Authoritarian by design

The site announcing America’s new design studio is a hot mess. That’s a clue.

President Trump’s recent executive order creates the “America by Design” initiative, which purports to “breath[e] new life into the design of sites where people interface with their Government.” 

It elicited an immediate response from the design community. Starting with critiques of the website itself. 

“How did you manage to fail so epically at making the most basic website?” AmericaByDesign.Fail asks in large font, beneath an undulating upside-down American flag. “Do you know that beautiful design is more than graphics? That it must also be usable, clear, and accessible?” 

Dr. Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, a design anthropologist, consultant, and author of Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook, is one of many design experts who lent their enormous talents to the government over the years. She believes the site is a window into the true intentions of the Trump administration.  

“The America by Design initiative of the current regime undermines the history and real goals of Federal design policy in the United States,” she writes on her Substack. Citing her experience leading a team of experts in producing the first-ever U.S. National Design Policy in 2008, she advises against being misled by the announcement’s design-speak. “With the now over 250 ‘forbidden words’ by the Federal Government, the firing of the highly effective Federal design and engineering teams by DOGE, and the design of the America By Design website itself, it is clear … that the America By Design initiative is not focused on Design for Democratic Governance.”

Web designer Ethan Marcotte shares a similar view. 

Marcotte left the government’s technology and design initiative, 18F, earlier this year, after he became concerned that he would be asked to do things he couldn’t ethically bear. (His should-I-stay-or-go decision matrix is a master class in career management.) The decade-old agency, tasked with developing open-source tools to improve digital services across the government, was his dream job, populated by people who were open, curious, and focused on meeting the needs of a diverse array of users. DOGE eliminated it in March.

Marcotte shared his story on an episode of The Design of Business | The Business of Design podcast this season and made the case for a government redesigned to be efficient and responsive.

“I do find myself like, what is the role of compassionate design right now?” he said. “Because civic technology in 2025 looks a lot different than it did 12 months ago. It’s folks building surveillance technology and thinking about ways to build databases on American citizens.”

Which is part of what got Marcotte’s attention when the government’s wonky website went live.

“I don’t want to get mired in the aesthetics,” he said in a blog post. (They’re grim.) “Let’s look at how the site was built — after all, that’s part of ‘design.’” 

The site is heavy, overbuilt, and expensive to load. Not unusual. “But imagine you’re one of the millions of Americans on a prepaid ‘pay as you go’ plan, or on a home network with capped, limited data.” This is a page that is too expensive for plenty of people to view.

If it can be viewed at all. 

Marcotte ticks through the myriad issues that people with a wide array of disabilities may have in navigating the site. “Creating a single page with literally hundreds of accessibility errors will exclude anyone who doesn’t conform to the designer’s narrow definition of ‘a user.’”

Which leads him back to the future.

To believe that this initiative is about design is to willfully ignore the work that has gone before, much of which was improving government services in meaningful ways. (Marcotte cites the United States Web Design System, United States Digital Service, and 18F; Design Observer has covered government design in safety and accessibility here and in tax filing here.)

Marcotte offers a darker perspective.

“I don’t think it’s an accident that a simple-looking ‘America by Design’ page is built the way it is. It’s communicating their priorities, and how this government wants to redefine design,” he says.  

“The authoritarian impulse — to erase histories, to control a narrative, to single-mindedly focus on image and aesthetics — shapes not just the site’s text, but its design as well,” he continues “Its text erases the history and work of the people who quietly labored to create better digital services for the public; in their place, it proposes that one man alone can define ‘design’ for the country” 

He suggests that the design community take what the administration is communicating very seriously. “We find that new definition in the way the site’s constructed: it is digital design intended for the privileged few, one that actively excludes people who don’t conform to a specific, discriminatory definition of ‘eligible.’”

Go deeper:

How can design heal and repair?  “Design’s superpower is its ability to open up other possibilities of how we do things, and see things, and experience things in a way that helps people decide: ‘Ah, this pathway might be better,’” says Dory Tunstall on Season 10 of DBBD.

Meeting Ethan Marcott and remembering Sylvia Harris. Ethan Marcotte shares more details about his experience and his hope for compassionate design. I also share the incredible true story of Sylvia Harris, the graphic designer-turned-educator who created the fields of citizen-centered design and public interest design, and changed so many lives in ways we may never know.

The public needs designers now, more than ever. Ashleigh Axios explains how design improves government systems. “These efforts increasingly rely on human-centered, research-informed, and citizen-centric processes. From government websites to medical facilities and assistance programs, the goal is to meet the needs of all those who rely on them while fostering appropriate confidence in public systems.”

Redesigning tax filing for equity and efficiency. After years of effort, the government launched IRS Direct File, a new tool that allowed taxpayers to file directly with the government. “Improving the U.S. tax system is not just a matter of modernizing government systems — it’s a matter of justice,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado, the executive director of Florida Rising, a nonpartisan political organization focused on marginalized voters.