Sustainable Change: How Design and Designers Can Drive the Sustainability Agenda Chick, A., & Micklethwaite, P. (2011) Design for the real world. Papanek, V., & Fuller, R. B. (1971) Design for Sustainable Change: How Design and Designers Can Drive the Sustainability Agenda. Chick, A., & Micklethwaite, P. (2017) Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics, New Practice Fry, T. (2009) Designing Sustainability: Radical Changes in a Material World Walker, S. (2014) 182 Resources Design The Invention of Desire Helfand, J. (2016) Design, When Everybody Designs : an Introduction to Design for Social Innovation Manzini, E. (2015) Developing Citizen Designers Resnick, E. (2016) Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our World Berman, D. B. (2009) Ethics: a Graphic Designer’s Field Guide Kane, E. M. (2010) Good an Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design Roberts, L. (2006) Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines. Graphic Artists Guild (2018) How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing your Soul Shaughnessy, A. (2010) Just Design: Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes Simmons, C. (2011) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds Bellacasa, M. (2017) Professional Practices in Graphic Design AIGA. (2010) 183 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Sustainable Graphic Design: Tools, Systems, and Strategies for Innovative Print Design Jedlička, W. (2010) The Design Activists Handbook: How to Change the World with Socially Conscious Design Scalin, N., Taute, M., & Berman, D. (2012) The Design of Dissent, Expanded Edition: Greed, Nationalism, Alternative Facts, and the Resistance Glaser, M., Ilic, M., & Heller, S. (2017) 184 Resources 185 Ethical Sellout: A Designer’s Guide to Giving a F/ck Gratitude 186 Resources Thanks to the collaborators and participants who generously donated their time to the research that made this book possible. Thank you to my supervisor, colleagues, and instructors at Emily Carr University: Katherine Gillieson, Craig Badke, Garnet Hertz, Louise St. Pierre, Gillian Russell, and Helene Day Fraser. Thank you to my partner, Dahlia. I couldn’t have done this without your unwavering love and support through the ups and downs of this process. Likewise to my family. Ashley, Pat and Myrna, your supportive and enthusiastic feedback and eagle editing eyes have been invaluable. Finally, gratitude to Winston, my floofy companion who kept me company through the hours of writing and design and forced me out into the world when I was trapped in the zone. Love you, chicken. 187 Bibliography/ Codes of Ethics Academy of Design Professionals. (2017). Code of Professional Conduct. Retrieved November 10, 2018, from http://designproacademy.org/code-of-professional-conduct.html Ad Standards. (2018). The Canadian Code of Advertising Standards (Code). Retrieved November 10, 2018, from http://www.adstandards.com/en/ standards/cancodeofadstandards.aspx AIGA (2010). AIGA professional practices in graphic design. (pp. 3-6,129-147). Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. AGDA. (1996). Australian Graphic Design Association Code of Ethics. Retrieved November 10, 2018, from https://www.agda.com.au/about/code-of-ethics/ Canadian Creative Industries (2017, November 23). The Canadian Creative Industries Code of Conduct to Prevent and Respond to Harassment, Discrimination, Bullying and Violence. 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Retrieved March 09, 2018, from http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervenein-a-system/ Manzini, E. (2006). Design, ethics and sustainability. Guidelines for a Transition Phase. Cumulus Working Papers, Vol 16. No. 6 (pp. 9-15) Manzini, E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs : an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2015]. Manzini, E. (2016). Design as everyday life politics. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://www.desis-network.org/2016/09/27/design-as-everyday-life-politics/ Ramchandani, N. (2018, July). Nice ad, shame about the planet. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://dothegreenthing.com/issue/nice-ad-shame-about-the-planet/ Rights of Nature (2016). Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://therightsofnature.org/frequently-asked-questions/ Schlanger, Z. (2017, April 20). Apple wants to try to “stop mining the Earth altogether” to make your iPhone. Retrieved September 3, 2018, from https://qz.com/964862/ apple-says-it-will-stop-using-rare-earth-minerals-to-make-iphones/ 33 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Bibliography/ Sharma, R. (2017, January 10). Apple Is Most Environment-Friendly Tech Company. