The Ethics of Design, article by Debora Manetti
We are used to thinking of identity as something we inherit: a place of birth, a mother tongue, a geography that precedes us. But perhaps identity is not a point on a map. It is a moment. As Marguerite Yourcenar writes in Memoirs of Hadrian, our native place is not necessarily where we were born, but where, for the first time, a conscious gaze falls upon oneself. A moment of recognition. Of presence. From this perspective, identity is not a boundary, but a relationship; not a flag, but a disposition to listen. It is something that happens between us and others.
"Letters are never neutral: they carry stories, accents, memories. They move across cultures and contexts, shaping how meaning is perceived, shared, and remembered."
Those who work with visual design and identities, especially in typography, inhabit precisely this in-between space. Letters are never neutral: they carry stories, accents, memories. They move across cultures and contexts, shaping how meaning is perceived, shared, and remembered. Every alphabet is a small cultural architecture, an intimate space to be inhabited. By shaping these signs, designers translate many different ideas of what feels normal — notions that vary across languages, countries, families, and levels of self-awareness.
This is why letter shapes and design can become a bridge: because through form, it mediates difference rather than erasing it. In shaping these signs, designers influence how people relate to ideas, to one another, and to themselves — how they feel welcomed or excluded, recognised or overlooked.
In this sense, design is never just about form or function. It is a practice of care. And care, in its many dimensions, belongs to the broad and complex meaning of kindness. Fight for Kindness was born from this realisation—and from a sense of urgency.
From the need to bring the creative industry one step closer to social responsibility at a time of profound cultural and ethical crisis. In a world where values are increasingly fragile, accelerated, and often reduced to slogans, kindness is not a soft concept, but a necessary one. Yet kindness resists simple definitions.
To promote a culture of kindness, the first step is learning how to understand it—not as a single gesture, but as an extended concept that touches every dimension of our experience as human beings.
THE FOUR KINDS OF KINDNESS
1. Kindness is the way we relate to the world we inhabit
It is present in how we care for the planet, in the responsibility we take toward all forms of life, present and future. Every sustainable choice, every effort to protect and preserve our environment, acknowledges our place within a larger ecosystem.
2. Kindness for humanity as whole through inclusivity, justice, and collective care
It takes shape in the willingness to create social spaces where people feel valued, respected, and allowed to belong. Strong communities are not built through sameness, but through attention to difference.
3. Bringing kindness into our relationships, with those close to us—friends, colleagues, families
In listening, respecting, and supporting others, even when patience is required. Often, it is in these small, everyday interactions that kindness reveals its most transformative power.
4. And kindness is also what we owe to ourselves
Taking care of our physical and mental well-being, setting boundaries, and allowing ourselves to rest and grow are not acts of selfishness, but acts of awareness. Self-kindness allows care to remain sustainable rather than exhausting.
It is a fact that living with kindness is not always easy. Even the smallest intentional acts require awareness, effort, and persistence. What often surprises us is how demanding it can be to practice kindness within cultures that privilege simplification, arrogance and easy solutions. That is why we are called to fight for it. Fight not to simplify complexity, but simply to do our part, while respecting the points of view of others: to recognise the world's challenges and commit, however modestly, to contributing to positive change.
So, in a time that demands speed, designing consciously becomes an act of resistance. Thinking of design not only as aesthetics, but as ethics of form, means choosing what to make visible, what to make legible, what to make human. To pause to remember ourselves that we are humans. Because if we are just a tiny spinning dot in the middle of the Milky Way, if all things are destined to change, then what defines us is not what we leave behind, but how we choose to be present.
Perhaps this is the deepest role of design: not to change the world alone, but to remind us, with kindness, that we are part of it — here, now, together with others.
This article is part of the Visual Voices for Change 2025 Fight for Kindness Annual book
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