Study Task 2 - Ethics in Graphic Design - To What Extent Must Designers Concern Themselves With Ethics?

Ethics and morality are things which must be considered in any vocation, and though it may seem to carry less gravity then a career in medicine or law, it still must be considered in graphic design. Many designers have published material one their opinions of the matter including Glaser (2001), Beirut (2000) and Abrahams (2016). Beirut (2000) states - “Graphic designers, in truth, view the advertising world with a measure of envy. Whereas the effect of design is secretly feared to be cosmetic, vague and unmeasurable, the impact of advertising on a client's bottom line has a ruthless clarity to it”. Effectively, Beirut states that a designer’s responsibility is to aesthetic and therefore their work holds less ethical significance then that of the advertiser. He comments that graphic designers inform, and advertisers persuade.

Glaser (2001) very much considers the designers relationship with the public and their responsibility to tell the truth - “We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher?” - So while Beirut argues that its purely the advertisers role to consider ethics, Glaser comments that the designer does indeed owe some responsibility to the public as well. After all, if designers are the ones with control over all the visual communication in the world, there is a lot of responsibility for it to be accurate, as visual communication is essential to society and how we function day to day as humans, so to this effect, is a designers main ethical responsibility to be accurate and effective in their practise?

Abrahams (2016) considers the notion of morality within graphic design beyond the parameters of doing effective work and looks more at the big picture -“To a designer, at least a designer today, ethical issues are viewed as coming from the client … What does the client do? Is this ethically acceptable or not? Indeed, is this politically acceptable or not?” - Abrahams states that one of the main responsibilities of the designer is to be more critical when taking on projects, and to review them in correlation to their own moral compass and ethical values. If all designers did indeed uphold this value, there would be no one to design for unethical clients and the world would be better of for it.

These posters are examples of typo’s and accidents in graphic design which may cause offence or confusion, highlighting a graphic designers ethical responsibility to check for mistakes.

These are examples of ad campaigns which perhaps the designers should have had the ethical responsibility to turn down.