We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents . . .

Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design . . .

We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of a more useful, lasting and democratic form of communication — a mind shift away from product marketing and towards the exploration of a new kind of meaning.

Two decades ago we published our toneshifting update of Ken Garland’s First Things First manifesto — a broadside against advertising, an indictment of the consumerist ideology pushed on designers. A strident call for a “reversal of priorities.”

Over thirty big-shots signed it, including Garland. Then it took off, wobbling the straight-line orthodoxy of graphic design around the world.

Sixty years and three re-writes later, FTF’s maverick legacy has been re-examined in a recent piece for AIGA Eye on Design.

Want to find out what made FTF a “tradition of enduring protest”? Check it out!