Waiting for
Permission An essay written by Michael Bierut featuring an afterword by the designer
1 MICHAEL BIERUT
Waiting for Permission (1992)
31 NATALIE ESTRADA 23 Years Later, ( 2015 )
It almost seems like a dream now.
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Big budgets. Fat, happy, suggestible clients cruising happily along, 2
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with fat, happy design firms feeding greedily in their wake. 4
Lavish corporate identity manuals. Hardcover brochures promoting office space in shiny buildings by brand name architects. Annual reports for non-profit clients-non-profit!-with a little picture on the cover, a flyleaf with nothing printed on it, then another page, new paper stock, with just one or two words in 8
point type, then another page, another paper stock-with nothing on it- then a piece of coated paper with another little picture
on it, and then-maybe-the darned thing would finally start, after the atmosphere had been properly created...
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The eighties seem far away now,
so far away, so much farther than the calendar tells us. To young designers entering the field in the lean and mean nineties, the previous decade will surely seem like an impossibly golden age, one of almost unimaginable excess and bravura. Even to those of us who lived through it, it takes the incontrovertible evidence of a flashy portfolio piece-circa, say, 1986-to remind us how much things have changed.
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And they have changed.
This decade sees a new awareness of
sometimes cracked and halting (perhaps due
environmental issues, much of it lip
to years of disuse) but genuine nonetheless.
service abounding with soy-based images
Ten years ago, it seemed as though a typical
of squirrels and pine cones, but for the most
pro-bono piece was a lavish six-color
part deeply felt. It doesn’t necessarily mean
production of a clever visual pun:
that graphic designers have ceased to trade
Today it’s just as likely to be something
in excess for its own sake, but the examples
down-and-dirty that as least looks as
of that excess are just as likely to provoke
though it was designed to truly help the
embarrassment as envy.
client’s cause rather than add awards to
This decade also sees among designers a new
the designer’s trophy cases.
social consciousness as well, one provoked by equal parts Clarence Thomas and Daryl Gates. The voice this consciousness takes is
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All in all, designers in the
But the flesh, for the most part, remains weak. While these issues dominate designer’s consciences, they still remain peripheral to
nineties seem to want more
most of our practices. Designers continue to work dutifully (probably, in fact, more urgently than ever these days),wishing that they
than ever to create work
could do what they think is right, rather than what they’re told to do, all in the name if “professionalism.” The fundamental idea of
that’s appropriate, that’s
truly challenging the client’s expectations, of getting outside the grinding process of filling the orders and shipping the goods, of
relevant, that challenges
“being bad,” (as Tibor Kalman exhorted us at the 1989 American Institute if Graphic Arts Conference in San Antonio) still seems
the client’s brief, that’s
an elusive goal for most designers. Is it hard to see why? As Milton Glaser said at that same confer-
aimed at more than the
ence, “Friends are friends, but a guy’s gotta eat.” Most of us would say that our ideals, whether newfound or long held, give away at
next design competition.
the end of the day to the pressures of running our businesses, that the sanest course of action is to push environmental activism or
In short, the spirit is willing.
social consciousness as far as you can and then back off to fight another day, that a client’s a client and an invoice is an invoice.
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In the end it’s all about the money, isn’t it?
Well, maybe not. Maybe it’s about some-
If you believe what you read in most
thing else, something that hasn’t changes,
designer’s promotional literature, that’s what
something to do not with money but with
the designer-client relationship is meant to
very structure of the relationship between
be: a partnership. Sometimes even clients
designers and their clients.
themselves (at least new clients) enthuse
Most relationships in daily life are defined
about this idea as well. But privately, most
at least in part, by hierarchy. Someone is
designers would concede that most of
in charge, and someone is following orders.
their client relationships are anything
Often these relationship are immutable:
but partnerships, a fact that’s seen as both
parent and child, student and teacher,
frustrating and basically unchangeable.
employee and employer. Occasionally the roles are more interchangeable, as in the case of marriages or partnerships.
