This is an excerpt from Ruined by Design, a book about design ethics and activism. You can find out more about it here.

In 1944, the CIA (or technically, the OSS, its precursor) published one of the greatest design manuals of all time, and by far my personal favorite. The Simple Sabotage Field Manual was clandestinely, and I hope very carefully, distributed to people living in Axis or Axis-controlled countries who sided with the Allied cause, including our good friends and role models in the French Resistance. It was declassified in 2008. The manual is filled with dozens of little…

Dear Designer

On March 14, 2018, millions of students across the United States, across all grades, walked out of their classrooms for the March For Our Lives. This was specifically in response to the Parkland High School massacre, where 17 kids were murdered, but also generally about the country’s inability to address gun control. (In 2019, 776 teens and 209 children were murdered by guns in the U.S.) Kids were marching to solve a problem adults had failed to address.

On September 20, 2019, three days before the United Nations Climate Summit, roughly six million people, in over 4,500 locations in 150…

Dear Designer

Welcome back, gentlemen. Last year’s guide to white men in tech was one of the most popular articles on this platform, so I’m excited about this year’s. We assume the popularity was for several reasons: The title had a number in it, it was addressed to white men, it was written by a white man, and it was about tech. That’s a Medium grand slam!

(I’m kidding. There was no guide last year. Roll with it.)

Look, I’m walking a tightrope here, kids. First of all, let’s acknowledge, as white men, the privilege we have in society in general and…

Dear Designer

“That’s not a good look,” came the reply.

“What’s not a good look?” I asked.

“Shaming workers.”

This was in response to a tweet I sent out a few weeks ago, pointing out some new horrible Facebook behavior. (There are many of these tweets to choose from in my feed. Pick one.) The tweet was addressed to Facebook workers and went something like “Facebook employees, this is where you work” with a link to an article about Facebook’s newest horrible behavior. I’ve posted the same type of tweet to Twitter workers as well.

But still, I was taken aback by…

Dear Designer

Hey Mike,

Will you please just write something positive before this year is out?

— My editor

The promise of the internet was that it was going to give voice to the voiceless, visibility to the invisible, and power to the powerless. That’s what originally excited me about it. And I’m guessing that’s what originally excited a ton of people about it. It was supposed to be an engine of equality and democracy. Suddenly, everyone could tell their story. Suddenly, everyone could sing their song. Suddenly, that one weird kid in Trondheim, Norway, could find another weird kid just like…

Dear Designer

Hey Mike,

We’ve been behaving so badly that I hope the government comes in and regulates us.

— Anonymous Facebook Employee

Dear Designer,

The first car I remember my father driving was a 1973 Plymouth Gran Fury. It was midnight blue. Big as a boat. You could easily fit four people across the back seat. It smelled like cigarettes. He bought it used. But he looked good in it, which is probably why he bought it. My father was a vain man. Is a vain man.

The car got terrible gas mileage, which hadn’t yet become a concern for most…

Dear Designer

Dear Mike,

How do you know when it’s time to leave a job?

Dear Designer,

You’ll have a number of jobs during your career. Some will be good. Some will be bad. Most will oscillate wildly between those two poles. But the one thing all those jobs will have in common is that, at some point, you will leave. Sometimes it’ll be your call; sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it’ll be a happy occasion; sometimes it won’t. But rest assured, every job has an endpoint.

The fact that a job ends shouldn’t be a surprise, although the manner in which it…

Dear Designer

Dear Mike,

I’m a union organizer. In the last few months we’ve started getting a lot of calls from workers in the tech industry looking to unionize. We don’t have a lot of experience talking to tech people. A few of them said they were contacting us because of an article you wrote about how to form a union, so we were wondering if maybe you could help us get the lay of the land.

Dear Union Organizer,

Thanks for reaching out. Happy to help as much as I can. As long as we agree that I’ll be painting with…