
I was perusing my November/December 2007 Step Inside Design magazine and came across an interesting interview of designer Kalle Lasn written by Laurel Saville. The discussion was focused on Lasn's book Design Anarchy.
Kalle Lasn is the creator of Adbusters magazine and describes the process as to how Adbusters came about in Chapter 3 of Design Anarchy: "We were a bunch of burnt-out activists tired of environmentalism, feminism and all of the other -isms...We had this nasty feeling that 'we the people' were slowly but surely losing our power to sing our songs and tell the stories and generate our culture from the bottom up."
In Kalle's "First Things First Manifesto" he states: "The [design] profession's time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best...We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mind shift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning."
This article brought home the realization that designers and writers have a duty to use the power of words and imagery to illuminate and enlighten, not just fuel mass consumerism.
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