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Dear Designer
Dear Designer: It Might Be Time to Start Flipping Tables
If your company insists on being shady, you have to put your foot down
Dear Mike,
In your last column, you talked about how to persuade your clients and employers to do the right thing by building a good argument and alliances. But what happens when that’s not enough? What happens when they insist on doing unethical shit?
— A Designer
Dear Designer,
Well, we’re eventually going to get to the point where we flip some tables over. I just didn’t want you thinking that was your first course of action. But there comes a point after you’ve exhausted all other courses, where you have to put your foot down. There are things you cannot do. Case in point:
On July 3, 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol of Arizona posted a video tour of one of the concentration camps along our southern border. I’ve watched it, but if you want to watch you’ll have to Google it; I won’t link to it. It’s a video that justifies jailing refugees and separating children from their parents. It’s a video that lies about the conditions these human beings are living in. Its goal is to make you feel okay about the racist and dehumanizing acts our government is perpetrating. It’s totalitarian propaganda.
But hey, this is supposed to be a column about design advice. So why are we talking about this? Well, one, because we should give a shit. The fact that we have concentration camps in our country is something that should piss us off, and we should take action against it. I have no doubt many of you are with me on this. So let’s move on to issue number two.
Shortly after this video was released, RAICES Texas, a nonprofit doing amazing work providing educational resources and legal aid for migrants, discovered the video had been created by Ogilvy, one of the biggest and most renowned advertising agencies in the world. RAICES tweeted out “@Ogilvy has a $12m contract with CBP to help them with public relations such as this video.”
