Don’t click that.
Every day, millions of people are nudged, pressured, and tricked by the websites and apps they use. Not through hacking or fraud, but through design. The buttons, checkboxes, and consent screens that fill our digital lives are often built to work against us, steering us toward decisions that benefit companies rather than ourselves.
These techniques have a name: dark patterns. And most people have never heard it.
What is this project?
Transparent by Design: A Public Awareness Campaign on Dark Patterns is a graphic design and digital communication campaign created to help everyday people recognise manipulative design tactics and understand how they work. The campaign’s public-facing slogan, Don’t click that, is a deliberate shift in register from the formal project title: direct, colloquial, and immediately memorable.
The campaign consists of four interconnected outputs:
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An interactive website where you can encounter dark patterns firsthand, not just read about them, but experience them, before having them revealed and explained.
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A physical zine designed to be picked up in libraries, community spaces, and educational settings, giving the campaign a life beyond the screen. Available in both a full-colour professional print version and a high-contrast black and white version for home printing.
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A set of four A2 posters, one campaign overview and one focused on each of the three patterns, for display in public spaces.
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Three Instagram posts that distil each pattern to a single bold statement, designed for a feed rather than a wall.
The three patterns this campaign addresses
Confirmshaming is when the opt-out button is written to make you feel guilty or foolish for saying no.
Misdirection through pre-ticked checkboxes, when a box is already ticked for you, signing you up for something without your conscious input.
Privacy zuckering, when opting out of data sharing, is buried inside a system of toggles, all defaulted on, designed to exhaust you into giving up.
These are not accidents. They are intentional design decisions. This campaign exists to make them visible.
Who made this?
My name is Milo. I am a graphic design student in the final stage of my degree. This project builds on my dissertation research into trust signifiers and ethical UX/UI design in consumer interfaces. It extends that work into a format designed to reach the audiences most affected by dark patterns rather than the designers who study them.
This blog documents the full design journey from initial research through to the final campaign outputs.