What do I mean when I say I’m a “Justice-Minded” designer?

Learning justice as a practice, how to start implementing it to your designs, and connecting with others

Like many, figuring out how to define myself as a “designer” has always been a struggle. While in social impact, my project work and interests are all over the place. And often it confuses people — which valid, honestly, it confused me too.

I know there is a clear-theme in the work that I do, but describing myself as an “accessible, anti-colonial, sustainable, climate-conscious, inclusive” designer seems like a bit much, right? This is when I came across the term “justice”.

Obviously, I’ve heard “justice” before, but like many, I associated it with the legal system. While I’ve heard and used terms like “social justice” or “climate justice”, it wasn’t until Andres Colmenares, from IAM, brought up justice as an interconnected concept in a lecture I attended did my curiosity spike.

I’ve never seen myself in solely one movement. Like many BIPoC folks, I believe in climate justice, but popular movements feel disconnected to my communities’ struggles or have been co-oped by corporations. And with social justice, well, our work won’t matter if we don’t have a livable planet. When Andres first introduced these two movements as being interconnected or one-in-the-same, I felt a light-bulb go off. And when I started researching justice, I realized my communities and the global majority, specifically Black and/or Indigenous writers, have been saying this all along.

See Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Winona LaDuke, bell hooks, Vandana Shiva, Alicia Garza, Nick Estes, Grace Lee Boggs, and so many more amazing writers, activists, and artists

Come along with me down the “justice” rabbit hole and see why I came out calling myself “justice-minded” designer

Starting out with some justice basics

To put it simply, justice is to “right wrongs”. I see it as challenging and changing colonial narratives that have led to the overwhelming exploitation and extraction of our globe. When I operate with that definition, it is clear to me that climate justice and social justice are one in the same. The exploitation of the Earth started with the exploitation of its people. Societal injustices like racism, poverty, ableism, classism are all consistent factors in what makes climate injustices possible.

For example, when I looked into the history and CREATION of “race” (yes, did you know colonizers made this up?). Race was created to rationalize chattel slavery when colonizing European nations needed labor for the farming of cash crops in the 1500s. THEN, these same cash crops are responsible for devastating ecological destruction and the displacement of Indigenous peoples and their ways of life. Now this isn’t just a farming or a historical thing, all we have to do is look at the rush to mine colbalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the silent genocide that is being inflicted upon its people and land by “Western” countries and consumerism to see this is all connected.

When we look around, we can see everyday injustices like these play out through systems of oppression: historical and systematic maltreatment woven into our cultural norms and governments. When we live in a culture that prioritizes wealth and power for a few rather than the collective security and joy of the many, of course injustices become systematic. So when I mention justice, I also must mention liberation. Because if we want justice, then we need to be liberated from the norms that got us here in the first place. AKA righting those wrongs by liberating ourselves from systems of oppression.

OK one more big thing: to be justice-minded is to be loving

Not to be a softie, but I think we cannot talk about justice and liberation without talking about love’s place in all of this. If you know me, you’ve probably heard me talk about the power of radical love alongside my work.

I am a strong believer that when we seek justice for those oppressed, it is another way to say that they are loved. It is an acknowledgment that we care, recognize, respect, and trust in what they are experiencing and commit to helping drive change. And there have long been political philosophers, such as bell hooks, Joy James, James Baldwin and Dr. Cornell West who have said the same.

Radical love as a driver for justice and liberation is how I motivate myself to continue this work. While still developing what this means, I see radical love as something that moves past our close interpersonal relationships and into our communities and society as a whole. Taking directly from bell hooks, I see radical love as the ability to extend myself and my work to have care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust in/for one another.

To be honest, if I cannot imagine a future where my communities are loved and filled with joy — I don’t really know what I am doing this for. With the tools for radical love, I think we hold the potential to create alternative just futures. Without love, creating a better future together becomes impossible — or at the very least a difficult chore.

Rabbit hole recap

First, learning about justice, liberation, and love is honestly way more complicated than what I just wrote. But that was just a mini-intro to give you some context. But if you’re going to take anything away from this section, remember:

• our climate and social struggles are the same justice issues
• to seek justice we need to liberate ourselves from systems of oppression
• radical love is a key driver in justice and liberation movements

Something I say to myself to put it simply is: there is no peace without liberation, there is no justice without love.

Now we get the larger issuer, so how do we relate to design?

So let’s get back into what it means to say I am a “justice-minded” designer. Basically, it is the acknowledgement that our struggles with injustices are interconnected.

Many designers I know that do systems/service work are siloed in their their specific area of expertise. Be it climate action, food security, accessibility, anti-racism, etc. But when we start seeing that the injustices we designing to solve are interconnected, we find unexpected inspiration in shared histories, experiences, and past actions. Additionally, having cross-industry collaborators and supporters can only make our movements stronger.

So what can being a “justice-minded” designer look like?

I think this is something many designers are trying to define, myself included. From my own work, I have come up with some simple starting areas to help us get into a “justice mindset”. These are by no means comprehensive, but just practices I use and see in justice work.

I like to break this up into two groupings: action practices and reaction practices. This is pretty simple, action practices are things you can do, while reaction are things you can reflect on.

Action practices are about external actions you can take on your projects. For me, it starts with how I set up the strategy of my work. I make an emphasis to look at the contextual history, the lived experiences of communities most impacted, what justice means to said communities, and their ideas for liberation.

Engaging in these action practices can look different for each project, but some tenets I use to help implement them look like:

• ensuring those with lived experience with the problem you are trying to solve are on your team
• providing transparent open context and information with all those involved
• having a diversity of ways for people to engage in your designs
• dismantling the uneven power structure of leaders within your work and initiatives

Reflective practices, on the other hand, is more about doing the internal reflective work. I see it as a way to hold myself accountable to my work and to communities I am in service to. There is no way to know of all injustices happening in a system. But I do believe there are best practices that involve learning more, listening more, speaking up more, and giving up power more.

Again, there are so many ways to do this, but some reflection questions I ask myself are:

• Am I going beyond individual responsibility and looking at societal/industry responsibility?
• Am I de-centering myself in my work and not being defensive when provided with critical feedback?
• Am I the “right” designer or firm to be tackling a certain problem? Do I have the situated context to understand what is actually happening? (i.e. see white savior complex)
• Am I able to give this opportunity to another designer or community member that may have lived experience with this challenge?
• Am I willing to admit when I do not know something and need help from others? (mutual aid requires us also to ask for help)

To say I’m justice-minded is a label to help find others like me

Designers can really call ourselves anything. It is in our work and practice that we can demonstrate justice, liberation, and love. In all honesty, I am learning and growing around what it means to be “justice-minded” and in turn what it means to be loving in my practice as a designer.

I continue to find inspiration from activists and philosophers, but other “professional” designers: it can be few and far in between. This is why I wanted to write this in the first-place, in hopes that what I wrote resonates with other designers that use or want to use this label of being “justice-minded”.

I hope there will be people who read this and go “of course you do this” or comment saying “have you thought about this?” because I really want to know other people’s thoughts on justice in design. I think this is a practice that has been developing on the fridges of our industry, and its time we come together.

So if you are one of these designers who this article resonates with or wants to add more, please reach out or comment to connect! What are your thoughts on “justice”? What do you practice in your work? What are some resource that really changed your world view? Would you like to be designer buddies?

Like justice, we are interconnected. So if anything, what I mean when I call myself a justice-minded designer is that I want to be connected with everyone else who is doing the amazing work of justice, liberation, and love.