Do we have any responsibility for the messages we help to communicate? Everyone has run into a prospective client that wants to sell fantasy to people who are living in fact. The truth be told, many of us use the fantasy approach ourselves—I am the first to admit it. But is it possible to design without deception? You bet it is—here’s how:

1. Work exclusively with the truth.
More than ever, it seems, we live in two distinct worlds—fantasy and fact. In fantasy world smoking is cool. In fact world smoking is a first class addiction. In fantasy world, skinny people eat triple cheeseburgers. In fact world huge numbers of folks struggle with obesity. In fantasy world, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” while in fact world, last time I checked, there are consequences for our every action. The truth is, in fact world, deception is never a valid marketing strategy—it is at minimum unethical and at the extreme, criminal. The problem isn’t with the presentation, it’s with the delivery. You can attract a customer with fantasy but you can only deliver fact. If there isn’t a match, you are guaranteed to disappoint the customer. And that, in the long run, does a disservice to both the customer and the client.

2. Don’t help to advance ideas and products you don’t believe in.
The question I ask myself at the outset of every job is this: “Should I use my talents to promote this idea, product, or service?” If the answer is no, I’ve got to decline the project. I don’t mean that we must actively endorse every product or service we help to promote. I mean that we need to make a conscious decision to draw the line between the stuff that makes the world a better place and the stuff that clearly doesn’t.
In an earlier post I advanced the proposition that commercial graphic design is not self-expression. Now I pose that even though we shouldn’t leave our fingerprints on the communications we create for our clients, we must accept some level of responsibility for them. Yes, even though a good and ethical designer is often tempted by a plum project or an easy paycheck, they must apply their own moral code and persevere.

3. Don’t be like me.
“Get real,” you say, “People don’t really believe everything we show and say.” “Consumers are smart; they understand that advertising and marketing is cloaked in fantasy.” “This is a free country; grownups are free to make their own decisions and mistakes.” See how easily I list rattle off those excuses? It comes from experience. I find it excruciatingly difficult to avoid fantasy. But it is possible. It can even become one of a designer’s unique selling propositions. “Isn’t this obvious?” Evidently not. Daily, I see and hear people make claims about products, services, and ideas that are unadulterated fantasy. They exploit ignorance, play on confusion, create unnecessary complexity, and use misdirection to deceive people long enough to get them to part with their money or to manipulate their thinking. If we want to improve the perception of our craft, if we want to be thought of as something other than “hired guns,” we’ve got to improve our practices and demonstrate that doing so is the key to the only profits worth having.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.