Your Black History Month reading list

In honor of Black History Month, here are some Black authors who are addressing the persistent issues of inclusion in the modern design era — many are cherished contributors to the Design Observer community. As always, proceeds from book sales support local booksellers and our editorial programs.

Kevin Bethune

Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation (MIT Press, 2022)

A first-person navigation of design, engineering, and corporate America — from Westinghouse to Nike to founding his own consultancy. Bethune, a familiar figure to the Design Observer audience, recounts his journey as a Black professional navigating predominantly white institutions and how his embrace of design became both a tool and a philosophy.

Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction (MIT Press, February 2025)

Bethune’s follow-up work is equally unflinching, while offering a compelling argument for embracing the messy, non-sequential nature of creative and professional life in the pursuit of breakthrough innovation delivered by happier teams leading happier lives.

Charlene Prempeh

Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design — (Prestel, 2024)

Prempeh, founder of the UK-based creative agency A Vibe Called Tech and a contributor to Gucci, Frieze, and others, surveys a century of Black design across fashion, architecture, and graphic design — recovering figures who have been systematically erased from the dominant narratives of design history.

Kaleena Sales

Centered: People and Ideas Diversifying Design Princeton Architectural Press, 2023)

A rich, inclusive, contemporary, and global look at design diversity, past and present, through essays, interviews, and images curated by design educator and advocate Kaleena Sales. Centered advocates for highlighting and giving a voice to the people, places, methods, ideas, and beliefs that have been eclipsed or excluded by dominant design movements. The thirteen essays and interviews in this volume feature important and underrepresented design work and projects, both historical and present-day.

Omari Souza

Design Against Racism: Creating Work That Transforms Communities — Omari Souza (Princeton Architectural Press, 2025)

Omari Souza is the founder of the State of Black Design Conference and a longtime Design Observer collaborator. This debut book builds a case for “restorative design” — borrowing from restorative justice to help practitioners examine the harm embedded in designed objects, services, and spaces and move toward accountability and healing.

An Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design — Edited by Terresa Moses and Omari Souza, foreword by Dori Tunstall (MIT Press, 2023)

A collection of 21 essential essays from a range of Black designers, educators, and activists. It spans the design industry, pedagogy, and activism — and serves as a kind of blueprint for the world that Black designers, whose names we may not know, have been building through their work.

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall

Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook — (MIT Press, 2023, updated 2026)

A landmark field-shaper from OCAD University’s dean — the first Black person to hold a design school deanship anywhere in the world. Weaving memoir, manifesto, and practical framework, Tunstall dismantles the colonial foundations of modernist design and offers a reorientation around Indigenous and Global South knowledge systems. The New York Times Book Review called it essential; Bethune himself called it “a critical addition to the canon.”