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from https://www.investopedia.com/news/ apple-most-environmentfriendly-tech-company-aapl-goog/ St. Pierre, L. (2016). DESIS Design For Social Innovation & Sustainability. Current: Design Research Journal, 07(1), 32-35 Steffen, A., & Bluestone, C. (2011). Worldchanging: a user’s guide for the 21st century. New York: Abrams. Tassinari, V. (2018). DESIS Philosophy Talks. Retrieved November 24, 2018, from http://www.desis-philosophytalks.org/ Thomas, S. (2013, July 13). Waste is a Design Flaw - Sophie Thomas. Retrieved November 21, 2018, from http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/waste-design-flaw/ Transition Towns | The Circular Economy. (2018). Retrieved September 5, 2018, from https://transitionnetwork.org/ United Nations. (1982, October 28). World Charter for Nature. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r007.htm Vaughan, A. (2015, September 25). Data centre emissions rival air travel as digital demand soars. Retrieved April 2, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2015/sep/25/server-data-centre-emissions -air-travel-web-google-facebook-greenhouse-gas Walker, S. (2013) Imagination’s Promise: practice-based design research for sustainability, Chapter 28 of Handbook of Design for Sustainability, Walker, S. and Giard, J. eds., Berg Publishers, London, pp. 446-465. Walker, S. (2014). Designing sustainability: making radical changes in a material world. Routledge. Walker, S. (2017). Design for life: creating meaning in a distracted world. Taylor & Francis. White, P., St. Pierre, L., & Belletire, S. (2014). Okala practitioner: integrating ecological design. Phoenix, Ariz. : IDSA, c2014. 34 Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Bibliography/ Appendix/ Appendix A: Research Ethics Certification i Fig 1.0 TCPS 2: CORE Ethics Certificate Appendix B: Industry Literature Review ii Fig 2.0 Literature review matrix: Popular publishing in design ethics data capture Appendix C: Literature Review Visualization & Analysis iii Fig 3.0 Popular publishing in design ethics visualizations iv Fig 3.1 Visualization detail: popularity ranking v Fig 3.2 Visualization detail: frequency of terms as indexed vi Fig 3.3 Visualization detail: core principles per publication vii Fig 3.4 Visualization detail: core areas of ethical design Appendix D: Visual Language Exploration viii Fig 4.0 Archetype visualization trial: universe of archetypes viii Fig 4.1 Archetype visualization trial: geometric overlays and secondary archetypes ix Fig 4.2 Development of the ecosystem of core and secondary ethical design practices x Fig 4.3 Partial poster concept featuring archetypes and top actions xi Fig 4.5 Expressive diagramming explorations for archetypes: cartesian grid adaptations xii Fig 4.6 Working model of the ecosystem of ethical design archetypes for use in research analysis xiii Fig 4.7 Finalized visualization of ecosystem of ethical design archetypesfor use in book Appendix E: Affinity Diagramming & Data Analysis xiv 5.0 Assigning ethical action research findings to ethical design archetypes Appendix F: Survey - Ethics in the Creative Industry xv Fig 6.0 Ethics in the creative industry online survey: google form xvi Fig 6.1 Job title or role response sample xvii Fig 6.2 Personal definition of ethical work response sample Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Appendix Table of Contents/ Appendix F: Survey - Ethics in the Creative Industry xviii Fig 6.3 Work considers social responsibility response sample xviii Fig 6.4 Want to do ethical work response sample xviii Fig 6.5 Work considers sustainability response sample xviii Fig 6.6 Conflict between personal and professional ethics response sample xviii Fig 6.7 Likelihood to choose ethical employment response sample xviii Fig 6.8 Interest in ethical work response sample Appendix G: Industry Interviews xix Fig 7.0 Interview question document xx Fig 7.1 Interview release form sample xxi Fig 7.2 Interview response raw data sample xxii Fig 7.3 Full interview sample II: raw data xxiii Fig 7.3 Interview insight data capture Appendix F: Interview Diagramming & Analysis xxiv Fig 8.0 Interview data diagramming per ethical design archetype xxv Fig 8.1 Interview data capture and affinity diagramming xxvi Fig 8.2 Interview insight data capture Ethical Sellout: Refining Standards of Ethics in the Commercial Design Industry Appendix Table of Contents/ Appendix A/ Research Ethics Certification PANEL ON RESEARCH