THE SOCIAL ROLE OF THE

DESIGNER

//André Domingos 4506//FBAUL //DC5

IntroduçãoA profissão de designer tem mudado ao longos dos tempos, com o passar da geração Reagan-Thatcher-Bush em que dominava a obediência, a neutralidade e a serventia à industria, existe uma nova realidade, o design não é neutro. Milton Glaser costuma dizer: “O bom design é boa cidadania”. Visto o design não ser neutro, o que estará inerente a essa boa cidadania? Um designer deverá ser profissionalmente, culturalmente e socialmente responsável pelo impacto do seu trabalho na sociedade.

Durante a geração Reagan-Thatcher-Bush o consumismo desenfreado era encorajado, e enquanto durou os designares gráficos aproveitaram os despojos de uma prosperidade artificial, com uma passividade igual ao resto. Mas cedo começamos a perceber que algo não estava bem.

O design gráfico é uma ferramenta poderosa, capaz de informar, divulgar e fazer propaganda de mensagens sociais, ambientais e políticas, bem como comerciais. E devido a isso devemos deixar de ser passivos, temos o dever de ser bons cidadãos e participar na alteração do nosso governo e sociedade, usando os nossos talentos e habilidades especificas para encorajar os outros a acordar e participar também.

Um logotipo elegante pode legitimar o ilegítimo; um pacote bonito pode aumentar as vendas de um produto inferior, um bom vendedor pode convencer as crianças de que algo perigoso é essencial. O designer gráfico é tão responsável quanto o departamentos de marketing e publicidade para a propagação de uma mensagem ou ideia. Sim somos parte do problema, e como tal devemos ajudar a resolve-lo, visto sermos nós a responder às necessidades dos clientes, devemos considerar os problemas que assumimos. Se é ajudar a vender tabaco e álcool, ou um projecto de uma biblioteca em memória de um presidente que lê apenas livros de cowboy? Será que a sociedade realmente beneficiará de um plano estratégico para utensílios de plástico ou de fast-food? As respostas podem ser mais subtil do que um sim ou um não. Mas uma coisa é clara: Design não é um processo neutro, isento de valores. Um projecto não tem mais integridade do que o seu propósito ou assunto. Garbage in, garbage out (Katherine McCoy). A solução de design mais sublime nunca pode superar a qualidade de seu conteúdo.

ÍndiceConsumismo_

19501960197019801990

ReaganomicsObey_

Money_Nova CriseEnriquecimento Ílicito_

//Oxford Street, London

CONSUMERISM

More, Newer, Better

Selling in Order to Buy

+

1950

+

1950In many ways, Tupperware reinforced the ideal of the efficient home and kitchen. After all, Tupperware was meant to help housewives maintain freshness and cleanliness in food storage and preparation. Tupperware also helped fulfill the postwar desire for consumer goods. When asked how she recruited new dealers to her Tupperware distributorship, Jean Conlogue noted, "We tried to fill a need for something that they wanted, like new carpet, or a new refrigerator, and then we would map out for them how many parties they would have to hold." The company further reinforced consumption with their promotions and prizes. As rewards for their high sales, Tupperware dealers were rewarded with top-of-the-line appliances, from washing machines to double boilers

Selling in Order to Buy

consumer spending no longer meant just satisfying an indulgent material desire. In fact, the American consumer was praised as a patriotic citizen in the 1950s, contributing to the ultimate success of the American way of life. "The good purchaser devoted to 'more, newer and better' was the good citizen," historian Lizabeth Cohen explained, "since economic recovery after a decade and a half of depression and war depended on a dynamic mass consumption economy."

After World War II,

The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War, was another defining element of the 1950s. After World War II, Western leaders began to worry that the USSR had what one American diplomat called “expansive tendencies”; moreover, they believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened democracy and capitalism everywhere. As a result, communism needed to be “contained”–by diplomacy, by threats or by force. This idea shaped American foreign policy for decades.

The Cold War

/

played an important role in middle-class life during the postwar era. Adults participated eagerly in the consumer economy, using new-fangled credit cards and charge accounts to buy things like televisions, hi-fi systems and new cars. But manufacturers and marketers had their eyes on another group of shoppers as well: the millions of relatively affluent boomer children, many of whom could be persuaded to participate in all kinds of consumer crazes.

the idea that designers’s talents should be directed beyond selling stuff is not new: in 1964, Ken Garland released the First Things First manifesto in London, signed by 22 concerned designers. In 2005, during our tour of downtown London, Ken’s wife Wanda showed me the McDonald’s that used to be London’s city hall: it dawned on me that poor countries are not the only ones at risk of having their cultures ground up and loaded with filler. For me, Ken exemplifies the designer who is both ordinary and extraordinary. That evening, over tea in Ken’s Camden home-studio, he reminisced that he wasn’t suggesting we should have any less fun; he simply thought that our skills could be used in much nobler ways.

