Ken Garland and Milton Glaser may have played pivotal roles in the thriving responsible design movement, and discourse on the subject might be dominated by top designers within a homogenous demographic group, but minority designers are indisputably a self-motivated, powerful, driving force sustaining the movement. The cause is notably present in the work of ethnic/racial minorities (Carroll, n.d.; Creative Ummah, n.d.; Cherry 2015; Quito 2015a; Quito 2015b; Quito 2017a; Quito 2017b) and a recent Howard University study (Ahmed 2017) on the perspectives and approaches of twenty racial/ethnic minority designers showed that almost all the participants practiced design responsibility even though few had exposure to “First Things First” (Garland 1964) or the Road to Hell (Glaser 2002), and almost none were motivated by big names or organized initiatives. Most participants in the study were not members of any professional design organization, so the advocacy efforts of the participating minority designers were independent of any ventures by the likes of AIGA (the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design). In addition, responsible design is flourishing within minority groups despite significant barriers that exist. These include the profusion of financial restrictions, scarce tangible incentives, and limited support for the cause.
The participating designers’ commitment to social responsibility through their creative work was heavily propelled by unique experiences particular to their own minority racial/ethnic identity. The systemic underrepresentation, stigmatization, and power struggles of minorities create a compelling stimulus spurring this group to cultivate the empathy and passion necessary to seriously commit to ethical design advocacy. This is unsurprising since, historically, minorities have been powerful advocates of sociopolitical action, and continue to be involved in more recent efforts such as Occupy Wall Street, climate change activism, and the Black Lives Matter movement (Foner 2017; Volk 2014). For these designers, their minority status and experiences shaped and positioned them to be deeply invested in responsible design despite many obstacles.
According to the designers in the study, the median percentage of their overall creative work that could be considered responsible was 80 percent.1 Such a high percentage is significant given the overwhelmingly negative perception of design and advertising ethics today. 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 (Bilak 2015; Boradkar 2004; Dery 2010; Snyder 2008; Harris as cited in Brooks 2017; Harrison and Hefner 2014; Heller 1991; Heller 2002; McCollam 2015; Poynor 2006; Quito 2015b; Spettigue and Henderson 2004; Trampe, Stapel, and Siero 2011; Van Helvert 2016). The study indicated that minority designers are a driving force within the movement to positively change the ethical standards of the industry from within their local communities and on the global level. For the designers in the study, responsible design is not a cause to achieve; rather, aligning one’s personal value system with one’s work ethic is the only acceptable way to work. In the words of some of these designers:
I think when a person has a value system, that group of values should be apparent in all aspects of their being, and even in the work that they choose to take on. Having had [sic] been a product of community programs that influenced change in my hometown…set a strong foundation, and I decided to use my talents to further promote change and possibly inspire another me to do the same in the future.
My previous internships at ad agencies really dissuaded me from pursuing a career as an advertising executive. I was not fulfilled and felt incredible guilty “scamming” consumers to buy things I deemed unimportant. Being an Asian female from the Philippines who moved to the United States…, I acknowledge the effects of “irresponsible design” and its impact on the developing world and the economically underprivileged.
I’ve had these thoughts independently, which lead me down a path of pursuing work which enrich [sic] the community, the proliferation of the arts, or artists themselves. However, I felt validated to know that this was an established line of thinking, and that I wasn’t isolated amongst the myriad commercial artists.
I turned away from the world of commercial art, and worked with institutions, nonprofits, and individuals who’s [sic] visions and missions aligned with my own values. This has been for about eighteen years now, and I don’t plan on stopping.
One designer in the study further suggested that a significant amount of advocacy is in fact run by underrepresented groups:
There’s also another problem…that comes with social activism and design. Much like other political movements, it’s often run by young people, women, LGBT, and people of color for free.
