OH NOES!!!1!!!!!11 D3z*N i5 @ <@p*ta|*5t t00|!
Everyone take a deep breath.
Design, when taken as a field, has always been used to comodify and sell things. Always. The contemporary practice of design has always had its roots there. Old print shops used design to make their books more attractive. Broadsheets were used to bring in crowds to various events. Anyone who has an idealized view of design that is a pure and advertising-less needs to crack a text book. It isn't unfair to say that advertising spawned the proliferation of the modern design field. They have always been linked.
The real issue that the First Things Fist manifesto is attempting to adress is the lack of moral compass in the advertising world. While the title suggests a return to some ideal, the real aim is to establish a new trend in advertising in which personal morality and advocacy are the new viable career paths. The main aguement is that designers should be more beholden to their own morality than to market trends. This is an admirable aim, but the present market situation leaves most of this civic-minded design to be completed by individuals with extra drive to work for these causes outside their job, or by smaller private firms who aren't subject to shareholders and gains.
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2 comments:
A new kind of marketing toward exploration and a new meaning.. to effect a person, or patron rather it needs to cease being an image and become an idea in the mind. So the article seems to suggest that the advertisers job is to break through into the ideological state.
The essay- or manifesto as some might call it further goes on to suggest the roles of graphic designers and advertisers. Designers to inform and advertisers to persuade, but what is wrong with persuasion if a person believes in that good or service he or she is endorsing? nothing. the peoblem is that as we all know (and is pointed out in the reading) not all advertisers can do this and are doing this.
It is not necessary however to view all commercial work as just paying the bills, but- of corse it is up to the individual designer how much of a social conscience they might like to have in their work. Yes i am aware that the Hummer has an advertiser as well as all cigarette brands which are not by far the epitome of health and well being. But in the end however we are the middle man, and we are the persuaders. But we can not demand someone pertake in a product anymore than we can demand say a tree of money grown in our yard. It is absurd to think that such a high percentage of sales are a direct result of an "image" that has been created around a product.
I would like to always believe that an intellegent ad factual advertisement would speak to the intellect of the consumer- and decision would not be made simply on the basis that a product "looks cool."
We affect
We persuade maybe
but we do not force someone into a purchase or decision.
(...unless you're microsoft)
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