Do Good Design: How Designers Can Save the World »

David B. Berman is a strategic consultant with over 25 years experience in graphic, interface, and accessibility design.  He has traveled to 20 countries as an expert speaker, serves as the Ethics Chair for graphic design in Canada, and as a vice president of Icograda, the world body for graphic design. Clients include IBM, the International Space Station, the Sierra Club, and Canada’s largest federal government departments.

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.

The Creative Brief: Disarming the Weapons of Mass Deception 4

Ch. 1 Start now 6

Ch. 2 Beyond green: a convenient lie 20

Ch. 3 Pop landscape 30

Ch. 4 The weapons: visual lies, manufactured needs 48

Ch. 5 Where the truth lies: a slippery slope 60

Ch. 6 Wine, women, and water 72

Ch. 7 Losing our senses 84

The Design Solution: Convenient Truths 102

Ch. 8 Why our time is the perfect time 104

Ch. 9 How to lie, how to tell the truth 120

Ch. 10 How we do good is how we do good 128

Ch. 11 Professional climate change 134

The Do Good Pledge 146

Ch. 12 "What can one professional do?" 148

App. A First Things First manifesto 159

App. B Excerpt from the GDC's Code of Ethics 160

App. C Excerpt from AIGA's Standards of Professional Practice 161

App. D The road to Norway and China 162

Notes 165

Index 171

Questions for discussion 177

Acknowledgements: a small group of concerned citizens 178