SPOD #11 Lechts und Rinks. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Design der Neuen Rechten

The rise of new right-wing movements is confronting the design disciplines in a previously unfamiliar way. This is because the political success of the New Right is largely based on the purposeful use of design: on efficient communication design in social media, the subversive aestheticization of protest actions, the creative coding of entire spaces and the depoliticization of design as a whole.
The 2019 DGTF conference took these developments as an opportunity to look at its own design practice: What does it mean for designers to work in a society in which an ethnic nationalism gains symbolic expression? In which cultural identities are invoked, ethnopluralism is celebrated and xenophobia becomes socially acceptable? This documentary examines the role of the media, the appropriation of spaces, the function of graphics and objects as well as the organization of interactions in order to discuss the relationship between design practices and new-right ideologies.
The open-ended publication series "Studienhefte Problemorientiertes Design" makes historical and contemporary reflections on the social and political dimension of Design accessible. It is a collection of irregularly appearing texts that critically examine the practical, cultural, methodological and everyday functions of Design. The problem-oriented approach aims to link design to the contradictions, potentials and circumstances of reality. Based on a critical examination of the possibilities and limitations of Design, alternative models of Design are outlined that contradict the established market-based design practice.