Inclusion

The Editors
Advocacy
At its core, advocacy is an art of creative benevolence: to advocate for someone (or something) is at once an act of generosity and a form of compassion, a mark of conscience and an expression of citizenship.



On Fighting the Typatriarchy
"My intent was to make a typeface that stands for the strength of a woman at different times in her life. In Indian culture, a woman is expected to be the powerhouse of responsibilities." An excerpt from Feminist Designer.


Cindy Chastain, Jessica Helfand, Ellen McGirt, Lee Moreau
Design Observer x Mastercard
For three days in March, we gathered with some sixty people—designers and scholars, social entrepreneurs and independent consultants, creative leaders and senior practitioners from across a range of industries—to discuss the current state of everything from collaboration and craft to cultural transformation, technological innovation, and the social and systemic changes impacting the ways we live and work.


Don Norman
Design for a Better World
An excerpt from Don Norman’s new book, Design for a Better World.


Dana Arnett, Kevin Bethune
S10E12: Decolonizing Design
Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook is a guidebook to the institutional transformation of design theory and practice by restoring the long-excluded cultures of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities.


Daniella Zalcman
What We See
The inaugural book from Women Photograph, What We See, is a broad survey that represents the equally broad careers of our members.


Dana Arnett, Kevin Bethune
S10E6: Richard Ting
Richard Ting is the Vice President of Design for Revenue at Twitter.


Sloan Leo, Lee Moreau
The Futures Archive S2E10: The Automatic Door
The automatic door is a part of most peoples everyday lives, and certainly considered a convenience. But when you walk up to one does it feel magical? Futuristic? Frustrating? On this episode, Lee Moreau and Sloan Leo discuss the automatic door, and how we can design thresholds of all kinds to be inviting to all people.


Sloan Leo, Lee Moreau
The Futures Archive S2E3: The Blender
Do you have a blender? Do you use it? Does it make your life more convenient? On this episode of The Futures Archive Lee Moreau and Sloan Leo discuss the blender, gender roles, and power structures.


Sloan Leo
The Infrastructure of Care: Community Design, Healing & Organizational Post-Traumatic Growth
This essay interrogates the relationship between power, decision-making, and organizational healing. It asserts that community design as a practice offers a theoretical framework for organizational dynamic healing that structurally enables those harmed to set the pace and nature of resolution and repair.


Maurice Cherry
Make the Path by Talking
The Birth of Revision Path: The year is 2006.


adrienne maree brown + Lesley-Ann Noel
This Is Our Time!
adrienne maree brown on design, liberation and transformation as told to Lesley-Ann Noel.


The Editors
Ritesh Gupta + Useful School
Useful School is the world’s first pay-what-you-can online product design school for people of color.


Lee Moreau + Grace Jun
The Futures Archive S1E5: The Uniform
On this episode of The Futures Archive designer Lee Moreau and this episode’s guest host, Grace Jun, discuss the notion of a uniform, and the importance of inclusivity in human-centered design.


Jessica Helfand + Ellen McGirt
S9E10: Quemuel Arroyo
Quemuel Arroyo is the first ever chief accessibility officer at the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority.


The Editors
Terms of Service: June 2021
In advance of this weekend’s second annual Where Are The Black Designers conference, we are pleased to share this interview with some of their members.


Connect 4
Min Lew and Zaiah Sampson: Finding Your Creative Voice
Feeling confident in yourself and your work—especially when you’re still a student—can be a challenge.


Connect 4
Kojo Boateng and Brian Jean: Making Decisions, Making Your Mark
Brian Jean and Koto Boateng talk about decision-making as a creative, about being a Black designer, today and in the past—and why now is a great time to enter the design world.


Kaleena Sales
Teaching Black Designers
The vibrant complexities of the urban landscape create visual impressions in the mind, eventually serving as a mental library of stored images to use or reference when necessary.


Ellen Lupton
Confidence Equity
Are we born with confidence, or do we earn it? If we don’t have it, how can we get it?


Connect 4
Victor Newman and Ana Amaro: Becoming an Animator
In this episode, hear student Ana Amaro and her mentor, creative director Victor Newman talk about how they each found their calling and first encountered their animated favorites.


