Ethics Assignment: 2A Ethics and Design
After reading these articles my perspective about the my design work has changed. I’ve learned the importance of giving credit in case I use someone else’s work. Not only was it not our own design work, but it can be dangerous and is overall not professional to steal somebody else’s work.
When designing for classes, I’ve used somebody else’s images. However, all of them have been downloaded from free sources that allow use of the images in our own way. Until now, I haven’t given credit as I didn’t know how imperative it really was. Essentially, the idea here is that as you go on in design, you learn the importance of often over looked instances such as plagiarism.
The New York Times article about Fairey’s Copyright Case explains how important it is to issue recognition to the original author of the art we decide to use in our projects. It wasn’t ethical of Fairey to use false images to justify his actions. Mistakes are inevitable, but you grow by learning from them. I didn’t have a general idea of ethics and design until this course. This case is special in the sense that both parties reached an agreement. I think Fairey learned from his actions and would think twice using a photograph without giving credit to the author.
If we want to avoid discrepancies such as criminal investigations, ethics in design are an essential set of rules we have to keep at the forefront of creating.
