Just the designer

I would like to pick up on the point Lena makes about becoming desensitised to danger through the existence and abundance of panic buttons. I agree that through the mass media’s constant bombardment of panic buttons we no longer “recognise the alarm as a sign of potential danger.” Have you ever run over to a car that’s alarm is sounding to check everything is all right? The reason we don’t react is not that we don’t care that someone’s car is being broken into but because we’re so familiar with hearing it, we’re almost certain it’s just another case of someone not knowing how to unlock their car.

The barrage of information condemning every choice I make has lead to the point where sometimes I wonder if I care at all. It makes it incredibly hard to make any decision without feeling like your about to be blamed for all the wrongs in the world. I sometimes have to actively remind myself that these things are real and that I do care about them and I should be more active. But because we feel so far removed through the technologies we posses it makes it hard to feel we can play any effective role. Panic buttons have put us into a state of risk unreality where we feel lost to do anything, and then their real purpose emerges. Not to warn us of the dangers we face but to keep us in a state of control, of helpless obedience. But it’s less than obedience because that would suggest we are actually doing something, instead it is more like a state of coma. Panic Buttons exist to keep us from opening our eyes and changing the way things are.

With so many headlines and information floating around it’s no wonder we feel lost to do anything because we don’t know who’s telling us the truth anymore. When even climate change’s credibility comes under attack through The Great Climate Change Swindle and our assured fatal end to humanity is questioned, what are we to believe?

As designers how should we react when a client asks us to communicate a controversial message to the public? Is it our job to question the client and debate the credibility of the information? Seems a little out of our league when the experts cannot even get to the bottom of it. I feel I have felt this to a small extent in our Live Project for Lewisham Council. In the original briefing I was shocked to hear our client tell us “that we’re not arguing whether it’s happening, that’s a given” And that it was our job now to “convince other that it’s happening.” I think my Goldsmiths alarm bell went off when I heard this. Having been constantly told to question everything we were now being actively told not to, to believe it and make others believe it too. I expect this is a likely picture of the way the real world works. So we get on with the project regardless of personal beliefs because after all, we’re just the designer?


The Risk Society and Beyond: edited by Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck and Joost Van Loon, 2000, SAGE Publications.
The Great Climate Change Swindle: Martin Durkin, 2007, Channel 4.
www.news.independent.co.uk