Do Good Design: How Designers Can Change The World

by David B. Berman

AIGA Design Press / New Riders (Peachpit)

A little over four years ago I reviewed David B. Berman’s important new book here on this blog. I was delighted today to receive an updated/reprint version of this honest, hard-hitting, book—together with a lovely note from David (Duv to his friends), who I have known and exchanged ideas re: design ethics with for well over 20 years.

Do Good Design rails against the consumptive excesses of the so-called “developed world” and urges designers to help steer a better course for our planet—before it’s too late. Delivered with in-your-face directness, it presents a strong argument regarding the inherent power of design to shape our world and takes on greed, excess, and the scheming tendencies of advertising and “targeted” visual communications. Full of pithy quotations, well illustrated (with wide-ranging examples of manipulative media and manufactured needs) and impressively annotated and cross-referenced, David combines his keen observation skills with courage to question the status quo, expressing his marathon call for positive change with passionate zeal. In his words, “the future of civilization is our common design project.”

Thanks Duv—keep up the “good” work of shaping a more equitable and sustainable future!

More info at dogoodbook.com.

Toronto, Canada

An essay I compiled for Applied Arts Magazine (pulling from various articles I’ve penned over the past years) appears in the current issue (Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2010) with the following pull-quote featured on the cover…

“NEED is the father of thought. I would like to think that designing and dreaming have traveled in lockstep since our species began to walk upright… Graphic design ignites passion, identifies, informs, clarifies, inspires, and enables communication… Design shapes culture and it influences societal values.”

Read or download the whole essay here (384 KB PDF).

Taipei, Taiwan

My good friend Professor Apex Lin (distinguished designer and educator) is currently publishing a book entitled “設計論語” about “designers’ definitions of design.”

Shown above are a few of the pages I’m submitting—my views on the role design can play re: a better future; a proposal for how a simple, proactive reshuffling of the norm can “raise the bar” as regards ascendant creativity; and a depiction of visualization in relation to the role individual Weltanschauung plays in the conveyance of visual communication (the latter is a re-work of an invitational poster I first created for the GDC@50 celebrations with the statement: Design is the application of intent. Graphic design targets the eye, and ultimately the mind’s eye, of both the individual beholder and the broader audience. Strategy, concept, message, and visual vocabulary connect sender and receiver by means of graphic acuity and attraction… you see?”).

Hong Kong

At the invitation of the newly formed Hong Kong Design Centre (HKDC), Icograda president Robert L. Peters today gave a presentation entitled “The Future—by Design” as part of the inaugural Business Of Design Week (BODW), envisioned to become Asia’s leading international conference dedicated to design, brand, and innovation. The week also marked the official opening of HKDC’s new premises in a historic building granted by the government of Special Administrative Region.

HKDC is active in organizing events and activities that promote the use of design in business, and are the first organization in Hong Kong dedicated to promoting design development among different disciplines. It takes the leadership role in being the focal point of design in Hong Kong, and by creating a sense of belonging among designers, offers a united platform where ideas, knowledge, and information can be shared throughout the design community and local business sectors.

Delivered a year to the day after the traumatic events of 9/11, Peters’ talk addressed broad issues relating to the impact that today’s design will have on the world of tomorrow. The abstract follows…

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The Future—by Design

We live in uncertain times—times of political, social and economic instability—times of information overload, overwhelming change, over-branding, and overly powerful media empires. Wealth, health, knowledge and technological progress are not shared equally. For many of our six billion fellow human beings, the world is a place of imbalance, inequity, injustice, and suffering. Globalization of information and trade threatens to turn everything into an economic model—with risk to indigenous identities, to vernacular visual languages, to the historical roles of tribes and nations, and to the equilibrium of individuals.

Designers have an important role to play in shaping the future. Design is powerful, it shapes culture and it influences societal values. Design can inform, empower, and clarify—or it can obscure, encumber, and manipulate. In an age of information and ideas, graphic designers are in a unique position of immense influence and responsibility—they can choose to be champions of the unique things that dignify human beings and that make our civilizations meaningful, or they can choose to act as ‘servile minions’ of profit-driven agendas and thereby maintain the status quo.

Designers possess unique abilities with which to analyze scenarios, envision outcomes, create integrative synergies, and give form to universally equitable and sustainable solutions. This presentation shares viewpoints from the worldwide design community, offer predictions, and aims to provoke action—on how visionary design thinking and smart practice can play a positive role in shaping the future.

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Seemingly everywhere.

I first used the line “Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future…” in a conference lecture in the mid-or-late 1990s.

