Milton Glaser: I’ve been thinking about these sorts of questions for a long time and I think the problem comes from an essential split in how designers identify themselves. I often think of myself as an artist, and so I’m interested in the traditional role of the artist in society, which is to illuminate the culture and to help people establish community. But the other role – which is a very powerful one – is driven by commerce, where you are essentially a salesman for an institution or a client and your role is to effectively sell what they produce. People who enter the field often enter it with their intentions split or they make their decision early on, most obviously in advertising where you have to recognize the reality of that relationship: if you are concerned about issues of social good and beauty, you’re not in the right business. In the advertising world, people basically have to play ball: they can use their personal beliefs to argue with the clients objectives if they want to, but it is a position with very little leverage. You just can’t stand up to the onslaught and say, “Well, even though this is effective advertising, it’s not telling the truth, it’s hurting people...” That’s not the same. The pressure for being on the “business” side adds support to the existing power structure, and it’s very hard for anybody in advertising to resist that structure.

It seems to me that outside of advertising is a little more opportunity to maintain an individual position. First and foremost, as a freelance designer, you at least have some choice over your clients, which you don’t have in the advertising game. You can say “this is the kind of client I want”, “this kind of client doesn’t make me feel good” and so on… So there’s a little optimizing that goes on, although it may be more theoretical than real when you don’t have any money in your pocket. The profession is really divided about this, and my feeling is that if you have the option of working for yourself and if you have some control over what you do, even though it may only be nominal control, then the issue of personal ethics does come into it. Your role as a transmitter of ideas to the culture and your responsibility to that culture becomes more sharply drawn.

Jonathan Barnbrook: Can I ask you a kind of naive question which is something I’ve wondered as long as I’ve been in design? If enough people in graphic design changed the way they designed, do you think it would be possible to change society? Or does there need to be a total change of the structure of human civilization? Is it possible to change society through your work just by putting out the messages you believe in? I worry that graphic design isn’t necessarily the best way to change society.

MG: That’s a very important question. Designers are part of the system by which ideas enter into people’s consciousness. We’re part of the transmission system – we’re not usually the originators of the messages. We’re like the telephone lines.

JB: Right…

MG: When I was growing up, and that was a very long time ago, the idea was that professionalism excluded the idea of your own ethics or your own behavior as part of the process. That is to say that whatever you were asked to do, you did, and you did it well, and effectively, because that was what being a professional meant. But it seems to me, as I grow older, that view isn’t sufficient. Since Nuremburg, the explanation: “Well, I was only following orders…” doesn’t cut it. You can’t live that way any more. You can’t justify following orders as the way you behave in the world. That’s obviously an over-dramatized example, but what you do as a person in terms of whether you help or hurt the community you’re talking to becomes significant. If you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing and if you wilfully participate in things that you yourself perceive to be destructive, then you are putting yourself in the same category of having suspended ethics in the name of professional appropriateness. And I find that hard to do these days. Do you remember that “Road to Hell” thing I did? [the questionnaire Glaser wrote in order to determine how willing to lie he was, included in full below.]

JB: Yes.

MG: The last time I showed that to a class of young people, a third of the class said that they would work on a product that would eventually kill people. That scared the hell out of me. When you’re talking to older people you almost understand that they are set in their ways, they have a job, they have a mortgage to pay, but when you’re talking to young people, you expect a kind of vigorous altruism, or at least a sense of possibility. Of course you could say that two thirds of them weren’t prepared to do it, but the fact that a third were willing indicates a kind of moral opacity which I think is scary.

JB: I wonder if it is to do with their belief in the idea of a structured society. There was the Modernist utopia of improving society through design, but people are much more cynical about it now. They believe so much more that style is the factor, that style drives profit rather than that design is a useful tool for social change. I wonder if people maybe see design a bit differently nowadays.

