INNOVATION Spring 2021: Decolonizing Industrial Design

Decolonization of industrial design must be the first step in order to make space for Indigenization in industrial design. Indigenizing industrial design allows space for Indigenous Designers to create products and solutions that are rooted in Indigenous Knowledge, for and with their communities. Indigenizing industrial design can help develop gene... See more

That act of industrial design is a natural skill that is innate in Indigenous creatives and designers and passing this knowledge on to future generations is grounded in who we are. 

1) Design’s strong relationship to the consumer-led marketplace has increasingly come to define designers’ role and potential; 2) the imperative to think and design in ever shorter horizons of time (time = money) and produce quick results encourages the de-contextualization of problems (all stakeholders are not served, social and environmental sust... See more

Design has evolved to meet the challenge of the new relationship between people and the material goods they need. Today, designers — artisans, manufacturers, engineers, architects — think far beyond the way things look. Comparing pre-industrial design to post-industrial design with a picture is absurd. Critiquing a modern object based on its appear... See more

designers ought to be the loudest and most insistent proponents for discovering new and better ways to produce goods and services