Dear Emigre

Here’s an old rant from the archives. The file was last modified on October 10, 1999. I was responding to the anguish and lamentations about the “state of design” in those magazine pages. It took a few issues, but they eventually did print an edited version of my letter.

I would phrase things differently today, but in any case here’s the original text:

“Dear Emigre:

Here’s an idea for all your ennui: PRO-BONO. Doesn’t anyone out there believe in anything besides a clever italic or an ironic stock photo? ‘The state of design’? There’s a big wide world out there, and contrary to what you may or may not have read, things ain’t looking very pretty, friends.

What’s so bad about capitalism is not that it produces bad design or co-opts your concept... but that there’s a real human cost. (A severe one.) An environmental one, too. (A massive one.) While you were working on that comp late that night how many acres of rainforest vanished? How many children went to sleep cold and hungry? Or went to sleep forever because their parents couldn’t afford medical care? How many millions spent another birthday in jail? Or were ‘disappeared’ by a governor they didn’t vote for? Or were murdered because they spoke a different language or didn’t wear the proper veil? Or were raped by their employer... at the factory that made that shirt you’re wearing? Yeah, so what are you going to do about it?

There’s a difference between an annual report for Lockheed and an annual report from an NGO like, say, Amnesty International. Does anyone know what ‘samizdat’ means anymore? You designers have the tools of the media right under your pudgy little fingertips! Give a stage to the disenfranchised! Broadcast the voices of the invisible! Pry open the sleepy eyes of the complacent! Jam the media! Organize your work place! Speak truth to power! Venture forth into your community... Just get off your ass! ‘Resistance’ indeed. What the hell are we in this for anyway? A couple of blue ribbons? A fast buck? The esteem of your peers? A new look or a clever punch-line?

What will be your legacy? If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Stop your whining and do something.

P.S. Thanks for the great magazine.”