The Great Discontent interview designer Paula Scher:
I think graphic design is an important profession because it’s part of what we put out into the world, and it’s what people see and perceive. It’s not just about doing design for the “public good.” The design community currently thinks that if you design something to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy, then that’s good, but if you design something for a bank, then that’s bad. I disagree. I think all design matters and all design deserves to be intelligent.
Obviously, we don’t want to advertise products that are horrible for people because that’s immoral. But if we can raise the expectation of what something can be, then we’ve done a huge service for our community. For example, consider the way most strip malls and shopping centers think they have to appear and behave: it’s horrible. Why can’t there be a different kind of experience? Why can’t we see them as something potentially terrific? There’s an architect named James Wines, whose Structure In the Environment architecture firm designed facades for a chain of BEST stores in the 1970s. He took big box stores and turned them into fantastic outdoor sculptures. He raised the expectation of what those experiences could be.
To me, that’s the most responsible design there is: taking something “bad” and making it terrific by raising the expectation. That’s what we do.