That simple statement has since spread through the Interwebs like some sort of memetic rogue virus, repeated relentlessly by “famous quotes” sites, “wallpaper generators” and the like — a quick Google search brings up literally thousands of graphic “treatments” of this — on sites around the planet devoted to graphic design, yes; but also fashion, interior design, poster and decor sites, product design, architecture, engineering, strategic planning, marketing, medicine, linguistics, social work, advertising campaigns, etcetera, etc…

In fact, hardly a month goes by without someone, somewhere asking me for permission to use this now-famous statement for their own purposes — and of course I grant them full permission. While being widely quoted is certainly flattering, it does carry with it the caution to always “watch what you say.” (-:

For the record, I initially stated the “quotable quote” in question along with the advisory conclusion re: the power of design (and the ensuing responsibility of designers): “Design is therefore responsible for the world our children will live in.”

The top image is my own, from a book on design published in China. The images following are a tiny sample of the many “treatments” found online… (the Mao Clinic even offers it as “downloadable wallpaper” — click image below).

Nunavik, Quebec

Established in 1978 with a lone, single-engine De Havilland Beaver aircraft and collectively owned by the Inuit, who have occupied the territory for thousands of years, Air Inuit is the sole airline providing passenger, charter, cargo, and emergency air transport services to Quebec’s northernmost coastal communities known as Nunavik. Its small fleet of 26 airplanes is well known in the airline industry for having “one of the most enviable safety records in Canada” despite the “challenging and often hostile conditions” under which it operates. The new identity and liverywere designed by Montreal-based FEED in collaboration with brand consultant Marc-André Chaput.

The orange-and-white goose design was created to reflect the Inuit’s love and respect of nature and the abundant wildlife that have allowed its people to survive for thousands of years in one of the planet’s harshest environments. It was also intended to underscore the company’s distinctive corporate culture and bold new vision for the future which includes improving efficiency to cope with rising operating costs, the addition of new routes and specialized services, and a careful expansion into new markets…

Read more and see more of this outstanding re-brand at Brand New, here, where you can also see a “before and after” identity comparison.

Lisbon, Portugal

Today’s issue of Público, Portugal’s daily national newspaper, includes an article by journalist Maria João Lopes, who interviewed me last month in Caldas da Rainha. Maria has collated our pleasant hour-long conversation (sitting in the cool shade of the trees at the ESAD/CR* campus) into a portrait of “the Portuguese persona,” as well as conveying my call to those in the design professions to make a stronger case (with business, with government) re: the powerful role that design can play in shaping culture, improving the quality of everyday life, and creating a better and more sustainable future.

Thanks for your interest, Maria!

You can view or download a screen-resolution PDF (62 KB) of the newspaper article here… if you do, I hope your Portuguese is better than mine.

* My visit to ESAD/CR (which prompted the Público interview) was triggered by the feature article about Portuguese graphic design that I wrote recently for Communication Arts magazine (1.1 MB PDF) here.

Brooklyn, New York

Friend Wendy Richmond’s book Art Without Compromise* has just hit the shelves… the scuttlebutt and some reviews follow, and you can read the Introduction here:

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Art Without Compromise* will inspire artists to change the way they think about their creative landscapes, from personal goals to cultural influences to technological realities. Author Wendy Richmond helps artists to look closely at what they see every day, both in their own art-making and in the world around them. Readers will learn to develop an uncompromising commitment to finding and protecting their own unique process for making their strongest art.

This thought-provoking book covers such topics as:

• understanding the artist’s unique identity in relation to the larger culture

• building systems of support and collaboration

• explaining how an artist’s needs can lead to innovation and authenticity

• responding to the Internet and changing concepts of what is public and private

• accepting digression as a creative necessity

Artists will come away with a clearer perspective of their past and future work, a critical eye for personal relevance, and an abundance of inspiration.

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A few reviews:

“Personal and personable, a first-hand account of the essentials of the creative process, written in an indomitable and penetrating voice and style.”

—Nicholas Negroponte, cofounder, MIT Media Lab; founder and chairman, One Laptop Per Child

“Reading Wendy Richmond is like a conversation with a wise friend. The topic of art and its place in our lives is something we have all thought about; it’s just that she has thought about it more usefully and can explain her ideas with a jargon-free clarity that is an art in itself.”

—Matthew Carter, type designer

“Richmond is absorbed by life and so aware of what is happening around her that she is compelled to make a mental note of it and then speculate later on its significance. Her insights are ironically drawn from the opposite kind of awareness: outsight. Outsight means the ability to see and understand external things clearly. Richmond’s ability to observe and derive is what feeds these chapters.”