ETHICS TCPS 2: CORE Navigating the ethics of human research Certificate of Completion This document certifies that Kelly S Small has completed the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans Course on Research Ethics (TCPS 2: CORE) Date of Issue: Fig 1.0 Certificate of Completion: Panel on Research Ethics i 27 October, 2016 Appendix B/ Industry Literature Review Fig 2.0 Literature Review Matrix: popular publishing in design ethics data capture ii Shaughnessey 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Frequency (% of total pages) Core Principles Appendix C/ Literature Review Visualization & Analysis Per Publication Berman Popular publishing in design ethics Analysis of Top Publications Addressing Design Ethics March 28, 2018 Kelly S Small GSMD 510 | Studio Popularity Ranking* Do Good Design: How Designers can Change the World Design Futuring Sustainability Ethics and Practice Design Futuring Sustainability Ethics and Practice Berman Fry Heller & Vienne 8 11 9 8 10 Handbook of Pricinng & Ethical Guidelines 7 Ethics: a Graphic Designer’s Field Guide Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design Design Activist’s Handbook: How to Change The world with Socially Conscious Design Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane Papanek Resnick Roberts Scalin 2 7 1 5 6 3 1 9 Berman: Do 10% good work. Fry: Design for life not commerce. Heller + Vienne: responsibility to self and society. Suggests designers pledge to spend at least “10 percent of professional time helping repair the world” and offers GDC and AIGA codes of ethical practice as guidance. Argues for a separation of design from the hegemonic market economic system that has at its central focus the production of wealth rather than the production of quality of life. A series of essays that offer insight into how individual designers approach accountability and moral code in practice. Acknowledges the subjectivity in the topic of ethics and reinforces that ethical work is a personal choice. Graphic Artists Guild Design for the Developing Real World: Human Citizen Designers Ecology and Social Change 6 2 4 3 How to Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul Just Design: Socially Conscious Design For Critical Causes Shaughnessey Simmons 11 10 4 Heller & Vienne Fry MacAvery Kane Papanek Graphic Arts Guild: follow the code. Kane: legalities, integrity + morality. Papanek: design for need not want. The creative practitioner must adhere to the code of fair practice and bring ethical issues to the grievance committee of the Graphic Arts Guild. A field guide that provides high level information relating to nearly all potential ethical issues a graphic designer may face. Separated into the above 3 categories, this book takes no ethical stance but instead provides objective information. In order to practice ethically, the designer must only create for true human needs—clean air, shelter, etc—and not fabricated wants from the marketing and advertising industries (for which he has a great deal of contempt) 5 Goodreads / Amazon *Using Bayes theorum to determine popularity ranking from user ratings on Goodreads.com and Amazon US and Canada. Data adjusted for accuracy based on number of reviews per rating. Amazon Popularity (North America) Resnick Goodreads Berman 1 Berman Fry 2 Fry Heller & Vienne 3 Heller & Vienne Graphic Artists Guild 4 Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane 5 MacAvery Kane Papanek 6 Papanek Resnick 7 Resnick Roberts 8 Roberts Scalin 9 Scalin Shaughnessey 10 Shaughnessey Simmons 11 Simmons Frequency of Terms as Indexed Sustainability Social Responsibility Ethics Scalin Roberts: learn from moral philosophy. Scalin: subvert from within the industry. The designer must consider their social responsibility and, ideally, work for people, animals, and the environments—those who do not have access to design tools, or strategic design-thinking methocs. One of only 2 books exclusively dedicated to ethics in design. It is a comprehensive collection of tools for understanding and managing all ethical issues in design and, as well, understanding the underlying moral philosophy. Designers can learn to become activists who actively subvert from within their industries to enact positive change toward a more socially and environmentally just society. Simmons Shaughnessey Shaughnessey: ethics are core to business. Simmons: simply do something. Everything a young professional needs to know about entering the industry with an eye on social and environmental responsibility. Suggests that a strong set of ethics are as core to practice for the