"Just Say No... Quietly"
Michael Foucaults investigations of the ways in which power operates in society tell us that power does not flow in one direction and simply oppress its subjects in a negative way. Power, which can be positive or negative, is everywhere, and if power is everywhere it can be addressed and disrupted everywhere.
The fact that we are involved in the power structures we oppose does not negate opposition - it refocuses it. In each ecenario the individual needs to understand how power acts and through which methods. Draw upon your knowledge and intervene on your own terms, on your own ground.
The essay argues that socially responsible work can take place in the corporate field, it opposes FTF manifesto's idea that the two are seperate.
By operating from within you are able to say no. Or to affect the designs you produces to some extent. "Sometimes silence is shhhh..."
I'm not sure I agree whole-heartedley with this essay. Becuase no matter what you do, if you work for a advertising agency you are still promoting the products they assign to you. You can refuse, but that can have immediate detrimental effects on your career. It might be better to build different foundations to support yourself. Although "just say no" might provide a method for conciencious designers who feel like they need the stability of working for a design company.
First Things Next - Rick Poyner
Hand in hand with the 'neutral designer' argument comes the claim that visual communicators need not worry about the value of the messages they convey becuase consumers are more than capable of deciding for themselves. To think anything else is to reveal yourself to be a 'sneering and puritanical' elitist, with a lamentably low opinion of the public's intelligence, according to Design Agenda. The gross generalisation in this piece of sophistry masks a more complicated reality. First, designers are consumers, too. If, as a consumer, you disagree with something, why shouldn't you apply this awareness to your choices and practice as a designer? Second, people vary enourmously. Some are extremely sceptical and hard to persuade, some are pushovers and most of us fall somewhere in between. Advertisers and marketers know this and devise their strategies accordingly. It is often repeated that western consumers are exposed to something like 3,000 advertising messages a day - we can safely conclude that the number is huge. It belittles nobody's intelligence to say that, deluged with commercial messages day after day, most of us are simply not in a position to decode each one rationally on its merits and undertake the time - consuming research required to discover the truth about a particular company, product, or claim.
First Things First, Now More Than Ever - Matt Soar
Matt Soar inititally makes the connection between the FTF manifesto and other anti-capitalist manifesto's.
He then goes onto dividing designers into economic classes.
The "usual suspects" that Matt Soar talks about in FTF,NMTE are the 33 who signed the FTF manifesto.
Matt makes the observation that all of these are well established, well paid designers, falling into the upper echelons of economic class.
Then the middle classes who make up most of AIGA's members (professional association for design) and then the proletariat. So, the important of this manifesto should be directly related to the resonance it has within the proletariat class of designers.
Adbusters - Hijacking the language of advertising itsself. "Culture Jamming" "taking the piss out of consumer capitalism"
or..
Mark Crispin Miller (New York Uni) "The system is the ultimate ironist. - in the great contest of ironies, the idealist will always lose out to the nihilist."
"Milton Glazer maintains that it is exceedingly difficult to spend a lifetime in the business "without having sinned" : "the question is how to balance the reality of professional life with ones desire not to cause harm." Firest Things First, at its core, simply asks that we check in with out ethical and moral selves before making new decision - rather than going ahead anyway, in the hope that our cosciences wont connect up the dots. (it may also alleviate the resigned thought that goes something like: "I might as well work with this client becuase I dont someone else will." at the wlimit, whether through culture jamming or some other falvour of social activism, the manifesto could offer some of us that final prod we needed to begin thinking outisde the biggest box of them all."
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