While studying at Calvin College, I chose to illustrate the challenges of cultural impositions in corporate graphic design marketing and campaigns for my final communications capstone presentation—a presentation titled "The Morality and Professional Appropriation of International Graphic Design".  For many, doing good work that also does good in the world is just a slice of the character in design practice. When a single idea or concept can be expressed or utilized in dozens of different formats, platforms and mediums, how can creators control ownership and usage of their work? In this final presentation, I explored this increasingly critical aspect of design by showcasing diverse research towards legalities, morality, and integrity in graphic design in the interest of in cases, campaigns, and causes.*

*To shorten my online presentation, I moved my case study on the 2005 coffee conflict between Ethiopia and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to the very bottom of this page.

Moral Thesis

As designers, we often take the role of promoting and selling someone's "stuff" or service. This stuff has a long manufacturing trail that includes how it was made, whose hands it passed through, what natural resources/cultures/human rights were sacrificed in the making of it, and what type of unjust economic systems we support in the purchase of it. My biggest ethical issue concerns whether I am brave enough or care enough to follow that trail of manufacturing—to learn that the product or service I am about to promote is the very thing that undermines me and what I care about. By means of careful, intentional leadership, we are prophets, priests and kings, proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth through our careers. You cannot advance the cause of Christ’s renewal without wisdom, as it requires companionship of our fellow international brothers and sisters, and the mental and moral capabilities that our God has endowed us with.

International Design

Magnification of the value in culture of societies and individuals, in even the smallest way, rather than diminishing, trivializing, and supplanting it—is a worthy and delicate task for a designer. Even through the design of Starbucks, and more importantly, through the designers connection with the international world of advertising and branding, they are responsible for how society acts or behaves, the coffee they drink, what products they buy and through all of these things, what beliefs and values they place on the world around them and the people who reside in it. The design student or novice designer that’s super intent on designing hip, fashionable and ultra-cool design solutions may often not consider this immense power over society. Instead, they often place more emphasis on the aesthetic side of graphic design rather than the purpose of it; they forget that form follows function, and in turn the international livelihood of something as simple as the Ethiopian coffee farmers. This in turn, may be a reflection on the educators of graphic design and their not placing enough emphasis on the influence and power that the designers work may ultimately have.

Morality + Social Change

With graphic designers creating the main share of visual stimuli that we are all exposed to on a daily basis, their responsibility for the shaping of our environment has grown significantly. According to this observation it can be stated that graphic designers are agents of change, whether designers are consciously aware of this role their work takes on or not. Modern communication technology allows insights into different cultures that often lead to imitation of certain aspects of that culture without regard of its original connections to the local requirements. This causes unsustainable developments, as cultural reality gets disconnected from the necessities of the environment in which it takes place, leading to a strange tangle of cultural fragments that fails to support communities, families, and individuals in their efforts to live together. Yet, graphic design has the responsibility to shape culture in a way that allows for a sustainable development.  In times in which cultural elements are excerpted from their original context, it becomes the designers’ role to help with the translation of these cultural elements into the new environments, helping with the adaptation of new practices in ways that are in connection to the cultural systems in which it is placed. This way, graphic design helps counteract the disconnection between culture and place, that was initiated by globalization. Products serve as markers of history, society, culture and of individual and collective identities. They have sociological, cultural, and psychological meanings and functions in addition to economic and utilitarian ones. In modern society, there is a tendency towards the loss of cultural guidelines for the formation of an individual’s identity and the reduction of shared agreed upon social codes. With the constant global exchange of ideas and products, culture is in a constant flux and changes radically. It is a powerful method to promote cultural identity and therefore it is important for local people to develop the design skills that will allow them to communicate about their own culture and develop a visual identity inspired by both deep sense of tradition and contemporary life. This approach presents a possible direction for graphic design as a discipline that empowers local communities to define their own meanings for the products that determine their reality. Therefore, graphic designers need to include the indigenous populations in the design processes, empowering the local communities to create their own messages. Design can no longer take the stance of representing others, but has to empower them to represent themselves. Additional to empowering local communities, designers also need to ensure that they have a profound understanding of the local culture they design for, so that they do not rely on the universal culture to provide them with the visual vocabulary. With an understanding of both the global and the local cultures and a well-refined skill set for the translation of concepts, graphic design will be able to reconnect culture to its specific place, and bridge the gap between the universal and the indigenous.

