Colonizer to Creator

For all of the progress proclaimed by evangelists, little has changed from the previous century for design today. Designers still are overwhelmingly white with most executive positions continuing to be occupied by the 36% minority of men within the industry. This demographic truth, however, reflects a more urgent issue that manifests itself in structures that reify its status quo.

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, socioeconomic mobility stagnates, and the original community members get pushed to the bottom, if not already neglected into destitute.

TThis 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.

Instead, the current state of design is simply the digitally updated version of Eurocentric design doctrine and practice. 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.”

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.”

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.

Consider sentiments many Modernists were vocal about. The Italian graphic designer Massimo Vignelli often is cited as defending the practice of using only four typefaces and disparaging “visual pollution.” 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.

To view a certain collection of typefaces as the essential tool kit for typography immediately excludes billions of people as mentioned. Furthermore, should anyone outside of Europe need to use Latin characters, it is thanks to the complicated history of Western imperialism and the violent destruction of indigenous cultures. This history is endemic to Modernism and canonized itself into the popularly known institution as the International Style.

What tie Modernism and Design Thinking so frighteningly close was the shared sentiment of catering to the “needs of humanity” and “centering the human in the design process.” Yet this assertion inevitably becomes empty since no single design approach can ever truly be universal or wholly ubiquitous to any one human experience.

By bankrupting design through “neutrality” or “universal humanness,” making judgments through an ocean of sticky notes drowns cultural implications from its purview. The incessant insistence that “design is human” or that “design empathizes with the user” not only plays into white supremacist defaults of a user/human but also creates a carefully constructed lexicon which persuades lay people that design is a nonnegotiable product intended to be sold whether or not some lay people may fit the target audience to be served.

By evangelizing a monotheistic devotion for Design Thinking, the jurisdiction for design expands as Design Thinkers may now colonize anything as a “design problem” to be solved. Like evangelism during the Age of Discovery, Design Thinking becomes the gospel in which all other design methodologies are inferior. A different flavor of colonialism, Design Thinking and its missionaries seek to eradicate opposing mythologies to establish itself as supreme and all-encompassing through missions (bootcamps) and plenary indulgences (certification).

This self-righteousness that comes with being a Design Thinker consequently privileges the designer above anyone else. The result is a profession of narcissists deepening class stratification by standardizing Design Thinking jargon as a metric for gatekeeping and producing an artificial need that clients ought to hire for.