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DLB is interested in finding out what you think about design ethics. Take our 3-minute online survey and you’ll be entered to win a prize.

We’re giving away copies of the new Milton Glaser documentary To Inform and Delight and signed posters from the man himself (seen above).

We’ll choose three winners at random from completed surveys. One Grand Prize winner will receive a DVD and a poster. 1st runner-up scores a signed poster and our 2nd runner-up will grab a copy of the DVD.

The survey will close next Friday, August 6. We’ll announce the winners on August 9th.

The Rules

You must provide a valid email address to receive a prize. This address will only be used by DLB for notification purposes. You have our word that we will not sell, lease, or give your email address to anyone.

Good luck!

See more of Helmut Smits at his website. Photos by Lotte Stekelenburg. Via.

Over the coming week, we’ll interrupt our normal DLB programming to bring you a special set of feature posts celebrating one of our favorite designers, Milton Glaser. We recently had a chance to speak with Glaser about our favorite topic, design ethics, and in celebration of the “To Inform and Delight” DVD launch, we will share some highlights of our conversation over the next week. We also have a few copies of the documentary and a few signed posters to give away – Nick will have details for you on Friday.

Even if you don’t know who Milton Glaser is, it only takes a few minutes of watching the documentary to realize you’re already quite familiar with his designs. Through casual conversations with Glaser himself and dozens of his closest friends and collaborators, the film gives an intimate look into the thoughts and processes of someone whose work – if not his name – is so ubiquitous and so influential. A constant theme is the importance of teaching; no doubt Glaser sees the film itself (as its title suggests) as part of his teaching project. We hope our conversations add something to that – stay tuned.

Who would think that someone would ever have a need for these. Check it out — it’s a huge dose of WTF.

A nice diagram at Experience matters caught my eye today, when reading this post.

Although it looks to me like the author of the article conflates application insecurities (buffer overflows, unvalidated form input, improper exception handling, etc.) with what we used to call cases of social engineering (popularly represented these days by phishing), the main point here is worth heeding: our dumb behavior on social media sites leaves us vulnerable to cybercrime.

What’s worse: in the age of the personal brand, where there may be good prima facie reasons to "add" contacts you don’t recognize, those tinyurl-filled twitter streams become a minefield. I think it’s incontestable that now more than ever, it’s easy to make a dangerous mistake.

Here’s Lindsay’s nifty flowchart, which may be of some potential use for those remaining credulous internet users we all know.

See more nifty icon design at iconwerk .

1. Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?

A thought-provoking essay from Bruce Nussbaum over at Fast Company Design:

Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers? Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

2. 101 Patterns for Influencing Behavior Through Design

In the tradition of Oblique Strategies and IDEO’s Method Cards, Dan Lockton has created a design deck with patterns meant to affect user behavior.

3. The Ethics of Overdraft Policies

This article is breathlessly anti-bank, but it has a point: what kind of company could ethically design a policy like this?

“When you step back and ask, as a reasonable business person, would any customer want their fees to be itemized such that their fees would be maximized? No. No customer would ever want it.”

4. PAY & SIT: the private bench

Adam Greenfield on delicious:

The truly terrifying aspect of Fabien Brunsing’s piece illustrating differential permissioning and the monetization of public space…is that you can bet someone somewhere’s going to take it as a best practice.

The video uses the same style as Story of Stuff (simple black-and-white animation) to discuss environmental and health issues stemming from the use of toxins and chemicals in cosmetics. Describing these complex issues in such a simple, widely-understandable way is not easy, but they do an excellent job. Watch.

Btw, I love the depiction of Proctor & Gamble around 3:30.