Time for design activism
Activism is defined as:
the use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause.
I previously briefly explored some of the programs that are cropping up in many of the top design schools. Their goal is to aid the development of thoughtful, responsible designers, who might consider their profession a complement to their roles as participants in culture and society.
Is design activism?
So is design for social change a form of activism? Can lending your expertise to a client whose values and goals you may be personally attached to mean you’re taking part in design activism? Perhaps but only insofar as design, as a discipline, is one where an effort at persuasion in support of a cause occurs.
And yet, activism is much more than that. It contains a requirement for personal, undiluted engagement and the implicit hope that direct action will trigger a reaction.
Several organizations, such as the Designers Accord or Design Can Change aim to inform, connect and engage designers and corporations through guidelines and a pledge of responsibility. Most importantly perhaps they strive to include design and designers as participants in policy, culture, business, social and environmental progress.
Is social enterprise today’s activism?
Other organizations open up the notion of innovation and social enterprise to all that wish to participate and provide physical—The Hub SF—or virtual—OpenIDEO or Design 21—spaces for concerned citizens to collaborate in.
Even large corporations who wish to engage—some with the help of successful TV shows such as Glee or Mad Men—fund grassroots projects and ideas. AMEX’s Members Project and Pepsi’s previously discussed Refresh Everything are two such examples but there are many more.
Aside from these initiatives, funding and nurturing of social enterprise is becoming commonplace. So why is change so slow in coming?
No more excuses
The short list I included above is a minuscule sampling of the resources available to those who are willing to go beyond what they were trained to do and become activists in their own way.
The First Things First Manifesto first published in 1964 by Ken Garland and republished in 1999 by Adbusters, AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Blueprint and Eye magazines, expressed notions akin to those found in doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. It dealt with ethics in design practice and what I would call harm reduction.
This is still relevant of course but, isn’t it time for design to become activism again? Beyond reducing harm and giving lip-service to sustainability, beyond campaigns that aim to “raise awareness” and not much else. Shouldn’t we stop being so pleased with what design and design thinking can do and actually take an active part in doing it?
If every designer, studio or consultancy devoted even a fraction of their time to imagining new solutions to problems greater than those we get paid for, change would happen much faster. If we all leveraged the collaborations that make our practices fruitful to make ideas happen, change would happen much faster. If we all were more prone to sharing our ideas and allowing others to build on them with us, change would happen much faster.
Don’t you think?
If every designer, studio or consultancy devoted even a fraction of their time to imagining new solutions to problems greater than those we get paid for, change would happen much faster.
that stopped me a bit….
it feels like what we as designers must do is take a step back and reassess the current given situation. Designers today are sitting on unprecedented amounts of information in all the walks of life, with the high volume of information comes a great deal of capability and so this mix increases the level of responsibility to heights never thought of before. The innate raw potential in design has been once used for harm ( nazi germany propaganda era ) and as it was destructive it could also be quite beneficial….
personally i think collaboration is extremely important but what is more important right now is a unity of vision…
a thing that can only be achieved via dialog that aims to unite a singular “truthful” representation of what the world is and what the world needs and whats our relationship with the world…
most designers have an amazing ability to screen information and string pieces of information together to weave a larger canvas
this particular canvas needs to be big enough to engulf issue of race origin religion and final destination while given it must prove itself a mighty one against critique and opposition but. for such a union to ever occur we all need to gather more information…
a necessary period of incubation where one asserts where he/she belongs in the grand scheme of things…
and then if such a union is to emerge to life…
nothing is impossible
Thank you for your thoughtful comment Ameen. I agree with you that dialogue should occur and a wider and deeper understanding of the world’s systems is necessary to effect widespread change. However, if we wait for the big picture to be complete, it may be too late. If we hope for a time of agreement—see the Climate Summits—nothing will change. Lastly, if any larger scale design project is any indication, issues often need to be cut into manageable morsels before they can be fully solved. I believe the relative inertia we are witnessing on many topics stems from this desire to please everyone. I think I mentioned in another post that social profit initiatives often fall short because they fail to envision a context other than the one in which it was originally created, making it arduous to roll it out to other communities and cultures. Your point about dialogue and collaboration is essential to ensure the solutions that are crafted have the maximum reach. But when is the right time to bring the “period of incubation” to a close and move on to action?
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