Naomi Klein is a journalist and author whose best-selling book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (2000), a criticism of the effects of the 1980s shift from manufacturing to marketing and the increased focus on brand consumption rather than product consumption, garnered international attention. She also highlighted the disparity between the First World’s “lifestyle” of consumption and the realities of production in Developing Nations “sweatshop” conditions.
Many designers, especially students, have been drawn to No Logo, which reflects the profession’s frequent and often strong criticisms of the ethics of production and consumption, as seen in the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris in the nineteenth century and Vance Packard and Victor Papanek in the twentieth.
Klein worked as a journalist for the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, and her study for No Logo took four years and took place in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia. In 2001, she was named the winner of the National Business Book Award for the best business book published in English in Canada. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Globalisation Debate (2002), a collection of articles and talks about the emergence of the global grassroots movement, was published more recently, though it was less directly concerned with design per se.
Sources
Woodham, J. M. (2006). A dictionary of modern design. Oxford University Press.
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