First Things First (Revisited) By Rick Poynor
The critical distinction drawn by the manifesto was between design as communication (giving people necessary information) and design as persuasion (trying to get them to buy things). In the signatories‘ view, a disproportionate amount of designers‘ talents and effort was being expended on advertising trivial items, from fizzy water to slimming diets, while more „useful and lasting“ tasks took second place: street signs, books and periodicals, catalogues, instruction manuals, educational aids, and so on. The British designer Jock Kinneir (not a signatory) agreed: „Designers oriented in this direction are concerned less with persuasion and more with informa- tion, less with income brackets and more with physiology, less with taste and more with efficiency, less with fashion and more with amenity. They are concerned in helping people to find their way, to understand what is required of them, to grasp new processes and to use instruments and machines more easily.“