emerging design professional as concept development and strong visual communication skills. Title is used as a mantra: no matter how small the idea or the cause—just do something, make something. Just design. (Predominantly design for existing good causes and toward some sort of social good no matter how imperfect) No Data Berman No.1 Fry Roberts Resnick: design for social causes. Core Areas of Ethical Design Heller & Vienne The Philosopher The Ethical Purist Graphic Artists Guild Roberts MacAvery Kane The Design Activist Resnick The Philosopher code adherence No.2 Papanek The Sustainable Designer environmentalism philosophy activism The Social Designer MacAvery Kane Roberts socialism Scalin No.3 Shaughnessey The Social Designer Simmons Shaughnessey 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 ethical design practice à la carte code adherence Ethical Sellout environmentalism ethical sellout earning a living Core Principles Per Publication Berman: Do 10% good work. Fry: Design for life not commerce. Suggests designers pledge to spend at least “10 percent of professional time helping repair the world” and offers GDC and AIGA codes of ethical practice as guidance. Argues for a separation of design from the hegemonic market economic system that has at its central focus the production of wealth rather than the production of quality of life. A series of essays that offer insight into how individual designers approach accountability and moral code in practice. Acknowledges the subjectivity in the topic of ethics and reinforces that ethical work is a personal choice. Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane Papanek Graphic Arts Guild: follow the code. Kane: legalities, integrity + morality. Papanek: design for need not want. The creative practitioner must adhere to the code of fair practice and bring ethical issues to the grievance committee of the Graphic Arts Guild. A field guide that provides high level information relating to nearly all potential ethical issues a graphic designer may face. Separated into the above 3 categories, this book takes no ethical stance but instead provides objective information. In order to practice ethically, the designer must only create for true human needs—clean air, shelter, etc—and not fabricated wants from the marketing and advertising industries (for which he has a great deal of contempt) iii Resnick Roberts Scalin Resnick: design for social causes. Roberts: learn from moral philosophy. Scalin: subvert from within the industry. The designer must consider their social responsibility and, ideally, work for people, One of only 2 books exclusively dedicated to ethics in design. It is a comprehensive collection of tools for Designers can learn to become activists who actively subvert from within their industries to enact - Graphic arts guild code - Kane - AIGA, GDC, RGD Code adherence - Adherence down to every font purchase - Commercial industry or non - Reports issues to grievance committees socialism environmentalism earning a living - First things first - Designer for cause - Scalin - Design activism - Contempt for capitalism - Designer for the underdog or underprepresented - Works in the commercial industry for big brands - Quiet/everyday activism - Does their best to do good within market constraints - Commits a percentage of time to do ‘good’ work - Shaughnessy - Berman - Maximum earning potential The For-Good Agency The DESIS or Fry Heller & Vienne Heller + Vienne: responsibility to self and society. - Pro bono work - NFP/NGO/Public sector - Resnick - Citizen designer - Just design - Manzini - Design for public good - Avoidant of commercial work The Design Activist socialism activism Fry - Fry - Papanek - Environmental Ethics (land ethic, silent spring) - Ecocentrism/anthropocentrism - Sustainable design practices - Walker - Often contemptuous toward capitalism The Ethical Purist The Sustainable Designer Frequency (% of total pages) Berman - Roberts - Design ethics and moral philosophy theory - Asks “what is the good?” (Meta ethics) - Ulm school and habermas - Malaise of Modernity - Academic philosophy - Design for social innovation towrd sustainability - Academic - Public-good focused - Everyone is a designer - Expert designer as facilitator - Avoidant of commercial industry socialism earning a living - Charges a reduced rate for work - Clients include NFP, NGO, Public institutions - Highly engaged in the community - Will decline work for clients who don’t fit philosophy Figs 3.0 Popular publishing in design ethics data visualization and analysis Appendix C/ Literature Review Visualization & Analysis