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"Also, if you’ve ever questioned whether or not design actually has any impact — other than aesthetically — on the world, here is your answer. History books are filled to the brim with Zyklon B, the Luger pistol, and other war machinery. But in reality, without his design system, Adolf Hitler would never have been able to wreak havoc over Europe and other parts of the world the way he has. Design, when wielded strategically and with purpose, is a tool capable of achieving things nothing else can ever come near.
This not only makes the job of designers incredibly important, but it also gives them great responsibility. Designers actively steer the flow of events in a certain direction. They scent, color, and shape history as it unfolds. As their work directly impacts our world, designers have the responsibility of carefully choosing the people and ideas they contribute to."
I contemplated putting this into the newsletter, specifically because it’s about the corporate design of Hitler's Third Reich. But I shared it because it focuses on the museum that houses so much of it (which is currently closed), and the atrocity and impact the system's success caused.
Now more than ever, it’s important that we see just how political design actually is. It’s hard to say “The third reich was one of the most efficiently thought out corporate designs and system in history", without getting a knot in your throat. But realistically, it was. And that's what made it dangerous.
Now, I'd like to also place STRONG emphasis on the fact that the visual / corporate design alone didn't make the Third Reich what it was. It was a culmination of fascism, racism, and more that came together. However, my point here is that instead of dumbing down the craft of design to pixel pushing, it's important to see just how much design can hijack certain cognitive functions, trigger reactions in people, and alter the way we generally view a particular topic.
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