For all of the progress proclaimed by evangelists, little has changed from the previous century for design today. Designers still are overwhelmingly white with most executive positions continuing to be occupied by the 36% minority of men within the industry. This demographic truth, however, reflects a more urgent issue that manifests itself in structures that reify its status quo.

With design becoming one of the most visible professions in the United States, who qualifies to enter its gates is of serious inquiry amidst the deepening socioeconomic divide between Americans. In spite of supposed attempts at diversifying the industry, entry is barred by arbitrary certification, exorbitant costs for design boot camps, and the saturation of work primarily to be reserved in rapidly gentrified urban centers.

The consequences of this phenomenon reveal itself devastating. Communities are uprooted, socioeconomic mobility stagnates, and the original community members get pushed to the bottom, if not already neglected into destitute.

This form of colonialism however was never unique to design nor the tech giants which have co-opted it. We have seen in modern history how the extraction of wealth takes many forms: the pillaging of indigenous lands, cultural appropriation, and wage theft which its victims today continue to be under Stockholm syndrome induced by their masters.

Indeed, capitalism and its ruthless operations is nothing new to the United States but design appropriated as an extension to capitalist venture has never actually progressed simply because the tools now live digitally. Thus if design previously faced Modernism’s authoritarian sentiments and was then followed by Design Thinking’s conception, what truly separates the two if not a parent-child relationship?

Instead, the current state of design is simply the digitally updated version of Eurocentric design doctrine and practice. The prescriptive nature of Modernism never escaped contemporary conversation, rather it became one of many rebrands in the 21st century to co-opt the weaponization of design. Indeed, Modernism has undergone a rebrand and today is marketed as “Design Thinking.”

While Design Thinking has only recently taken the spotlight, its essence takes precedence from the Modernist movement. Pioneer Tim Brown frequently references Modernist practitioners including Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Isamu Noguchi as precursors to the Design Thinking dogma. But at what point of intersection intertwines Modernism to Design Thinking? Why is it that Modernism has acted as such a reference point for the Design Thinking doctrine?

Consider firstly the Modernist dogma. In 2019 while teaching a graphic design course at UCLA, book publisher Lars Müller often told his students that as designers we must be “above our audience.” Using language familiar to Modernism, Müller was not shy in his convictions towards “educating the masses.” As 2x4 partner Michael Rock puts it, there existed a “missionary zeal” towards modernizing and reforming the masses if not pulling the common citizen into an inevitable “modernization” which if one went against would be seen as simply living a life with one’s eyes closed.

This call towards modernization however extends beyond simply lifestyle choice. With other art movements against its backdrop (i.e. Dadaism, Constructivism), Modernists eventually absorbed many of them into a repackaged brand known historically as the Bauhaus. And as with any branding project, the margins which did not serve its brand were stripped from its significance, flattening a character into the Bauhaus. This colonization of cultural movements and ideas was nothing contradictory to Modernist ideology but in fact essential to its practice.

Thus to echo sentiments of neutrality refuses to recognize the social context in which work is made. The idea that a style can be “international” assumes that its curated formal qualities function for any person across cultural lines. By extending itself outside its borders, the International Style mobilized the same Western imperialism that sought to supersede whole graphic traditions, language loss, and the disappearance of indigenous scripts. What was even “international” about International Style if only accessible to Europe and its colonies whom underwent a conditioning of white supremacy?

It is impossible to divorce content from form and certainly context from a practitioner. However, those who proclaimed to do so or even urge others to follow suit inherit the privilege of not being affected by such a sociopolitical context because the context in which they live in safeguards them from experiencing the heightened consciousness the marginalized are forced to reckon with. This act of prescribing racelessness or more broadly neutrality is itself a racial or sided act. An urgent questioning forms: What is universal? What templates as neutral? What are our defaults?

Herman Miller demo for Aeron chair size comparison. Left being Size A — Small and right being Size C — Large.