The most important figure in the history of ethical design is Victor Papanek (1927-1999), who was a design theorist working in the 1960s. Papanek was born in Austria, but he studied in New York. He was heavily critical of the design profession and argued that designers should follow codes of ethics in their own work.
He was a strong advocate of socially and ecologically responsible design and asked how designers could serve the "real needs" of human beings. His most important published work was Design For The Real World (1971), which emphasizes the social and moral responsibilities of designers. It opens with the statement:
There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them.
This was a very controversial remark. He goes on to say:
Before (in the "good old days") if a person liked killing people, he had to become a general, purchase a coal mine, or else study nuclear physics. Today industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis.
This is obviously very contentious language and industrial designers were offended by it. They viewed it as an attack on their integrity. Papanek was ridiculed by established designers for many years. In fact, Design For The Real World was turned down by 12 publishers before it was eventually published. But it's since been translated into 23 languages, which arguably makes it the most widely read book on design in history. It did appeal to radical young designers.
Papanek believed that conventional design was governed by marketing strategies and profit ratios and he disapproved of products that were unsafe or essentially useless. He wrote: "Much recent design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires, while the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer."
According to Papanek, a lot of designers were preoccupied with aesthetics, which he regarded as shallow and superficial. He wrote, "Because in any reasonably conducted home, alarm-clocks seldom travel through the air at speeds approaching five hundred miles per hour, streamlining is out of place." He was thinking of things like Raymond Loewy's streamlined pencil sharpener, which looks like a jet engine. This is an inanimate object, but it has an illogical, aerodynamic style to make it sell.
Papanek wrote: "Only a small part of our responsibility lies in the area of aesthetics." He urged designers to ask themselves: "Am I on the side of social good, or will the object that I design be an addition to the catalogue of unnecessary fetish objects?"
By contrast, he urged designers to develop solutions to the problems of people living in the third world, as well as vulnerable groups like children, the disabled and the elderly - people who were often forgotten by the design profession. He was determined to lead by example. As a designer, he worked for the United Nations and Unesco and designed a cheap television set for use in Africa that cost less than $10 (1969). This could be produced within the limits of local possibilities and was distributed by Unesco. He hoped it would revolutionize education in the third world.
Also in the field of communications, Papanek designed a radio (1962) that could work without batteries and was made from used tin cans. It was powered by burning wax or wood. All the components are packed in the can. The entire unit cost less than 9 cents in 1966. Because it gave no attention to aesthetics the tin-can radio was ridiculed. People started to call Papanek the "Garbage Can Designer." But the design was successfully used in India and Indonesia for years.
In 1968 he worked on a project that would help to develop vegetation in arid areas. He developed an artificial seed pod, made of biodegradable plastic. They were dipped in plant seeds and nutrient solution. The seeds were dropped from airplanes. The biodegradable plastic was absorbed by the surrounding vegetation and turned into a fertilizing agent, and the seeds helped to form vegetation.
He agreed with Ralph Nader that American cars were fundamentally unsafe. He said that the car is a fetish object, because it's loaded with false values. He meant that cars became status symbols, while important functional questions were ignored.
For example, in the 70s it was well-known that car bumpers were inadequate: they gave very little protection. Car manufacturers said that improving them would add $500 to the price of each car. Papanek proved that wasn't true by creating a home-made bumper. He placed 80 empty bear cans in between two old bookshelves and put them on the front of his car. Then he drove his car into the local senate building. Both the car and the building remained undamaged and the total cost of this "bumper" system was 14 dollars.
Papanek is the major figure in the history of ethical design. Over his lifetime, he published a total of eight books, which have had a huge impact on the practice of design. It's been said that they represent the conscience of the design profession. Three years before his death, he published The Green Imperative: Natural Design for the Real World, which focused on ecology.
Papanek inspired other designers to work in the same way. Another example of an ethical product is the clockwork radio designed by Trevor Baylis. The inspiration for this came from hearing a report on the subject of AIDS in Africa and the problems resulting from the lack of information. There was no mains supply and replacement batteries were hard to find, so Baylis invented a radio that could run by clockwork. It was mass produced by a company called Baygen. The radio has been personally endorsed by Nelson Mandella.
