Designers Fight the Man

In an industry so often called out for a lack of integrity (we are the people who sell beer almost exclusively with bouncing boobies), Beyond Madison Avenue tracked down a group of designers who take their ethics seriously. National Design Awards winners, Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, Georgie Stout, and Paula Scher, declined a congratulatory invitation to the White House from First Lady Laura Bush.

Because they hate the war? Because they think Bush is an idiot? No, because they believe that Bush has been unethical in his use of language and communication - their bread and butter.

Graphic designers are intimately engaged in the construction of language, both visual and verbal. And while our work often dissects, rearranges, rethinks, questions and plays with language, it is our fundamental belief, and a central tenet of "good" design, that words and images must be used responsibly, especially when the matters articulated are of vital importance to the life of our nation.

We understand that politics often involves high rhetoric and the shading of language for political ends. However it is our belief that the current administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communication of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America. We therefore feel it would be inconsistent with those values previously stated to accept an award celebrating language and communication, from a representative of an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning.

Read the entire letter at BMA.

A compelling gesture. Thank you all.

Comments

[Bob]

Hmmm. I guess their morals depend on what the definition of "is" is.

[Jonas Cord]

Wow, self-important graphic designers get pretentiously indignant. They should get another award...

[tom lout]

Stop mad cowboy disease.

[Rob Mortimer]

Brilliant.