Very excited to read What is post-branding? How to Counter Fundamentalist Marketplace Semiotics, a book by Jason Grant & Oliver Vodeb published by Set Margins (which seems to be publishing all the good design books these days).

Post-Branding empowers better design of public communication for civic and activist groups by replacing corporate branding’s predatory principles with a new set of strategies embedded in a new culture of craft. A new way of being and knowing, for a new way of relating with the world.

Jason is runs the Brisbane-based studio Inkahoots. For the last 30 years or so they’ve worked in direct collaboration with social movements, transforming from a community-run screenprinting workshop into a non-hierarchical design studio focused on creative political expression.

Jason was one of my tutors at the Queensland College of Art. At the time I was in my final year at uni, about to graduate into a recession, and seriously questioning my choice to become a designer and design’s complicity in consumerism. Learning from him and about his practice had a huge influence on me. It prompted me to do a masters of Design Futures with Tony Fry and to try to find ways to be a designer outside of / against capitalism.

On a related note, I’ve been thinking about writing a series on design and design-adjacent practices that are modelling new ways of working. My shortlist so far is:

• Inkahoots (AU)
• Holon (ES)
• Then Try This (UK)
• Geeks for Social Change (UK)
• Promising Trouble (UK)
• Krater (SI)
• Brave New Alps (IT)
• Multitudes (UK)
• And Also Too (CA)
• Civic Square (UK)