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
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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
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A Tribute to Feira Do Pau
A stroll through Maputo’s Ebony Market and the relational power of Mozambican design.
#Objects of Interest
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A House and a Hole
How industrial exploitation and extractivism destroy lands, bodies, and architectural practices in Morocco.
#Earthshaking
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“Sustainability Without Class Struggle is Just Gardening”
Victoria Nascimento Veiga’s journey toward socially and environmentally conscious fashion.
#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.
Our events
#Let’s Talk
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Let’s Talk About School No. 3
Dec 14, 2023 | 6 pm CET | online | group conversation
#Futuress Tutorial
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Between Imaginary and Image: Architecture as Storyteller
Sat Nov 18 | 4 pm CET | online and at KHaus in Basel, Switzerland | with Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk
#Let’s Talk
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Let’s Talk About Institutional Life No. 2
POSTPONED to Oct 26, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | group conversation
#etceteras
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etceteras: feminist festival of design and publishing
October 5-7, 2023 | Casa Comum, Porto, Portugal | festival
#Educators In Correspondence
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Classism and Design: On the Social Implications of Studying Design
Sep 27 | 6 pm CEST | online | with Paola De Martin and Afonso de Matos
#Let’s Talk
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Let’s Talk About Institutional Life No. 1
Sep 2, 2023 | 4 pm CEST | kHaus Basel | group conversation
#Let’s Talk
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Let’s Talk About Collective Practices No. 3
Aug 17, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | group conversation
#Let’s Talk
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Let’s Talk About Collective Practices No. 2
July 13, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | group conversation
#Roundtable
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Who Gets to Design Arabic Typography?
June 28, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | with Sahar Afshar, Maha Akl, and Mohamed Gaber, co-moderated with Imad Gebrayel
#Futuress Keynote
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A Design Anthropology of What?
June 22, 2023 | 3 pm CEST | online | with Mahmoud Keshavarz
#Designing Resistance
members
A Beautiful Mess: Moving Towards Non-binary Language
Transcending hegemonic expression and embracing typographic activism with the Bye Bye Binary collective.
Our events
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About School No. 3
Dec 14, 2023 | 6 pm CET | online | group conversation
#Futuress Tutorial
members
Between Imaginary and Image: Architecture as Storyteller
Sat Nov 18 | 4 pm CET | online and at KHaus in Basel, Switzerland | with Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Institutional Life No. 2
POSTPONED to Oct 26, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | group conversation
#etceteras
members
etceteras: feminist festival of design and publishing
October 5-7, 2023 | Casa Comum, Porto, Portugal | festival
#Educators In Correspondence
members
Classism and Design: On the Social Implications of Studying Design
Sep 27 | 6 pm CEST | online | with Paola De Martin and Afonso de Matos
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Institutional Life No. 1
Sep 2, 2023 | 4 pm CEST | kHaus Basel | group conversation
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Collective Practices No. 3
Aug 17, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | group conversation
#Let’s Talk
members
Let’s Talk About Collective Practices No. 2
July 13, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | group conversation
#Roundtable
members
Who Gets to Design Arabic Typography?
June 28, 2023 | 6 pm CEST | online | with Sahar Afshar, Maha Akl, and Mohamed Gaber, co-moderated with Imad Gebrayel
#Futuress Keynote
members
A Design Anthropology of What?
June 22, 2023 | 3 pm CEST | online | with Mahmoud Keshavarz
News & Collaborations
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On-site and online—creating spaces to meet and learn
Thanks to Switzerland’s Culture Department of Kanton Basel-City, we’ve secured a generous grant for a brand new edition of monthly Futuress Tutorials and Let’s Talk events! Until
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We are heartbroken and excited at the same time as we say Hello and Goodbye
Life throws curveballs, and Futuress’ financial struggles and the recession have also impacted our team members, who freelance for Futuress, alongside juggling their other jobs and family commitments. With a
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A Futuress workshop: Unveiling resistance stories with publisher Onomatopee
To explore possibilities for re-writing design history, the Dutch publisher Onomatopee has organized six HISTORICALL! workshops, one of them facilitated by our very own Futuress co-director Maya Ober. We’ve
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For Us, With Us, By U—a collaboration centering stories from the SWANA region!
