Design Justice

My work seeks to support community organizers, non-profit organizations, activists, artists and researchers in the making of a just world. To this end, I am a member of the Design Justice Network, a community of practitioners reinventing design as a means to liberation from exploitative, harmful systems.

My practice is guided by the Network’s principles, which call to actively listen and critically engage with areas and structures of oppression in design, starting with myself as a person and my own process as a designer.

For constantly guiding me and teaching me the depth of this work, I am indebted to past collaborators and particularly to my team at And Also Too, where I have been working since 2016.

Read about Lupe

Design Justice Principles

Reproduced from the Network’s website.

  1. We use design to sustain, heal, and empower our communities, as well as to seek liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems.
  2. We center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.
  3. We prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.
  4. We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.
  5. We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.
  6. We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.
  7. We share design knowledge and tools with our communities.
  8. We work towards sustainable, community-led and -controlled outcomes.
  9. We work towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other.
  10. Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.
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