—Chris Pullman, artist and former vice president for design, WGBH Boston

(from DT&G Magazine)

“Thoughtfully written, concisely edited, beautifully designed…”

There is more to being a designer than using tools to re-form and regurgitate our thoughts. There is more to design than balancing concept with execution. Design is intent: the process of understanding relationships and making choices based on that knowledge. We make our thoughts real when we put them into the world, and they give us back the world we live in. Worldwide Identity, Inspired Design from Forty Countries is thoughtfully written and concisely edited by Robert L. Peters, beautifully designed by his team at Circle (Winnipeg, Canada), and published by Rockport in partnership with Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations).

Rob is very concerned about how we make our thoughts real in the world—as he should be, with the depth and breadth of his background. Rob is a renaissance designer. Founder of Circle, a former president of Icograda, an internationally respected teacher, juror and speaker; mountain climber and solar home-builder; he has more than smarts and experience—he has passion and he has vision. He ventures into the world and the world sends him back with questions about our future. He entreats, “Aware of the advancing threat of monoculture, can the world’s identity designers help conserve and revive those things that make human culture distinct and unique?”

The opening pages are written with an urgent intelligence, and give an integrated overview at where we now stand as a species from a designer’s point of view. As designers in a globally connected world, it is our responsibility to contribute towards a shift in this place we find ourselves, and Rob drives that point home. As he has said, design is a verb and not a noun—a gestalt, not a thing.

As with most design books the verbal content is brief, but is well written and informative. The first few pages of preface and introduction are worth the price of admission alone. They make you think instead of react: something we all need to do more of. The visual content has a museum quality of wayfinding in 2 dimensions: each country’s opening section is displayed as a keyed demographical brief, describing the conditions through which the designs were conceived and birthed. It is not only a quick reference, it allows cultural comparisons of design produced within various countries in an accessible way, something of interest to all of us in today’s technologically connected world. The identities are collected both as encapsulations with background briefs, and fuller histories as case studies. Many are culturally flavoured, a reminder of how wonderful and necessary distinction is in the face of the “emergence of nonplaces (uniform airports, generic shopping malls), and the advancement of what some theorists are calling ‘serial monotony.’” He also points out that more than half of the world’s top economies are no longer countries, but now belong to the corporations. This explains a lot, doesn’t it?

The book opens with “Identity lies at the very core of culture, and it is the key to our understanding of self.” This is a book to remind you of that and it should be on every thinking designer’s bookshelf. Better design leads to better choices, and better choices lead to better design.

—Maggie Macnab, author of Decoding Design, principal of Macnab Design. Read more reviews of Worldwide Identity here.

Worldwide Identity: Inspired Design from Forty Countries

Designers worldwide have given shape to the identities of corporations, organizations, locations, events, products, and services that surround us. Published in partnership between Icograda and Rockport Publishers, Worldwide Identity aims to be “a stimulating source of inspiration, reflection, and learning” and “an international snapshot of excellence in identity design”—it showcases over 300 identities from 40 Icograda member countries around the globe. The book’s clear and concise manner assists readers in seeing how innovative, distinctive, and appropriate identities arise from designers’ thorough understanding of mandate and cultural context. Available as of October 2005 from bookshops worldwide, through Rockport, or purchase online: www.amazon.com.

Author: Robert L. Peters

ISBN: 1-59253-187-3, Rockport Publishers, Inc.

Hardcover, 256 pages, 400 color images

Size: 228 x 280 mm (9 x 11 inches)

$45.00 US / £29.99 UK / $63.00 CAN

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Identity Matters

An online version of an Opinion/Commentary article originally published in the July 2005 issue of Communication Arts magazine (CA #337, Illustration Annual 46) draws from Peters’ new book Worldwide Identity. Read the essay online (a 792 K PDF) here.

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Some reviews of Worldwide Identity from amazon.com:

“Thoughtfully written, concisely edited, beautifully designed…”

There is more to being a designer than using tools to re-form and regurgitate our thoughts. There is more to design than balancing concept with execution. Design is intent: the process of understanding relationships and making choices based on that knowledge. We make our thoughts real when we put them into the world, and they give us back the world we live in. “Worldwide Identity, Inspired Design from Forty Countries” is thoughtfully written and concisely edited by Robert L. Peters, beautifully designed by his team at Circle (Winnipeg, Canada), and published by Rockport in partnership with Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations).

Rob is very concerned about how we make our thoughts real in the world—as he should be, with the depth and breadth of his background. Rob is a renaissance designer. Founder of Circle, a former president of Icograda, an internationally respected teacher, juror and speaker; mountain climber and solar home-builder; he has more than smarts and experience—he has passion and he has vision. He ventures into the world and the world sends him back with questions about our future. He entreats, “Aware of the advancing threat of monoculture, can the world’s identity designers help conserve and revive those things that make human culture distinct and unique?”

The opening pages are written with an urgent intelligence, and give an integrated overview at where we now stand as a species from a designer’s point of view. As designers in a globally connected world, it is our responsibility to contribute towards a shift in this place we find ourselves, and Rob drives that point home. As he has said, design is a verb and not a noun—a gestalt, not a thing.

