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Last week, we talked about two types of theories which we could potentially use to evaluate the ethical qualities of a designed object. Consequentialist theories, we said, are more ends-focused: a design fails to be ethical if it has unethical consequences, even if those consequences weren’t predicted by the designer. Deontological theories, on the other hand, say that since the design decisions are morally fallible, we have to grade ethical content based largely on a designers’ intentions.

Milton Glaser most famously designed this "I Love New York" logo.

This discussion is part of a larger attempt to slog our way toward a stance about design ethics. We want to do this because we think design ethics are important, and this week, we’re going to focus on exactly why they’re important. Particularly, Nick is going to start developing that project on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

While he does that, I plan to start introducing some of the canonical texts in the history of design ethics, under the snappy new tag of the DLB Design Ethics Compendium. The idea of the Compendium is that we’ll be able to use some of what other great designers have written to either support or argue against whatever systematic positions we arrive at. I’ll start that today, with Milton Glaser‘s The Road to Hell.

The Road to Hell

By: Milton Glaser
August/September 2002
Reprinted from Metropolis Magazine, among other places.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of illustrating Dante’s Purgatory for an Italian publisher. I was impressed by the fact that the difference between those unfortunates in Hell and those in Purgatory was that the former had no idea how they had sinned. Those in Hell were there forever. Those in Purgatory knew what they had done and were waiting it out with at least the possibility of redemption, thus establishing the difference between despair and hope.

In regard to professional ethics, acknowledging what it is we do is a beginning. It is clear that in the profession of graphic design the question of misrepresenting the truth arises almost immediately. So much of what we do can be seen as a distortion of the truth. Put another way, “He who enters the bath sweats.”

Finally, all questions of ethics become personal. To establish your own level of discomfort with bending the truth, read the following chart: 12 Steps on the Graphic Designer’s Road to Hell. I personally have taken a number of them.

1. Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf.
2. Designing an ad for a slow, boring film to make it seem like a lighthearted comedy.
3. Designing a crest for a new vineyard to suggest that it has been in business for a long time.
4. Designing a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent.
5. Designing a medal using steel from the World Trade Center to be sold as a profit-making souvenir of September 11.
6. Designing an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring.
7. Designing a package aimed at children for a cereal whose contents you know are low in nutritional value and high in sugar.
8. Designing a line of T-shirts for a manufacturer that employs child labor.
9. Designing a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work.
10. Designing an ad for a political candidate whose policies you believe would be harmful to the general public.
11. Designing a brochure for an SUV that flips over frequently in emergency conditions and is known to have killed 150 people.
12. Designing an ad for a product whose frequent use could result in the user’s death.