3 | Part of me, a Design Activist.

3 | Part of me, a Design Activist.

In last 7 years of my life in Bangkok and New York City, I’ve enrolled in two design schools, had internships with art and design focused companies, attended design industry social events and volunteered in design-related sustainability efforts. One of my most life-changing experiences that introduced me to the idea of design activism was when I volunteered for the recycled material product development project of Warm Heart Worldwide in a northern province of Thailand. While there, I developed friendship with people who were both Thai and from overseas, who were truly motivated and kind-hearted to help the local hill-tribe people achieve and sustain a better quality of life. After my volunteering experience ended, my commitment to improving communities with sustainable art projects continued and the opportunity to initiate similar initiatives in the United States has provided even more motivation.

From my perspective, design activism is a driving force from a group of people who may come from different design industries but share similar motivations to help people. The design group collaborates with each other, forming connections that develop practical outputs, usually ideology or products. These outputs can help humanity with improving and sustaining a better quality of life and influence other people outside of their group to consider about how they can create initiatives that serve the same purpose.

Great articles about reaching sustainability goals though design activism are Ann Thorpe’s ‘Defining Design as Activism’ and Fuad-Luke’s ‘Design Activism’, which reinforce each others’ ideas. One important point they discuss is framing the problem. The world’s sustainability problems are numerous and affect almost all industries. Framing the challenging issue will help design activists contextualize their goals and target the factors that contribute to the issue, allowing them to proceed with the project more efficiently and successfully. Another important idea discussed in the articles is positing comprehensive sustainability as an ultimate goal. 

After the advent of narrower web-based communication channels caused information to become filtered by a select few—ie social media companies, mass media conglomerates, etc.—Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, created globalvoiceonline.org with the objective of maintaining diverse and straightforward dissemination of information. This form of design activism creates digital channels that bridge ideas and cultures across the globe in a general sense, and can be used specifically by design activists to achieve industry sustainability goals through internationally collaborative efforts.

From Zuckerman’s TED talk about 'Listening to global voices', I’m glad to be one of those bridging activists who are committed to improving communities and encouraging others to do the same. I have contributed to the goal of comprehensive sustainability with projects that utilized my interdisciplinary creative skills—such as using recycled material and helping coordinate local crafts maker and vendors—and hope to design more in the future.