Promotional Information

Great design can be an agent of social change. The environmental crisis is the greatest issue of today, and according to author David Berman, consumerism is its largest cause … often fueled by convincing graphic and product design intended to invent “needs”. Alternatively, creative professionals can use their skills to help spread messages and ideas the World really needs to hear, doing good by how we design and how we use design. This book offers a powerful and hopeful message that includes solutions that everyone will want to hear.

In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman argues that global branding strategies are the most powerful tools used today to encourage over-consumption amongst growing Developing World populations, the largest long-term threat to global harmony and environment. 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.

Table of Contents

Contents

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

About the Author

David Berman has over 25 years of experience in design and strategic communications and is a senior strategic consultant to IBM, The International Space Station, The Canadian Government, the United Nations Association of Canada and the Aga Khan Foundation. Since 1984 David has worked to establish a code of ethics which embraces social responsibility. The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada ratified David's draft nationally in 2000, which has been adopted as an international model by Icograda, the world body of communication design.

Reviews

"David Berman, in this lively visual narrative, reveals for us the power of design to drive consumption and some of our unbecoming behavior of recent decades. Yet, more importantly, he speaks of the extraordinary potential to design to change the world, leading human behavior toward our aspirational destinies." Richard Grefe Executive director, AIGA | the professional association for design