Discontent lay just beneath the surface, however, especially among young students, who were critical of France’s outdated university system and the scarcity of employment opportunity for university graduates. Sporadic student demonstrations for education reform began in 1968, and on May 3 a protest at the Sorbonne was broken up by police. Several hundred students were arrested and dozens were injured.

In the aftermath of the incident, courses at the Sorbonne were suspended, and students took to the streets of the Latin Quarter (the university district of Paris) to continue their protests. On May 6, battles between the police and students in the Latin Quarter led to hundreds of injuries. On the night of May 10, students set up barricades and rioted in the Latin Quarter. Nearly 400 people were hospitalized, more than half of them police. Leftist students began calling for radical economic and political change in France, and union leaders planned strikes in support of the students. In an effort to defuse the crisis by returning the students to school, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou announced that the Sorbonne would be reopened on May 13.

First things first

The boss needs you, you don't need him

Consumer goods

we are proposing a reversal of priorities

Be realistic, demand the impossible

960@

1970Unconcern for

the presentNo Future/

Oil embargo

Yom Kippur War

+

One of these Arab-Israeli wars, the Yom Kippur War, began in early October 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. After the Soviet Union began sending arms to Egypt and Syria, U.S. President Richard Nixon began an effort to resupply Israel.

"There are not many songs written over baked beans at the breakfast table that went on to divide a nation and force a change in popular culture." Timed with typical Sex Pistols flair to coincide with Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, the release of "God Save The Queen" was greeted by precisely the torrent of negative press that Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had hoped. On May 31, 1977, the song earned a total ban on radio airplay from the BBC—a kiss of death for a normal pop single, but a powerful endorsement for an anti-establishment rant like "God Save The Queen."

In response, members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) reduced their petroleum production and proclaimed an embargo on oil shipments to the United States and the Netherlands, the main supporters of Israel. Though the Yom Kippur War ended in late October, the embargo and limitations on oil production continued, sparking an international energy crisis. As it turned out, Washington's earlier assumption that an oil boycott for political reasons would hurt the Persian Gulf financially turned out to be wrong, as the increased price per barrel of oil more than made up for the reduced production.

+

Once he took office, he set about making good on his promises to get the federal government out of Americans’ lives and pocketbooks. He advocated for industrial deregulation, reductions in government spending and tax cuts for both individuals and corporations, as part of an economic plan he and his advisors referred to as “supply-side economics.” Rewarding success and allowing people with money to keep more of it, the thinking went, would encourage them to buy more goods and invest in businesses. The resulting economic growth would “trickle down” to everyone.Nine million people were unemployed in November of that year. Businesses closed, families lost their homes and farmers lost their land. The economy slowly righted itself, however, and “Reaganomics” grew popular again. Even the stock market crash of October 1987 did little to undermine the confidence of middle-class and wealthy Americans in the president’s economic agenda. Many also overlooked the fact that Reagan’s policies created record budget deficits: In his eight years in office, the federal government accumulated more debt than it had in its entire history.

On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall–they became known as “mauerspechte,” or “wall woodpeckers”—while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the war really over.”

The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

Reaganomics

1980//

Reagan

Don’t let it pu s h out local people

Thatcher

Bush Sr.+

=

+

WORK BUY

OBEY

1990Here we are now

entertain us

I AM

A MAN

*

*

Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web

Trade negotiations? Oh, please--wake us when it's over. Tariffs. Subsidies. Antidumping measures. Multilateral investment agreements. The eyes glaze over. Even free trade's First Cheerleader, Bill Clinton, confesses that most people think the World Trade Organization is "some rich guys' club where people get in, talk in funny language and make a bunch of rules that help the people that already have and stick it to the people that have not."

The Battle In Seattle

Cerf’s protocol transformed the Internet into a worldwide network. Throughout the 1980s, researchers and scientists used it to send files and data from one computer to another. However, in 1991 the Internet changed again. That year, a computer programmer in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web: an Internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to another but was itself a “web” of information that anyone on the Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.

The World Wide Web

, the Internet has changed in many ways. In 1992, a group of students and researchers at the University of Illinois developed a sophisticated browser that they called Mosaic. (It later became Netscape.) Mosaic offered a user-friendly way to search the Web: It allowed users to see words and pictures on the same page for the first time and to navigate using scrollbars and clickable links. That same year, Congress decided that the Web could be used for commercial purposes. As a result, companies of all kinds hurried to set up websites of their own, and e-commerce entrepreneurs began to use the Internet to sell goods directly to customers.

