• design thinking
• is a
• rebrand
• for
• white supremacy
• darin buzon

For all of the progress proclaimed by evangelists, little has changed from the previous century for design today. This demographic truth, however, reflects a more urgent issue that manifests itself in structures that reify its status quo.

With design becoming one of the most visible professions in the United States, who qualifies to enter its gates is of serious inquiry amidst the deepening socioeconomic divide between Americans. In spite of supposed attempts at diversifying the industry, entry is barred by arbitrary certification, exorbitant costs for design boot camps, and the saturation of work primarily to be reserved in rapidly gentrified urban centers.

The consequences of this phenomenon reveal itself devastating. Communities are uprooted,socio-economic mobility stagnates, and the original society members get pushed to the bottom, even if they are not already neglected into destitute.

This form of colonialism however was never unique to design nor the tech giants which have co-opted it. We have seen in modern history how the extraction of wealth takes many forms: the pillaging of indigenous lands, cultural appropriation, and wage theft which its victims today continue to be under Stockholm syndrome induced by their masters.

Indeed, capitalism and its ruthless operations is nothing new to the United States but design appropriated as an extension to capitalist venture has never actually progressed simply because the tools now live digitally. Thus if design previously faced Modernism’s authoritarian sentiments and was then followed by Design Thinking’s conception, what truly separates the two if not a parent-child relationship?

The prescriptive nature of Modernism never escaped contemporary conversation, rather it became one of many rebrands in the 21st century to co-opt the weaponization of design. Indeed, Modernism has undergone a rebrand and today is marketed as “Design Thinking.”

While Design Thinking has only recently taken the spotlight, its essence takes precedence from the Modernist movement. Pioneer Tim Brown frequently references Modernist practitioners including Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Isamu Noguchi as precursors to the Design Thinking dogma. But at what point of intersection intertwines Modernism to Design Thinking?

Consider firstly the Modernist dogma. In 2019 while teaching a graphic design course at UCLA, book publisher Lars Müller often told his students that as designers we must be above our audience.”Using language familiar to Modernism, Müller was not shy in his convictions towards “educating the masses.”As 2x4 partner Michael Rock puts it, there existed a “missionary zeal” towards modernizing and reforming the masses.

This call towards modernization however extends beyond simply lifestyle choice. With other art movements against its backdrop (i.e. Dadaism, Constructivism), Modernists eventually absorbed many of them into a repackaged brand known historically as the Bauhaus. And as with any branding project, the margins which did not serve its brand were stripped from its significance, flattening a character into the Bauhaus. This colonization of cultural movements and ideas was nothing contradictory to Modernist ideology but in fact essential to its practice.

Whether Vignelli realized his eugenics-adjacent language or not, his belief in the designer’s fight against the ugliness further cemented Modernist practice of erasure and consolidation.