twenty-six.design is an independent design, editorial, and research studio led by Jarrett Fuller. Our work takes shape across a variety of media, from books and websites to podcasts and installations and we work with clients large and small, around the world.
In addition to client work, we also produce experimental work, research projects, and original content, including Scratching the Surface, a weekly design criticism podcast; readings.design, an online archive of canonical graphic design texts; and other books and speculative projects.
New Jarrett Fuller essay, Against Design, published on Design Observer
The essay looks at Oli Mould’s new book, Against Creativity, the limits of design thinking, and the problems with the designer savior industrial complex:
Creativity,” Mould writes, “is about searching for, giving space to, and trying to realize the impossible.” Design, too, is an inherently future-looking profession. It can imagine futures that are more equitable, more inclusive, more humane. But to do this, design must shift from colonizer to democratizer. We must move away from the designer-savior industrial complex that tells us the designer can parachute into any problem and, with some design thinking, fix it, indicating change from the top-down. We need to move away from giving lip service to empathy without any action. We need to move away from design for design’s sake, from award-driven work, from superficial decoration masquerading as change.