Good design is responsibly generative. 

Production is necessary and inevitable in our practice, but not everything ideated needs to be created: not every problem needs to be solved, and not every problem needs to be solved individually. As a designer, I work to recognize how design responds to an already saturated landscape, to the built and natural environment, to the framework of capitalism, and to the needs of the consumer. My ideas do not exist in a vacuum, I pledge to not treat them as such. 

Designers are responsible for everything we make, so we can't stop working after a first good idea — we must push and tweak and erase and destroy and challenge. My designs are never finished, only ready for the next critique. 

Good and responsible design comes out of mediocre design with rigorous research and defined intentions regarding impact — I work to talk to the people who will use it. Deontological ethics notes the duty a designer has to the public to not treat people as ends in themselves, but instead to collaborate to create new solutions and structural change. Examine user needs and appropriately respond to them.  I strive to only generate what is necessary, responsible, and good.

Good design is diverse, inclusive, and supportive.

Who we are matters. Good design begins with supportive and diverse design education defeating stereotypical norms within the field. Our identities aid us in recognizing inequitable solutions and avoidance of harmful social patterns and behaviors within design. The makeup of our field establishes who we hold up as examples as the default for “good” work. As of right now, our studied examples are primarily privileged, cis, het, white men. 

We can do better than upholding this standard by evolving our field to reflect users and the public. We don’t need to imagine what our communities need when we have diverse identities within our practice. 

Beyond inclusion, we need to make accountability the foundation of our profession. Ethical individualism within graphic design must be defeated so that decisions are not upheld by individual choices but consulted by a field reflective of our communities. Designers and organizations need to be held responsible for unethical solutions with detrimental impacts on our society and our profession itself. Reproduction and reinforcement of harmful systemic behavior through ignorant and privileged design ends here.

Good design is collaborative.

Design that works is most effectively achieved through information-based design approaches bridging the gap between theory, practice, and critical feedback. 

Clients supply their needs with a strong understanding of their desired portrayed philosophy through a brief. Designers serve as active listeners and creators, working to elucidate this philosophy in extension with the brief and an understanding of the impact of their work. The impact and outcome of the design systems should align with the designer’s values, lest they sacrifice their personal integrity and virtue ethics through a transactional relationship. Designers should not tell lies to users at the command of clients, nor bend to the needs of a capitalist economy through their solutions. Ultimately, the intended audience is the users of said system, I create ethical solutions to solve the discovered problems.

An application of care-based ethics in this working relationship aids in the responsiveness and trust built between clients and designers. Clients should not be seen as a means to an end, much as clients should not see designers as a means to an end. Fair compensation and engagement are expected and required in order to ground the relationship in mutual dignity.

---

Good design is intersectionally sustainable. 

Designers create, design, and contribute to the visual and public landscape of the physical world and associated society. To responsibly do so, understanding of the interconnectedness of the human and natural world needs to be inherent to ideation and construction. I work to create visually sustainable solutions that do not strive towards exploitation, default assumptions, domination, or inequality. I exist to contribute and learn from my community — my practice and values work to create solutions that recongize intersectionality as situated in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s definitions and structure. 

I pair care ethics with this philosophical structure to create a sense of responsibility and solidarity to and with the public. Socially, economically, and politically, designers affect and influence everyone in the public sphere with their work. The public good must be at the forefront of the practice of graphic design lest people and consumers are used as the means to an end. 

I talk to the people I am designing for — I want to hear their perspective, their needs, their desires, the systems they want changed. Graphic design is a tool to communicate and can easily be used to change the world. I effect change through diverse solutions and an awareness of power relationships, societal structures, and who they work for. I hope to transform these systems to create sustainable solutions that challenge the society that only works for the privileged, instead implementing and generating one of systemic change for all.