Design Drafts: Selected Proposals and Writers Design Drafts: Selected Proposals and Writers

Between the open call announcement on 28 April and the deadline on 28 May 2022, Het Nieuwe Instituut and Disegno journal received 69 entries in response to the question, "Is design just a game?" Topics addressed by entrants included: the belief system surrounding the design industry through folklore and wxtch craft; finding a language for the more-than-human as player within the game of design; the hidden processes and criteria of design education through the lens of former students; the capitalisation on (tarot) card decks in the design processes of the corporate design industry and reflections on the exclusionary politics of the design field.

All the entries were reviewed by team members from Het Nieuwe Instituut and Disegno (Delany Boutkan, Evi Hall and Oli Stratford). They made a pre-selection of 30 proposals that best exemplified the criteria specified in the open call.

The pre-selected proposals, and all the other submissions, were then considered by the selection committee: Aric Chen (general and artistic director, Het Nieuwe Instituut); Nanjala Nyabola (political analyst, activist, author of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya); and Marjanne van Helvert (designer, researcher and author of The Responsible Object: A History of Design Ideology for the Future). The committee members were asked to read all 30 pre-selected proposals and invited to nominate any other projects for inclusion on their longlist.

The selection meetings were held on 15 and 16 June 2022 via Zoom. Proposals were evaluated on the basis of their engagement with the question ("Is design just a game?") and with the craft of writing, how they address contemporary challenges facing design and societies at large, and the specificity, situatedness and depth of the proposal. During the pre-selection and selection process, Het Nieuwe Instituut and Disegno's team members and members of the selection committee abstained from voting on proposals by individuals or collectives with which they are or have been affiliated themselves, allowing the jurors unfamiliar with them to make their judgements.

The committee recognised and awarded six commissions and writing trajectories and a fee of EUR 750 per commission. The selected proposals demonstrate a timely constellation of topics, varied yet clear approaches to the question "Is design just a game?" and personal and social engagements with their subject matter, as well as a deep interest in specific writing formats. The committee's decision and this page were published and presented on 21 June 2022.

• Andrew Pasquier
• Bianca Nozaki-Nasser
• Chinouk Filique de Miranda
• Gijs de Boer
• Kathryn Larsen
• Malika Leiper

The application descriptions below are summaries of the writers' proposals as they were submitted to the open call. The applications will now be subject to the Design Drafts workshopping process with Het Nieuwe Instituut and Disegno teams. This means that the final written pieces and writing formats may vary from the initial draft proposals as described here.

_Andrew Pasquier's proposal explores how a gamified attitude towards design is (often excessively) applied to spaces intended for collective joy and leisure such as clubs, concert venues and festivals. At these spaces, complex systems of crowd control, payment, and other forms of surveillance are applied to facilitate circulation and enjoyment. With his proposal, Andrew hopes to address party and event design by analysing the systems and spatial circulation of real party spaces and festivals in order to question and critique the logic that more design of collective spaces, in gamified ways, improves both experience and outcomes. _

Andrew Pasquier is a freelance writer and researcher currently completing an MA in Political Communication and Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he was an editor at 032c Magazine in Berlin and global program coordinator at the Urban Design Forum, a non-profit gathering designers, developers and civic leaders to debate issues facing New York City.

In her proposal, Bianca Nozaki-Nasser states that "the gamification of social design invites us to live inside the imagination of those who have privilege, who feel so empowered to own the future they've already turned it into a game". She suggests that to shift from a performative to transformational practice, designers today should look to the interdependence, principled action and self-awareness of radical community organising. She imagines writing a long-form love letter to connect historical legacy to current design communities in the USA, such as the Design Justice Network, Design as Protest and Colloqate Design, as well as international communities including Haven for Artists in Beirut.

Bianca Nozaki-Nasser is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist, organizer, and educator. Born to a Syrian-Lebanese father and Japanese American mother, her work has always been rooted in social practice. Bianca uses visual and interactive media to interrogate the ways gender, race, and culture are embedded into objects, systems, and relationships. She is currently the Strategy & Creative Director at 18MR, a national digital-first Asian American advocacy organization, and artist in residence with Level Ground LA. Her forthcoming solo exhibition wrecks and reckons with time, identity, and community. Bianca received her M.F.A. in Media Design Practices from the ArtCenter College of Design and her B.A. in Communication from the University of Southern California.

