International Design Day

IDD has been around since 1963 and until 2020, it was called World Design Day.

International Design Day is an opportunity to recognise the value of design and its capacity for effect change. On this day, we challenge designers to reflect deeply on the well-being of people within their local environments, and to find innovative solutions to local needs by using design as a vehicle to honor diversity and transcend borders.

This year’s theme is called Suspended in Transition.

One of the questions being posed in their toolkit is: “In this space of radical change, how should the design profession (re)define itself?”

First, you can replace design profession with ANY profession and the question is still valid and worthy of your time and thoughts.

When it comes to branding, the design profession needs to start by naming and recognizing the racist history that branding has come from and every conversation needs to start from there.

The word brand derives from the Old Norse word brandr or "to burn," and refers to the practice of branding livestock to show ownership. This practice then was adopted by the Portugese, even before the Atlantic Slave Trade, to brand people who were enslaved with a hot iron.

And this has not been widely named in the modern world of branding.

The way I see it is before we can redefine our roles, we must pay acknowledge this history that branding came from.

It’s only from an honest unpacking that we can begin to see the impact branding has had on the culture that is created around everything that has been designed - from personal brands to corporate brands, from websites to wellness studios, from political campaigns to bills being passed.

What do you think?