OUGD501 Study Task 2

Ethics in graphic design:

Ethics are subjective, there are some ethics that the majority of people live by and don't disagree with. However, some ethics are often debated, people have different views, different boundaries. Ethics are personal politics, that will never be fully agreed upon, that's not in human nature to agree upon everything. Ethics in graphic design is a lot like politics design. Design can be used as a vessel to communicate certain views, policies or ethics and can be rather divisive. The core ethics of a designer is to communicate the idea effectively, but do you put your own personal ethics aside for the core idea of design? Do your personal ethics come through in your work? It's a designer’s responsibility to ensure the idea is delivered, but does that mean your work should be devoid of all controversial ethical opinions, balance the idea behind the work with a contrasting element, or do you morally as a designer, refuse or accept works that match with your personal ethics? Tim Abrahams, in the article ‘The only way is Ethics: What Are The Moral Obligations For a Graphic Designer? for ItsNiceThat talks about Neville Brody and his opinion on the matter, stating “Brody though believes one of the reasons why political material is so attractive to graphic designers is because it offers them an opportunity to be open and expressive. The best designers today, Brody believes, are “conscious of issues reflecting the rest of the world, and aware of their role within that. They initiate information, inspire and create awareness. Their work is lively, fantastic, bold.” (Abrahams, T 2016) Is the idea that graphic designers should add their own political views to client work right?