
7
ANATOMY OF DESIGN
In the mid-1990s, when Tibor Kalman exhorted designers to “stay away from
corporations that want you to lie for them,” he was at the peak of his pique.
Since the 1980s he had become increasingly agitated every time he saw
graphic designers win awards for packaging and prettifying socially
irresponsible wares. Although his New York firm, M&Co., had its share of
corporate accounts, he carefully vetted them, examining their motives and
history. Of course, this is not feasible for everyone, but Kalman, who died of
cancer in 1999, so deeply believed the modernist ideal that design should be a
force for social virtue, not a convenient veneer, ...