Milton Glaser - Ambiguity and Truth (and The Road to Hell)

'Pablo Picasso, spent many years depicting subjects from several different points of view at once, understanding that any single point of view was a misrepresentation.’

• Things can be interpreted in many different ways so offering one viewpoint is effectively a lie in itself as not everyone will agree on the same thing. 
• Applying the same approach to an idea that Picasso applied to a physical subject can potentially create a more honest understanding of a topic. 

‘Purgatory is where most of us are right now. In any event, awareness of what we actually do in life seems worth thinking about.’

• Purgatory is supposedly a place where people can cleanse themselves of their sins before going to heaven. It is an alternative to the concept of hell where people have no chance of going to heaven. In relation to social responsibility, it tells us that people are aware of the good and bad they are putting to their audience through their work and they can make conscious decisions about it. 

‘...idealistic young people as yet seemingly uncorrupted by money or professional life.’

• This suggests that these 'idealistic young people' will probably become corrupted as their career in the industry continues. It gives the impression that the value they hold for money will eventually surpass how much they value their own morals. This raises the argument of whether social responsibility is only a priority to certain types of people and still only to a certain extent. 

‘…but the truth is we are subjected to a thousand of such misrepresentations every day of our lives.’ 

• We are being lied to all the time. Advertising is not a truthful industry. 

‘we can no longer recognise them as lies’

• As a society we are becoming immune to the lies we are fed everyday. This could lead on to the idea that when an advert comes around claiming to care about social issues, we buy into it because we are glad something positive is happening. However, we don't look into the concept deep enough to understand whether it is actually genuine or not. 

‘the assault has changed our brains and our view of reality and truth.’ 

• We struggle to understand and trust brands because they have warped our idea of what to believe. If you are lied to often enough, you struggle to complete trust anything, it spark cynicism. 

'Most of us here today are in the transmission business. While we don’t often originate the content of what we transmit, we are an essential part of communicating ideas to a public that it affected by what we say. Should telling the truth be a rudimental requirement of this role? Is there a difference between lying to your wife and friends and lying to people you don’t know?’

• This quote starts me thinking about how the nature of this industry and the structure of the way we work. When we are working for a client, are we actually working for them or are we working for their audience? 
• 'Don't shoot the messenger' comes to mind here. Does the responsibility lie with the company funding the work or does it lie with the person who actually pieces together how this is going to be communicated to society?

‘…the greater the psychic distance the easier it is to persuade people to act against their own self interest.’

• This links back to what I was saying before. Maybe the companies who fund the work find it easier to propose a deceptive campaign because they are not the ones making it. As a creative (or the messenger in this case) you are one step closer to the audience so potentially will find it harder to go against your personal morals on the subject. 

‘...lying has become acceptable in our public life.’

‘I’m not sure when the word “spin” replaced “lie”’ 

‘Marketing can be shameless.’

‘…a lie repeated often enough, becomes the truth.’

• People's ideas of truth and lies are being played with but it is going united in society. Although there is an awakening to excessive consumerism, much of society cannot see through the false facade they are presented with. Is it unfair to blame consumers on the ground of naïvety and/or ignorance when this has been ingrained in their brains all their lives?

Summary of approach to include in context and themes chapter...

Milton Glaser’s approach to this topic is that being lied to is an all too common occurrence in today’s consumer society. We are lied to so often that we are becoming immune to it and are starting to accept it as normality. In his essay ‘Ambiguity and Truth’ he gives examples and analogies of how we are deceived by advertising and states that as a society ‘we can no longer recognise them as lies’ and ‘the assault has changed our brains and our view of reality and truth.’ In relation to social responsibility, it is clear that the people running these campaigns either do not feel a sense of responsibility to their audience or they are not acting on it. It gives the impression that there are goodies and baddies of design, those who care and those who don’t, but the truth is that there is no distinctive line between the two.

This is where Milton Glaser’s ‘Road to Hell’ becomes relevant. The Road to Hell is a list of eleven questions which ask designers to what levels they would go to to deceive their audience. The questions become increasingly difficult with the first being about making a package seem bigger than it actually is and the last being designing an ad for a product which could eventually cause the user’s death. It forces creatives to think about their morals in relation to their practice and the various stages of difficulty in answering the questions shows that a sense of social responsibility is not a black and white concept. It is a scale which creatives have their place within.