Do Good Design: How Designers Can Save the World

In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman argues that we live in an age where the democratization of technology offers us each an opportunity to leave a greater legacy by the creative ideas we choose to share rather than the genes we strive to propagate. Indeed, the future of civilization has become our common design project. He believes that communications professionals have more conspicuous power than they realize, and play a core role in helping some corporations mislead audiences in order to invent unfulfilled “needs” in larger and larger markets. In a World where design has become a recognized corporate asset, designers and their clients have the opportunity to use their persuasive skills responsibly and to accelerate awareness. Recent developments regarding professionalism and ethics offer powerful hope that there is great opportunity for designers and other professionals to choose what their still-young profession will be about: creating visual lies to help sell stuff or helping repair the World by bridging knowledge and understanding.

Do Good Design is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA.

How did design help choose a president?

Why are people buying houses they cannot afford?

Why do U.S. car makers now struggle to compete? Why do we really have an environmental crisis?

Design matters. Like never before.

Disarming the weapons of mass deception.

Designers create so much of what we see, what we use, and what we experience. In this time of unprecedented environmental, social, and economic crises, designers can choose what their young profession will be about: inventing deceptions that encourage more consumption—or helping repair the world.

Do Good Design is a call to action:

It alerts designers to the role they play in persuading global audiences to fulfill invented needs. The book outlines a more sustainable approach to both the practice and the consumption of design. All professionals will be inspired by the message of how one industry can feel better about itself by holding onto its principles. In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman offers a powerful and hopeful message for all designers.

Today, everyone is a designer.

And the future of civilization is our common design project.

Do Good Design is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA. The author will make a donation of 10% of his proceeds to a not for-profit organization whose mission is in alignment with the goals of this book.

vii Forewords

1 Introduction

4 The Creative Brief: disarming the weapons of mass deception

6 Chapter 1: Start now

20 Chapter 2: Beyond green: a convenient lie

30 Chapter 3: Pop landscape

48 Chapter 4: The weapons: visual lies and manufactured needs

60 Chapter 5: Where the truth lies: the slippery slope

72 Chapter 6: Wine, women, and water

84 Chapter 7: Losing our senses

102 The Design Solution: Convenient Truths

104 Chapter 8: Why our time is the perfect time

120 Chapter 9: How to lie, how to tell the truth

128 Chapter 10: How we do good is how we do good

134 Chapter 11: Professional climate change

146 The Do good Pledge

148 Chapter 12: “What can one professional do?”

159 Appendix A: First Things First manifesto

160 Appendix B: Excerpt from the GDC Code of Ethics

161 Appendix C: Excerpt from AIGA’s Standards of Professional

Practice

162 Appendix D: The road to Norway and China

165 Notes

171 Index

177 Questions for discussion

178 Acknowledgements: a small group of concerned citizens

180 About the author