February 27th, 2026
This Is Where Designers Must Act – On the Situation in Iran
The events in Iran leave many of us — probably more than ever — stunned, almost paralyzed. Now, three colleagues who, for understandable reasons, wish to remain anonymous, have started the initiative “Designers Must Act” as an Open Letter to designers, design researchers, educators, practitioners, and institutions worldwide. Will it be enough? Probably not, but we should not leave anything undone that is within our power. In the end, solidarity is the only thing we truly have. That is why we must multiply it. As Wolfgang Jonas states: “This is not, as is so often the case, a grandiose design manifesto claiming the agency to solve all the world’s problems, but rather an urgent call for concrete and binding signs, gestures, and actions (however small they may be) in support of our Iranian colleagues.” We publish the open letter in full below. The original link is included as well.
Nearly a decade ago, Victor Margolin and Ezio Manzini’s open letter “Stand Up For Democracy” urged the design community to recognize its responsibility in shaping democracy worldwide. That letter articulated a growing understanding of design not only as a professional practice, but as a civic force that helps build the infrastructures of participation, communication, and collective life.
Today, we write not to repeat that call, but to advance it. Yet much of what has been articulated has not entered practice. This letter is another incitement toward doing so.
In recent months, Iran has entered a period marked by widespread repression, mass detentions, and severe violence, alongside repeated disruptions to communication infrastructures. At stake are the fundamental conditions that allow people to speak, assemble, and participate safely in public life.
Across many international professional and academic contexts, including within our own discipline, responses have often remained cautious or silent. Yet silence is not neutral. Neutrality is also a position, a stance of silent consent.
The subject of design is the human being. Not merely as users or consumers, but as people within society. Where human dignity is at risk, design must act. If we lose this principle, design is reduced to a tool.
Design cannot be separated from politics. Yet its concern must remain with people, not with their reduction to game pieces in ideological conflicts, and not with deciding which people matter in which part of the world.
If design claims a role in democratic life, then the ongoing uprising and repression in Iran are where that claim must be proven.
Our field possesses concrete capacities that are directly relevant in times of civic strain: the ability to visualize complex systems, to communicate across differences, to structure participation, to build and sustain channels of inquiry, and to translate concern into coordinated action.
We therefore call on the global design community to move beyond tokenistic acknowledgment toward meaningful engagement through more substantial forms of solidarity including:
• designing for connectivity in response to restrictions on communication and civic participation inside Iran;
• actively identifying, inviting, and safeguarding the participation of those directly affected;
• providing sustained academic, institutional, and action-oriented support for Iranian designers, design students, and researchers, including mentorship, collaborative platforms, and projects that respond to present conditions;
• leveraging informational, transformation, and system design to make invisible conditions visible, to render longstanding demands for structural change legible beyond Iran, and to enable durable exchange and collaboration;
• contributing to the enrichment of discourse on design for democracy, not merely in terms of designing new ballot boxes, but in redesigning democratic infrastructures.
Alongside these actions, we invite an open and sustained dialogue within the global design community on the role articulated in this letter, not as an abstract debate, but as a collective effort to deepen and refine the language, practices, and responsibilities of design in times of crisis. Action and reflection must reinforce one another.
To break silence is not to speak for others; it is to ensure that those whose voices are constrained are not cut off from the global networks that shape knowledge and practice.
We therefore urge our colleagues worldwide to stand clearly and collectively in defense of the conditions under which dignity and shared life remain possible.
Those Who Stand
The following individuals have publicly endorsed this letter.
Names are listed upon verification.
Simon Meienberg
Jan Zurwellen
Wolfgang Jonas
Bijan Aryana
Tom Bieling
Moein Nedaei
Nila Rezaei
Felix Kosok
Maziar Rezai
Birger Sevaldson
Birgit Mager
John Thackara
Uta Brandes
Alongside these actions, we invite an open and sustained dialogue within the global design community on the role articulated in this letter, not as an abstract debate, but as a collective effort to deepen and refine the language, practices, and responsibilities of design in times of crisis. Action and reflection must reinforce one another.