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The Stanley Milgram Experiments
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In the early sixties, a psychologist at Yale University named Stanley Milgram did a series of notorious experiments. 13
[They] explored the dynamics of
hierarchical relationships, ones where someone was in charge and someone else was following orders.
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He wanted to find out how far someone would follow the orders of another person if he perceived that person’s authority as legitimate.
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The experiments had many variations, but they all basically went like this. Milgram asked people to volunteer for an experiment they were told was about the relationship of learning and punishment. The volunteers, who came from all walks of life, were each paid $4.50 and were shown the same setup when they arrived in Milgram’s lab.
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They were introduced to another person they
shock,” “moderate shock,” “strong shock,” and
were told was a fellow volunteer. The second
on up to “extreme intensity shock,” “danger:
person was to serve as the “learner” and the
severe shock,” and finally the cryptic and
subject was to act as “teacher.” The teacher
presumably frightening label “XXX.” For each
would be directed by the experimenter to read a
wrong answer, the volunteer teacher was to
series of word pairs to the learner, and then test
increase the shock level by one notch.
the learner on his memory. For each answer the learner got wrong, the teacher was to administer to him an electric shock. This was done with a control panel with thirty switches ranging from 15 to 450 volts, labeled in increments “slight
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Of course, the whole setup was an illusion.
Before he began, Milgram asked his students
The shock panel was a convincing-looking but
and fellow psychologists to predict how many
harmless prop; the fellow volunteer, the
people would administer the highest shock. The
“learner,” was an employee of Milgram’s who was
answers were always the same: at the most, one
particularly good at screaming in agony when
or two out the hundred. Milgram himself, then,
receiving the imaginary shocks. The purpose of
was surprised when almost two-thirds, 64% of
the exercise was not to study learning, but to study
the subjects, did and they were told and went
obedience: Milgram wanted to find out how far
all the way to the top of the scale.
people would go up the scale, how much pain they would inflict on a fellow human being, just because someone else told them to.
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Milgram did a lot of variations in the experiment
drawn from them is something like, “People are
to try to drive the number down. He moved the
capable of anything if they’re given an excuse
setting from Yale to tawdry-looking storefront; he
to do it.” However, this is a misinterpretation:
had the learner complain of a possibly fatal heart
most of the subjects, even the fully obedient
conditions; he fixed it so the subject actually had
ones, were anything but cheerful as they followed
to hold the learner’s hand down on a “shock plate.”
the experimenter’s commands. In fact, it was
None of it made much difference. No matter what,
common for subjects to protest, weep, or beg to
about half of the volunteers administered all the
break off the experiment.
shocks to the helpless learner. These experiments are fairly well known to the general public, and the most common moral
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Still, the obedient majority,
prodded calmly by the experimenter, would pull themselves together,
do what had to be done, and administer the shocks.
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Of course, designers are regularly paid a lot more than $4.50 to do things a lot less overtly heinous
Occasionally they help promote a cause or product they truly don’t believe in or design something to intentionally deceive
than administering a 450
the public. But these dilemmas are fairly rare. Most commonly, what most of us have done at one time or
volt-volt shock to a fellow
another is make something a little stupider or a little uglier than we really thought it ought to be. We’ve had good reasons: we need
human being.
the money, we need the experience, we don’t want to jeopardized the relationship, we know it’s wrong, we have no choice.
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Most commonly, what most of us have done at
side of the angels. What they had failed to realize
one time or another is make something a little
is that subjective feelings are largely irrelevant to
stupider or a little uglier than we really thought it
the moral issue at hand so long as they were not
ought to be. We’ve had good reasons: we need the
transformed into action.”
money, we need the experience, we don’t want to
We too somehow remain on
jeopardized the relationship, we know it’s wrong, we have no choice. This would sound familiar to Dr. Milgram. “Some subjects were totally convinced of the wrongness of what they were doing” he observed, “but could not bring themselves to make an open break with authority. Some derived satisfaction from their thoughts and felt that -within themselves, at least- they had been on the
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the side of the angels.
So is it all about money?