Popular publishing in design ethics Analysis of Top Publications Addressing Design Ethics March 28, 2018 Kelly S Small GSMD 510 | Studio Popularity Ranking* Do Good Design: How Designers can Change the World Design Futuring Sustainability Ethics and Practice Design Futuring Sustainability Ethics and Practice Berman Fry Heller & Vienne 8 11 9 8 10 7 Handbook of Pricinng & Ethical Guidelines Ethics: a Graphic Designer’s Field Guide Design for the Developing Real World: Human Citizen Designers Ecology and Social Change Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design Design Activist’s Handbook: How to Change The world with Socially Conscious Design Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane Papanek Resnick Roberts Scalin 2 7 1 5 6 3 1 9 6 2 4 3 How to Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul Just Design: Socially Conscious Design For Critical Causes Shaughnessey Simmons 11 10 4 5 Goodreads / Amazon *Using Bayes theorum to determine popularity ranking from user ratings on Goodreads.com and Amazon US and Canada. Data adjusted for accuracy based on number of reviews per rating. Amazon (North America) Popularity 1 Berman Fry 2 Fry Heller & Vienne 3 Heller & Vienne Graphic Artists Guild 4 Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane 5 MacAvery Kane Papanek 6 Papanek Resnick 7 Resnick Roberts 8 Roberts Scalin 9 Scalin Shaughnessey 10 Shaughnessey Simmons 11 Simmons Frequency of Terms as Indexed Berman Fry iv Goodreads Berman Sustainability Social Responsibility Ethics No Data Figs 3.1 Visualization detail: popular publishing popularity ranking No.1 Heller & Vienne Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane Roberts MacAvery Kane 5 MacAvery Kane Papanek 6 Papanek Resnick 7 Resnick Roberts 8 Roberts Scalin 9 Scalin Shaughnessey 10 Shaughnessey Simmons 11 Simmons Appendix C/ Visual Research and Analysis - Data Visualization Frequency of Terms as Indexed Sustainability Social Responsibility Ethics No Data Berman No.1 Fry Heller & Vienne Graphic Artists Guild Roberts MacAvery Kane No.2 Papanek Resnick MacAvery Kane Roberts Scalin No.3 Shaughnessey Simmons Shaughnessey 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Frequency (% of total pages) Core Principles Per Publication Berman Fry Berman: Do 10% good work. Fry: Design for life not commerce. Suggests designers pledge to spend at least “10 percent of professional time helping repair the world” and offers GDC and AIGA codes of ethical practice as guidance. Argues for a separation of design from the hegemonic market economic system that has at its central focus the production of wealth rather than the production of quality of life. Heller & Vienne Heller + Vienne: responsibility to self and society. Figs 3.2 Visualization detail: A series of essays that offerfrequency insight into howof terms as indexed individual designers approach accountability and moral code in practice. Acknowledges the subjectivity in the topic of ethics and reinforces that ethical work is a personal choice. v Graphic Artists Guild Graphic Arts MacAvery Kane Kane: legalities, Papanek Papanek: Shaughnessey 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Frequency (% of total pages) Appendix C/ Visual Research and Analysis - Data Visualization Core Principles Per Publication Berman Fry Heller & Vienne Berman: Do 10% good work. Fry: Design for life not commerce. Heller + Vienne: responsibility to self and society. Suggests designers pledge to spend at least “10 percent of professional time helping repair the world” and offers GDC and AIGA codes of ethical practice as guidance. Argues for a separation of design from the hegemonic market economic system that has at its central focus the production of wealth rather than the production of quality of life. A series of essays that offer insight into how individual designers approach accountability and moral code in practice. Acknowledges the subjectivity in the topic of ethics and reinforces that ethical work is a personal choice. Graphic Artists Guild MacAvery Kane Papanek Graphic Arts Guild: follow the code. Kane: legalities, integrity + morality. Papanek: design for need not want. The creative practitioner must adhere to the code of fair practice and bring ethical issues to the grievance committee of the Graphic Arts Guild. A field guide that provides high level information relating to nearly all potential ethical issues a graphic designer may face. Separated into the above 3 categories, this book takes no ethical stance but instead provides objective information. In order to practice ethically, the designer must only