When bad design isn’t a mistake, it’s the strategy. The “America by Design” initiative isn’t just a messy website. It redefines design itself, away from accessibility and toward exclusion, erasure, and control.

Designers shaped the modern web. Now they have the chance to shape the foundation of AI. Openness is becoming the new creative advantage. New essay on Design Observer.

What happens when a nation responds to school shootings not with policy, but with products? In an exclusive interview, the filmmakers behind HBO’s Thoughts & Prayers discuss the strange, chilling world of America’s active-shooter preparedness industry.

What happens when a nation responds to school shootings not with policy, but with products? In an exclusive interview, the filmmakers behind HBO’s Thoughts & Prayers discuss the strange, chilling world of America’s active-shooter preparedness industry.

Looking for inspiration? Give the gift of insight. Discover the best books for designing a better life. Explore our bookshop today!

In her first essay for Design Observer, Kim Devall argues that as the industry leans into automation, our real advantage is the human touch, craft, struggle, and the years it takes to build true taste.

Behind the $90 billion souvenir industry are artisans whose work carries lineage, labor, and economic survival. Design Observer examines how so-called kitsch objects function as cultural endurance across shifting markets.

Souvenirs are a $90 billion industry, but for millions of artisans they are also livelihood and cultural continuity. A new essay on Design Observer explores how objects often dismissed as kitsch become acts of survival, adaptation, and global exchange.

In his latest essay for Design Observer, Lee Moreau draws a parallel between The Wizard of Oz and today’s AI era, exploring how power, isolation, and illusion shape our creative and moral choices as designers.

“Design is a practice of reckoning with the past as much as it is of designing for the future.” In the DB|BD season finale, Lee Moreau joins Ellen McGirt for a moving conversation about navigating uncertainty, rebuilding what’s been broken, and staying hopeful about what comes

A nurse brings cake… and people die. Then things get really weird. Inside District Nurse, the lo-fi indie horror you need to see. Full conversation with the filmmakers.

Production designer Grace Yun on building fear, memory, and longing: from the unsettling domestic spaces of Hereditary to the quiet hauntings of Past Lives. Read the full conversation on Design Observer.

While we work to expand access to design for the next generation, we’re also helping today’s designers find their next role. Explore the Design Observer Job Board

From 90s horrorcore to Lil Nas X’s hellish visuals, rap has long used horror and occult imagery to explore trauma, challenge norms, and shock audiences. John Morrison traces the genre’s dark visual history in his latest essay.

Looking for your next gig? See who's hiring and apply via our job board

My latest for @DesignObserver: "@erikinternet did not come to play. " I not only enjoyed his new book, I got to enjoy the people I met because of it, and what it did to my spirit. https://t.co/gRTeDYpLQF

While we work to expand access to design for the next generation, we’re also helping today’s designers find their next role. Explore the Design Observer Job Board

Looking to grow your design career or your team? The Design Observer Job Board connects designers with opportunities at every level. Explore open roles or post one of your own:

When despair silenced his creativity, designer Satoru Nihei turned to daily acts of making, transforming failure into a path back to himself.

Hapy Halloween! You’ll fiend for these spooky szn design reads. 📖

On the heels of this month’s Louvre heist, a poet reflects on his own hellish, and oddly heartening, encounter at a famed museum.