Other Worlds: A 4-Year, 20-Issue Retrospective
Other Worlds was launched in July 2021. Over the past four years, twenty issues have been published. In this retrospective, we celebrate the richness and range of contributions — from an analysis of the US presidential elections to a media history of the dashboard, from a portrait of the late Bruno Latour to an interface journey through the Dutch immigration center, from a design proposal for obsolete devices to an autofictional account of boyhood in graphic design. This is also an opportunity for new subscribers to discover articles they may have missed.
We’re also pleased to announce that these twenty issues are now available for download as a series of four bulletins, designed by students of the Publishing Futures Master at Delli: Alëna Koleso, André Fróis, Diogo Silva, Filipa Fonseca, Leonor Ferreira, Maria Andrade, Maria Rodrigues, Rodrigo Almeida and Sofia Castela.
Finally, we would like to thank all the authors who generously contributed to our effort to make the social, political, cultural and technical complexities surrounding design practices more legible – and therefore mutable.
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OW #20: “The Parable of the Coconut: On Kamala Harris’s 2024 Campaign Strategy” by Noemi Biasetton (December 9, 2024)
Noemi Biasetton examines Kamala Harris’s viral hype-based campaign, which aimed to engage young voters through meme culture and the “brat” aesthetic. She highlights the strategy’s adaptability and appeal but also warns of potential backlash from forced trends and unconvincing attempts to sway a savvy online audience.
OW #19: “They Built World: A Boyhood in Graphic Design” by Gilbert (November 11, 2024)
Gilbert offers a vivid autofiction of their childhood fascination with graphic design, detailing formative encounters with cult magazines, coveted toys, and niche board games. The journey reflects a gradual immersion into a world of vibrant imagery, compelling typography, and the irresistible allure of the commodity.
OW #18: “Typographic Bodies: From Colonial Dictatorship to Sex Education” by Silvio Lorusso (October 23, 2024)
Silvio Lorusso reflects on a visit to the Aljube Museum in Lisbon. There, he noticed a photo from the colonial past of Timor where bodies of the local people were arranged to form celebratory words, leading him to explore similar uses of bodily typefaces in design history.
OW #17: “Useful Overdrive: On the Usefulness of Chindōgu” by Ana Margarida São Miguel & Madalena Mourinha (July 15, 2024)
Ana Margarida São Miguel and Madalena Mourinha, both currently studying at DELLI, explore the Chindōgu movement, highlighting how its whimsical inventions challenge the traditional notions of usefulness in design. They discuss how Chindōgu’s playful yet impractical gadgets question our understanding of utility within consumer culture, and advocate for a broader understanding of design that embraces both the useful and the un-useless.
OW #16: “Other Typographic Worlds: Recap (Part II)” by Rita Carvalho (March 18, 2024)
Rita Carvalho details parts of the 13th Encontro De Tipografia, including the last day of the conference, several workshops, a small trip and an exhibition. 13ET took place between the 23rd and the 25th of November at the Lusófona University of Lisbon.
OW #15: “Other Typographic Worlds: A Partial Recap” by Silvio Lorusso (December 18, 2023)
Silvio Lorusso chronicles a day of the 13th Encontro De Tipografia, which took place between the 23rd and the 25th of November at the Lusófona University of Lisbon.
OW #14: “‘I Understand’: Navigating the Dutch Immigration Center Website” by Maisa Imamović (October 25, 2023)
Web developer and writer Maisa Imamović dissects a tiny yet crucial user experience that occurs during the process of obtaining a residence permit. Adopting an intimist tone, Imamović stays close to minimal interaction elements such as menu items and buttons while considering their cultural significance and their rhetorical effects on the user. This contribution is a unique example of cultural criticism by means of ‘user journey’ and speculative interface design.
OW #13: “God Save Alegria: On Détournement” by Ana Henriques (June 26, 2023)
Ana Henriques delves into the various uses of détournement, a cultural technique developed by Guy Debord and the Situationists to hijack the meaning of images produced under capitalism. A versatile instrument, détournement has been employed in many different contexts, such as the punk movement and the fight against AIDS. Nowadays, its legacy lives in images that criticise the cosy, pacific illustration style of Big Tech: Alegria.
OW #12: “What is a Dashboard” by Nathaniel Tkacz (April 24, 2023)
Swedish-Australian media theorist Nathaniel Tkacz discusses the essential characteristics of a dashboard and explains how this ubiquitous but overlooked ‘symbolic form’ for monitoring and understanding came to dominate the daily life of individuals, organizations, and firms, infiltrating both the sphere of work and that of leisure. The following text is an excerpt of Tkacz’s book Being with Data: The Dashboarding of Everyday Life, published by Polity Press in 2022.
