According to the International Council of Design, “The role of the graphic designer is to focus the public’s attention; make information – especially difficult-to-understand information – accessible; foster emotional reactions (i.e., sympathy, concern); provide powerful words and images that move people to action.” – Ellen Shapiro (USA).
According to the survey results there seem to be two schools of thought related to this. One school believes that graphic designers are successful in solving the needs of commercial clients, but fail in the sphere of social causes. Why? Milton Glaser (USA) stated that the biggest reason for failure is a lack of “understanding the root causes rather than the trivial.” Sharon Poggenpohl’s (USA) comments amplified Glaser’s opinion: “The biggest challenge is that so many designers envision themselves as technical or aesthetic experts and fail to respectfully address the audience they wish to communicate with. They don’t know enough about their audience and the practical needs or actions that would help them.” She continued: “Much ‘pro bono’ work is done for self-serving aesthetic and promotional reasons – whether it works or not is not a serious issue.” Sadik Karamustafa (Turkey) expanded: “Every year thousands of posters about social causes are produced for awarded exhibitions, self-promotion etc. They do not serve any social cause.” Shapiro added: “There is no one who’s a softer touch than a designer with the promise of a creative opportunity and perhaps a design credit or award.”
The second school of thought believes that graphic design cannot solve major social problems, but that it can contribute to raising awareness. Anders Suneson (Sweden) commented: “Sometimes we describe design almost as a religion. It plays an important role, but we can’t walk on water. Graphic design is important in focusing on problems and in helping the good forces to get some self-confidence – to lift the good example and to expose the evil.” Stefan Sagmeister (USA) stated: “Good stuff is noted, bad stuff is not. We have done both.”
Most respondents believe that a graphic designer’s contribution to projects aimed at social causes should be intensified and that designers should collaborate to increase their success rate at making a sustainable impact. They also feel that local and international professional organisations should increase their efforts in organising and managing long-term projects aimed at supporting design for social causes. Examples that were mentioned included the lobbying for tax benefits for ‘pro bono’ work and centralised coordination of resources, mobilisation of participants, recruitment of sponsorships and negotiation of free media space.
Source: https://www.ico-d.org/connect/features/post/116.php
According to an e-article by Tabitha Yong, designers are privileged with the incredible ability to influence interactions, identities, information, emotions, habits — and above all, the future of human experiences. But that bestows on us great responsibility to be thoughtful about how and what we design. Especially when the people we work with are vulnerable, we must ensure that what we create is relevant, respectful, and genuinely beneficial. Power inequalities naturally inhere in relationships between benefactors (the Haves) and beneficiaries (the Have-Nots), but we can either mindlessly reinforce these disparities or we can eliminate power imbalances as much as possible to truly build toward a more socially just and equitable world. To start, we wrote a beginner’s set of guidelines for designing for social impact!
1. Design with, not for.
Social solutions are not a heroic gift you are bestowing upon mankind; they are a collaborative effort. Stay humble. Solutions have a higher chance of long-term success when the people you are designing for are actively involved, providing feedback or lending their abilities and insights wherever possible. Failure to include them could result in wasted effort. The people you’re serving are in many ways experts in the issue you’re dealing with and may even think of and create better solutions than you could. By recognizing this, you acknowledge that they are not accessories or passive recipients of your work, but rather teammates in a shared effort to solve a problem.
2. Talk to and observe users to ensure that what you’re doing is, in fact, actually serving their needs.
Sure, you may be brilliant. Sure, you may have created the most innovative piece of design/engineering/technology in the world. But none of that really matters if it doesn’t suit the needs of the people you’re purporting to help. You might think you can pull a Steve Jobs and invent something that people will want, but even on the off chance that this actually does happen, it’s still important to verify with users that your idea is actually improving their lives. Entrepreneurs, designers and NGOs too often create well-meaning products that fail to connect with their target demographic or solve problems that don’t actually exist.
3. Work to eliminate, not reinforce, harmful stereotypes and power imbalances.
It’s unfortunately far too easy to defer to assumptions and stereotypes to explain social problems. In your own work, be aware of biases so that you don’t perpetuate concepts that directly or indirectly hurt your users.
4. Test iteratively to get the best version of your idea possible.
Even if you have identified a serious problem in the community and co-created with your users to develop a potentially successful solution, ideas often look and work great in concept but run into unforeseen setbacks once they’re realized. This isn’t anyone’s fault; it just means your solution needs some tweaking. Naturally, the best time to do that is before you commence full implementation — this way, you have ample opportunity to make sure you’re on the right track, whether this means tweaking a few features or completely starting from scratch. Don’t be afraid to fail (in fact, you should do it fast, early, and often!) — you’re in the pursuit of the best possible solution for your users, not the coolest project you can put in your portfolio.
5. Strive for long-term, long-lasting, effective solutions.
Conventional charity or designing for a short-term problem (providing money, resources or products) is often a temporary solution for aid and perpetuates dependence. But really, ain’t nobody got time or money to sustain band-aid solutions to major problems like health inequality or homelessness. To create genuine social impact, strive for solutions that will help your users for years to come, not just for the next month or so. Usually this means working toward solutions that empower your users to eventually sustain themselves without you.
Source: https://medium.com/@telogram/5-things-to-keep-in-mind-when-designing-for-social-impact-6dc25b5ad794
Workshop Challenge:
There are several societal issues currently happening. They range from public awareness about the importance of covid-19 vaccinations, to new laws for releasing ferocious dogs on the streets to having fat seagulls who cannot fly. The fat seagulls’ issue has become national news and requires everyone’s support to tackle it. It is affecting the migratory species, the safety of people, the cleanliness of the beaches and so on. It is an issue that has several minor issues within it. It has sparked great interest from the public and environmentalist. Our beaches need to be clean and safe for everyone to enjoy. The seagulls’ species needs to be safe in order to go on with their season migrations in peace. And the ferocious stray dogs need to be captured and contained for the safety of all.
For this week’s workshop challenge, I would like to address an environmental issue currently happening in the little island of Bahrain. This issue is affecting the seagulls. Recently, it has been reported that the island’s seagulls have put on weight dramatically and became too fat to fly. This goes back to several reasons which includes throwing garbage near the beaches where the seagulls fly. Citizens and residents have not been disposing of their garbage properly, so the seagulls have been eating inappropriate food. Seagulls started eating a traditional Bahraini dish called “Machboos”. This dish is a traditional Arabic rice dish cooked in a chicken broth flavoured with a blend of spices and dried lemon, which has become the seagull’s favorite. They have been feasting on piles of this leftover carb-rich dish, thus gaining weight. Due to that, another problem has occurred. Now the seagulls are being attacked by stray dogs. These dogs are now visiting the coasts to feast on these fat seagulls. This has also become a threat to residents, visitors and other wildlife as the stray dogs’ presence has increased around the shoreline areas. There is a serious lack of public awareness. Most people are feeding the seagulls with food not wanting to waste it. However, it is posing a threat to the migratory species as they are failing to reach their destination before the season ends. My visual outcome solution to this issue is to create, produce and install posts along the coastal beaches encouraging the citizens, residents, and visitors to follow some simple rules to save the seagulls species while creating a clean beach environment and a safe one for all.
Omar Mal,
April 15, 2021
Omar Mal 