what does it mean to decolonize design?
daniya
quotes that hit me:
We should aim to eliminate the false distinctions between craft and design, in order to recognize all culturally important forms of making.
“Use Comic Sans, Curlz, Brush Script, Papyrus. Understand why people respond to it. Accept that social constituencies (not clients but constituencies) have made a choice that should be respected instead of ridiculed […] Challenge yourself to dismantle what the (Ivy League?) man has told you is ugly, uncouth, primitive, savage.”
Designers are trained to be chameleons: We shape ourselves to whatever brief comes our way.
To avoid taking charge of another’s narrative, or appropriating what isn’t yours, recognize when a project is not yours to take.
And it’s not just who you work with, but also how you collaborate.
Ultimately, there is no finite end that we’re trying to reach: Decolonization is a process.
“For far too long, designers have remained married to the concept that what we do is neutral, universal, that politics has no place in design,” says Abdulla. Yet the choices we make as designers are intrinsically political: With every design choice we make, there’s the potential to not just exclude but to oppress; every design subtly persuades its audience one way or another and every design vocabulary has history and context.