The Designer as Responsible Citizen: An/Aesth/Ethics

Design is often thought of as an activity seeking to change existing situations into preferred ones (Simon, 1969). But how are designers to discern what the nature of this “preferred” change should be? What would it mean to truly design ethically? In the admirable but naïve quest to improve situations through design, it is possible to end up bypassing the ethical altogether. Design can aesthetically provide the appearance and sensation of ethicality without the inconvenience of actually having to be ethical. Ethical discomfort is anaesthetised through the process of aestheticizing ethics: an/aestheticization. Beginning with visual communication design, but maintaining a view to the applicability and importance of the argument for broader fields of design, this paper presents the case that there is hope for genuinely ethical design in an increasingly aestheticized world by drawing on German philosopher of aesthetics Wolfgang Welsch’s suggestion that the root of ethics can be found to emerge from within the aesthetic itself. Design, which for so long has been a principal contributor to an/aestheticization, contains within itself - precisely due its aesthetic nature - the potential to return feeling to a society which finds itself constantly numbed to true ethical being.

Chapter three began by setting out one particular way of thinking about the complex realm of the ethical.

Design is undergoing a re-conceptualisation triggered by debates about its potential to instigate meaningful social, cultural and environmental change. Simultaneously, design and the allied designbased industries are experiencing a vigorous ascendancy across many spheres of life. While our collective aesthetic is finely tuned to contemplate and consume all things designer, innovations in digital media are generating new dimensions in the design realms -spawning new industries and aesthetic developments. From designer kitchens and clothes to technology and landscapes, our senses have become hard wired to appreciate the nuances and aesthetics of the visual. At the same time, a growing consensus about environmental fragility and how practices of production and consumption are contributing to an unsustainable future, underpin a discourse which sees the potential of design to be transformative, or "redirective" (Fry 2008). There is little disagreement that we are witnessing an 'ethical turn' occurring in professional and allied practices, including the design fields. This re-conceptualisation extends design's role -and the of practitioners responsibility -beyond stylistic enhancement or the quest for optimal product solutions, to account for the aesthetic dimensions of human experience and consequences of creative decision-making underpinning design processes. The traditional roles of design, designer and designed object are thus redefined through new understandings of the relationship between the material and immaterial aspects of design, where the design product and process are understood as embodiments of ideas, values and beliefs. This notion brings to the fore central questions around ethics, social

Proceedings of DRS

Ethics, Design and Planning of the Built Environment, 2013

Our contemporary " fi rst" world societies seem to be drifting in a state of cultural crisis. This has been notable for the past several decades. As planning theorist John Friedmann (1993 , p. 482) put it sometime ago: What we are living through in the fi nal decades of this [20th] century is something altogether different. It is nothing less than the collapse of the Euclidean world order of stable entities and common sense assumptions that have governed our understanding of the world for the past two hundred years. Rather than abating, this crisis seems to have become chronic and perennial, though often ignored. It relates to profound changes in how we see the world (our conceptual frameworks or paradigms), in how we come to know (epistemology), in how we decide what we ought to do (morality or normative ethics), and in how we fi nd meaning in our lives. The fi rst wave of change came from the modernist replacement of religious faith by science as foundational source of knowledge and justi fi cation. This led to scientism-the claim that the scienti fi c method was the only source of knowledgeand the dominance of a mechanistic and instrumental mode of thinking. The second wave 1 was the postmodernist questioning of the very possibility of any sure foundation for knowledge, leading to a loss of the modernistic faith in science (Harper and Stein 2006). The result of this challenge was an erroneous 2 (but widespread) view that there is no longer any way to justify our beliefs and values. Our contemporary (economically) advanced societies seem to be under the sway of a confused combination of modernist "instrumental reason" and postmodernist "soft relativism," leading to a narrow and self-absorbed search for "authentic identity" and a loss of vigor in political culture (Taylor 1991) .

Design Principles & Practices, 2008

As the young graphic and industrial designers we teach graduate into an uncertain future, they must be prepared to address and help solve emerging resource and societal issues. In this course, the design student explored current and future issues facing their profession. EDGE (Ethics of the Designer in a Global Economy) is a class taught by the research-based faculty team (Eric Benson and John Jennings) that aims to help shape students into “citizens for the 21st century” through proactive, instead of reactive projects. All projects assigned in this class lived outside of the classroom to help inspire and create awareness of the issues in the local and design communities. The students work for the semester is documented online and will soon be in a printed literary journal designed by the students. Whether by an architect, industrial/fashion or graphic designer, the objects and systems that play a key role in shaping our everyday lives have been intentionally created to support a cause or to be sold in the marketplace. With that in mind the designers’ power to enact a sustainable and equitable change is profound.

Proceedings of DRS

In the context of the designers responsibility for the impact of technology, ethical considerations are important. However, these considerations are often seen as limiting innovation and the freedom of the designer. Is it possible, on the contrary, that ethics can also foster creativity in design? The research project Tech-Wise is about a practice oriented approach in ethics; developing tools to engage people with ethical deliberation on the impact of technology. One result of the project is a workshop format for stimulating ethical deliberation that can be tailored to particular technologies and design disciplines. We argue from the results of one particular instance of this workshop format that such an approach to ethics has a fruitful reciprocal effect. It can stimulate creativity in design by enriching the question about the purpose of an innovation, and the other way around enrich ethical reasoning by opening up to often surprising impacts of technologies.

Design Philosophy Papers, 2006

Our understanding of design has been evolving steadily over the past 100 years and in recent years there has been a rush of new research into a variety of dimensions and Ethics is one the many dimensions that have received research attention. In this paper we look at the various dimensions of design and at current and past definitions to see the contemporary understanding of the subject as we see it today with the aid of models that the author has evolved over several years of reflection and research. We then trace the evolution of design as a natural human activity and restate this history in terms of the major stages of evolution from its origins in the use of fire and tools through the development of mobility, agriculture, symbolic expression, crafts production and on to industrial production and beyond to the information and knowledge products of the day. This sets the stage to ponder about the future of the activity and of the discipline as we see it today.

2023

Commercial graphic design has come to be viewed as damaging to the environment and society. This dissertation examines graphic designers of the current Design for Good movement to determine what their two desires: (1) for meaningful and ethical work and (2) for the production of ethical outcomes which encourage positive social and environmental change, reveal about the relationship between design and ethics in contemporary society. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews revealing the personal experiences of individual designers and document analysis of online mission statements of Design for Good agencies and activist design organisations, the following research questions are answered: What motivates designers to participate in Design for Good? What is the role of the Design For Good community in driving the Design for Good movement? How do graphic designers and design organisations define authentic Design for Good? What does this indicate about the relationship between ethics and design work in contemporary society? Comparing data to theories of ethical work and job selection identified in the literature review, design’s relationship to ethics is revealed to be deep routed in its ability to influence change. Designer’s understanding of this power and their ability to champion their personal values in their work and within the Design for Good community are recognised as strong motivating factors. Authentic Design for Good is understood to be hugely complicated to define, particularly with regards to client selection and working with commercial clients. Characteristics of contemporary society including capitalist systems and a lack of unified governance are identified as barriers. However, the relationship between ethics and design is observed to be reciprocal: ethical issues in contemporary society encourage designers to seek ethical work, whilst the ethical outcomes produced function as meta-goods, reshaping society’s understanding and awareness of ethical issues.