Design is politics

This week, I do not have the strength to elaborate on the various things that have gone at work because my headspace has been completely overwhelmed by the murder of an ICU nurse by border patrol officers in Minneapolis (300 miles from the actual US border). I am worried about family members who live across the river in St Paul, Minnesota. The US, the country I grew up in and for which I still hold a valid passport, is undergoing a state-sponsored campaign of terror against its own citizens under the explicit direction of the executive branch. Talking about design today seems petty, but thinking about what is happening in the US made me think about why I do the job I do in the UK.

Years ago, when I was still a graphic designer working in New York, I had a few formative encounters that led me to understanding how design could be in the service of the public good. I came across little magazines (e.g. Dot Dot Dot) that presented a view of the world in which designed objects could represent intellectual positions. A world in which reading critical theory was a good use of time for people making posters about art exhibitions because design could imbue the world with meanings that ran deeper than surface aesthetics. Or at least that is how I understood it. Having been fed a diet of high modernism and postmodernism while being trained as a graphic designer, the idea that design could be a political act, that it could bring a world into being, seemed right. In practice, it was always hard to directly connect this ideal with the things I was making, but I wanted it to be true.

Today, I work for NHS England, an arms-length body of the Department for Health and Social Care. I haven’t always worked for the public sector, but I sought out this work because I wanted to apply my knowledge and skills to a domain that felt worthwhile, one that didn’t seem like it would contribute to the further enshittification of everything. I continue to choose to work here, despite all of the ways the organisation makes the work harder than it needs to be, because it is the place where I feel that I can best add to society through design.

I believe that design is a political act. I feel this in my bones. I am fond of the expression “strong opinions, weakly held,” but this is one idea that I will go to my grave holding firm. What we put into the world, as action or artefact, is how the world is made. Design is a way of engaging with the greater conversation of how to live together on a planet with limited resources. Design is thus politics.

I have plenty of interesting, difficult work to do at my job, and I’m thankful for it because the world is horrible right now. I’m glad I have a distraction that has a good and noble purpose. As a recently-minted UK citizen, I’m glad I don’t need to go back to where I grew up. I don’t know how I would remain sane if I did. I am fortunate enough to be able to contribute to the great endeavour that is the NHS, a collective project that represents more-or-less the exact opposite of what I see happening in the US right now. The daily work on this project is a salve against horror. I hope my small contribution to the public good can move the needle. It may not, but the choice of where to apply effort is really all I can control. With everything going on in the world, this choice is one small way to try to change the world.