How Can Design Engage Creative Confrontation?

Cynthia E. Smith

Letters from the Black Lives Matter Harlem Street Mural, designed and painted by artist Thomas Heath (MA), a bold declaration along a busy New York boulevard, 2020. Credit: Along Sicherman for New Kingston Media

Not all conflict is damaging. When it engages with unjust systems, conflict can be transformative, creating space for debate among various voices and viewpoints and catalyzing positive change. Provocative creative actions by designers, artists, and activists have brought new attention to entrenched issues. Nadine Bloch and Andrew Boyd assembled the Beautiful Trouble Toolbox, a set of core tactics, principles, and theoretical concepts by more than seventy artists and activists that can be used in imaginative ways to propel creative activism. In New York, the Black Lives Matter Harlem Street Mural makes a strong visual statement of protest against police killings of Black Americans and in affirmation of the value of Black lives, as do similar murals in communities across the country and around the world. As an alternative to confrontational street protest, London’s Art the Arms Fair presents art events that expose the international arms trade and expand the discourse on its role in contemporary society. With a view to harsh realities on the ground, one art collective incorporates discarded bullet casings into woven rugs called Maps (Bullet Rug Series), which offer evidence of international arms-trafficking routes, secret military interventions, and lethal weaponry design. And, as Caroline O’Connell explains, in Northern Ireland during the period known as the Troubles, collaborative textile making was harnessed to express a united stance for peace by women from the communities on both sides of the conflict.

Visual symbols can activate global movements by communicating across divides. Lee Davis writes about an effort to create a set of universal graphic symbols in the late 1960s, with the goal of reducing confusion and conflict brought on by increasing globalization. More recently, a Uruguayan graphic designer created a new World Peace Symbol, devoid of the problematic meanings associated with previous signs. Another visual design, the Extinction Symbol, is simple, replicable, and easily deployed in a multitude of contexts. Incorporating the image of an hourglass, it signifies the urgent need for action in the face of accelerating plant and animal species extinctions.

Cynthia E. Smith

Cynthia E. Smith is Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Curator of Socially Responsible Design. She integrates her training as an industrial designer with her advocacy on human rights and social justice issues, organizing a humanitarian-focused design exhibition and publication series, serving on international design juries, and lecturing widely on socially responsible design.


The letters "M" and "A" are painted onto an asphalt street; the letters are black and white and contain the silhouettes of human figures.

Letters from the Black Lives Matter Harlem Street Mural, designed and painted by artist Thomas Heath (MA), a bold declaration along a busy New York boulevard, 2020. Credit: Along Sicherman for New Kingston Media


Two letter "T"s are painted onto an asphalt street; in shades of yellow, orange, and read are depicted portraits of Black American figures..

Letters from the Black Lives Matter Harlem Street Mural, designed and painted by artist Dianne Smith (TT), a bold declaration along a busy New York boulevard, 2020. Credit: Along Sicherman for New Kingston Media


The letters "E" and "R" are painted onto an asphalt street in shades of blue.

Letters from the Black Lives Matter Harlem Street Mural, designed and painted by artist Joyous Pierce (ER), a bold declaration along a busy New York boulevard, 2020. Credit: Along Sicherman for New Kingston Media


Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation

To address racial divides in the United States, beginning in 2016 the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, a national nonprofit, designed and launched its Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation framework, a process of multisector community dialogue that confronts the damaging, centuries-old belief in a hierarchy of human value based on based on race, physical characteristics, or place of origin. This powerful process is designed to bring healing and transformation to a number of different spheres, from journalism and entertainment to public space and museums.