Maybe I operate on the fly more than I realize. Maybe we all do. Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom suggests that there is no such thing as character (i.e., the consistent moral center we hope we have). It rings true when he says, “Although it might be hard to think about the person who will occupy your body tomorrow morning as someone other than you, it is not hard at all to think that way about the person who will occupy your body 20 years from now. This may be one reason why many young people are indifferent about saving for retirement; they feel as if they would be giving up their money to an elderly stranger.”¹

In the graphic design profession the joke has always been we never retire: You can’t retire your persona. Now you can’t afford to. And sadly, a lot of us have fallen out of love with design. What happened? Over the last two decades, a perfect storm of low economy/high technology have left practitioners compromised, at sea on a leaky boat.

The designer who thinks today, “If I give them the solution, they'll hire me,” might, on a better day think, “I need to be paid before I do any work.” Or in another situation, “Low-balling my fee will undercut the other designers bidding on this project and get me the assignment.” But, wait a second, “Low-balling undervalues my work and besides, undercutting does not help the profession.” Our all-too-human tendency to rationalize goes right to work when we’re rattled, our brains fooled into thinking we are doing the necessary, expedient thing (often ignoring ethics, not to mention the law).

In fact, there is no ‘Code of Ethics’ promoted by AIGA, the premiere organization for professional designers; instead an online document, the Statement of Professional Standards², outlines business practices and addresses some issues that are ethical in nature but excludes or skirts others. When asked, designers often have not read this document. Designer Ben Whitehouse of Whitehouse and Company, himself a young designer, observes, “Students with no professional experience are daunted by professionalism and they don’t understand the importance of professional standards. It needs to be brought alive for them.”

AIGA must be careful how it puts its disapproval of certain unprofessional practices in print. For instance, executive director Ric Grefé says, “AIGA was advised by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) not to publish a spec work position in any statement that might be referred to, even indirectly, as an ethical standard that might elicit censure within the profession...or it might risk being cited for a restraint of trade through price fixing (i.e., making it unethical to work for nothing) for which we would have lost our 501.3.c status and possibly been subject to a regulatory action.”³ However, articles on AIGA’s Web site detail the perils of spec work in depth and provide tools to combat the practice in a way that does not appear to be ‘setting too many standards.’ But spec work is rampant. Is the horse out of the barn? The irony is, of course, that it is only by maintaining high standards that any profession (and its individual practitioners) remains healthy.

DO THE RIGHT THING
While free falling into an economic abyss there is little time to ponder outcomes; we’re more apt to take an expedient escape. Everyone is in the same boat: Manufacturers are being forced to reduce their costs by retailers, accept penalties if sales go bad. Publishers are struggling if they are still in business at all. Economic belt tightening is expected of everyone right on down the line—designers included. And doing the ‘right thing’ may seem difficult for just about everyone.

We are urged by AIGA and the Graphic Artists Guild not to work on speculation, not to pirate software programs or type fonts and to consider the implications of signing Work for Hire agreements. But how bad is it to do any of these things? Since no one discusses both sides openly, designers, who may well have ‘sinned’ themselves, just get hot under the collar when they hear someone else has broken the code of honor. Brad Weed at Microsoft, who was a designer/design manager until recently says its all too hush-hush. “People can’t even debate these issues. People may have risen to the top by working on spec. Yet we give them medals.” Weed suggests if designers could just relax and say, ‘Here are the internal conflicts I have about this. Can we discuss?’ This would be more in keeping with the culture of the profession.” By remaining less than candid, we will never advance the profession.

Bloom says, “We tend to attribute our own bad behavior to unfortunate circumstances, and the bad behavior of others to their nature.” So if we don’t ignore, or rationalize, we demonize. None of these responses does any good because it doesn’t help us understand that we are in conflict with ethics and the law. If we weren’t, wouldn’t we always do the right thing?

In a world changing at lightning speed, we need to face reality: The thing that, when you open your eyes, is still there.

The available options: Sink, swim or get out of the water.

Reality in 2010 is that we live in a world of economics: a world that expects free stuff is chock full of stuff (some awfully good, most good and some awful); a hodgepodge of people making that stuff; in a world in which there have been no new ideas ‘since the Greeks’; where clients are getting a lot for free. And where a lot of clients (and the general public) seem to be thinking this is the way it should be, how do you argue otherwise?