Funny how they're using terrible stock photography instead of terrible Gen AI imagery for the ad.

If you’re a designer, planner, architect—this is your invitation.

Let’s move engagement upstream and make it mean something.

Not just for the public, but for the design itself.

Good designers create form.

Great designers translate story into place.

Design driven by story transforms space.

From the Vietnam Memorial to the High Line, it’s story that turns places into something that matters.

Christopher Alexander once wrote: “Light on Two Sides of Every Room.”

It’s beautiful and intuitive.

That’s what public engagement should be—clear, human, accessible.

We don’t consult the public for surgery or engineering—but we do for design. Why?

Because space shapes meaning. And meaning comes from the people who live in a space they've made into a place.

I wrote about this in my latest for Frontier Magazine: “Engaged by Design.”
Instead of performative consultation, let’s root design in something more real: story.
magazine.frontier.is/engaged-by-d...

Full piece here 👇
magazine.frontier.is/im-a-designer/

Design belongs upstream —
Not after the deck is done.
Not as an afterthought.
As a way of inventing new futures.

I once wrote that Ricky Gervais was a designer.
He reframed the Golden Globes.
He designed a new context.
Someone said: “He’s just a comedian.”
Both things can be true.

Designers don’t just make things —
We ask better questions.
We reframe problems.
We imagine what could be.

Design means “to mark out.”
Not decorate.
To define intention.

But what if design is the thinking?
Not just polish — but possibility.
Not just aesthetics — but strategy.

The fundamental flaw here is thinking his comments are in any way intended for his opponents. He knows full well who he is speaking to and that they will be sympathetic. And he also knows and intends for his comments to inflame his opponents as a form of distraction.