MG: I think they must. But I also think they see life differently. It’s probably a reflection of the larger culture but it seems to me that people have lost their sense of real life. They’re only interested in entertainment and they have lost the connection between action and consequences, cause and effect. For instance [before the recent Gulf war] when President Bush took a helicopter and landed it on an aircraft carrier and paraded across the deck. He moved the aircraft carrier – at a cost of $1,000,000 – so that you wouldn’t see San Diego in the background.

JB: Really? I didn’t know that story.

MG: But when the story came out that he had done this, it didn’t make any difference. The fact that it had been done and that it made a more entertaining presentation was enough for the audience. There was no rejection of Bush, there was no shock that a million dollars had been spent for this theatrical bullshit. So you say, “what’s the matter with people? Are they nuts?” But then you discover that they are. You discover that people are inert, and they have lost the sense that there is such a thing as reality. As long as they are watching an entertaining TV show, nothing else matters.

JB: Do you think that’s the fault of politicians or is it something that’s induced by the political backgrounds of people encouraged not to care?

MG: If I were a Marxist, which I’m not, at least not entirely, I would say that this is a device of a ruling class, not unlike religion in the past, to keep people in a state of constant amnesia where they don’t understand what is going on. Nor do most people feel that their lives have any effect. It’s an expression of powerlessness and a desire to be unconscious. And I think that this has been institutionalized more than anything else by the tremendous power of television.

JB: So what are your moral criteria for taking a job? Mine are completely instinctive and not necessarily based on logic: they’re based on a gut feeling, essentially of whether a product is nice or not.

MG: It’s a good question, The other thing that you have to be very careful about is self-righteousness and coming on like “I know the answer to everything and I’m a moral person and all the rest of you are shit”. It’s a very easy trap to fall into and I’m acutely conscious of that fact. One of the things that bothered me about the First Things First Manifesto [again, reproduced in full at the bottom of the page] was that it was so bloody self-righteous and also that it didn’t give people a place to go. That is to say that it did not recognize that you’re part of a larger system and that capitalism is the basis of that system, that unless you’re willing to become a revolutionary and try to overthrow the system, then think it through. You have to recognize that there has to be a position that you can take within that structure – which is about the exchange of goods and selling things – that brings a more enlightened view to it and doesn’t just make you a participant in something that you deeply feel is not good for others, not to mention yourself. The real issue is finding a path. I try with all my efforts not to do things that make me feel harmful. Part of it is conscious but part of it is intuition.

JB: It’s difficult. I mean I don’t drink Starbucks or Coca Cola or shop at Gap but you wonder where you have to draw the line.

MG: There’s no absolute position. All ethical issues are problematic otherwise they wouldn’t be ethical issues. They all have an area of ambiguity about them, a space where you cannot make a clear objective decision and then you basically have to go with what feels better to you or what emphasises your own sense of who you are.

JB: Going back to First Things First…. I signed it but did you sign it in the end? I know you had lots of contact with Rick [Poynor] over it…

MG: I did sign it. And I signed it because I thought on balance it was a good thing to do. I called Rick about it, complaining a bit that it gave people no recourse. I felt it contained too many absolute distinctions and that part of it should recognize that people have to make a living: there were details about it that sounded too harsh, too unforgiving, and too impractical. But nonetheless, I think it was a very important document to start with. You use polemics to start people thinking about things and so I supported it.

JB: I agree: it was a starting point. I think for many people it raised a question that wasn’t even there. But there was such a negative reaction, I know from a lot of designers in New York…

MG: Yes, that was interesting. There was a negative reaction, but people feel threatened by polemical statements of this kind and also, again, they think of themselves as professional practitioners who are doing a job. It’s one of the interesting things about design is that the battles that you hear about are invariably battles about form. “The client wanted us to use a big red balloon and I said we have to use a blue balloon! And we argued and finally the client capitulated and we won and we used blue balloons!” And you realize that the arguments about aesthetics, deflect the real issue of whether the product was useful or harmful. In my own mind those are the significant battles: a battle about the size of typography is not exactly the most critical issue in the world, but when you hear about design heroism, it’s usually about controlling the form. Of course the form is very important, most of us spend our lives fiddling with the form, but the inherent content of what is being said and its effect on the people who are receiving the message cannot be ignored.

