Social Good

Sara Jamshidi|Essays

Black Hand: Iranian Banksy?

Black Hand is one of the numerous underground artists in Iran and his exhibition is neither the first nor the last underground exhibition.

Véronique Vienne|Essays

Taylor Holland’s Scenic Tour

A photograph is at first a document. Crop it, and it becomes a picture. Trim it further into a square and you’ve got a “sign” — a potential icon.

Observed|Essays

Redesiging the Parking Sign

Nikki Sylianteng was sick of getting parking tickets. Her solution: redesign the signs.

Observed|Miscellaneous

Sylvia Harris Citizen Design Award

Sylvia Harris is widely recognized as a pioneer, a generous mentor and a vital inspiration to the field of social impact design. In that spirit, the Sylvia Harris Citizen Design Award has been established to honor her legacy by …

Adam Harrison Levy|Essays

The Last Unknown Place in New York

If you want to see a version of the future you could try to take a boat to an island off the coast of the Bronx.

Observed|Events

More Botany

Avery Thatcher is one of the emerging designers from the oft-lauded creative class in Portland, Oregon.

Rob Walker|Essays

Infrastructure Field Trips

The Macro City conference in the Bay Area includes "field trips" to examine "overlooked networks of infrastructure that surrounds us," firsthand.

Laura Tarrish|Gallery

Hunter | Gatherer: Botanicals

Each of us has a connection to nature — a primal response to certain landscapes — yet we don’t always use it as raw material for our own work.

John Thackara|Essays

Food As A Commons

People go hungry not because of a shortage of production, but because the food available is too expensive, or they lack the land to grow it on. In California, the prototype of a combined social, political and technical solution has been …

The Editors|Essays

A Mother’s Work is Never Done

This year, for Mother's Day, Design Observer collected photos of women designers and their offspring in varying forms: we received entries in the form of then-and-now contemporary photos, of generational divides, of mothers as children …

Adam Harrison Levy|Essays

The Oldest Living Things In the World

Climate change — once a distant fear — is already upon us, Rachel Sussman’s glorious, and vitally important book could not have come at a more crucial moment.

John Thackara|Essays

Presence and Encounter — How We Meet Is As Important As Why

I’m not suggesting that we abandon social media — just that we cultivate a hybrid approach so whenever someone says “online” someone else says, “and what about offline?”. Or when we find ourselves …