Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our World

Audio

Listen to an interview with David Berman.

FOREWORD BY ERIK  SPIEKERMANN

How did design help choose a president?
Why are people buying houses they cannot afford?
Why do U.S. car makers now struggle to compete? Why do we really have an environmental crisis?
Design matters. Like never before.

Disarming the weapons of mass deception.
Designers create so much of what we see, what we use, and what we experience. In this time of unprecedented environmental, social, and economic crises, designers can choose what their young profession will be about: inventing deceptions that encourage more consumption—or helping repair the world.

Do Good Design is a call to action:
It alerts designers to the role they play in persuading global audiences to fulfill invented needs. The book outlines a more sustainable approach to both the practice and the consumption of design. All professionals will be inspired by the message of how one industry can feel better about itself by holding onto its principles. In this provocative and dramatically-illustrated book, David Berman offers a powerful and hopeful message for all designers.

Today, everyone is a designer.
And the future of civilization is our common design project.

Do Good Design is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA. The author will make a donation of 10% of his proceeds to a not for-profit organization whose mission is in alignment with the goals of this book.

Praise For Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our World

"I believe that the real value of this book does not reside in the plethora of data and information that it contains but rather in the compelling biographical account of the author's passionate journey to discover and advocate how design and designers can contribute to doing good in a fragile world."
– Jacques Lange
Icograda President (2005-2007)

"David Berman, in this lively visual narrative, reveals for us the power of design to drive consumption and some of our unbecoming behavior of recent decades. Yet, more importantly, he speaks of the extraordinary potential to design to change the world, leading human behavior toward our aspirational destinies."
– Richard Grefé
Executive director, AIGA | the professional association for design

"...just the right measure of passion and reticence...excellent."
– Ken Garland
Author, First Things First manifesto

"A fine read."
– Steven Rosenberg
Past President, Society of Graphic Designers of Canada

"I think the book is just great!"
– Mervyn Kurlansky
Co-founder, Pentagram UK
Past-President, Icograda

Online Sample Chapter

The Weapons: Visual Lies, Manufactured Needs

Table of Contents

Contents

vii Forewords
1 Introduction
4 The Creative Brief: disarming the weapons of mass deception
6 Chapter 1: Start now
20 Chapter 2: Beyond green: a convenient lie
30 Chapter 3: Pop landscape
48 Chapter 4: The weapons: visual lies and manufactured needs
60 Chapter 5: Where the truth lies: the slippery slope
72 Chapter 6: Wine, women, and water
84 Chapter 7: Losing our senses

102 The Design Solution: Convenient Truths
104 Chapter 8: Why our time is the perfect time
120 Chapter 9: How to lie, how to tell the truth
128 Chapter 10: How we do good is how we do good
134 Chapter 11: Professional climate change

146 The Do good Pledge
148 Chapter 12: “What can one professional do?”
159 Appendix A: First Things First manifesto
160 Appendix B: Excerpt from the GDC Code of Ethics
161 Appendix C: Excerpt from AIGA’s Standards of Professional

Practice
162 Appendix D: The road to Norway and China
165 Notes
171 Index
177 Questions for discussion
178 Acknowledgements: a small group of concerned citizens
180 About the author