How can Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) designers, educators, and researchers imagine transnational identities beyond Western worldviews? This is one of the core questions driving For Us, With Us,
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Futuress at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
“The F*word—Guerrilla Girls and Feminist Graphic Design” covers a vast range of media, styles, discourses, and contexts in which feminist graphic design has made its mark. The exhibition
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A small Futuress satellite in Winterthur
For a few hours on November 26, 2022, Futuress unfolded in a real space! Yes, a physical space! Futuress co-director Nina Paim and long-standing Futuress ally Noemi Parisi hosted a
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What can we do better? Share your thoughts!
We reach out to you—our fabulous Futuress community—for your advice and insights. How can Futuress continue to flourish and become financially sustainable? Let us know what we can
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“Cooking with Stories” at the Arquiteturas Film Festival in Porto, Portugal
“Cooking with Stories” by Mayar El-Bakry, Maya Ober, and Romi Lee explores the tales, traditions, and rituals behind anonymously designed cooking tools. Following the preparation of dishes from the South
#Living Archives
#Living Archives
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Embargoed Memories
Reckoning with the Portuguese violent colonial past through fragments of my family’s heirloom.
#Living Archives
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Circling the Circassian Identity
Chronicles of nationless-ness, scattered souls, and fragmented selves.
#Living Archives
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(Re)claiming Archives: استعادة الأرشيف
A palace of memories for collective imagination قصر للذاكرة الجماعية والأحلام العامة لتتذكرها وتتخيلها
#Living Archives
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Flat-Packed History
Disassembling simplified narratives and recovering anti-imperialist histories in Northern Ireland.
#Living Archives
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A Race Against Time
How the digital gallery Swatch Bharat is documenting the rapidly disappearing native Indian aesthetic.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Living Archives
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“Please Say More”
Bec Wonders on the Vancouver Women’s Library, the legacy of feminist archives, and the complex history of female conflict.
#Living Archives
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Named After Men
Colonial exploitation and egocentric bragging at the roots of the botanical sciences.
#Living Archives
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Chasing Images
In search of the Black aesthetic and my own identity via Louise E. Jefferson.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Feminist Curricula
#Feminist Curricula
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أحْرُف وكَلِمَاتْ وقِصَصْ A Multi-Script Type Design Program
Imagining a playground for collective archiving, researching and letter-making.
#Feminist Curricula
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Institutional Frictions
Reflecting on the possibilities and challenges of bringing activism into the design classroom
#Feminist Curricula
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A Critical Statement
Why I became a product designer who does not want to design products.
#Feminist Curricula
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Teach What You Need to Learn
A conversation about the Swedish Master program critically addressing visual standards and promoting “norm creativity.”
#Feminist Curricula
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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.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Feminist Curricula
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Learning from the Vernacular
A conversation with Clara Balaguer on the copyother, ethical piracy, and trolling graphic design.
#Feminist Curricula
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A Fashion Degree in Humanswear?
Students and educators doing fashion beyond binaries and norms.
#Feminist Curricula
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Disrupting Design with Capital “D”
Designer and educator Ramon Tejada on embracing your own voice, asking uncomfortable questions and making spaces in design education.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
Subscribe to our newsletter!
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
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Enough is Enough
Art & Design students lead the charge to expose the abusive underbelly of France's education system.
#Complaint Collective
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Long Nights
Do art universities educate students to exploit themselves? Short answer: Yes.
#Complaint Collective
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Glowing Red Letters
How a group of German art students is tackling structural discrimination with an anonymous form.
#Complaint Collective
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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
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Oh, Dear Diversity
A poem recalling memories of arrival, confrontations, and healing.
#Complaint Collective
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Diversity Issues
Teachers and students voice their grievances around discrimination in Swiss design schools.
#Designing Resistance
#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.
#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.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
#Designing Resistance
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“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.
#Designing Resistance
members
“We Are Not Safe:” Platform Censorship And Trauma
Oppressive social structures are coded into our feeds to alienate and harm marginalized identity dissidents in Latin America. How can we fight back?
#Designing Resistance
members
What Women Do to Get Around Karachi: Futile or Fertile?
Mutual trust and care as feminist strategies to navigate the public transport and gendered social norms of Pakistan’s largest city.
Get involved: support FUTURESS today
Subscribe to our newsletter!
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.