As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Vulnerable Observers
members
I Don’t Want to Quote Anyone but Myself
A lyrical resistance blooming where exile and memory intertwine, reclaiming the self in full.
#Living Archives
members
“Anthropology Is a Way of Being”
Farah Hallaba on bridging academia and community through participatory research.
#Living Archives
members
“Stretching the Meaning of Public Space”
Nadia Mounier on documenting Cairo, gender politics, and the tensions of image-making in a changing Egypt.
#Epistemic Activism
members
Kusvikirwa: A Decolonial Spirit
Reconnecting with the past through ancestral practices in Zimbabwe.
#Designing Resistance
members
On Rehearsing Access
Making space for non-normative time with Access Riders.
Our events
#Let’s Talk
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Let’s Talk About Workshopping No. 2
Oct 17, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | free | open group conversation
members
Unwired Currents—Imagining Technologies Otherwise
An online fellowship and public program expanding the notion of technology beyond colonial, modernist, and solutionist views!
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Activist Practices No. 2
Sep 26, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | free | open group conversation
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Mocha Celis: We Dare to Build the World We Want to Live In
July 4, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture with Francisco Quiñones Cuartas and Virginia Silveira from Mocha Celis | co-moderated with Paulina Ojeda
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Crip Spacetime and Utopias of Care
June 19, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture within the Design Educators* Unite paid course | with Nina Mühlemann
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Workshopping No. 1
June 15, 2024 | 1:30 pm CEST | Messe Basel | free | group conversation | co-moderated with Habib Asfar and Mara Züst from the Mini-Zine-Library | co-organized with the Swiss Design Awards
#Educators In Correspondence
members
Design as Mediation: On the Everyday Politics of Space-Making Practices
June 15, 2024 | 5:30 pm CEST | Messe Basel | free | with Habib Asfar and Mara Züst from the Mini-Zine-Library | co-organized with the Swiss Design Awards
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Design and Other Ways of Knowing
June 13, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture within the Design Educators* Unite paid course | with Ramia Mazé
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Feminist Killjoy Design Pedagogy: On Emphasizing Joy
June 6, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture within the Design Educators* Unite paid course | with Elizabeth Chin
members
Unwired Currents—Imagining Technologies Otherwise
An online fellowship and public program expanding the notion of technology beyond colonial, modernist, and solutionist views!
Our events
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Workshopping No. 2
Oct 17, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | free | open group conversation
members
Unwired Currents—Imagining Technologies Otherwise
An online fellowship and public program expanding the notion of technology beyond colonial, modernist, and solutionist views!
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Activist Practices No. 2
Sep 26, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | free | open group conversation
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Mocha Celis: We Dare to Build the World We Want to Live In
July 4, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture with Francisco Quiñones Cuartas and Virginia Silveira from Mocha Celis | co-moderated with Paulina Ojeda
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Crip Spacetime and Utopias of Care
June 19, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture within the Design Educators* Unite paid course | with Nina Mühlemann
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Workshopping No. 1
June 15, 2024 | 1:30 pm CEST | Messe Basel | free | group conversation | co-moderated with Habib Asfar and Mara Züst from the Mini-Zine-Library | co-organized with the Swiss Design Awards
#Educators In Correspondence
members
Design as Mediation: On the Everyday Politics of Space-Making Practices
June 15, 2024 | 5:30 pm CEST | Messe Basel | free | with Habib Asfar and Mara Züst from the Mini-Zine-Library | co-organized with the Swiss Design Awards
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Design and Other Ways of Knowing
June 13, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture within the Design Educators* Unite paid course | with Ramia Mazé
#Design Educators* Unite!
members
Feminist Killjoy Design Pedagogy: On Emphasizing Joy
June 6, 2024 | 6 pm CEST | online | lecture within the Design Educators* Unite paid course | with Elizabeth Chin
News & Collaborations
#News
members
The Futuress team grows temporarily: Welcome Heba Daghstani!
We are thrilled to announce that long-term Futuress community member Heba Daghistani will support us from January to July 2026! After participating in Futuress’ second fellowship, the Troublemakers’ Class of
#News
members
Building bridges—translating five Futuress texts into Japanese with Tokyo-based publisher Troublemakers
We are excited to share the fruits of a collaboration with Tokyo-based independent publisher Troublemakers! Over the past few months, the two platforms have been carefully selecting five out of
#News
members
Unwired Currents—a new collaboration redefining technologies
Together with the think & do tank Dezentrum, we received funding from the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia to collaborate with design researcher and long-time Futuress contributing editor Franca López
#News
members
A glimpse into Futuress’ endeavors in “Publishing Anecdotes”
In July, co-director Mio Kojima talked about her journey at Futuress in a
conversation with graphic designer, researcher, and cultural worker Roman Karrer
[https://futuress.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?
