Ethical design

Within Ethical design charging to design for a charity I think is acceptable, I believe that there should be a cap on how much should be charged but at the end of the day, people got to earn a living. However, if the designer is well off and well known then by principal, there shouldn’t be any earnings. This might seem like a weird way of thinking, but it works the same with celebrities. They wouldn’t be able to give as much money as they do to charity if they hadn’t earnt a huge amount previously, the same goes for designers, so if a charity job is all they have, that job is still a job that should be paid. When there is a job that comes up that a designer doesn’t agree with then I think there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. The designers name will be on the campaign and if the topic is a touchy subject then this could jeopardise their whole career. 

I think that designers are part of the process of selling inappropriate good or of promoting ‘bad’ companies, because they are making the designs that make people want to buy these products or be apart of that company. A designer should refuse to be apart of the advertisement of something they personally do not agree with or something that is well known to be a bad company or doing. An issue that I would refuse to be involved with is animal cruelty, politics that I don’t agree with, fur trade and false advertising, eg. a drink that says it will do this.. but has a huge amount of sugars or things that are at the moment making people obese which at the moment is causes a lot of trouble to our NHS system, costing us more more in taxes, it all links together causes the reasons for this.

Unpaid internships I don’t agree with. I think that from a students point of view it’s hard as we need to earn money to live, so we can’t afford to do an internship unless we have parents that are happy to support us finically. We wouldn’t have time for a part time job, doing both would be possible if you are willing and have the energy to work 7 days a week. But is that enough to live on? No, its not. I think that an internship should be paid at least minimum wage, and if minimum wage is being paid, then travel should be subsidised to be able to do this. If you don’t have experience within internships then it is almost impossible to get a job you want. The design industry is a vicious circle, an exciting circle but very hard to make yourself known without the references.