JB: I agree. Would you tell a client if you didn’t agree with what they were saying with their message? Or shouldn’t you “tell” them anything? Does it need to be a more balanced discussion?

MG: There’s that issue of self-righteousness again. I don’t think you can tell clients much. You can tell them you’re unwilling to do something. That is your ultimate weapon, though it may not be much of a weapon at all – there are so many clients who think that all designers are interchangeable and that design is a commodity like a hamburger. If you can’t get a pound of hamburger at this store you’ll simply walk down the block and get another hamburger. There’s not a lot of leverage, unless you have either persuaded the client that your vision is so extraordinary that they won’t find it down the street, which is very hard to do, or if you develop a relationship with a client which is based on other things besides professional practice.

JB: I don’t really believe there are many design geniuses in the world. We are all products of our time, we have to be decent human beings first and then come up with good design. You can’t rant or be prima donna-ish. Working with a client should be an exchange of ideas, it’s not “here’s the brief” and then “I’m going to show you how you should market your product”.

MG: I would agree that design is essentially a dialogue not a monologue. In most cases your role is to serve the client. But then in the area of your own personal ethics, if you have a relationship with a client which is based on more than professionalism, if you like them and trust them and they trust you and like you, then the possibility for persuasion becomes much greater. I have to say the best work I have ever done in my life, and I would say fervently the only work I have done on a sustained basis that I think of as being useful is where I really have a friendship with a client that went beyond professionalism. My first rule about what I have learned is to work with people you like and that goes beyond the question of professionalism.

JB: What do you think of experimental typography? People trying to reinvent design and come up with something new? I wonder if it’s linked to the idea of celebrity?

MG: Well, culture lives on celebrity. Being celebrated is a tool for improving your economic life as well as a reward for your own personal need to be applauded. We all have that as an element of our makeup, but sometimes it becomes overbearing, particularly when the relationship between the celebrity and the accomplishment doesn’t seem to make any sense. But I think that’s an inevitable part of being in the world. You want to invent new things, or improve existing things. That’s a consequence of being human.

JB: But do you think it has increased over the past ten or twenty years?

MG: You mean the search for celebrity? I think it’s increased as the obsession with celebrity has increased. Instead of worrying about your own life you voyeuristically begin worrying about someone else’s. There are all these television programs about these Hollywood idiots who are getting married or getting divorced or having affairs or whatever. Who cares?! But obviously people do care.

JB: I suppose being a celebrity can sometimes bring you power.

MG: There is one aspect of being a celebrity which less offensive: the search for the admiration of your peers. Wanting to be considered worthy by members of your tribe is an inevitable behavioral characteristic of our species: everyone wants to be admired for their accomplishments. In fact, people probably wouldn’t try so hard if they didn’t feel that they were being admired by others whom they respect.

JB: Can I ask you to elaborate on the idea of designers being separate from society? I do work with political content but I sometimes wonder if I’m affecting anything because maybe only other designers see it. But then again if you affect those designers and that affects their work, does that have an effect on general society? Personally I find it very difficult to tell. But the thought of having no effect at all is quite terrifying.

MG: There’s a difference between the effect designers think they’re having and the effect they actually can have. With the advent of Modernism there was a real attempt to position designers as being an important part of daily life. You recall the early Modernists were all socialists, concerned about the transformation of society. When they came to the United States that began to vanish, because of America’s fear and rage at the idea of socialism or anything that might change the economic system and so what was left was merely the stylistic assumptions of Modernism, without its political or moral underpinnings. That’s where we are now in terms of the relationship of design to public life. But I think something is happening: there’s a turn in the culture where designers are beginning to question “is that all there is?” “How about other issues?” Even if the First Things First manifesto is argumentative and not completely approved of by people in the field, it’s an indication of something going on. I think there is the beginning of a sense of moral indignation and also the sense that being a designer can also be linked to the social good. How exactly this is going to be played out remains a question. But in my view there is the beginning of a new consciousness.