#News
members
“A Critical Statement” by Sophie Thurner republished by the WOMAN OPEN TECH LAB!
First published on Futuress in February 2022, “A Critical Statement
[https://futuress.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c6aa2d13eba1beab1d5d1bceb&id=0cdfb31bcf&e=6be58e2e08]
” calls out exclusive and extractivist
#News
members
Futuress unveiled at the Type Electives lecture series
On April 19, 2024, Futuress co-director Maya Ober shared some behind-the-scenes
of Futuress within the Type Electives
[https://futuress.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c6aa2d13eba1beab1d5d1bceb&id=456788b561&
#News
members
Futuress featured in the debut issue of Troublemakers Magazine
We are honored to be part of the very first issue of the Tokyo-based independent
magazine Troublemakers [https://troublemakers.me/]! In September 2023,
Troublemaker co-founders Manami Inoue and Yuto Miyamoto
#News
members
Futuress showcased at Ravisius Textor, France!
Futuress was featured in the exhibition, reading room, and public program “
Voltolo—all-around education in contemporary graphic design practices.
[https://www.ravisiustextor.eu/spativm/voltolo]” Curated by designer Alexandru
Balgiu,
See all News & Collaborations
#Living Archives
#Living Archives
members
“Anthropology Is a Way of Being”
Farah Hallaba on bridging academia and community through participatory research.
#Living Archives
members
“Stretching the Meaning of Public Space”
Nadia Mounier on documenting Cairo, gender politics, and the tensions of image-making in a changing Egypt.
#Living Archives
members
Embargoed Memories
Reckoning with the Portuguese violent colonial past through fragments of my family’s heirloom.
#Living Archives
members
Circling the Circassian Identity
Chronicles of nationless-ness, scattered souls, and fragmented selves.
#Living Archives
members
(Re)claiming Archives: استعادة الأرشيف
A palace of memories for collective imagination
قصر للذاكرة الجماعية والأحلام العامة لتتذكرها وتتخيلها
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Living Archives
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Flat-Packed History
Disassembling simplified narratives and recovering anti-imperialist histories in Northern Ireland.
#Living Archives
members
A Race Against Time
How the digital gallery Swatch Bharat is documenting the rapidly disappearing native Indian aesthetic.
#Living Archives
members
“Please Say More”
Bec Wonders on the Vancouver Women’s Library, the legacy of feminist archives, and the complex history of female conflict.
See all Living Archives stories
#Feminist Curricula
#Feminist Curricula
members
Navigating the Culture of Critique
Why Indian design education needs a plural understanding of decolonization.
#Feminist Curricula
members
أحْرُف وكَلِمَاتْ وقِصَصْ A Multi-Script Type Design Program
Imagining a playground for collective archiving, researching and letter-making.
#Feminist Curricula
members
Institutional Frictions
Reflecting on the possibilities and challenges of bringing activism into the design classroom
#Feminist Curricula
members
A Critical Statement
Why I became a product designer who does not want to design products.
#Feminist Curricula
members
“Teach What You Need to Learn”
A conversation about the Swedish Master program critically addressing visual standards and promoting “norm creativity.”
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Feminist Curricula
members
The Last Shift
Field notes from La Entrega Final, or how feminist activism plays itself in the Chair of Design and Gender Studies at FADU, Buenos Aires.
#Feminist Curricula
members
Learning from the Vernacular
A conversation with Clara Balaguer on the copyother, ethical piracy, and trolling graphic design.
#Feminist Curricula
members
A Fashion Degree in Humanswear?
Students and educators doing fashion beyond binaries and norms.
See all Feminist Curricula stories
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Complaint Collective: Exposing abuse and discrimination in design education.
#Complaint Collective
members
Does Design Care?
Is “care” just lip service to a new buzzword in design discourse?
#Complaint Collective
members
Enough is Enough
Art & Design students lead the charge to expose the abusive underbelly of France's education system.
#Complaint Collective
members
Long Nights
Do art universities educate students to exploit themselves? Short answer: Yes.
#Complaint Collective
members
Glowing Red Letters
How a group of German art students is tackling structural discrimination with an anonymous form.
#Complaint Collective
members
Calling Out Dutch Art Institutions
An anonymous Instagram account cries for accountability in the Dutch art and design scene. What happens next?
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Complaint Collective
members
Oh, Dear Diversity
A poem recalling memories of arrival, confrontations, and healing.
#Complaint Collective
members
Diversity Issues
Teachers and students voice their grievances around discrimination in Swiss design schools.
