Back in February, amidst the feline army, I curled up to finally finish reading Lucienne Roberts’ book GOOD: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design.” This is possibly the only book I have found and read that directly discusses ethics in Contemporary Graphic Design. Gathering a selection of opinions, from the likes of Ken Garland, Thomas Matthews, Deborah Szebeko, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Daniel Eatock, the book starts at the beginning of ‘Early Civilisation’ (p.21), and later discusses aspects of History, Philosophy (p.34), Law (p.44) and Politics (p.58). In conclusion the book presents a series of discussions with a collection of credible designers (p.113-192) - ultimately asking what it means to be a “good” designer.

Whilst reading the book, I was particularly taken by the inside front cover - which captures an extensive collection of books, journals and CDs, that (I can only imagine) are a selection of resources Roberts used as research for the publication. I found myself turning the book sideways trying to work out the titles of the books on the shelves. For me, this image was the most personal visual used in the book – an honest illustration of the depth and complexity that is design ethics and (creative) social responsibility.

For all design students and professionals interested in their work being more ethically or socially responsible, this text is a great introduction to design ethics that offers food for thought over what is really takes to be a “good designer”.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Design, Graphic Design, Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.