Dear Terry,
Gee. This is not accurate in the least. To describe graphic design as “Helping clients to make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs” is *not* “a pretty accurate description of what a ‘graphic designer’ does.”
You seem assume that graphic design is primarily a tool of advertising agencies. This is narrow-minded, prejudiced, and ignorant.
Without claiming that everyone in all fields of graphic design uses the same designations I might use, a range of graphic design professionals deal with issues that range of way showing, educational exhibitions, and medicine labeling to different forms of informatics and legibility. With a little work, I can think of at least a hundred kinds of graphic design that do not involve psychological manipulation — book design, typography, font design, highway signage, data visualization, and more.
Some graphic designers work in fields that involve psychological manipulation. Others do graphic design to serve people through effective information and the visual organization of data.
She Ji has just now published the work of two exemplary organizations that use graphic design as a tool for public service. One is the Communication Research Institute of Australia. The other is the Simplification Center:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872618300194
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872618300054
Another good example is Per Mollerup’s book Data Design: Visualising Quantities, Locations, Connections:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Data-Design-Visualising-Quantities-Connections/dp/1408191873
https://www.amazon.com/Data-Design-Visualising-Quantities-Connections/dp/1408191873
And then, we have the classic work of Edward Tufte:
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
These all offer examples of graphic design used to serve human beings by providing them with useful information leading to sounds choices rather than attempting to manipulate them.
Terry, I am embarrassed for you. This latest post explains why so many of the graphic designers on this list get annoyed with your false claims. Your personal beliefs about how to define the word “design” may be debatable, whether or not anyone agrees.
It is difficult to justify a claim as silly as this. The assertion that all — or most — graphic design involves “helping clients to make lots of money by creating for them psychologically-manipulative visual designs” is not accurate. It is false.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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