I have just returned home and begun an intensive recovery that is befitting of the work hard / play hard ethic with which I tackled these past four days at ICOGRADA’s Design Week in Seattle. The news has been on the television all evening: looping footage of the escalating tension between Israel and the Hezbollah; of blown out Lebanese neighbourhoods and clips of Anderson Cooper chasing after the next ground zero. After dinner, we rent Syriana, remembering its scenes of a claustophobic and heavily armed Hezbollah-occupied Beirut; trying to make some sense of it all; but, of course, it only serves to underline the point that there are no simple answers, no defined lines that clearly separate right from wrong, the good guy from the bad guy; and a harsh reminder of what we are up against as we return from this conference back to reality with our heads full of optimism and ideals.

We live in a fast paced and ever-changing world. This statement has become ubiquitous to the point of cliché in the post 9/11 21st century. It is often used as an excuse or as a dismissive explanation for the chaotic state of our existence. But what we were repeatedly told during the conference, the theme of which was “Defining Design on a Changing Planet”, was that as designers, we possess the skills and ability to create an order to our surroundings, to facilitate conversations with others and among others as well as the ability to inspire. What it all comes down to is that this ever-changing world is not an excuse for us; it is a challenge. One for which we need to make some commitments.

Cheskin CEO Darrel Rhea delivered an inspiring starting point for this discussion by stating that designers naturally have more empathy and compassion than others in the world of business. In fact Rhea went further, declaring that you can’t be a competent designer today without empathy. “It is a core component of our work” he said, “to care about our client and their product”. The 80’s image of the advertising agency concerned only with sales and the manipulation of the consumer has been replaced with an openness and an inclusion of customer insight. It has finally come around that doing the right thing is actually good for business. There is a growing appreciation for this movement in both the corporate world and among consumers. They talk of “meaningful consumption”, that people want to get something more out of all of their “stuff”.

Furthermore, it is apparent that the global business world is more seriously embracing the business of design and designers and the value that we provide. Pentagram co-founder Mervyn Kurlansky expanded on this notion when he described the majority of humankind as innately existing in “a fixed way of being”. The example he gave was the classic notion of learning to ride a bike, something you never forget how to do, and something you will always essentially do the same for the rest of your life. The ease with which we cling to such habitual behaviour is a survival technique, a safety clause in our DNA. But somehow designers can look past this instinct, instead relying on our intuition, approaching situations with new perspectives and in the process creating change.

Examples of designers bringing about such change were plentiful. We heard from Alejandro Quinto and Lorraine Gauthier, both of whom worked with Bruce Mau on his immensely important design driven art exhibit Massive Change before joining forces and starting Work Worth Doing, a Toronto-based company that considers the social, economic and environmental areas of design. We reveled in the contagious passion of Mo Woods, a designer and UW Design Instructor who has developed the Inneract Project, a program that teaches inner city youth “filled with potential but without opportunity” about the power of graphic design. We met Saki Mafundikwa, who started the first design school in Zimbabwe, encouraging Africans to discover and define their own graphic language. And we were deeply inspired by the eloquent story from Ravi Naidoo, founder of the Design Indaba (a Zulu word meaning “gathering of the people”) of how graphic design was embraced as a major force in uniting the people of South Africa in their new post-apartheid nation.

Equally as inspiring were the more informal discussions with designers that we met from all around the globe, while eating lunch out in the sun or grabbing a coffee – Starbucks of course – during a break. Passionate people are doing some very inspiring and important things as a result of their understanding of design and the ICOGRADA Design week allowed them to meet others of similar mindsets and in many cases make the scope of their individual foci larger or more realized.

But with this message of our new role as communicators of change came a stern reminder of our heavier obligation towards social responsibility. Linda Fu, who is currently completing her PhD thesis on “the visual representation of the Other in the context of globalization” stated that globalization has become the “term of our time” but it tends to remain undefined while being overused. It has, without a doubt created a smaller world, but with bigger responsibilities, one in which “the obvious is often false and the truth is often the exact opposite”. She stated that we are currently in the third stage of globalization which she termed as Coca Cola-nization or the Disneyfication of the world. Both of these serve to comment on the grotesquely off-balanced position of American influence over other cultures. Fu told us that she fears the emergence of a homogeneous culture, that a global monoculture is very real and the weaker cultures will not survive. Her advice for us on this issue was to go out and see the world, celebrate its differences and, on the topic of indigenous cultures, “love them, and try to understand them.”

The notion of a shrinking cultural map was reinforced dramatically on Saturday when Andrea Marks presented her film Freedom On The Fence, a documentary on the Polish poster art movement that was born as both a result of and as a response to the Soviet rule of the country from 1952 to 1989. Through their bold and original works, Polish poster designers were responsible for bringing both joy and an acerbic political commentary to the otherwise crumbling and dismal streets of Warsaw and Krakow serving as bright flowers in a concrete garden. One cannot help but marvel at the seemingly natural proliferation of human creativity during such horrific and repressive conditions. The sad reality of the present is that with the fall of Communism and an opening up to the West, this unique cultural art form has quickly faded away to be replaced with the standard Hollywood and brand name fare. You can only wonder how many other micro-cultures are disappearing in a similar way but without the benefit of a documentarian to share their moment with the world. At the same time, it begs the question of what strange and wonderful cultures are germinating in our current perilous period of world history.

