OMG! Ponies!

I stumbled on this lovely “manifesto” by AdBusters, the spoiled counterculture brats from about 10 years ago.  It’s fairly standard crap, written in “manifesto” form because that’s what counterculture thinkers like Karl Marx (and Theodore Kaczynski) do. They write:

“We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.”

Translation:  We play with Adobe Illustrator and AutoCAD and think that this makes us “creative” and therefore superior. We learned how to use the tools we use in the context of using it to earn a decent living.  Our parents think we should work for a living. Our teachers think we should work for a living.  Society thinks we should work for a living.

Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.

Translation: Some of our classmates and former friends got jobs doing graphic design. They viewed vocational school as a school that would train you for a job. They went to art school because they wanted to get a job as a graphic designer and use their skills to provide for themselves and their families.  We view them as sellouts because we don’t approve of decisions that they made.  Of course, their choices don’t really affect us in a concrete sense.  And it really isn’t our business how others live their lives.  But we will judge (and condemn) them for having successful careers in graphic design.

Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

Translation: We don’t work in graphic design. So we don’t really know all the things that go into the world of advertising.  Moreover, we don’t care about macroeconomics, urban planning, sociology (not written by Naomi Klein) or history.  When we say “us,” obviously we don’t mean the sellouts who work in advertising for a living.  They’re the enemy.  In fact, anyone who contributes to commercials is the enemy.  This of course includes people like production assistants who provide for their families by working on commercial shoots and people who work in factories and in retail – decent jobs that also help people provide for their families.  We have decided to call our fellow citizens “citizen-consumers” because frankly we think anyone who isn’t in our clique is a boor.

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.

Translation: Yes we are just whining.  Which is why we’ve decided to downplay our job as “graphic designer.”  We’ve decided that we are “problem solvers.”  That makes us sound like superheroes.  Anyone who works for a television show, production company, organization, or magazine that we don’t approve of is the enemy.

We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.

Translation: We have no plan.  Hence the dense language that doesn’t actually mean anything.  “Mindshift” is a total bullshit word.  We threw it out there because it sounds good.  Also, consumerism bad.  We disapprove of the manufacture, marketing, and sale of goods.  Even though it has been a cornerstone of human society for millenia.  And we want to be able to spray paint whatever we want wherever we want whenever we want regardless of whether the owner of the property wants us to.

In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.

Translation: We didn’t think of this. Some guys back in the Sixties did.  But we’re not ripping them off because we fessed up.