Design Is Not Neutral

By: Grace Hamilton
  • Summary

  • Design is Not Neutral is a podcast built from a thesis project. As a present design master's student at the University of Notre Dame, I began a broader inquiry into the way design as a field was built and the way we now teach design. After doing more research, it became clear - that design in the United States has a diversity problem. The roots of our diversity issue are squarely in how we define and teach Graphic Design. Graphic Design was made for white, cis-gendered, able-bodied men in consumer-driven societies. With this foundation, how we determine what is ‘good design’ has become extremely exclusionary. Yet, despite increased conversation around equity, design education has yet to dramatically change. The designers and design educators interviewed on Design is Not Neutral have all deeply researched the field of design education in order to improve our field. This podcast will not only provide listeners with resources on how to challenge their own perceptions of what design has been defined by, it will also provide concrete examples of how this work is being done in classrooms. I hope you enjoy each conversation as much as I did and if you liked Design is Not Neutral please check us out on Instagram.
    Grace Hamilton 2022
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Episodes
  • 08. Leslie Harris
    Mar 23 2023
    Leslie Harris (she/her) is a Senior Product Designer originally from Detroit, MI and currently based in Austin, TX. Leslie has spent the majority of her career working in an agency setting and at startups spanning the world of adtech, healthcare, logistics and fintech. Her focus as a designer includes understanding how to build graceful and ethical solutions for sociological and cultural problems we face today and potential problems in the future. Inspired by the human condition, Leslie loves digging into problems in the hopes of creating relevant and highly adoptable experiences for the groups that need it most.In addition to her professional experience, Leslie is also a recent graduate from Texas State University's Communication Design Graduate Program. During her studies, she explored how design functions as a mechanism for business and society and the socioeconomic impacts it has on the Black community.Join us as we discuss what it means to have an ethical design practice, how to teach design ethics and history, and what the future of design education looks like for the next generation of students.
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    42 mins
  • 07. Nika Fisher
    Feb 9 2023

    Nika Simovich Fisher is a Serbian-born, American-raised graphic designer, writer, and educator based in New York. Her written work explores how design and identity overlap, and highlights underreported voices in internet and design history. Her words have appeared in publications including The New York Times and AIGA Eye on Design. In 2018, she co-founded Labud, a design studio specializing in strategy, branding, and web design for clients across fashion, art, and tech. She is an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Parsons School of Design, and previously taught at The University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University. Nika holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Journalism School, and a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design.

    Join us as we discuss teaching web design and how the rise in user experience design and accessibility needs have shifted the way we think about the internet.

    Please also check out some of Nika's latest work including a lecture at Parsons and a story on AIGA Eye on Design.

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    36 mins
  • 06. Bobby Joe Smith III
    Nov 28 2022

    Bobby Joe Smith III is a Black and Lakota (Hunkpapa and Oohenumpa) graphic designer and media artist. Design, computation, performance, writing, and lens-based image-making are mediums of expression and inquiry he turns to often. His creative practice is rooted in the ongoing decolonial and abolitionist movements led by Indigenous communities on Turtle Island and across the Black diaspora. His research draws from the decolonial, abolitionist, and post-apocalyptic strategies of Black and Indigenous people to construct a poetic vernacular of "unsettling grammars"—gestures, methodologies, and utterances that deviate, disrupt, and dismantle settler-colonial systems. By rearticulating these "unsettling grammars" through the disciplines of media art and design, Bobby Joe seeks to reveal vectors leading toward decolonial futures and generate work that resonates with the people and movements that comprise his community. He currently is pursuing an MFA from UCLA’s Design | Media Arts department and holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Middlebury College.

    In this episode, listen as we discuss how Bobby Joe utilizes design to uplift his community and how we can encourage students to think about design in a way that is meaningful to them.

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    1 hr and 10 mins

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