create for true human needs—clean air, shelter, etc—and not fabricated wants from the marketing and advertising industries (for which he has a great deal of contempt) Resnick Roberts Scalin Resnick: design for social causes. Roberts: learn from moral philosophy. Scalin: subvert from within the industry. The designer must consider their social responsibility and, ideally, work for people, animals, and the environments—those who do not have access to design tools, or strategic design-thinking methocs. One of only 2 books exclusively dedicated to ethics in design. It is a comprehensive collection of tools for understanding and managing all ethical issues in design and, as well, understanding the underlying moral philosophy. Designers can learn to become activists who actively subvert from within their industries to enact positive change toward a more socially and environmentally just society. Shaughnessey Simmons Shaughnessey: ethics are core to business. Simmons: simply do something. Everything a young professional needs to know about entering the industry with an eye on social and environmental responsibility. Suggests that a strong set of ethics are as core to practice for the emerging design professional as concept development and strong visual communication skills. Title is used as a mantra: no matter how small the idea or the cause—just do something, make something. Just design. (Predominantly design for existing good causes and toward some sort of social good no matter how imperfect) Figs 3.3 Visualization detail: core principles per publication vi Core Areas of Ethical Design The Philosopher Shaughnessey: ethics are core to business. Simmons: simply do something. Everything a young professional needs to know about entering the industry with an eye on social and environmental responsibility. Suggests that a strong set of ethics are as core to practice for the emerging design professional as concept development and strong visual communication skills. Title is used as a mantra: no matter how small the idea or the cause—just do something, make something. Just design. (Predominantly design for existing good causes and toward some sort of social good no matter how imperfect) Appendix C/ Visual Research and Analysis - Data Visualization Core Areas of Ethical Design The Philosopher The Ethical Purist - Roberts - Design ethics and moral philosophy theory - Asks “what is the good?” (Meta ethics) - Ulm school and habermas - Malaise of Modernity - Academic philosophy The Design Activist The Philosopher code adherence The Sustainable Designer environmentalism philosophy activism The Social Designer socialism The Social Designer ethical design practice à la carte - Fry - Papanek - Environmental Ethics (land ethic, silent spring) - Ecocentrism/anthropocentrism - Sustainable design practices - Walker - Often contemptuous toward capitalism - Pro bono work - NFP/NGO/Public sector - Resnick - Citizen designer - Just design - Manzini - Design for public good - Avoidant of commercial work The Ethical Purist The Sustainable Designer code adherence - Graphic arts guild code - Kane - AIGA, GDC, RGD Code adherence - Adherence down to every font purchase - Commercial industry or non - Reports issues to grievance committees The Design Activist socialism Ethical Sellout environmentalism activism ethical sellout earning a living environmentalism - Works in the commercial industry for big brands - Quiet/everyday activism - Does their best to do good within market constraints - Commits a percentage of time to do ‘good’ work - Shaughnessy - Berman - Maximum earning potential The For-Good Agency The DESIS or Fry socialism earning a living - First things first - Designer for cause - Scalin - Design activism - Contempt for capitalism - Designer for the underdog or underprepresented - Design for social innovation towrd sustainability - Academic - Public-good focused - Everyone is a designer - Expert designer as facilitator - Avoidant of commercial industry socialism earning a living - Charges a reduced rate for work - Clients include NFP, NGO, Public institutions - Highly engaged in the community - Will decline work for clients who don’t fit philosophy Figs 3.4 Visualization detail: core areas of ethical design vii Appendix D/ Visual Language Exploration Figs 4.0 Archetype visualization trial: universe of archetypes viii Figs 4.1 Archetype visualization trial: geometric overlays and secondary archetypes Appendix D/ Visual Language Exploration Fig 4.2 Ikigai inspired development of the ecosystem of core and secondary ethical design practices ix Appendix D/ Visual Language Exploration