First Things First
In an effort to collect the major texts of design ethics, DLB continues its Design Ethics Compendium this week with Ken Garland's First Things First.
Ken Garland's First Things First manifesto is no doubt a classic in design ethics. Garland - art editor of Design magazine, proprietor of Ken Garland & Associates, and active member of the socialist Labour Party - wrote the manifesto was in November, 1963. The early sixties in Britain were a time when readily-available consumer goods were both changing the consumer landscape forever and simultaneously enabling corporations to lavish enormous production budgets, unheard of in the austere post-war years, on designers and advertisers. Four hundred copies of First Things First were published in January 1964, signed by several well-established design figures, as well as a host of other teachers, students, designers and photographers.
(For a fuller history of the manifesto, check out Rick Poyner's Design is about democracy.)
| Tagged with: | Design Ethics, Design Ethics Compendium, Ken Garland, Rick Poynor |