What are you consider to be the role of advertising?
1. It is a means to note buyers and communicate to them about the products they want to buy. What is more, the designers should to let audiences pay attention to products with a short time.
2. Tell the truth to audiences.
3. Normally, the advertise objective are promoting consumptions. Designers should never lay the customers, but they need make the products looking good.
4. The advertising should make the life better instead of overly make maximum profit. (Include, eco-friendly, change people’s bad behavior, etc.)
5. The advertising should promote the sale of productions.
Discuss the ethics of advertising:
1.Tell the truth to audiences.
2.The advertising should make the life better instead of overly make maximum profit. (Include, eco-friendly, change people’s bad behavior, do not design for cigarette, munitions and drugs etc.)
What do your consider to be good advertising and bad?
Good:
1.A good advertising should have a unique concept and good visual or sound effect, since advertising needs to give a big impact or good effect to audiences. Because, nowadays, lots of people live a stressful life and I think watch an interesting advertising is an excellent way to release.
Example:
2. If it makes you aware of goods and services or save your shopping time that you can use and will be helpful. For example, advertising is used to help you become aware that Zhangli is introducing the function and concept of new Nike shoes in China. And I find this advertising useful.
Bad:
1.if the advertising make you uncomfortable or unhappy. Example, idea is boring and sound and visual effect is bad.
2.It is bad if it irrelevant to your needs and is not helpful. For example, I will not buy a car, and the advertising is totally wasting my time. That is ineffecient for car producers and for me.
Research ‘first thing first’ a manifesto by Ken Garland 1964 and the renewal of the manifesto in 2000.
First Things First 1964
a manifesto
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.
By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.
In common with an increasing numer of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.
We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible. Nor do we want to take any of the fun out of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested. (Reference:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~maxb/ftf1964.htm )
First Things First 1964 manifesto
The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in the Guardian newspaper.
Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the sixties, it tried to re-radicalise design which had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School and the counter-culture of the time it explicitly re-affirmed the belief that Design is not a neutral, value-free process.
It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto. (Reference: Wikipedia)
First Things First 2000 manifesto
The First Things First 2000 manifesto, launched by Adbusters magazine in 1999, was an updated version of the earlier First Things First manifesto written and published in 1964 by Ken Garland, a British designer.
The 2000 manifesto was signed by a group of 33 figures from the international graphic design community, many of them well known, and simultaneously published in Adbusters (Canada), Emigre (Issue 51) and AIGA Journal of Graphic Design (United States), Eye magazine no. 33 vol. 8, Autumn 1999, Blueprint (Britain) and Items (Netherlands). The manifesto was subsequently published in many other magazines and books around the world, sometimes in translation. Its aim was to generate discussion about the graphic design profession's priorities in the design press and at design schools. Some designers welcomed this attempt to reopen the debate, while others rejected the manifesto.
The question of value-free design has been continually contested in the graphic design community between those who are concerned about the need for values in design and those who believe it should be value-free. Those who believe that design can be free from values reject the idea that graphic designers should concern themselves with underlying political questions. Those who are concerned about values believe that designers should be critical and take a stand in their choice of work, for instance by not promoting industries and products perceived to be harmful. Examples of projects that might be classified as unacceptable include many forms of advertising and designs for cigarette manufacturers, arms companies and so on. Adbusters has been a significant outlet for these ideas, especially in its commitment to detournement and culture jamming. (Reference: Wikipedia)
So, I think designers can’t just pursuit maximum profit, they should make people’s life better (Take more attention on political and social problem). And we need to believe design can save your country and change the world.
