COP3 / Interview / Ian Anderson.

COP3 / OUGD601
PRIMARY RESEARCH / INTERVIEW.
IAN ANDERSON.

During a workshop with Ian, I mentioned to him about the subject i was looking art in regards to my dissertation. He said that he would be more than happy to answer any questions I may have concerning the issues of ethics and social responsibility in Graphic Design.

I sent Ian the following questions:

1).  How ethical are your design practices?

2).  How do ethics effect your design practices?

3).  Is there a type of client/company that you wouldn't design for?

This was Ian's Response:

hello caitlin

firstly, i don't feel you can divorce ethics and / or politics from every aspect of one's life, social and / or cultural, personal and / or professional.

so...

1)  I like to think that my design practices are as ethical as they can be whether it be a question of equal opportunity employment, or the clients we work with (and why), or the messaging we communicate through our work. We are not ethic-neutral in that we don't try to avoid potentially contentious issues, and how ethical our practise may be, or even whether it is or not is dependent on perspective. What i can say is that why we do what we do, and why we don't do what we won't do, is my ethical decision.

2) There are certain messages we aren't comfortable communicating, there are products we won't endorse, there are politics we won't support etc. Consequently there are tones of voice we won't employ and imagery which we won't use. What the specifics of these stands are is not important — what is important is the fact that we will draw a line in the sand which we will not cross rather than where we will draw it.

3) Yes, for sure! We've turned down The Conservative Party and numerous cigarette and tobacco product manufacturers / distributors. We only agreed to work with Coca-Cola on certain projects. I would NEVER design a cover for Coldplay, Keane or Starsailor.

does that help?

Ian.

I found that Ian's response was very helpful and informative. Getting perceptions and opinions from someone that is so experienced in Graphic Design as well as being known to focus his work on ethical issue was very Valuable.

I sent Ian another question Aa few sees after this, asking about his thoughts on designing for alcohol to see what he felt about such an issue.

Question:

Have you or would you ever work for an alcohol company? If yes, why? If no, why?

Yes we’ve worked with alcohol companies on various design and ad project. We researched and named and brand developed and alcopop a long, long time ago for Gaymers. We called it Kiss so people would ask the bar person for a kiss… it was before the whole alcopops thing and under aged drinking thing got out of hand… we’ve done advertising campaigns for various vodkas. I suppose you could ask what’s the difference between alcohol and tobacco… for me, smoking is more of a direct health risk where’s drinking only becomes so with excess, and if you start with alcohol where do you stop? Anything with refined sugar in it? Or certain flavor enhances? Etc. It really depends on the message or the angle being communicated. Given the cultural shifts I wouldn’t do the kiss thing again, neither the name for the same reason as back then not the product itself.

I found it interesting when he mentioned 'were do you stop?' Its this question that is always present when it comes to the topic of ethics. How much of the worlds issues should designers take on their shoulders?