Connect 4
Natasha Jen and Adnan Bishtawi: How Do You Survive as a Designer?
How can you stay inspired, make great work, take care of yourself—and still pay the bills?


Connect 4
Forest Young and Sakinah Bell: Follow Your Curiosity, Find Your Inspiration
Finding joy, purpose, and personal evolution through creation.


Connect 4
Eddie Opara and Tyriq Moore: How Do You Build Knowledge as a Designer?
How learning and discovering new things is at the heart of being a good designer.


Connect 4
Man-Wai Cheung and Angel Blanco: “Mom, Dad, I Want to Be a Designer”
Man-Wai Cheung, founder and creative director of Adolescent and design student Angel Blanco, talk about choosing a creative career as first generation immigrants—and how they each explained that choice to their parents.


Harriet Gridley
Terms of Service: March Edition
Harriet Gridley, UK director of No Isolation, makes the case for a technological solution to loneliness.


Laetitia Wolff
Design is Capital: Five Lessons I Learned from Lille
Useful ingredients to bring design to cities.


Isometric Studio
Terms of Service: November Edition
Providing tangible steps to rethink institutions from the ground up and examine meaningful alternatives.


George Aye
How We Shook Up the World’s Oldest Student Design Competition
A story in Design Observer started a life-changing collaboration between the RSA in London and a small design studio in Chicago, Illinois.


Jessica Helfand + Ellen McGirt
S8E4: Ari Melenciano
Ari Melenciano is an artist, creative technologist, educator, and the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution fostering interdisciplinary innovation.


Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel
Terms of Service: October Edition
I got a bit quieter and listened a bit more, noting blindspots about critical theory, pedagogy, identity, and inclusivity. As I listened, I researched critical theory, anthropology, and social justice concepts I thought could improve the kinds of conversations I was hearing.


Debbie Millman
Maurice Cherry
On this episode, Debbie talks with Maurice Cherry about his education and career, and about why the profession of graphic design has been so slow to acknowledge Black designers.



Scott Boylston
Design, Belonging, and Human Capabilities
The space between what we hope to achieve in our lives and the realization of those desires is riddled with contradiction and confrontation.


Scott Boylston
Human Capabilities and Design
Blindness to social injustice doesn’t diminish its existence.


Steven Heller
Tolerance: Spreading the Word
THE TOLERANCE PROJECT is a traveling poster collection that celebrates and honors the starting point of all meaningful discourse: tolerance.


Laura Scherling
A Tale of Long Island City: Between Industrialization, Innovation, and Gentrification
The multi-faceted aspects of development in Long Island City, with creative and technological development deeply ingrained in it’s rich urban identity and history.


Steven Heller
Closing New York’s Penal Colony
How design is playing an integral role in the campaign to close Rikers Island.



Observed


The Female Design Council names a new director: Angharad Coates previously served as director of communications at the New York Academy of Art and was most recently a managing partner at Camron, a design-focused public relations agency.

Designing better (and more inclusive) (and more innovative) meetings.

"It’s interesting, highly random, and even has the excitement of gambling and card drawing." A designer uses MidJourney to explore new dimensions in typography. 

As the talent pool for luxury artisans in Europe dwindles, fashion brand LVMH has created a unique apprenticeship program in the US in partnership with Tiffany & Co., the  Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, the trade school Studio Jewelers, and RISD. “We are teaching the next generation of craftspeople how important the details are,” says Dana Naberezny, chief innovation officer of jewelry at Tiffany and head of its workshop in Manhattan.

Loon-loving Minnesotans, this is your last chance.

Hundreds of documents related to chattel slavery — including wills that bequeathed enslaved people to relatives —have been discovered among probate records in Fulton County, Ga. "We were able to uncover some interesting stories about slave owners," says Chief Probate Judge Kenya Johnson. "A story that I hadn’t heard before: Slave owners paid for their slaves to go back to Africa."

Due to climate change, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been forced to update its "plant hardiness zone map," an essential tool for gardeners (and anyone wondering why native plants are dying.)

Russia’s Supreme Court has banned "the international LGBT public movement," calling it an extremist organization.

There’s another Mona Lisa. Or is there?

