Ethics posts

In the last post, we took an in-depth look at Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they have impacted on search rankings for businesses. Whilst we established that using black hat SEO techniques is likely to result in a site becoming penalized, we didn’t look at what’s known as gray hat SEO.

Gray hat SEO is, as the name suggests, somewhere in the middle of black hat and white hat. This means that whilst the practices may be perceived by some as being OK, for the most part they still break search engine rules and may result in losing rankings, or worse.

However,...

Whilst the trend for online business continues to grow, there is a significant increase in the number of consumers choosing not to do business online. The most oft-quoted reason is privacy.

Six months ago, several thousand euros were charged to one of my cards. A criminal had somehow accessed my Amazon...

Sure, it’s happened to all of us. A prospective client contacts you and something just doesn’t feel right. The hair on the back of your neck stands up, you feel a cold chill in mid July or you just say to yourself, “this person is a wacko!”

Of course, you need money and you hope that it’s just a bad smoothie you had for lunch and you agree to take on the project. You think that if you stick with a contract and get a 50% upfront fee for the work, you’ll probably get through the project for what must be just a colorful character, and they may end up being a fun, and regular client. As the project progresses, you realize the person is not colorful or quirky… they are certifiably insane and you wish you had listened to the hair on...

A friend of mine wrote me the other day and told me his company was stealing copyrighted work. He was very upset and said that his manager believes that anything on the internet is available to be put on a crappy T-shirt.

He asked my advice on what to do. He was a creative who felt righteous indignation about stealing from other creatives. I had to think about what to say in response.

The first time I was ordered to steal copyrighted material by my boss, I was horrified and felt I should protect the rights of others. It wasn’t so much for monetary gain but for a presentation and involved the work of several dozen illustrators. Nonetheless, it was something for which they should have received payment.

I pushed the point in a meeting on the...

I recently added to my top ten most embarrassing moments of my professional life. No, I won’t be listing the top ten but this one was extremely disturbing because it affected a lot of people and basically went unnoticed and pushed out the truth and replaced if with a falsehood that had become the truth. I’m referring to an article I wrote about a famous designer but the images of the fantastic work weren’t actually his.

It was not my intention to prank or scam readers but I used the wonderful World Wide Web to gather my information and that was a blunder I should have seen coming. It wasn’t until a reader pointed out that the designer did not do the work, that I scrambled to find out the truth. At first, I thought, by the way the comment was worded, it was just a spam scam for a website and...

[Editor's note: As we approach the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11/2001 in New York City and Washington, DC, and the failed attack that resulted in a plane crash in Pennsylvania, we feel that it's worth discussing the role designers have in relation to companies attempting to profit from tragedies such as this.]

I remember the morning of the attack as if it was yesterday. It almost was. I was walking into work at a well-known greeting card company when a coworker asked if I had heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center.

I joked that some idiot pilot in a private two-seater probably got too close and smashed into the side, shattering some glass...

Every profession has its own set of ethical guidelines most of its members adhere to.

And while the design industry’s code of ethics might not be as crucial as, say, the medical industry, there are still some important ethical considerations every design professional should think about.

Here are some of the most prominent ethical considerations designers deal with, mostly specific to the design industry and...