Figs 4.3 Partial poster concept featuring archetypes and top actions x Appendix D/ Visual Language Exploration Figs 4.4 Expressive diagramming explorations for archetypes: cartesian grid adaptations xi Appendix D/ Visual Language Exploration Fig 4.5 Working model of the ecosystem of ethical design archetypes for use in research analysis xii Appendix D/ Visual Language Exploration Fig 4.6 Finalized visualization of ecosystem of ethical design archetypesfor use in book xiii Appendix E/ Affinity Diagramming & Data Analysis Fig 5.0 Assigning ethical action research findings to ethical design archetypes xiv Appendix F/ Survey - Ethics in the Creative Industry Fig 6.0 Ethics in the Creative Industry online survey: google form Fig 6.1 Job title or role response sample Fig 6.2 Personal definition of ethical work response sample xv Appendix F/ Survey - Ethics in the Creative Industry Fig 6.3 Work considers social responsibility response sample Fig 6.4 Want to do ethical work response sample Fig 6.5 Work considers sustainability response sample xvi Appendix F/ Survey - Ethics in the Creative Industry Fig 6.6 Conflict between personal and professional ethics response sample Fig 6.7 Likelihood to choose ethical employment response sample Fig 6.8 Interest in ethical work response sample xvii Appendix G/ Industry Interviews Ethics in the Creative Industry INDUSTRY QUESTIONNAIRE Return to: kelly@kellysmall.ca Name: Role/Level: Industry: Gender: Years in the business: Company: Clients/Client Sectors: Warm-up • Ethics in Design/Creative Industry (first thing that comes to mind) • Can you tell me about a personal philosophy or set of values that you live by • How do you, personally, define ‘ethical work’ • How interested are you in learning how to work more ethically? Explain. Personal Experience • From 1-10, 1 being the least ethical, can you tell me how ethical you think your current agency is? Your clients? Explain. • Tell me about an incident where your personal ethics and professional practice were in conflict? • How do you, personally, support a responsible practice; what are the ways that you insert your personal ‘ethical agenda’? Concrete actions that bring your values into practice. Name as many as you can. Industry/Professional Practice • Your company’s business model and how ethical considerations factor • Can you tell me what you know about your industry’s code of ethics • What are the ethical dilemmas people tend to run into in their day-to-day work • Tell me about something you’ve seen in industry that discusses ethical work: books, conferences, etc. Future of Ethical work • What issues do you feel are the most pressing as it relates to ethics in our industry in 2018? • What tips would you give a student or entry-level employee about how to work ethically in this business? Fig 7.0 Interview question document xviii Appendix G/ Industry Interviews Fig 7.1 Interview release form sample xix Appendix G/ Industry Interviews Fig 7.2 Interview response raw data sample xx Appendix G/ Industry Interviews Fig 7.2 Cont’d Interview response raw data sample xxi Appendix G/ Industry Interviews Fig 7.2 Cont’d Interview response raw data sample xxii Appendix G/ Industry Interviews Fig 7.2 Cont’d Interview response raw data sample xxiii Appendix H/ Interview Diagramming & Analysis Fig 8.0 Interview data diagramming per ethical design archetype xxiv Appendix H/ Interview Diagramming & Analysis Fig 8.1 Interview data capture and affinity diagramming xxv Appendix I/ Industry Interview Data Analysis Interview Insights Capture V1 Perceived Problems in the industry: - Not paying junior staff a living wage / unpaid interns - Money trumping ethics: tech seeking the next unicorn to IPO instead of solving legitimate problems — Niamh - Data and privacy - “A corrupt, money hungry, white male dominated industry” - Spec work as an ongoing problem in pitching - Not educating young designers about ethical work - Lack of universal design in products and services / designing so that everyone with every ability can access it “I - think it’s unethical if only one group of people can use and another is intentionally excluded” — Jed Looker Work environments that don’t respect people’s non-work lives My Philosophy to Live by: 19/27 responses were about ethics 70% - “Take no shit. Do no harm” - Live well outside of design: “I’m vegan, I live small, use my car less, support local, buy what I need and use what I need, recycle, trade and help people” - Andrea Emery, Design Educator - “Co-creation—we see clients and communities as collaborators” — Casey Hrychuk, David Coates - “Generosity. It’s a