Design Manipulation and Ethics
We are surrounded by different forms of design everyday whether it is architecture, products, fashion and advertisements. Design has the power to communicate messages in a visually interesting way, allowing the designer to express their opinions and views to the public or a specific audience. This leads to the question, does design have the power to manipulate us?
The most common example of this would be types of propaganda and arguably the most successful propaganda was made for the Nazi Party. This is an obvious example of how design manipulation was used in a negative way, by promoting Hitler’s campaigns they were fuelling more destruction and tragedy. The posters and designs featured clear typography, simple messaging and bold colours. From a pure graphic design perspective, you could almost say they are inspiring and well designed. Can a design be good when it is really unethical?
There are many examples of design manipulation such as propaganda, but using design to manipulate became a tool in advertisement to create a higher profit and this is down to a man called Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud the psychologist. Freud’s ideas on the human mind were originally hated as he believed there is more to the mind than on the surface and this was seen as a threat to the control of society. He believed that if we began to question the mind, we are also questioning the society, so this self-created empire would collapse. Freud believed that all humans had dangerous desires hidden deep within the unconscious part of the mind. However, showing feeling would not give people the respect that we desire, as shown is the hierarchy of needs. Edward Bernays decided to take his uncle’s theories and manipulate them into the world of advertisement in order to make money. Bernays was the first to take Freuds ideas and use them to control the masses. After being hired to promote America’s war aims to the press, he thought of the idea of using propaganda to create peace. He then thought of a way to make money by applying the same principle. This then lead to Bernays creating the first ever public relations office in New York. For his first experiment he was tasked with the idea of making it more socially acceptable for woman to smoke in public, which was deemed as unacceptable in 1929. Bernays hired a psychoanalyst to find out what cigarettes meant to a woman. The cigarette symbolised the man and his power. Bernays knew that he would have to change it to a symbol of challenging a man’s power. To do this he staged a protest during an event. On his signal, suffragettes pulled cigarettes from under their dresses and lit them. When this became the talk of the press he branded the cigarette as a torch of freedom. This revolutionary way of advertising inspired the American corporations to stop marketing products in a practical way, but to link them to the public’s emotions and how they wanted to be seen by others, which again related to the fourth need of Maslow’s hierarchy.Paul Mazur (1930) a Wall Street banker who worked for Lehman Brothers, wrote “We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old has been entirely consumed. A man’s desire must overshadow his needs.”
Manipulation does not always have to be a negative and scary concept. There are everyday examples of how design manipulates us. For example road signs are powerful, we look at them and insatiately know the action required, changing speed, direction or stopping your car. When you think about is this is a method of manipulation, but it is used to keep people safe. We are trained to know the meaning behind these signs and follow them like an instinct.
Another example we can see in graphic design is a tool used online called ‘call to actions’. This is a method mainly used by website designer to draw the users attention to something such as a ‘buy now’ button or ‘contact’. When you think about it this is manipulation. Having these buttons pop up constantly can pressure and manuipulate people into clicking them, purchasing things. However they can also be helpful finding the contact information on some websites can be difficult, so having these call to actions can also benifit the user. Call to actions are often used on charity websites to encourage people to donate or sign up to a news letter, allowing people to find out more about their cause. This is also a form or manipulation however doing this will help those in need and overall be a positive thing.
A third example of manipulation in our day to day life is the designs of pavements and crossings. Like the road signs we know that where there is a dip on the kerb it is a crossing place, and the texture underfoot allows all people to know this, including the blind. We are also drawn to zebra cossings as we are taught that they are the safest places to cross. These designs manipulate us in how be get from ‘a’ to ‘b’, however the aim is to keep us safe.
Design manipulation can make it harder for us to trust brands and companies as we don not always know what their goal is behind it. Although design manipulation can be a bad thing, leading to major consumption and almost brainwashing us, it does have some benefits. Design manipulation can be used to make our experiences better, like signs directing us places, telling us where is safe, and how to get help. I believe that it is important for designers to know how to manipulate. It really comes down to the ethics. Why are they wanting to manipulate? Who is benefiting from this?I believe ethics in design is more important today than ever. It is important to question the work we do on a daily basis. No matter what client or company you work for, we should try to be informed and educate ourselves to our best ability. Because, as designers we are supposed to improve upon brands or products, it is a designers job. But is it possible to truly improve something we don’t believe in? Defining your own set of values as designers is important. Even tough it might be easy to be accused of hypocrisy nowadays. Some of your moral standards or beliefs in one case might be not compatible in the other, at least from other peoples perspective.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
https://www.history.co.uk/shows/project-nazi/articles/how-the-nazis-branded-themselves
