Anna Bates

Major Project: Design and Politics


Global warming; deep economic recession; overpopulation; war; the behaviour of multinationals larger than countries…


Our current political parties don’t seem able to cope with the critical problems we face. And because today’s parties all seem to share the same views and policies, there are no real choices for the voter.


So where does that leave us? Designers can’t save the world. But operating in these conditions and with an acute awareness of the problems we face, a new generation of designers are beginning to reassess what their role is and question what changes they can make, through their work.


Some designers act out their political ideology in interventions as specific as designing a new material; others are at the right hand of government and industry, treating our services as material for their attention; ‘critical designers’ are using design to instigate debate on matters of policy. There are designers that want to use design to give us more control over our environment – but there are also those who use design to try to control us.


With this work, come new questions: if designers are going to be actively political through their work, what can they achieve? And whose interests are they serving?


This book explores these questions in five chapters: Design and Agency, Cautionary Terms, The Designs that Constitute a Democratic Society, The Politics of Manufacturing and Design for Prohibition.