ANTI-CAPITALIST DESIGN
WITH CHRIS RUDD
In the January 7, 2021 issue of The Chicago Reader, Murmur Ring held a conversation with ChiByDesign founder Chris Rudd to discuss how his work creates equity and dismantles racism in the design industry.
With a family of passionate political and community organizers guiding his upbringing, Rudd's design career developed organically from one synergistic moment following the next, but always with activism as the connective tissue.
As an emerging leader in Chicago, using design as a catalyst for creating equity while simultaneously demanding the field examine its own inherent racism, Rudd straddles formal institutions and grassroots organizing.
"In order to be anti-racist, you have to be anti-capitalist. I don't think we can actually ever be an anti-racist institution. We can be a better place, a more inclusive place. But I think racism is built into the DNA of capitalism."
On the way to Marquette Park, Rudd stops at his Father's house where he borrows a Multiracial Unity sign from the yard.
"I grew up like this," says Rudd. While most of his friends were playing ball or getting in trouble, he was going to rallies, "I come from a long line of activists."
The MLK Memorial at Marquette Park, designed by Sonja Henderson and John Pitman Weber, is made of terra cotta. It depicts the 1966 march where Dr. King was struck by a rock a few hundred feet from the monument. The scene depicted on the wall reenacts the moment where King was thrown to one knee and surrounded by supporters before a riot broke out. Several demonstrators were attacked and injured with a hail of bricks.
Content from our interview featured in The Chicago Reader was included in Matthew Wizinsky’s Design after Capitalism: Transforming Design Today for an Equitable Tomorrow from MIT Press.
Design after Capitalism asks how design can transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism: a framework, theoretical grounding, and practical principles.
"The idea that a struggle is somebody else's and not your own doesn't exist..
We go. We support. We fight."
Chris Rudd, designer & activist
CREDITS
MIRIAM DOAN
Photography
CHICAGO READER
Interview publication