Thread by @LindaDouniaR

I started working on 'even by design' to heal creatively. Design, today, is predominantly an instrument to enact white modernist ideals. I have had to shed my heritage for the privilege of being called a designer. This is a brief story of how I came to question this privilege.

I didn't go to design school because I didn't know that designers existed. That is not to say that image-making, fabrication, or invention didn't exist where I was from.
There were just named differently. And the people who did them were called artisans or artists.

So I stumbled upon design quite accidentally. A colleague who had gone to design school told me that the way I crafted curriculum and the way I taught my statistics class reminded him of design thinking. So I looked it up.

It was easy to fall in love with design thinking because it is a sexy and uncomplicated framework for saving the world. I was younger then and the idea of saving the world appealed to me. I wasn't too concerned about what saving meant or who was to be saved.

After a few years of freelancing for my friends as a graphic and UX designer, which I learned online, I got my first job in a global design agency. It was a dream come true. I felt like I could finally call myself a designer.

The excitement of joining quickly gave way to overwhelming self-doubt. I felt like an imposter. I didn't speak or dress like a designer. I didn't know any of the modernist gods. And what my (largely white) colleagues thought was good or beautiful felt foreign to me.

As a black woman with practice existing in spaces that make me feel small, I learned to adapt. I infused more monochrome and grids into my life. I reformated my taste to see what my colleagues saw. In no time, I was blending in, but never quite enough.

I remember my managers using the word 'potential' every time they gave me feedback. 'You have so much potential' is indirectly 'You are not quite there yet'. But the more I internalised the western canon in my work, the closer I got to realizing this 'potential' in their eyes.

My professional success became commensurate with the extent of my whitewashing. There is quiet but unquestionable violence in this when so much of my self worth as a creative is derived from what I make. I wondered how many other designers felt the kind of loss I experienced.

That's how 'even by design' started - to heal my creativity first, then to historicise design and understand how it came to support white supremacy. I also wanted to explore how design could reflect the multiplicity of creative perspectives outside the confines of whiteness.

S/O to the @figmadesign for giving a platform to its community during #config2021. I had no idea how much 'even by design' would resonate with other designers because, for a long time, I felt like the problem was with me, not the industry.

special s/o to @miggi & @_AnaBoyer 🙌🏽

So many people are already using the first chapter of the toolkit, Liberation, which focuses on creative healing. The next chapter, Expansion, will explore how design can be a conservation tool for indigenous image-making and fabrication systems.

figma.com/community/file…

The recording of the #config2021 talk will be shared in a month, but you can browse the presentation slides here in the meantime:
figma.com/proto/Patuy0xy…

If you want to follow the 'even by design' journey, you can sign up below. In my next post, I explore how design education works and methods of unlearning for designers of colour.

evenbydesign.substack.com/welcome