company value whether pro bono or impact models, we have an ethos of generosity”—Manos - “Don’t Steal. Be Nice” - “If you’re truly openly considering your user in every aspect without prejudice and bias then you’re headed in the - right direction. Empathy.” “Anti-Assumption” Find the root of the problem to be solves instead of filling assumed solutions like ‘we need a new website’ “Legacy” (can also be understood as sustainability) that something doesn’t just die once we launch or finish a workshop. Create things as simple as guidelines being able to carry the work forward and training the client in our methodologies - “Essentially putting humanity at the centre of everything you do and create” - “Align your job with your personal values” - The golden rule was referenced 3x - “My personal anthem would be entitled ‘love is the answer’” —Matthew May Actions toward Ethical Practice: 20% of all responses (11 repeats in 55) were about diversity and inclusion Practicing inclusive design - don’t just work for the white middle aged man archetype where other personas are “edge cases” “Fuck that they’re not edge cases, they’re humans” — Niamh Redmond Learning to work more ethically: 75% or 9/12 responses were enthusiastic - ‘yes’ wanted to learn more about how to practice more ethically, some even asked direct questions about what they can do right now and wanted more information about books, conferences, workshops etc that they could Fig 8.2 Interview insight data capture xxvi Appendix I/ Industry Interview Data Analysis engage with now or send their team to. - “Definitely interested—not a lot of research exists not he topic as you would find in industries like healthcare” - “I think I work more ethically than a lot of people I know. As an educator, I actually talk to students about ethical practices that are important to me and important to them in our industry” “I am interested as an educator - example young generation has interesting challenges like accommodation and kids on the spectrum I’m learning” - “I understand extreme examples of unethical work like turning down the #1 source of pollution in north america - but with more nuanced issues I know I could be doing better and want to be more aware - like diversity training in design or inclusive design training” - “We currently just follow RGD directives as a graphic design program — the most value that doc has is ‘spect work’ but of course we’re not allowed spec work! “I am very interested in learning more about how I can make more ethical choices on a day to day level. Global change is difficult if not impossible in this industry but having a guide toward more ethical practice on a micro level would be incredibly interesting to me” How do you define ethical work: 39% 9/23 ‘doesn’t harm people and the planet’, 4/23 “transparency and not misleading” 17%, 4/23 “Accessible and inclusive” 17%, 1/23 ‘sustainable and not disposable’ .5%, “no spec” .5%, 5/23 “fair and responsible/work I believe in” 21% - “Ensure the work doesn’t harm planet and it helps people” - “Work not solely for profit” - “Work that employs the right people for the right job including women, ethnic minorities, people with mental health problems, etc” - “Not taking work I don’t believe in” - “No spec or unpaid work for profitable companies” - “Work and practices that don’t harm others and contribute to the greater good” - “Being honest and transparent” (honesty and transparency came up a lot) - “Putting people and the planet before profit” - “Work that adds value to communities” (helps move small towns into a more intellectual economy, attract creative thinkers, etc - social branding) - “Accessibility of good design” For example, IDEO is great but too expensive - “Finding ways to be profitable but not unethical” - “Transparency - people are more conscious of where food, clothing, products and services come from and sup port businesses they believe in” - “Protecting, safeguarding, and promoting human rights in a professional setting” - “Only working for and with people/organizations/clients and institutions who follow a basic standard of human decency far from bigotry, racism, sexism, and ageism at a bare minimum” - “Producing work that helps to motivate social conduct toward inclusion” - “Work that isn’t temporary - I don’t consider work for the development industry to be ethical - it’s disposable and crass” Fig 8.2 Cont’d Interview insight data capture xxvii Thank you/ A CRITICAL AND PROCESS DOCUMENTATION PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF DESIGN EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN Kelly Small, 2019