Architecture for Humanity. Project H. Design Corps. Project M. From architecture to product design to graphics, social justice is increasingly playing a role in how and what we create. Designers are expanding the definition of “design” and employing their skills in a host of new ways.
When product designer Emily Pilloton of Project H came to Baltimore in the spring to lecture at MICA, she told the students to become design activists. On her own Web site, she explains why she chooses to employ social design tactics in her work:
We need to challenge the design world to take the ‘product’ out of product design for a second and deliver results and impact rather than form and function; to reconsider who our clients really are; to turn our tightly-cinched consumer business models and luxury aesthetics on their heads; to get over ‘going green;’ and to enlist a new generation of design activists. We need big hearts, bigger business sense, and even bigger balls.
What do you think? How is social justice playing a role in design today? Will it change the way we practice and see design? Where do we go from here?
One Comment
I always think that as designers, we love to have new givens to deal with and play off; new rules for new games.
I don’t see this as necessarily expanding the definition of “design”, either. Think of the alternative usages of the word, as in “to have designs on something”, and even of the way designers use the word “scheme”, as in “Scheme A”, “Scheme B”, etc. We just need to shift the negative emphasis of these words to the positive.
We need to use our schemes and design for good instead of evil.