Michael Latt, a film marketing consultant who had become a beacon for social justice, was murdered by an intruder in his Los Angeles home. Latt, 33, was the founder and CEO of Lead With Love, a social impact marketing agency that deftly married activism and art. His collaborators included directors Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, and Barry Jenkins.

Save the date: Riyadh, the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been selected to host the 2030 World Expo, according to the Bureau International des Expositions.  "Expo 2030 Riyadh, The Era of Change: Together for a Foresighted Tomorrow,” will run between October 2030 and March 2031.

Acclaimed American photographer Larry Fink, the self-described “Marxist from Long Island,” has died at 82. His black-and-white photographs ranged from portraits of working-class people to the entertainment elite. “He was a dear friend and a free spirit,” said his longtime gallerist, Robert Mann.

Uh, what’s wrong with networking? The COP28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber is facing accusations that his team has been using this year’s climate convening as an opportunity to make fossil fuel deals for the UAE’s state-owned oil and gas company, allegations he vehemently denies.

New data from McKinsey & Co. show companies are no longer promoting Black professionals into leadership jobs at the rate they were two years ago. And that’s a problem. “If you were borderline committed, you’ve just kind of exhaled and retreated,” said Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work, a research and consulting firm.

It may surprise you to learn that £88 billion of UK pension savers' money is invested in fossil fuels. Still unconvinced? Climate deniers, meet Oblivia Coalmine

A Japanese economist, Tatsuyoshi Saijo is at the forefront of the Future Design movement, which aims to figure out how to get the world to care more about future generations. He is one of the fifty individuals shortlisted on Vox's Future Perfect list—identifying the  thinkers, activists, and scholars working on solutions to today’s (and tomorrow’s) biggest problems.

We are all redesigners, now—or at least we're all becoming engaged design critics. In the US, Kansas citizens reject their state's proposed new license plate design (claiming, among other things, that it looks too much like New York's plate) while in the UK, residents of Gloucester dispute the design of a Covid memorial. 

Every front page in the New York Times—since 1852.

Design thinking has missed the mark, says Anne-Laure Fayard and Sarah Fathallah in this must-read piece in the Stanford Social Review. “We reject design thinking as a singular tool kit prescribed to solve social problems,” in part because, it has failed to do so. “Instead, we call for a critical stance on design, where critical means both discerning and important.”

The United States, Britain and more than a dozen other countries on Sunday unveiled what a senior U.S. official described as the first detailed international agreement on how to keep artificial intelligence safe from rogue actors, pushing for companies to create AI systems that are "secure by design." .

Dasha Tsapenko is one of a growing number of designers growing clothing from mycellium. (More here.) 

A brief respite of eye candy: this exquisite scrapbook—with typography made from matchboxes, dating from 1875—will bring you a rare moment of analogue joy. (Thanks to Debbie Millman for sharing it!)

Design Observer's approach to paying it forward includes supporting big dreams for those who deserve to see those dreams become a reality. (Spoiler alert: you won't find any “top fifty gifts for creatives” lists here this, or any holiday season.) Instead, we'll be sharing ideas over the next few weeks for ways that you can help someone else. Start here.

South African designer Thebe Magugu incorporates vintage (family) photos into a new line of clothing. (Read more about the Heirloom Shirt Project here.)

Remembering George Tscherny, the graphic design powerhouse whose work defined a post-war golden age of corporate growth, innovation, and consumerism.

The US government has published its Fifth National Climate Assessment, an interagency effort to provide a scientific foundation for policymaking and interventions. While there has been some progress, the current report has dire predictions on the adverse health effects of climate change and the unequal burdens some communities face. (See also the  United Nations Emissions Gap Report.)

"People who wouldn't drink in a social setting because they were embarrassed at having to drink out of a plastic cup —now they can use a mug like everyone else in the room and they don't feel like they're having to use a medical aid." A British potter designs inclusive mugs

Kyle Vogt, the CEO of Cruise, General Motors' autonomous vehicle unit, has stepped down amid serious concerns about the operational safety of the self-driving cars.

Ready to take on the ultimate challenge? Help shape the technology poised to change the world by taking your turn as CEO of OpenAI.

When only 9% of plastics in the Western world are recycled, how do you create change? One designer has an idea about how to tackle waste—our most egregious design flaw—beginning with housewares. 



Jobs | November 30