See all Complaint Collective stories
#Designing Resistance
#Designing Resistance
members
On Rehearsing Access
Making space for non-normative time with Access Riders.
#Designing Resistance
members
Urban Recyclers: On Taking over the Means of Production
How cartoneros in Buenos Aires paved the way to social and environmental sustainability.
#Designing Resistance
members
A Beautiful Mess: Moving Towards Non-binary Language
Transcending hegemonic expression and embracing typographic activism with the Bye Bye Binary collective.
#Designing Resistance
members
On Caste: The Roots of Discrimination in Indian Design
What using a debrahaminizing lens tells us about power relations and discrimination in the Indian design practice and education.
#Designing Resistance
members
Multiple Feminisms, Collective Struggles
How Argentina’s 35th Plurinational Meeting of Women, Lesbians, Trans, Travesti, Intersex, Bisexual, and Non-Binary shapes feminisms in 2022.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Designing Resistance
members
MOTHER TONGUE / מאַמע-לשון / MAME LUSHEN
What designing an interscriptual typeface tells us about legibility, Jewish visual culture and the feeling of inbetweenship.
#Designing Resistance
members
“Democracy in Iran Will Arrive Through Women”
Feminist activist Shirin Ebadi discusses why the women-led protests in Iran may herald the regime change.
#Designing Resistance
members
“Me All Around You:” Listening Practices In The Digital
Francisca Khamis Giacoman and Tina Omayemi Reden discuss Skype’s heyday, attentive listening, and why there is no “one” digital space.
See all Designing Resistance stories
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#TRAVESSIAS—CROSSINGS
#TRAVESSIAS—CROSSINGS
members
We Belong to the Land
Insights from a quilombola thinker on Brazil’s state-sanctioned violence and the power of oral traditions.
#TRAVESSIAS—CROSSINGS
members
Becoming Savage
A Guarani Mbya leader on environmental activism, food autonomy, and why we should all challenge the concept of “civilization.”
See all TRAVESSIAS—CROSSINGS stories
#Epistemic Activism
#Epistemic Activism
members
Kusvikirwa: A Decolonial Spirit
Reconnecting with the past through ancestral practices in Zimbabwe.
#Feminist Curricula
members
Navigating the Culture of Critique
Why Indian design education needs a plural understanding of decolonization.
#Epistemic Activism
members
Who Gets to Design Arabic Typography?
A pledge for politicizing Arabic type design, overturning exclusionary notions of ‘quality,’ and challenging classist gatekeeping to the profession.
#Epistemic Activism
members
A Canon Misbound: Feminist Lessons in Print
The lack of written accounts about Norwegian graphic design is a chance to question norms and explore non-traditional historiographic methods.
#Epistemic Activism
members
How Far We’ve Cum: Sweden’s “Sex Ed” Through Time
Historically, the same pitfall: society changes fast, and schools cannot bear the full responsibility for sex education alone. What next?
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Epistemic Activism
members
“What the Cl*t?” A Designer’s Take on the Orgasm Gap
People with clitorises don’t orgasm nearly as much as people with penises. Could illustrations help us to become more cliterate?
#Epistemic Activism
members
Judging by the Cover: Racial Bias in Design Publishing
Design books are overwhelmingly cis, male, and white. Designers: I dare you to face your bookshelf and check who is—and who isn’t—there.
#Epistemic Activism
members
“The War Is inside Us”
How can we even begin to understand the conflict in Ukraine?
See all Epistemic Activism stories
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Vulnerable Observers
#Vulnerable Observers
members
I Don’t Want to Quote Anyone but Myself
A lyrical resistance blooming where exile and memory intertwine, reclaiming the self in full.
#Vulnerable Observers
members
Parda: Of Roots, Curls and Race
A Brazilian’s entangled journey to Black awareness in a whitewashed world.
#Vulnerable Observers
members
Living an Immigrant Life
Settling and unsettling experiences of an Argentinian designer living abroad.
#Vulnerable Observers
members
minimal id entity
Bodies and selves: Reflections on visual coding and identity by Dior Thiam.
#Vulnerable Observers
members
Imaginations of Care
Curator Keyna Eleison making a case for expanding knowledges.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Vulnerable Observers
members
Soul Consuming
Researcher and designer Ann Kern talks about the difficulties of 2020, the toll of doing political design projects, and how she learned to say “No.”
#Vulnerable Observers
members
Emotional Labor, Support Structures, and the Walls in the Way
A conversation with (some members of) Decolonising Design, a group founded in 2016 by eight design researchers, artists, and activists, stemming from the Global South.
