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Abstract
Are we aware of the influence we wield as professional communicators in the new economic environment of globalized messaging and branding? And once we do acknowledge our power, wherein lies our responsibility, our opportunity, our ethics, our culpability, and our balance? Global branding strategies are the most powerful tools used today to encourage over-consumption amongst growing Developing World populations, and so thus the largest long-term threat to the global environment, and therefore to civilization itself. Communications professionals have more conspicuous power than they realize, and play a core role in helping some corporations mislead audiences in order to invent unfulfilled “needs” in quickly growing markets. In a World where design has become a recognized corporate asset, designers have the opportunity to use their persuasive skills responsibly and accelerate awareness of the messages the World really needs to receive. Recent developments regarding professionalism and ethics offer hope that designers and other communications professionals are embracing this opportunity. We can choose what our young profession will be about: creating visual lies to help sell useless things or helping to repair the World by sharing knowledge and understanding.