Integrity + Crowdsourcing

In 
addition 
to 
copyright 
law
, fair 
use 
issues, 
font
 licensing, 
software
 end
 user 
licensing,
 piracy, 
plagiarism,
 and 
correct 
image 
usage 
are 
some
 of 
the 
other
 legal 
issues
 that 
graphic 
designers 
need
 to
 be 
aware 
of. With crowdsourcing, graphic designers produce the work and present it for consideration to the client, and then the client picks the design they like best and subsequently pays only that designer. On the opposite side of the argument, many graphic designers along with AIGA are taking a hard stand against crowdsourcing and spec work. AIGA has detailed the risks involved for both designers and clients when they engage in spec work.  Designers risk being taken advantage of as well as not being paid fairly or at all for their services. Clients risk compromised quality when research, the development of multiple options, and lack of testing and prototype development fall by the wayside. Both parties face legal risks, in addition to aspects of intellectual property, trademark and trade‐dress infringements. Proponents of crowdsourcing argue that it’s a free trade system and actually gives young designers who don’t have a big client list or portfolio filled with work a chance to be judged on merit alone. However, Benkler, Bruns, and other advocates for crowdsourcing believe it will change the playing field—designers will be valued for strategic and creative thinking, not the production of logos and other output that will become commoditized and produced through methods like crowdsourcing. In addition to spec work and crowdsourcing, there are many other issues involving integrity in the field of graphic design. Kickbacks, design plagiarism and clients paying for services (or refusal to pay for services)  are all issues graphic designers can expect to face. Industry professionals tend to always have accounts about graphic designers stealing fellow designers’ work and presenting it as their own, being asked to create free marketing materials,  or having their work used without permission or compensation by respected organizations. With so many issues and topics dealing with integrity that designers experience during their careers, it makes sense to prepare students that are entering the graphic design ballgame.

Personal Experience + The Common Good

As a young freelancer, I found out the hard way about the importance of written contracts, especially in describing deadlines and milestones. I also believe that working with hired talent—photographers and illustrators, for instance—is a tricky area for freelance designers. Be sure to spell out who retains the rights and whether the work created is exclusive or nonexclusive. From experience, I have been approached to do design work for a company and/or client that I find questionable. In June of 2013, PacSun corporation had approached me to Photoshop models in bikini swimwear on their own terms for an online store. Not only would I have to fix lighting and blemish issues, but bring in their hips and curves substantially for a better look. I had to decide if I was willing to set aside my personal feelings to earn the money or if my personal code of ethics should preclude me from doing the work. At the end of the day, I said no. While other students like me may face no repercussions within the academic bubble for freelance jobs such as this, such practices are sure to cause problems for the studios and agencies they end up working with and for. My personal strategy and everyday “to-do” list that I have for my social design is: 1. Immerse yourself, 2. Build trust, 3. Promise only what you can deliver, 4. Prioritize process, 5. Confront controversy (remember the purpose of the message and any eventual outcome), 6. Identify the community’s strengths, 7. Utilize local resources, 8. Design with the community’s voice, 9. Give communities ownership (empower your client to help them be more self-sufficient in the future) and 10. Sustained engagement.

Conclusion

International design must communicate immediacy, honesty, trust, and the kinds of engagement that follow from them, and action taken on personal vision that rises both from a baseline of culture awareness. Social design is the material designers create that consider issues beyond the bottom line. It is design with attention paid to environmental impact, labor practices, and the common good. Social design isn’t extravagant—it is just enough, it is witty, fun, and practical. It encourages a response through how it looks or how it is used. It promotes community rather than further detachment from the world around us. As an example, if the designer places more emphasis on the creating of useful and lasting communications, then they contribute to a society that may be more informed. At an international standpoint, design needs to move away from the creation of artificial needs and the promotion of unnecessary products, and move towards the creation of more useful and lasting communication, communication with meaning, communication that contributes to world society. It’s about a community that’s not so caught up on materialism, a community that consumes less and, therefore, a community that is more sustainable and environmentally friendly. It’s about avoiding solutions that patronize or assume our audiences are of a lower intelligence than we are, or solutions that prey on the vulnerable or take advantage of the audience or their weaknesses. It’s about people working together to make things better.

*Ethiopia filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the names of three coffee-producing regions: Yirgacheffe, Harrar and Sidamo, where Fero is located. By seizing control of these brands, the Ethiopian government planned to force those who sell its coffee into licensing agreements, eventually obtaining a larger share of the sales. 

Ethiopia responded that the form of intellectual property it would seek for its heritage coffees was Ethiopia's decision to make, not Starbucks. With the controversial international case still at hand, the high-profile dispute with Starbucks increased the popularity of Ethiopian coffee. Trademark protection can protect Ethiopia's intellectual properties for its coffees today and, if necessary, Ethiopia can develop a sophisticated GI system at some point in the future that is tailored to meet its own needs. A gray area, however, is that the added revenue from fair-trade coffee, of which Starbucks is the largest buyer in North America, allowed the farmers in Fero to bring electricity to their village from the power grid 2.5 miles away.  

Between Starbucks and Ethiopia, a campaign should be a started as a new initiative by the municipality towards the issues of diversity, integration and tolerance. These issues and the mere nature of our ever changing and growing coffee trade require that they be continually in focus, so as to improve the social conditions of all who reside in Yirgacheffe, Harrar and Sidamo.

Faris, Stephan. "Starbucks vs. Ethiopia: The country that gave the world the coffee bean and the company that invented the $4 latte are fighting over a trademark." Fortune 26 Feb. 2007. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.