Promoting Sustainable Skills in Communication Design using Self-Regulatory Advertising Codes to Evaluate Green Label Attributes

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_34How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Design Curriculum; Green Labels; Green Advertisements; Packaging; Self-Regulatory Advertising Codes; Sustainable Communication Design

Abstract

Advertising codes set out by advertising self-regulatory bodies regulate advertising practices and keep advertisements honest, truthful, and decent contributing to sustainable development. These self-regulatory advertising codes can act as ethical guidelines by which designers can assess visual communication materials. This study reflects on this process and demonstrates the use of advertising codes as an instrument in design ethics related to specifically green advertisements. This study thus aims to investigate self-regulatory advertising codes and how these codes can address the potential phenomenon of misleading presentations in green advertisements. Thirty rulings about misleading green advertising claim complaints between 2014 and 2019 were reviewed. The scope of the review includes environmental claims and labelling design-related cases. The study focuses on two case studies, determining if designers complied with the advertising codes while developing green advertising material. The study finds that inconsistent design variables may mislead a consumer. Designers should be able to avoid misleading consumers if they subscribe to self-regulatory advertising codes as an ethical guide. This study also found that misleading claims may emanate from the misuse of design elements to represent the green characteristics of a product. In conclusion, this study argues that advertising self-regulatory codes should be every designer’s primary point of departure and the finishing point for conducting an advertising material’s compliance assessment. Therefore, self-regulatory advertising codes should be incorporated to design curricula to promote sustainable skills in design practice.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - O. A. Ojo
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/11/06
TI  - Promoting Sustainable Skills in Communication Design using Self-Regulatory Advertising Codes to Evaluate Green Label Attributes
BT  - Proceedings of the 10th Focus Conference (TFC 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 514
EP  - 528
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_34
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_34
ID  - Ojo2023
ER  -