Source from Unsplash by Jose Martin Ramirez Carrasco

This week as I was working on my newsletter designs and the topic of Ethics came up at and it got me thinking on the ethics that we as designers and companies owe to our consumers so I looked over my schools data base to see what I could find about the topic and I found an article on exactly by AIGA and as I read it the first thing I found interesting was  What is copyrightable? I had no idea how much went into copyrighting an idea I was always under the impression that as long as you were the first to create an item then the copyright would simply fall under your possession. Next in the Ethics of Design the section about Joe Camel something that was not mentioned about the character is that he was designed to have a very phallic nose as a form of subliminal messaging to give the impression that you would somehow be able to be like joe if you smoked subliminal advertising is also incredibly unethical we should always work to be upfront with our design. Finally when reading this I felt like it had to be said that everyone that takes part in production be it for food, Entertainment, Agriculture ect each has their own ethical responsibility. Designers can’t be held responsible for those in production as we as designers are just putting peoples messages and products out there but those who tell us what to create should be held to the highest ethical standards because they are who the consumer trusts most.