Probably not. The subjects in Milgram’s experiments often wanted desperately to quit, but they couldn’t just get up and walk away. What kept them at the shock panel wasn’t the $4.50 they were being paid but their idea that the experimenter, and not they, and certainly not the helpless subject at receiving end of the wire, was in charge.
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Most of us enter the field of design filled
And when we’re roused to out feet by a call to
with individual passions and unrealized
action, second thoughts set in. “That’s easy for
visions, and learn quickly that the other
him (Tibor, Milton, fill in the blank) to say. “but
people know better: first teachers, then
my clients won’t let me do that.” But of course
bosses, finally even the judges of de-
that’s not true. In fact, we don’t know what would
sign competitions and editors of design
happen of we tried: we take too much pride in the
annuals. We put aside our doubts-none of
quality of our “service” to find out. So business as
us want to be prima donnas anyway-and
usual remains business as usual.
become comfortable professionals in just another service industry.
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Designers, even in a climate that finds us more and more driven to question the social and ethical underpinnings of our work,
cede the same authority to our clients.
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Who’s in charge here,
anyway? The designer-client relationship can and should be a partnership. It’s time to stop blaming the client when it’s not. Our work can and should serve society: it should serve an audience beyond ourselves, beyond our clients, and beyond the next design annual. Otherwise, the member of that audience, the users of the products and messages that we produce, will remain wired to their seats, awaiting the next shock.
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And we designers, wanting to do what’s right but afraid to make trouble, will keep sitting, maybe just a little more nervously, our fingers on our control panels,
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waiting for permission.
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Twenty-Three Years Later,
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“Waiting for Permission” is Michael Bierut’s call-to-
Based on Bierut’s observations, designers had begun to take a timid approach to working with clientele, a stark contrast what Bierut describes the previous decade as a “golden age” filled with
action for designers to take
“unimaginable excess and bravura.” By the 1990’s, the atmosphere
charge and responsibility for
had drastically changed from “fat, happy design firms” to a new “social awareness” among designers working dutifully underneath
what should be a partnership between the designer and the client.
the thumb of their clients. In other words- designers had become weak-willed and the dynamic partnership between the designer and the client had dissipated.
Bierut then uses the Stanley Milgram experiments to
serve as an analogy to the point he makes. These experiments that illustrate the behavior of obedience even under perceived authority provide substantial context to the situation designers were undergoing during the nineties. Designers through Bierut’s eyes are seen as weak and malleable individuals similar to that of lab rats in a cage. Through this comparison of designers and the test subjects, Bierut makes it clear that there needs to be a drastic change in the then-atmosphere for designers.
By addressing the timidness of designers of the time,
the article aims to make designers aware of the predicament they’ve put themselves in and motivate them enough to get them out of it. Bierut communicates his message concisely and brings about a nostalgic air to the booming 8-’s to revive the drive designers once had. Depicting designers of the nineties as
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weak and unwilling participants in comparison to the designers of the eighties beaming with bravado might seem a bit harsh but this method is necessary to aggravate the audience (ideally comprised of designers working in the field) to push them to take action and utilize the authority they once had.
And they do. “Waiting for Permission” was written more than twenty years ago and design
since then has come a long way. By taking advantage of the monumental advances that have come through the past two decades in the design industry and technology designers have reclaimed their position as equally authoritative figures in client relationships. And during this process of bouncing back, designers had also utilized the heaps of new resources that came with the development of creative technologies as well. What we see today is a drastically different design industry producing better solutions to their client’s problems.
However, the next issue concerning the business of design between the designer and the
client that could potentially put designers in a rut similar to what Bierut describes would not be about problems within partnership itself but more so about losing these partnerships altogether. We know that design and the technology surrounding it has made a significant progression since Bierut’s article was written in 1992. While it gives designers a broad new range of possibilities in their field, the changes in accessibility to those outside of the design industry have taken away the once booming demand clients had for designers.
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Designed by Natalie Estrada for Intro to Visual Communications II of the 2015 Winter semester.
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This publication was printed using Smooth Enviroment on white #80lb Text and Classic Linen #80lb Cover, both from Neenah paper. The fonts used are Goudy Oldstyle Std & Priori Sans