Reading · Open Tabs: Design & Other Stuff

Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
But sometimes we pretend it does.

There’s an unspoken idea floating around in design education: that good design is clean, functional, universal. That it should work anywhere, for anyone. That the grid is neutral. That Helvetica doesn’t say anything. That form can be separated from culture.

But if you’ve ever lived across languages, moved between cultural frameworks, or tried to explain a layout to someone who reads in a different direction, you’ll know:

Design is never neutral.
It’s shaped by who it’s for, where it’s made, and the histories it carries with it.

When design ignores context, it risks becoming extractive, confusing, or even harmful. Not out of bad intent, but because it assumes too much.

It assumes universality where there isn’t any.

That can look like:

A government form that only makes sense if you speak the dominant language.
A logo that borrows sacred symbols without understanding them.
A campaign that uses “local flavour” as aesthetic but doesn’t talk to anyone who lives there.
When a tourism campaign uses Indigenous patterns on merch but none of the profit reaches those communities.

Design without context flattens complexity.
It misses the story , or worse, replaces it with one that was never ours to tell.

When context is skipped, the defaults step in: our own ideas of what’s “clear,” “logical,” or “beautiful.”
And those defaults are rarely neutral.
They often trace back to Western standards of clarity, progress, and taste.

When we walk into spaces shaped by colonisation, migration, language loss, or erasure (which is… most spaces) without awareness, we risk repeating the same dynamics we claim we’re trying to challenge.

Design (and research too) often wants to be community-led.
But in practice, it can sit top-down.
When no one talks to the people being “included,” inclusivity becomes performance:

A checkbox.
A gesture.
A look of representation without the substance of relationship.

Extracting insights isn’t the same as understanding.
Using someone’s photo isn’t the same as sharing the mic.

It’s not just about visibility.
It’s about power.
Who gets to define what makes sense, what’s valuable, what counts.

Not:
“How do I make this consistent?”

But:
“What’s already here and how do I not erase it?”

Not:
“How do I represent this group?”

But:
“Whose voice is missing, and why?”

It’s about starting from the people, the place, the history.
And choosing not to simplify what was never simple.
It’s about listening first.
Before form.
Before aesthetics.
Before assumptions.

Sometimes institutions use culture as a signal.
A face, a language, a pattern, a reference.
Not because they’re engaging with the community,
but because it looks inclusive.

Culture becomes aesthetic, instead of relationship.

But people aren’t symbols.
Communities aren’t branding devices.

Context asks us to treat culture as lived, not borrowed.
Held, not displayed.

Sometimes, even within marginalised communities, people can’t speak up.
Because of fear. Because of internalised racism1. Because of learned helplessness2, the kind that forms when you’ve been talked over for too long.

Writers like Gayatri Spivak (Can the Subaltern Speak?) have argued that there are moments when others might need to speak for those who can’t.
But the act of “speaking for” is never simple.
It comes with power. And with responsibility.

Even with the best intentions, design can reproduce the very dynamics it wants to resist unless we’re willing to stay aware of our position in the room.

In Autoethnography as a Decolonising Tool, Arianna Nisa-Waller and Gemma Piercy talk about the risks of assuming a “neutral” perspective in education, research, and design.
They suggest something else: that we locate ourselves in our work.

Not to centre ourselves.
But to take responsibility for what we bring and what we might be overlooking.

That reframing stayed with me.
It made me think: maybe part of designing with context is starting there.
Not just with research or references but with self-awareness.

Knowing our position.
Acknowledging our biases.
Asking how our presence shapes the process even when we don’t mean it to.

That’s not the whole answer. But it’s a place to begin.
And maybe one way to design with more care.

—
✲ Whether you design or not, I’d be curious to hear how this landed with you.
You can leave a comment, or just sit with it. Either way, thanks for spending time here.

Why Designing with Context Shouldn’t Be Optional

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