Category: Essays

Seher Anand|Essays

Food branding without borders: chai, culture, and the politics of packaging

280 million people live outside their homelands. A new generation of brand designers is stepping up to foster cultural exchange — not extraction — across diasporas.

Sarah Gephart|Essays

A new alphabet for a shared lived experience

Nila Rezaei|Essays

"Dear mother, I made us a seat”: a Mother’s Day tribute to the women of Iran

Ellen McGirt|Books

Parable of the Redesigner

Soft rains come in spite of us.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Véronique Vienne : A Remembrance

Lee Moreau|Audio

Announcing: Design As Season Two

Ellen McGirt|Essays

The Design Observer annual gift guide!

The winter holidays are already a tricky time for so many people, though this year feels uniquely fraught.

Ellen McGirt|Essays

Gratitude? HARD PASS

We ask too much of gratitude.

L’Oreal Thompson Payton|Essays

‘Misogynoir is a distraction’: Moya Bailey on why Kamala Harris (or any U.S. president) is not going to save us

Ellen McGirt|Essays

I’m looking for a dad in finance

It’s Nobel Prize season. (Big dramatic sigh.)

Aimee Allison|Audio

She the People with Aimee Allison, a new podcast from Design Observer

Kevin Bethune|Essays

Oh My, AI

Adobe customers believed that a recent update to the terms of service meant that the company would use their work to train AI models.