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Key concepts: design manifesto, consumerism, advertising,. social responsibility Attention Conservation Notice: It's an arty righteous manifesto by some graphics people with some kind of vaguely political grudge. Entries in the Viridian Summer Health Warning Contest: http://www.earthlight.co.nz/~bretts/vs.html http://www.tux.org/~lasser/viridian/ http://www.subterrane.com/heat.htm http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/sun.bmp http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/HEAT.html http://members.tripod.com/~MSpong/viridian/heatdeath.html http://www.premierestedivolt.com/HEAT.HTML http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/heatkills.html http://www.provide.net/~herrell/heat.html http://www.gothic.net/~weasel/viridian/ http://home.earthlink.net/~keim9/heatwarning.htm http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/viridianheat.html http://www.octa.net/heatposter.html http://www.boston.quik.com/kitsune/gfx/heatwarn.jpg http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~djb14/viridian/heatkills.htm http://www.artlung.com/viridian6/ http://www.well.com/~smendler/heat.html http://www.greenbuilder.com/viridian_heat_load@148K.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/heatkills.html http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pal/viridian.html http://www.potatoe.com/viridian/poster.html http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/3203/viridian_heat.html http://way.nu/greens/heat.html This contest expires very soon: September 1, 01999.
Viridian Individual Projects:
The manifesto below summons designers, visual communicators and advertisers worldwide to concentrate on things more serious than promoting dogfood and deodorants. The manifesto, signed by 33 prominent graphic designers, art-directors and critics, is published jointly this Autumn by seven international design magazines: Adbusters (CAN), The AIGA Journal (USA), Blueprint (UK), Emigre (USA), Eye (UK), Form (BDR), Items (NL). The manifesto aims at stimulating the debate on the cultural and social responsibility of designers. Signatories and publishers welcome its free distribution. For more information and background (introductions by Rick Poynor and Chris Dixon, and the original 1964 manifesto that inspired First Things First 2000): http://www.xs4all.nl/~maxb/ftf2000.htm
Reactions to: adbusters@adbusters.org editor@emigre.com
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it. Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best. Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse. There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help. We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication == a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design. In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
signed:(((Boy, there's nothing we Viridians like better than a good whacking design manifesto, especially when it centers around the year 2000. What a lovely sentiment, too! (((If we Viridians have any critical perspective to offer on "First Things First 2000," it's that this manifesto calls on creative people to be energetically responsible without offering them any immediate, first-things-first, hands-on method of publicly demonstrating their responsibility. In the words of the stolen Viridian aphorism, "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." How exactly are graphic designers to do useful design work in the public interest without getting paid for it by jackal-like ad agencies? Might we suggest a noncommercial "Linux model" for graphic designers, where important graphic challenges are tossed onto the Internet and tackled in tandem?)))
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAW A GLITZY COAL ADVERTISEMENT? O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O |
