Sustainable Design Guide Australia

One of the hardest thing as a designer is to refuse work. This can be impossible in some situations or if you are an employee. The designers and companies that are making large profits by choosing to promote bad companies for money tarnish the pride we ethical designers have for our work and industry.

Advertising and design uses a lot of psychology to manipulate the public. If this psychology is used to encourage people to support bad companies and products then it makes the designers personally as guilty as the companies themselves. By promoting bad companies you are making a public statement that you support this company and what they do.

It is very hard to distinguish who is bad and how bad they are. Of course no design firm can be perfect but when working for companies that carry out such extreme practices as logging, oil mining, uranium mining and weapons production/research, it is very clear that you are taking dirty money.

Remember the idea is not to be a saint or to be perfect, it is about setting standards for your company so as to gain respect from yourself, employees, your peers and your other clients.

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deskwithdrawers is a forum for students, tutors and design professionals to exchange and debate current ideas about design and design practices.

First Things First 2000, created by Adbusters and six other design magazines, is an updated version of a 1964 declaration. FTF 2000 states that too much design energy is being spent to promote pointless consumerism, and too little to helping people understand an increasingly complex and fragile world. It was signed by 33 high-profile designers, and has since been signed by hundreds more.

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Tiger Woods earns $55,555.00 per day while an Indonesian Factory worker (Nike) earns $1.25 a day

50,000 workers at the Yue Yen (Nike) factory in China would have to work for 19 years to earn what Nike spends on advertising in one year.

Disney CEO Michael Eisner earns $9,783.00 an hour while a Haitian worker (making Disney toys) earns 28 cents an hour; it would take a Haitian worker 16.8 years to earn Eisners hourly income; the $181 million in stock options Eisner exercised in 1996 is enough to take care of his 19,000 Haitian workers and their families for 14 years.

(quoted by Charles Kernaghan
"No Logo", Naomi Klein)