Victor Papanek
Austrian-American · 1923–1998
Designer, educator, and writer who argued that design's primary obligation is social and ecological responsibility. His book Design for the Real World became a manifesto for ethical design practice.
Wikipedia ↗“There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, in order to impress others who don't care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today.”
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“Design must be an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the needs of men. It must be more research-oriented, and we must stop defiling the earth itself with poorly-designed objects and structures.”
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“The only important thing about design is how it relates to people. Design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments and, by extension, society and himself.”
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“I am suggesting that designers concern themselves with problems that are real, not with trivialities. By devoting our best talents to the creation of more and more things for more and more people who don't need them, we are helping to create a sick, wasteful, ugly society.”
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“All men are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The planning and patterning of any act toward a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process.”
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“In an age of mass production when everything must be planned and designed, design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments. This demands high social and moral responsibility from the designer.”
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