JB: It is the same consciousness as at the turn of the century with the Bauhaus and the ideology of actually improving society. Although there was a socialist underpinning to it then, I do believe there is a return to the idea of improving society. Design should be the central thing to do that.

MG: The thing I’m most fond of saying is that being a good designer is no different from being a good citizen. What does it mean to be a good citizen in society? Well, you exercise your judgement about what is harmful and what is not and you try not to be harmful. It’s a little simplistic but it’s as useful a definition as any other one you can apply.

JB: It’s a bald statement but it’s true… To be a good citizen is all you require, and being a designer is a part of that. Design is not a separate activity from the rest of your life, it is a part of the whole. You have to act in the way you behave in in every aspect of your life.

MG: The nature of the conferences put on here by the AIGA and others, and what they’re talking about, is reflective of this shift. Do you have any examples of the same thing going on in England?

JB: There isn’t really a cohesive body organising anything like that here. The only example I can think of is not from graphic design but from the time of the invasion of Iraq, when suddenly everyone went on the street and marched against it… two million people here. Up until that point I just thought most people really did not care, so that was a really enlightening moment. If graphic design is a part of that then I think it’s a really positive thing. But I think globalization and the damage that corporations are doing is on the agenda now, in the same way that the environment came onto the agenda in the 80s and it’s not going to go away so hopefully it will become a common discussion in design. I think there is a feeling that designers do have some kind of positive contribution to make here, and the simple thing of not having a moral position and just displaying the client’s messages has gone.

MG: My own view is certainly that something is happening and things are beginning to change. The worse the situation – and ours really has become miserable in terms of opportunities for designers – the more revolutionary people become in their thinking. In the United States we are going through a real crisis about what being an American stands for. The idea of pre-emptive war is so horrifying to anyone who has democratic instincts that it has become obvious that we are on a very dark path. A lot of people have realized that they can no longer ignore what is going on and they have to raise some questions. But you start these things on a very small level: you think you don’t have an effect on the larger issues of the day because they seem so overwhelming but then you discover that all things start small. All ideas generate from a single source, and before you know it something happens to people’s consciousness and there’s a shift.

JB: So you remain optimistic for the future, then?

MG: Ha! Optimism is not exactly my basic characteristic but I think something is going on. You make yogurt by introducing a very small amount of bacteria to milk. The bacteria cannot even be seen but eventually it turns it to yogurt. You just don’t know what the consequences of even a small act will be.

JB: Just because you can’t quantify something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

MG: Exactly. You have to try.

Milton Glaser's Road to Hell
1. Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf.

2. Designing an ad for a slow, boring film to make it seem like a light-hearted comedy.

3. Designing a crest for a new vineyard to suggest that it has been in business for a long time.

4. Designing a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent.

5. Designing a medal using steel from the World Trade Center to be sold as a profit-making souvenir of September 11.

6. Designing an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring.

7. Designing a package for children whose contents you know are low in nutrition value and high in sugar content.

8. Designing a line of T-shirts for a manufacturer that employs child labor.

9. Designing a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn't work.

10. Designing an ad for a political candidate whose policies you believe would be harmful to the general public.

11. Designing a brochure for an SUV that turned over frequently in emergency conditions and was known to have killed 150 people.

12. Designing an ad for a product whose frequent use could result in the user's death.

First Things Manifesto, 2000
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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

Jonathan Barnbrook, Nick Bell, Andrew Blauvelt, Hans Bockting, Irma Boom, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Max Bruinsma, Siân Cook, Linda van Deursen, Chris Dixon, William Drenttel, Gert Dumbar, Simon Esterson, Vince Frost, Ken Garland, Milton Glaser, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Andrew Howard, Tibor Kalman, Jeffery Keedy, Zuzana Licko, Ellen Lupton, Katherine McCoy, Armand Mevis, J. Abbott Miller, Rick Poynor, Lucienne Roberts, Erik Spiekermann, Jan van Toorn, Teal Triggs, Rudy VanderLans, Bob Wilkinson