Design is Dangerous

Designers don't always design for good. Cigarettes and their often deceitful advertisements are harmful to humans and to society. Many people become smokers because of ad campaigns by tobacco companies, which are created by designers.

Cigarettes are known to cause lung cancer, asthma, heart attacks, stroke, and many more complications that I won't elaborate on as this is a design blog, not a medical blog. My design 1 class got to experience the damage a loved one's smoking can cause when guest lecturer, Brian Fies, shared excerpts of his graphic novel, Mom's Cancer, with us. Fies's family had to watch their mother suffer and the stress and confusion took a toll on the rest of the family as well. The effects of cigarettes are dangerous and often deadly and for a designer to promote tobacco use is dangerous.

Tobacco companies have a great deal of money and power and are therefore able to pay designers well for their ad campaigns. However, is it ethical for a designer to promote something known to cause harm to humans and society? Designing promotional materials for cigarette companies is dangerous because the advertisements often target you people by appearing cool, artsy, or counter-culture. Tobacco companies have found that if they get consumers hooked on their product at a young age—often before the legal smoking age—they will be customers for life. By designing an advertisement with cartoons, which appeal to children, promoting cigarettes, the designer begins the cycle of attracting a child to cigarettes, who later becomes a smoker for life and dies prematurely of heart complications or lung cancer. Design can be very very dangerous.

In today's society, designers know the consequences of smoking and more importantly encouraging society to damage their bodies through smoking. Whether or not they choose to create dangerous design that promotes cigarettes is a question of ethics. A designer must decide if they are willing to knowingly promote a harmful substance just to get paid. The consequences of designing for tobacco companies is intentional.

Word Count: 338