Design After Design

● Critical writing for a changing design world ●
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Post Design Festival in collaboration with FURTHER READING

Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It reflects, reinforces, and sometimes resists the systems that shape our world. At its best, design can be a force for connection, care, and change. At its worst, it can entrench inequality, extractive practices, and corporate control.

We’re seeking contributions that explore design not just as a discipline, but as a site of tension: between intention and impact, aesthetics and ethics, creation and consequence.

As part of DESIGN AFTER DESIGN¹ — the latest edition of POST, a one-day festival of talks and activities— we invite you to question, critique, and reimagine the design lifecycle: from BEFORE (the research, histories, and conditions that shape how things begin), through DURING (the processes, power dynamics, and decisions embedded in making), to AFTER (the systems, consequences, and lived realities that unfold long after launch).

For this round of submissions; POST is joining forces with Further Reading²; a like-minded multi-format publisher based in Bandung, Indonesia. Further Reading expertly engages in design discourse through online publications, printed periodicals, pop-ups and workshops– so we’re thrilled to be teaming up. Part of the editorial team is also Listya Amelia, Design Director and partner at OlssønBarbieri in Oslo. Together we will collaboratively review, edit and curate the submissions.

WE’RE INTERESTED IN WRITING THAT EXPLORES

● Who holds power in design — and why
● The ethics of our tools, technologies, and methodologies
● Community-driven alternatives and grassroots practices
● The subtle and radical shifts needed for non-exploitative futures
● The messy, uncomfortable, and transformative edges of design

This call is open to designers, researchers, artists, educators, and beyond - anyone invested in visual communication and its wider implications that wants to challenge the dominant ontology of devastation to imagine futures that have a future.

YOUR PROPOSAL

We have no concrete formats – essays, reflections, research-based deep-dives, speculative or experimental non-fiction – if it’s rigorous, bold, and thoughtful, we want to read it.

We do ask that an your written submission should be:
● Written in English
● 1,500 words or more
● Original and unpublished
● Any supporting images should be (Compressed JPEG, 2100 × 1400 px or MP4 video, 720 p)
SUBMISSIONS

Send us a max. 300 word proposal detailing your submission and a short bio. If you have previously published material, we would love to read it, so send us a link.

The deadline for proposals has been extended from end of October to Sunday 30th November 2025.

We’ll be reviewing proposals in phases. The deadline for contributions is 6 weeks from selection, and we can offer editorial support if needed. Texts will then be published on our website and shared with the POST community internationally.

Contributors receive a fee of €350 incl. VAT, paid upon publication. The editor is free to reject contributions after they have been written if they do not fit the editorial framework, deviate significantly from what was discussed/agreed upon, or if the quality is considered sub-par.

The open call is made possible through funding by Nordisk Kulturfond.

SUBMIT YOUR WRITING HERE →

ASK ANY QUESTIONS HERE →