_In her proposal, Chinouk Filique de Miranda reflects on the commodification of language through the ways in which design objects, specifically within the space of luxury fashion, are dressed with meaning through words with emotional and/or socio-cultural connotations. She explains: "Descriptive texts, in the online space, create a game-like experience towards (often) unattainable goods and cultural belongings, allowing us to wander through imaginary narratives, very much in the same way an adventure game does." She proposes to pivot her writing style from (fairly) academic to fiction, to create space to reflect upon her existing ideas of writing about design. _

Chinouk Filique de Miranda is a design researcher and critical (fashion) practitioner. She analyses, translates and visualises the crossover between the fashion system and digital culture with a focus on introducing digital literacy to fashion. In her practice she approaches fashion as a subliminal communication vehicle which she aims to demystify in order to inform consumers about complex matters regarding individual agency within our current digital culture. Next to her independent practice, she (co)designs workshops for cultural programmes and lectures on fashion, design and consumer engagement at various educational institutions.

In his proposal, Gijs de Boer expresses his sympathy towards the design-hating design students and practitioners who show their disappointment in the field through the online meme culture. He says: "We carry a sentiment that is pushed to the margins of fairs and schools where the currency of design is hope, namely: feeling deceived. Deceived by the bloated promises of whatever the next new genre of design can do. With the world on fire and the eyes on you, it seems you must either play along with a promise, or hit escape." He suggests that quitting the game is not going to change anything. Renouncing all design is also bluffing. Instead, he is in search of humility.

Gijs de Boer is an artistic researcher and educator based in Rotterdam. He is interested in ways of dealing with inherited modernist desires and feeling at home in an entangled world. He combines a background in philosophy and design with studying how aesthetics seduce specific roles, with projects looking at human-plant relations, trust-hierarchies in the financial world, and myths of neutral technology. His work takes shape as reports, websites, videos and workshops. Gijs teaches at Design Academy Eindhoven (@thecriticalinquirylab), where he explores methods of being critical while complicit, and is part of Extra Practice.

_In her proposal, Kathryn Larsen approaches the design industry as a game that is essentially pay-to-play, with hidden rules and economic (dis)advantages beneath the surface. Kathryn intends to write personal anecdotes from her experiences within and without a variety of architecture schools in a visual essay. The visuals will be based on the drawing techniques she taught and developed herself when not able to attend architecture schools due to economic circumstances. She will reflect on the exclusionary politics, economies and unhealthy (often emotional) grind-work that underpin the architecture and design field. Nevertheless, her proposal shows an approach to change. _

Born and raised in the USA, Kathryn Larsen is now based in the Netherlands and Denmark. She is a soon-to-be master's graduate from the TU Delft Architecture track and the recipient of several grants from Boligfonden Kubens Spirekasse to fund her experimental research studio. She combines her practical architectural technologist education with a tactile design process that involves sketching, drawing by hand, and material experimentation. She is fascinated by the building traditions and rare construction techniques of the past, and specialises in natural building materials. Most notably, her research focuses on how seaweed and seagrass can be used in architecture.

_Malika Leiper's proposal states that to profess design is just a game is a position of Euro- and Anglo-centric privilege. If design is indeed a game, with rules establishing winners and losers, then its parameters are determined by proximity to power, which has historically been, and continues to be, centralised in Europe and North America. In her contribution, Malika Leiper therefore asks: "How do we opt out of the game? Why is this needed? And where might emergent design languages stem from?" And, since there is no word for "designer'' in her mother tongue Khmer, "How to begin writing about design if the word does not even exist?" Malika will engage in qualitative and quantitative research to illustrate the unevenness of the enterprise of knowledge production in design, alongside data visualisations and photographic aids. _

Malika Leiper is interested in design culture across various disciplines with a particular focus on emergent contexts in Southeast Asia. After completing her master's in urban planning at Harvard's graduate school of design, she consulted with restaurants, non-profits, local governments, museums and design brands on research and strategies to build creative cultural capacity, often through public programming and community engagement. She approaches design as a collaborative process of translating knowledge and insights from different worlds into one common language through technical, moral and utopian applications. Originally from Cambodia, Malika is based in New York City.