Design Impact

Ellen McGirt

Your Black History Month reading list

Sithara Ranasinghe|Analysis

‘Adulterations Detected:’ on the human impulse to prettify our food with poison

Alexis Haut|Education

‘Thoughts & Prayers’ & bulletproof desks: Jessica Dimmock and Zackary Canepari on filming the active shooter preparedness industry

Phil Gilbert Irresistible Change Cover One

Ellen McGirt|Books

No mandates, only opportunities: IBM's Phil Gilbert on rethinking change

Louisa Eunice|Essays

The afterlife of souvenirs: what survives between culture and commerce?

Sanaphay Rattanavong|Design and Climate Change

The prepper’s palette: designing for collapse in a culture of control

Upside down national flag of the USA waving in the wind

Ellen McGirt|Analysis

Authoritarian by design

The “America by Design” initiative proposes that one man alone can define “design” for the country.

Alexis Haut|Analysis

Say it with your chest: WNBA players fight for pay and justice on their t-shirts

Earning just 9% of league revenue, WNBA players are demanding fair pay. Their protest t-shirts are changing how sports activism looks today.

Chantal Flores|Analysis

GenAI art is enlivening the search for Mexico’s disappeared

Families who’ve lost loved ones to the country’s decades-long Drug War are turning to an unlikely source to reenergize search efforts: ‘Ghiblified’ AI art.

Rebecca Billi|Analysis

Cop cities and covert communes: how architecture shapes urban conflict

Friction is inevitable, but urban practitioners have a say in whether it builds or destroys cities.

Seher Anand|Essays

Food branding without borders: chai, culture, and the politics of packaging

280 million people live outside their homelands. A new generation of brand designers is stepping up to foster cultural exchange — not extraction — across diasporas.