Though the designer viewed the lack of compensation and participation from dominant demographic groups as problematic, the fact that minority groups tend to be the ones volunteering the resources that turn social movements into social reality indicates that minorities are, and have historically been, leaders in social progress. The racial/ethnic minority designers in the study indeed play a significant role in promoting the cause by way of their substantial participation, and deserve recognition as key contributors to the success of the movement.
In addition to being at the forefront of the responsible design movement, minority designers reported that their efforts tended to be undercompensated and without any associated incentives, benefits, or recognition. Only two designers in the study had received a tangible benefit associated with responsible design, while one designer said he benefitted in the form of “informing others and teaching new ideas.” The rest were practitioners without reward. However, for many of the designers, financial restrictions were common barriers to their ability to design more responsibly. Additional hurdles manifested as clients with strict branding guidelines and projects with short turnarounds. Presumably, the minority designers in the study would be able to increase their design responsibility given financial incentives or fewer financial restrictions. When asked what would make them design more responsibly, the designers’ responses also pointed to a desire for more visible interest and participation in the cause by peers as well as by the wider community. There was also interest in having the ability to measure the impact of design decisions. In addition to repeated references to monetary resources as would-be motivators, these minority designers offered several suggestions for increasing the appeal of responsible design:
• Have organizations that sponsor these causes set aside some money for the design of the project instead of not including it in the budget at all.
• Perhaps if a company’s branding guidelines were not so strict and if designers could gain more freedom in executing the design.
• More talk and real action by fellow designers.
• Seeing that other designers are conscious of responsible design and encouraging each other, also maybe having the support and assistance when needing to research company background.
• The scale of the impact has to be bigger than what I can immediately imagine.
• Seeing more people interested in responsible design.
• More respect for the discipline.
• A social movement toward doing what is right and good rather than capitalism.
• A total rehaul of how society views success.
Minority designers form a powerful group of mass-market communicators since racial/ethnic minorities will comprise the majority of the US population in just a few years (Wilson 2016). While personal motivations and cultural backgrounds may be enough to drive the designers in the study toward responsible design, more needs to be done. The movement must be sustained on a larger scale to change the negative practice, as well as negative perception of design and advertising, into one where the industry is seen to practice responsibility and protect social interests. The study clearly revealed the serious shortcoming within the design and advertising industry to promote and incentivize responsible action. Despite the various and invaluable conferences, pledges, community projects, private initiatives, and publications promoting ethics in the industry, responsible design has not yet attained the visibility and propagation required to permeate the field and raise industry standards.
One approach could be for designers and design organizations to make responsible design a requirement. For example, in the healthcare, law, and communications fields, to name a few, ethics rules and compliance form part of mandatory licensing for practitioners. Violating these standards can have severe, career-changing consequences. The frequent lament that design is not taken as seriously as other fields is self-inflicted to some extent since the design industry has no such entry requirement. Licensing would undoubtedly cause the profession to be taken more seriously and by extension feed into improving society’s recognition of the fundamentally critical impact of visual communication. While implementing licensure in the design industry has long been a controversial and complex issue (McCollam 2015), derivative efforts can be a stepping-stone towards incentivizing and standardizing ethical design. Aligning organization requirements with the organization’s value system can enable substantial progress towards fulfilling Garland’s manifesto. For instance, if organizations like the American Advertising Federation (AAF) and AIGA, who play major roles in delineating ethical guidelines for design and advertising practice, turned these guidelines into a mandatory certification program required for membership, it would be a game changer. AAF already administers the Certificate for the Practice of Enhanced Advertising Ethics, but there seems to be no associated benefit encouraging practitioners to enroll. A less perfunctory approach than mandatory licensure could be subsidizing or discounting membership or conference fees to designers with the certification. Such efforts may not yield short-term financial benefits, but if the minority designers in the study whose powerful personal motives and the desire to see positive change are not deterred by financial barriers, surely more people and organizations can mirror their example. By following the lead of these minority designers, we can change the game.
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[1] Notwithstanding that responsibility is subjective and nuanced, and that the respondents had no defined benchmark against which to measure their responsibility.