Kevin Lo: Design Against Design
Kevin Lo is a Canadian designer who has been involved for decades in designing for and with protest and social justice movements. He used to run LokiDesign, a small and exceptional design studio in Montreal that, besides its engagement with radical social initiatives, earned their salary by mostly working for progressive cultural and social institutions. Kevin is now an assistant professor at Concordia University. Listen to this conversation with Oliver Vodeb about how an oppositional design practice can find its place across industry, community and the university.
Some 25 years after they first met, Kevin Lo and Oliver Vodeb talk about design and its radical potential across industry, community and university. A lot has happened in all that time. Design as a discipline has somewhat matured, and the idea that design should be used for "good" is now almost universally accepted. But of course, we should remain skeptical and careful. In the end, design still largely is a tool for capitalist extraction — at least in the professional world.
Kevin Lo is a rare designer who has walked the walk, and whose connection with design comes from a social design practice with a radical background over many years. Kevin ran his LokiDesign studio, which we have always thought was one of those studios that were "the real deal". He is also a member of the Memefest network and has closely collaborated in many ways over some twenty years, including on projects with Aboriginal activists in Australia at the Radical Intimacies sessions, with Black food activists in Baltimore, at the Food Apartheid sessions and at the Relational City sessions in Saigon. He was also a long-term jury Member of Memefest’s Friendly competition.
In 2023 Kevin joined the Design program at Concordia University, where he teaches graphic design and his research focuses on publication practices in the context of social movements.
He has recently published a great book titled Design Against Design for which Oliver Vodeb has written the Afterword.
This conversation looks at design with a sense of experience and maturity, but also curiosity, as things are dramatically changing. On one level we have AI and all that it brings to the discipline and profession of design, including the question: what is the future of graphic and communication design? On the other hand, despite growing knowledge about design's radical potentials, now more than ever we need radical design in theory, practice and education. So how do we think about such design across industry, community and the university?
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PODCAST CREDITS:
Hosted by: Oliver Vodeb/ Memefest.
Music: Thanks to Bait for their song Property Law. Two best friends meeting seasonally in bucolic surrounds to generate improvised music. Property Law recognises the Indigenous peoples of the world's relationship to land. As in, "we don't own the land. The land owns us." Each of us is only passing through. Empires, Epochs come & go, but the spirit of the land persists.
** The podcast's express personal views unless explicitly stated