It was the last presentation of the day that seemed to bring the main issues of the conference to a head. Earlier in the day, Henry Steiner had presented a thoughtful talk on cross-cultural design, revisiting some of the themes and ideas that he wrote about in Cross Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace ten years ago. In a globalized world, Steiner stated design is often the arena where cultures, either “fuse” or “crash”. He had begun by talking about the apparent arrogance of Starbucks opening a store in Vienna, a city already rich in coffee heritage and history. Interestingly, though perhaps not coincidentally, the final speaker was none other than Stanley Hainsworth, the Global Creative Director of the Starbucks Coffee Company located just down the street in Seattle. In an unprecedented move, when it came to the question and answer period, Henry Steiner was given the mic from the audience and readdressed his comments from the morning. In his response, Hainsworth, played it safe, as he had throughout his presentation, assuring us that the main intentions of Starbucks were always to create communities and that in the end, it is “all about the bean.”

It all screamed of towing the party line. And perhaps this was Hainsworth’s only major fault: that he didn’t engage us in a more genuine conversation about the challenges of a major international corporation in its attempt to “do good”. He seemed to be on the defensive, like the Marlboro Man in a cancer ward. We’ll admit that we were cynical. Most of us in the marketing world, who have pulled back the curtain generally are. And regardless of whether the Chinese government invited Starbucks to open a store in the Forbidden City or not, it still seems wrong. Like the real estate developer who looks out over a stretch of virgin forest and imagines suburbia, it would seem that the powers that be at Starbucks cannot walk a block in any city without envisioning its betterment by the presence of a round green sign.

But to be fair, after giving it further thought, it also appears that Starbucks is sincere in its intentions; that it really is trying its best to apply socially responsible thinking to its decision making process. Hainsworth stated that whether they are opening a store in a foreign country or simply in a new local neighbourhood that they do so with “a sensitivity to the local culture” by speaking with the leaders of the community and developing a visual language that is complementary and relevant to the area. The Starbucks Studio, located just down the street in Seattle is set up as a designers’ playground, each desk equipped with a large-screened Mac and an array of art supplies—paint, drawing pencils, markers, paper and ink. Hainsworth encourages organic and non-digital work for the Starbucks brand with few other limitations beyond five main criteria that hang as a checklist in the middle of the design area: handcrafted, artistic, sophisticated, human and enduring. “If the work produced is not all five of these things, we go back to the drawing board and try something different”, he explained. “We do have a list of corporate fonts (Clarendon, Trajan, Bembo and Trade Gothic) and an unchanging logo, but otherwise the world of creative possibilities is open.”

The reason that Hainsworth’s presentation was such an interesting finale was that it provided a concrete example of how the ideas and ideals that had been discussed in the days previous have actually been played out in the real world by a very large American corporation. Like every other manifesto or utopian vision, the social responsibility model that we had been molding over the course of the conference will always require amendments when it is put into practice in the real world. There is no defined line between absolute right and wrong and ultimately someone must make a decision that will reverberate through all levels of the corporate system, benefiting some aspects and taking its toll on others. At the same time, they are a business that has all intensions to make a profit and be successful. When it comes down to it, we can spend as much time as we like engaged in debate and discussion about how the world can be a better place and develop our visions of a designed utopia, but the truth is that it starts to become far more complicated when you actually apply those theories to a real life business solution.

So where does all of this leave us? How do we define ourselves? It seems that designers are always asking that question and the stakes are higher than ever to describe our role clearly to both ourselves and the world. The Turkish designer, Esen Karol ironically pointed out that the very aim of the conference, of defining design on a changing planet was paradoxical, that it is hard to hit a moving target. Linda Fu chastised our present state of identity crisis when she said, “There is still not a clear definition of what a graphic designer is. Do you wonder why? Look around. We are getting what we deserve.” The solution to this, or at least a good start can be found in the advice of Darrell Rhea who encouraged us to start talking with other people about what it is that we do, and what we believe, and not only with other designers. But perhaps we should leave the last word on this matter in the more than capable hands of the conference’s matron Sara Little Turnbull, who was honoured with the ICOGRADA Achievement Award and stated that “The designer is the conscience of the company. We can’t expect anyone else to fill this role.”

In the end, I return to the state of world affairs that are playing out this evening with rumours of World War III guaranteeing a troubled sleep tonight and in the times ahead. As a point of consolation, I am reminded of one other pinnacle moment early in the proceedings that had actually served to set the tone for why we were there and assured us that what was to come would be worthwhile. It came in the form of Tarek Atrissi’s presentation on his use of Arabic typography in design. Born in Beirut, but currently working out of the Netherlands, his work was beautiful and it made me realize that up until that point, the majority of Arabic type that I had been exposed to over the preceding months had come from the nightly news, as captions beneath the faces of “evil doers”, or wrapped in biased messages that encouraged the hate and fear of cultures that we don’t understand. In that moment, the power of design to change our perspective on things was personally felt. Even though we could not read what was on the screen, Atrissi’s design communicated its message absolutely.