See all Vulnerable Observers stories
#Earthshaking
#Earthshaking
members
“Sustainability Without Class Struggle is Just Gardening”
Victoria Nascimento Veiga’s journey toward socially and environmentally conscious fashion.
#Earthshaking
members
A Water Story
Tracing the ebbs and flows of India’s shifting aquatic ecosystems
#Earthshaking
members
When a Stone Says No
Following willful stones and the creative potential of refusal against cultural colonialism.
#Earthshaking
members
#Fashion #SustainableFashion #FashionFutures
Debunking hashtags to imagine generative fashion systems in times of ecological collapse.
#Earthshaking
members
Un-sustaining Sustainability?
Tracing the colonial origins of India’s rising “sustainable” fashion industry
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Earthshaking
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A Bridge Between Many Worlds
Industrial designer Iskander Guetta talks about learning from Marrakech, Bangalore, and beyond.
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Objects of Interest
#Objects of Interest
members
Designing Belief: A Journey into the Sacred Art of Phrakhreūang
How tradition, history, and social development converge in Thailand’s amulet culture.
#Objects of Interest
members
A Tribute to Feira Do Pau
A stroll through Maputo’s Ebony Market and the relational power of Mozambican design.
#Objects of Interest
members
A House and a Hole
How industrial exploitation and extractivism destroy lands, bodies, and architectural practices in Morocco.
#Objects of Interest
members
A Passive Mob: How Video Games Silence Dissent
Often game design enacts protest as something negative or apolitical. How could it instead ignite criticality and political agency?
#Objects of Interest
members
Hey Woman, Are You a Roti? Patriarchy and Indian Flatbread
What the making and unmaking of one of India’s most celebrated foods tell us about traditional female roles, unpaid labor, and revolution
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Politics of Display
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Reflejos Ajenos
The museum, national identity and the impossibility of classifying the intangible.
#Contra-Colonial Colors
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Gold
Fighting for existence in the wake of stolen wealth, toxic metals, gilded bureaucrats and golden visas.
#Politics of Display
members
South is Up
On subjective worlds, alternative Earths, and map projections.
See all Objects of Interest stories
#Incomplete Compendia
#Incomplete Compendia
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An Incomplete Directory of Feminist Bookstores
From fresh new shops to decade old strongholds, these are our community’s favourite places to get books and make friends.
#Incomplete Compendia
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A Resource Hub for Decolonizing Typography
Texts, lectures and other materials that help disrupt the Eurocentric status quo in type design education and practice.
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Feminist Findings
#Feminist Findings
members
A Letter from the Future
Connecting across time and space with the team behind Berlin’s Courage magazine.
#Feminist Findings
members
Pen Pal Plots
A fictional American woman‘s correspondence with three memorable cover girls that graced the magazine Soviet Woman.
#Feminist Findings
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Some Serious Surprises
A list of articles on feminist publishing in the 1980s feminist art magazine Chrysalis.
#Feminist Findings
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Follow the Money
Questioning the politics of the US funding of Lebanese women’s studies journal Al-Raida.
#Feminist Findings
members
Iterative at Heart
Spare Rib’s continuously shifting design found a middle-ground between mainstream and counterculture.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Feminist Findings
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Feminism. What’s In a Word?
Reclaiming the keyword for women’s liberation from misogynistic nineteenth-century French literature.
#Feminist Findings
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“What Do You Think History Is?”
A brief conversation with Liza Cowan, editor of 1970s lesbian separatist periodical DYKE A Quarterly.
#Feminist Findings
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Torn in Two Directions
The journal making space for Muslim women’s voices during France’s notorious “veil affair.”
See all Feminist Findings stories
#Contra-Colonial Colors
#Contra-Colonial Colors
members
Bronze-Verdigris: a Colonial History
Seeking liberty in stolen bowls, historical mansions, deadly wallpapers, and fugitive greens.
#Contra-Colonial Colors
members
Gold
Fighting for existence in the wake of stolen wealth, toxic metals, gilded bureaucrats and golden visas.
#Contra-Colonial Colors
members
Yellow
Framing and re-framing oppression through cinematic clichés, khaki hues, and a desert of lies.
#Contra-Colonial Colors
members
Blue
Bolting a chain of exploitation, from hardy rocky plants, to deep indigo dyes, and monumental stones.
#Contra-Colonial Colors
members
Red
Tracing the bloodline of an ink from sixteenth century Abya Yala to the National Gallery in London.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
See all Contra-Colonial Colors stories
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Letter from the Editors
#Letter from the Editors
members
Futuress Beginnings
An online magazine on the politics of design, a community space for transnational solidarity.
See all Letter from the Editors stories