Since then

Any ambiguity in this book's title is completely intentional. It can be taken ironically – ”obey” the giant – or it can be taken straight. You might be inclined to accept the imperative as an accurate picture of reality:

No one is coercing us to do anything and we are manifestly free, as no people before us, to do whatever we like. American artist/design Shepard Fairey's long-running 'Obey Giant' poster campaign – from which the phrase is taken – captures the spectrum of possibilities. To some viewers, coming across the giant's leaden visage in the street, like an ordinary piece of fly-poster advertising, the message seems threatening. To others this mysterious, ubiquitous, endlessly reiterated graphic instruction is a seductively absurd image-game. It's possible, too, to feel that other people are doing the 'obeying' without even realising it – while we go our own way.

The point is that there are no ways for you to express yourself that the brands don't own or control or won't own or control in an instant.

Obey the Giant

The 'giant' requires us to surrender to its every command and whim. Or you might scoff of at the very idea.

OBE

YThey livewe sleep...

The ‘giant’ requires us to

surrender to its

every command and whim.

Consume

MONEYGovernemnt’s

re-development

which catered to the

interests

rather than the needs of local people.

of private investors

MONEYO tribunal de Portalegre determinou que a entrega de uma habitação ao banco paga a totalidade do empréstimo, uma decisão inédita em Portugal que poderá fazer jurisprudência noutros casos.Até aqui a norma era o banco avaliar a casa, ficar com o imóvel e exigir ao cliente o pagamento do valor remanescente do empréstimo. Neste caso, o tribunal de Portalegre considerou que esta é uma forma de enriquecimento injustificado dos bancos.A Associação dos Profissionais e Empresas de Mediação Imobiliária de Portugal considera um "alerta" a decisão do tribunal de Portalegre e defende a necessidade de os bancos agirem."É um aviso, é mais um alerta", afirmou à agência Lusa o presidente da Associação dos Profissionais e Empresas de Medição Imobiliária (APEMIP), Luís Lima, num comentário à notícia avançada hoje pelo Diário de Notícias, segundo a qual o Tribunal de Portalegre determinou que a entrega de habitação ao banco paga todo o empréstimo em dívida.Luís Lima salienta o facto de a decisão tornada pública hoje ter de constituir jurisprudência, mas sublinha a necessidade de a banca "agir, intervir antes de o problema aumentar e tomar proporções incontroláveis"."Acima de tudo, as pessoas têm de sentir que o banco é um parceiro que vai tentar ajudá-los e é isso que, muitas vezes, não acontece", afirmou o presidente da APEMIP, reconhecendo, contudo, que a situação "está a mudar".Nos primeiros três meses deste ano, foram entregues 2300 imóveis, tanto por famílias como por promotores imobiliários, em resultado do incumprimento nos créditos à habitação e à construção, segundo dados da APEMIP.Este valor, que corresponde a uma média de 25 imóveis entregues por dia, representa uma subida de 74%, em comparação com o mesmo período do ano passado.

Tom Wolfe: Do you really think this your city any longer? open your eyes! the greatest city of the twentieth century! do you think money will keep it yours? … come down from your swell co-ops, you general partners and merger law-yers! it's the third world down here!

Esta decisão pode aliviar muitas famílias numa altura em que por dia 25 casas são entregues aos bancos.

Decisão inédita do tribunal de Portalegre pode ser aplicada noutros casos.

Bibliografia_principal

Heller, S. and Vienne, V. (2008). Citizen designer, perspectives on design responsability. New York: Allworth Press

Berman , D (2009). Do Good Design, How Designers Can Change the World. Berkeley: New Riders

Klein, N (2010). No Logo. London: Fourth Estate.

VV, AA. Baby Boomers. Available: http://www.history.com/topics/baby-boomers. Last accessed 10th may 2012.

VV, AA. Berlin Wall. Available: http://www.history.com/topics/berlin-wall. Last accessed 10th may 2012.

VV, AA. 1980s. Available: http://www.history.com/topics/1980s. Last accessed 15th may 2012.

Hornblower, Margot . (1999). The Battle In Seattle. Available: http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLI-TICS/time/1999/11/22/seattle.battle.html. Last accessed 10th may 2012.

VV, AA. 1970s. Available: http://www.history.com/topics/1970s. Last accessed 15th may 2012.

VV, AA. 1960s. Available: http://www.history.com/topics/1960s. Last accessed 15th may 2012.

VV, AA. 1950s. Available: http://www.history.com/topics/1950s. Last accessed 15th may 2012.

VV, AA. The Rise of American Consumerism. Available: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/american-experience/features/general-article/tupperware-consumer/. Last accessed 10th may 2012.

VV, AA. (2012). Tribunal: Entrega de casa ao banco liquida empréstimo . Available: http://economico.sapo.pt/noticias/tribunal-entrega-de-casa-ao-banco-liquida-emprestimo_143456.html. Last accessed 25th May 2012.

Bibliografia_secundarias