Designing for Dissent

Explore how design as a practice is a revolutionary force.

Featuring Guest Editor Rania Adwan, The Dissent Issue explores how creative resistance, spatial justice, and intentional refusal intersect with design to challenge failing institutional systems. Featured topics include art and performance as a medium for protest, confronting systemic racism in architecture, and community-led advocacy in disability and care.

“Every day, as designers, we shape how people move through the world—the systems they navigate, the messages they receive, the spaces they inhabit. Today, those systems are failing spectacularly. Rights are disappearing. Communities are under siege. Violence is being normalized. But here’s the thing: design is everywhere power operates, and therefore resistance lives everywhere.“

— Rania Adwan, From the Editor.

The Dissent Issue features:

• Navigating collective grief, resistance, and the power of dissent through vulnerability by Anna Johannes;
• Unpacking race, inequity, and public interventions in the built environment by Jacquelyn Ogorchukwu Iyamah;
• The visual strategies and graphic histories of social movements by Melissa Casburn;
• Resistance to the physical world through the digital space by Corrina Espinosa & Molly Valentine Dierks;
• The role of art and design as levers of political resistance by Nick Cheney of Blackfish Gallery;
• Care as dissent, wherein individuals become “positive deviants” within existing systems by Rachael Dietkus, LCSW;
• An excerpt from Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area by Rae Alexandra of KQED;
• Play as a tool for civic dissent, social equity, and community empowerment by Ryan Swanson and Maeghann Coleman of The Urban Conga;
• Resilience as an active discipline in the face of ongoing systemic challenges by Tracy Swyst;
• The Palette of Dissent: An Introduction to Emergent Dynamics by Tyfahra Singleton Milele, PhD;
• A visual examination of design strategies to support protest movements by Tyler Galloway;
• The value of disagreement for driving fresh perspectives, stronger bonds, and sharper decision-making by Zoe Donaldson of The Ready;
• A digital platform documenting and amplifying the work of DC-based Black artists and designers by Eden Elam.

Purchase The Dissent Issue and/or subscribe to Unfold to receive stories about creative thought leaders who are using design to change the world.