Paul Rand, the legendary designer, once said "Visual communication of any kind... should be seen as the embodiment of form and function: the integration of the beautiful and the useful." In fact design works have traditionally followed these two principles, which are aesthetics and their usefulness or function. In product design or architecture we often hear the phrase "form follows function" which was first mentioned by mid-19th century sculptor, Horatio Greenough and later repeated by many designers and architects until today.

However, there is another principle as important that students must be aware of, about the opposite side of the issues of visual communication which serves mainly to commerce. That other, often hidden, side is about the after effects of what we as visual communicators create. It is primarily about ethical awareness and responsibility towards the world we live in and the society we live with, and how our actions and creations can have long term consequences towards them.

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Above banner: 'Living Constitution', Studies to the identification processes with the Dutch Constitution. Design by Evert Ypma, founder of Multiplicity & Visual Identities – CAS Corporate Design, an international postgraduate programme at the Institute for Design Research at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. Contributed to www.indigodesignnetwork.org