people organizing creative and tech workers, talking about political conditions, and/or rethinking applied creative work
Organizations
Allied Media Projects is based in Detroit, they cultivate media for liberation.
Architecture Lobby is working for labor, democracy and justice in architecture.
Game Workers Coalition is a communication network for worker-led labour organizations and unions in the games industry (formerly Game Workers Unite).
Tech Workers Coalition organizes to build worker power through rank & file self-organization and education for an inclusive & equitable tech industry.
Art.coop is building a solidarity economy with/for artists.
Projects & Services
Fairphone is a more ethically produced smart phone with a focus on fairer supply chains and long-term sustainabiliy. Murena is a similar product for the US market using an OS focused on privacy and user control.
The Drivers Cooperative is a drivers-owned Uber-style taxi service currently in NYC and Denver.
May First is a cooperative digital services provider focusing on email, web, and cloud apps that protects the privacy and digital autonomy of members.
Stocksy is an artist-owned stock photo, video, and illustration provider.
Set Margins is an independent design publisher in The Netherlands.
Healthy Yards is an organization committed to help people change from harmful yard practices, which produce greenhouse gases and endanger wildlife, to healthy yard practices, that do exactly the opposite.
Jumpsuit is an open source, ungendered monogarment to replace all clothes in perpetuity.
Writing & Media
Mark Fisher Designer Communism
A talk at Digital Bauhaus Summit 2016 serves as powerful intro to this political philosopher’s final work later called “Acid Communism”, cut short by his untimely death in 2017. He tries to reconcile the lure of consumer products and counter-culture movements with leftist political aspirations in what can be perceived as a call to action for designers and creative professionals.
Kate Wagner The Nation (paywall limit)
Her writings on architecture and urban design are multi-layered yet very accessible. Some socio-political analysis through a designer’s lens includes… Want to Build Worker Power? Ask an Architect, Luxury Brands Are Buying Our Cities, Capitalist Rot Has Spread to American Kitchens, Urban Surveillance Is More Menacing Than Ever
Cory Doctorow, the coiner of the term Enshittification which describes how financial incentives degrade our digital experiences (and lives) is an extremely prolific chronicler who contextualizes socio-political-economic-technical news and logs mid-century design ephemera on his blog Pluralistic and on social media.
J. Dakota Brown: The Power of Design as a Dream of Autonomy, Typography, Automation, and the Division of Labor: A Brief History
The former dissects the insufficiency of the “First Things First” manifestos while the latter explores the labor conditions and associated political stories during the rise and fall of print.
Ruben Pater: Caps Lock
A book on how capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it.
Silvio Lorusso: Entreprecariat, What Design Can’t Do
He grapples with the promise or pitch of design, often for students and young professionals, versus the harsh reality.
Mike Monteiro is co-founder of the design agency Mule and a speaker and writer on issues designers face. He did a talk called Fuck You Pay Me what feels like a long time ago. His economic focus became more political and include the books Design is Job and Ruined by Design. His core works are linked on his web page.
Every Design Studio Should Be a Worker-Owned Studio in AIGA Eye on Design by Design Action Collective and Partner & Partners.
Studio Petrichor: We are Nature after all: Shifting the Mindset From Control to Cooperation
A different way of looking at designing landscapes and, by extension, nature.