Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It

by Mike Monteiro

What if we worked together to establish a set of professional standards, so that every designer was working from a common set of rules?

which had to move slowly and deliberately.

didn’t

She’d been labeled a troublemaker.

That means a health issue becomes a financial crisis. That means dependents don’t have access to care unless there’s another parent who’s lucky enough to have a job with benefits. That means kids with bad vision aren’t being tested, so they’re falling behind in school because they can’t see.

We see work as a way to pass the time during our vesting schedules, so we’re happy to trade away those rights for things that’ll matter once we get over the fence.

Dudes

love naming things after themselves.)

I care that you understand the job and the ethics behind the job. I care that someone has tested you on this knowledge and you’ve passed those tests. The reason I care about those tests, those signifiers, is because I’ve seen us run up a body count.

We had an opportunity to work ungoverned, and we failed. When the people we work for are out there saying things like, “what’s good for us isn’t necessarily what’s good for the world,” I need to know that we’re in place as a check on their idiocy.

Design is the solution to a problem, but that problem is never your self-esteem.

It’ll be on us to support the latter while repudiating the former.

It’s not an empowering term, and no, we’re not “reclaiming” it. We’re burning it with fire.

Our shifty definition of design has been quite helpful, mainly to us. It allows us to slither and slide toward the things we enjoy doing, while avoiding accountability.

There’s a reason I wrote these last three chapters in this order. Community breeds standards; standards breed accountability; accountability breeds trust; licensure validates that trust. It’s a journey. It may be a long journey, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking.

If the lessons in this book seem hard, it’s because they are meant to be. If the job I’m asking you to do seems difficult, it’s because it is. Hard and difficult aren’t the same as impossible. When it comes down to it, all I’m asking you to do is the job you signed up for.

By political, I’m talking about caring who our work is affecting. I’m talking about caring about who it’s helping and who it’s hurting. I’m talking about who’s making design decisions, and who’s being left out of them. I’m talking about increasing our definition of design beyond aesthetics and into ramifications.

Thank you to every musician, every zine maker, every writer, every street artist who taught me that we don’t need to get anyone’s permission to get our words, our noise, or our pictures out. Thank you