As with most design books the verbal content is brief, but is well written and informative. The first few pages of preface and introduction are worth the price of admission alone. They make you think instead of react: something we all need to do more of. The visual content has a museum quality of wayfinding in 2 dimensions: each country’s opening section is displayed as a keyed demographical brief, describing the conditions through which the designs were conceived and birthed. It is not only a quick reference, it allows cultural comparisons of design produced within various countries in an accessible way, something of interest to all of us in today’s technologically connected world. The identities are collected both as encapsulations with background briefs, and fuller histories as case studies. Many are culturally flavoured, a reminder of how wonderful and necessary distinction is in the face of the “emergence of nonplaces (uniform airports, generic shopping malls), and the advancement of what some theorists are calling ‘serial monotony.’” He also points out that more than half of the world’s top economies are no longer countries, but now belong to the corporations. This explains a lot, doesn’t it?

The book opens with “Identity lies at the very core of culture, and it is the key to our understanding of self.” This is a book to remind you of that and it should be on every thinking designer’s bookshelf. Better design leads to better choices, and better choices lead to better design.

— Maggie Macnab, author of Decoding Design, principal of Macnab Design, from a review in DT&G Magazine

28 July 2008

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“Exactly what a great book should be.”

Profoundly insightful, contextually relevant and outstanding production for this book published by Rockport. Including contributions from 40 countries and 300 identities this is a monsterish load of data come true, an almost impossible summit to attain, and surely a potential nightmare to manage… but for the author, who has fun and experience climbing real mountains, this topic is just the right challenge for him… a natural extension!

Forever curious, well traveled and a man of heart, his thirst to understanding and his openness makes this book probably one of the most relevant, not because super brands and logos are (again) disserted about, but because of his aptitude to convey his passion and knowledge in the most valuable way: words.

To be honest, I was a bit reluctant because… well… you know, not another one. But within a couple of pages reading (just the intro is worth the book) – I was floored. Really! This is not only a gorgeous book to look at. It’s a book to take to your fav spot and read… and reap. It’s a feast for the eyes and the mind. In fact, that is exactly what a great book should be. If I was a writer, this is the book I would have like to have written!

— Carole Guevin, Editor of netdiver.net

11 December 2006

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“An exceptionally inspirational & educational experience.”

This is a superb and intelligent documentation featuring worldwide identity designs by some of the finest talents from 40 nations. Robert L. Peters has done a brilliant job in providing us with this well-designed, quality volume of not only inspirational work but one which functions as an educational volume as well. And, it includes not only exceptional visuals but also well-written and well-edited descriptive copy along with a very informative and most welcome background about each country represented. I recommend it highly for both professionals and students alike.

— Eileen Hedy Schultz

President/Creative Director of Design International,
Past President of The Art Director’s Club,
Past President of the Society of Illustrators,
Member of Board of Directors and Professor, School of Visual Arts, NY, USA.

10 August 2006

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“An international design adventure.”

Robert L. Peters, the past president of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda), has produced one of the most unique and interesting corporate identity books I’ve come across in quite some time. In association with Icograda and an international advisory board, he has compiled – from entries submitted by design professionals around the world – the beautiful volume Worldwide Identity: Inspired Design from Forty Countries. Organized by country, the book highlights diversity in both individual logos and complete identity systems – all with well-written explanations, and in some cases the actual design brief for the projects.

A description of each featured nation helps the reader comprehend the influence and impact that the location, history, politics, cultural, economics and religions of a region may have on the exhibited designs – and vice versa. Designs from the United States are not included as American professional design organizations were not full Icograda members at the time of the “call for entries” in 2004. Any designer, feeling limited by their own geographic surroundings, should take a trip around the world via the pages of this incredible book. The author, Icograda, Rockport Publishers and all the designers/firms included in the book should be very proud of the end result of their collaboration.

— Jeff Fisher, author of Engineer of Creative Identity, writer of bLog-oMotives and the “Logo Notions” column at CreativeLatitude.com

8 November 2005

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Some additional reviews…

“A splendid piece of work!”
— Jan Middendorp, Berlin

“We love it… the book is beautiful!”
— David Coates, Ion Design, Vancouver

“Nicely made, interesting, and valuable.”
— Gediminas Lasas, Vilnius

“I was in Chicago a few weeks ago, browsing the design section at Borders when I saw Worldwide Identity on the shelf… Congratulations for the good work!”
— Marcelo Aflalo, Sao Paulo

“I really enjoy the concept and the ability to see work from around the world in a systematic way. The presentation and layout is great as well.”
— Matthew Clark, Subplot, Vancouver

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