OW #11: “Digitally-Disadvantaged Languages” by Zaugg, Hossain and Molloy (February 20, 2023)
Researchers Isabelle A. Zaugg, Anushah Hossain and Brendan Molloy explain why a large amount of spoken and written languages are digitally-disadvantaged. To do so, they shed light on the limits of the available digital tools and support, as well as the risks related to surveillance faced by the speakers. This entry was first published in the Glossary of Decentralised Technosocial Systems, a special section of Internet Policy Review.
OW #10: “Bruno Latour, Designer” by Cameron Tonkinwise (November 21, 2022)
Cameron Tonkinwise, Professor of Design Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, reflects on the “annoyingly prolific” production of Bruno Latour and its significance for designers. With his unique cleverness, Latour drew attention to the narrative – even promotional – abilities needed to advance a scientific idea, he reflected on the morality we delegate to things, and thus invited us to take those things seriously.
OW #9: “Preservation, not Perfection!”- An Interview with the People’s Graphic Design Archive by Michele Galluzzo (October 18, 2022)
Designer and design historian Michele Galluzzo speaks with Brockett Horne and Briar Levit, co-founders of the People's Graphic Design Archive, about messy history, bottom-up participation, institutional support and the awe that archival material can spark.
OW #8: “Who Can Afford to Be Critical? What Can Criticality Afford?” by Afonso de Matos (June 13, 2022)
Netherlands-based Portuguese designer and researcher Afonso de Matos looks back at his educational journey which led him from having no idea about design to believing that everything is design and design is everything. This journey urged de Matos to come to terms with a series of contradictions about the role of a critical attitude in design, its effects on the world and its relation to uneven professional opportunities.
OW #7: “Progress and Bigness: The Lineage of Design Events” by Hannah Ellis (April 25, 2022)
In her book The Circuit, graphic design writer, researcher and educator Hannah Ellis investigates the actual meaning of design when it reaches the scale of fairs, festivals and biennials, as well as the effects of these events on people and places. Here, we publish, with permission of the author, a short excerpt about the political and economic genealogy of these manifestations.
OW #6: “The Design of Hope: Stayaway Covid and Its Shortcomings” by Manufactura Independente (February 14, 2022)
Ana Isabel Carvalho and Ricardo Lafuente, founders of the F/LOSS-oriented design studio Manufactura Independente, rigorously dissect Stayaway, the contact tracing app launched in Portugal during the Covid pandemic. By analysing both the technical limitations of the app and its misleading visual metaphors, they prove that a grounded criticism of public health monitoring systems is possible. Reconsidering the app after its demise, they warn us against a novelty bias in the public discourse, which is too focused on promotion and expectations rather than consequences and effects.
OW #5: “The Loop: Medical Devices, Safety, and Care” by Pernilla Manjula Philip (November 15, 2021)
Pernilla Manjula Philip reflects on the various practices of care revolving around her illness. A complex scenario emerges: the safety procedures regulated by the official healthcare system limit the well-being allowed by do-it-yourself technologies developed by independent communities of makers. The approach of these makers is, in turn, often too technical and masculine to include most users. With her artistic work, Philip mobilizes empathy to counterbalance this state of affairs.
OW #4: “Design and Power - Part 1” by Silvio Lorusso (October 4, 2021)
Silvio Lorusso examines various ways in which designers have conceptualized, expressed and exerted their power. Furthermore, he looks at how such power overlaps with notions of authority, hierarchy, prestige, responsibility and ethics. The goal is to provide a specific set of categories to map the power relationships in which the field of design operates beyond both subjectivism and determinism.
OW #3: “May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way”: Five Questions to a Dutch Design School’s Meme Page (July 26, 2021)
An interview between Silvio Lorusso and @wdka.teachermemes.
OW #2: “Design for Obsolete Devices” by Anaëlle Beignon (July 19, 2021)
French designer Anaëlle Beignon recently graduated from the Interaction Design department of Malmö University. In this excerpt from her master thesis, Beignon shows how obsolescence is not just an internal quality of a device, but a dimension that emerges from the relation between such device and the broader sociotechnical ecosystem.
OW #1: “The Branding of Bodies” by Ruben Pater (July 5, 2021)
In his new book CAPS LOCK, Ruben Pater uses accessible language and striking visual material to dissect the complex relationships between graphic design and capitalism. Here, we publish, with permission of the author, a shortened version of the chapter 'The Designer as Brander'.
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Other Worlds is a small, artisanal journal dedicated to design research, criticism and transformation. Its goal is to look at the social, political, cultural and technical complexities surrounding design practices, making them legible and therefore mutable.
OW features articles, interviews, short essays and various other cultural products that don’t fit neither the fast-paced, volatile promotional machine of design media nor the necessarily slow and formal processes of scholarly publishing. This approach allows the journal to address pressing issues without compromising on rigor or depth.
Editorial Board: Silvio Lorusso (editor), Francisco Laranjo, Luís Alegre, Rita Carvalho, Patrícia Cativo, Hugo Barata