November 4, 2023

Our IMMEDIATE demand: CEASEFIRE NOW.  

This is a public act of solidarity unequivocally condemning Israel’s genocide of Palestine and Palestinians. We are individuals from all over the world united by our craft and profession as designers, who are standing up to say we are AGAINST genocide and the military occupation of Palestine. We sign this pledge to commit to speaking up about Palestine as designers- an act that is often riddled with threats of censorship. We are encouraged to be silent, and to look the other way as professional designers. We refuse. 

We as individuals – who work as human-centered designers, interaction designers, experience designers, interface designers, service designers, graphic designers, user experience designers, product designers, design researchers, design leaders, futurists, and technologists – know that at the heart of all that we do is a commitment to designing for the better, both for people and the planet. We design for better futures and we prototype better futures in our work, every day. We cannot, in good conscience, therefore stay silent during a brutal genocidal, and displacement campaign of a people while claiming to work for better futures.

Whether as designers we are passionate about the climate catastrophe, sustainability, youth, education, safety, feminism, maternal health, biodiversity, decolonization, mental health, inclusion, surveillance technology, security, community building and community health - this genocide touches on every issue. Many of us also like to call ourselves life-centered designers. As professionals, we can not in good conscience claim to practice life-centered design, while ignoring genocide, a catastrophe designed to have devastating effects on both people and the planet. Dropping 12,000 tonnes of bombs from the sky is certainly not good for the environment, on top of the fact that it kills families, children, and all life below it. 

We pledge our names to condemn the dehumanization of Palestinians. We reject the framing of any one group of people as inherently evil who deserve violence. We unequivocally stand for the safety, freedom, and liberation of the people of Palestine and reject the notion that the brutal genocide and oppression of one group of people determines the security and safety of another. We recognize the lethal nature of this intentional framing and we reject it. We are unequivocally against islamophobia, anti-semitism, racism, and the willful persecution of people. We understand that no state government is representative of a faith tradition.

We sign our name to say we stand against genocide, to say that under no circumstances whatsoever is genocide justified, to say that we stand against the military occupation of Palestine and the apartheid society created by Israel under which Palestinian people are subject to inhumane conditions under “normal circumstances”. 

We can not be designers who stay disconnected from brutal war crimes while claiming to operate from a space of empathy when we design for spaces, technology and interfaces. Empathy is the ability to feel. To not feel anything when you see grieving and wailing parents carrying remains of their children who were bombed, men pulling out corpses from rubble with their bare hands, hospitals and ambulances being bombed carrying the injured, white phosphorus raining down onto people that will burn through skin and flesh to the bones upon contact - to not feel, to stay silent, means something in US has extinguished - and this ALSO is something we pledge to fight against. There is nothing normal about staying silent or indifferent while a population–half of which is children—is being annihilated. We reject the efforts to keep us silent, to keep us inactive. We reject efforts to disconnect us from our sense of humanity in fear of professional retaliation.

We pledge our names below to say that we did not look away, that we bore witness. The power of showing our names and showing up is not lost upon us, especially because we are listening to Palestinians on the ground say clearly that they want us to keep talking about Palestine. We hope to collect as many signatures from designers as possible, from around the world, to show our collective stance and condemnation of genocide.

More information on Designers Against Genocide can be found here

*This initiative is inspired by the Writers Against the War on Gaza initiative