African American Design Nexus

The Design Nexus seeks to gather African American designers in the design professions to showcase their craft, explore different geographies of design practice, and inspire change within design institutions to participate in adopting new approaches to elevate black designers.

The Design Nexus emerged from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s inaugural Black in Design Conference where Dana McKinney, the President of the GSD’s African American Student Union and other students discussed ways of connecting and representing black designers. Dana created a list of over 2,000 African and African American designers that is a growing volume of work the Design Nexus is using to populate its content. When Phil Freelon and Mohsen Mostafavi discussed the potential for housing this project at the GSD, the idea of the African American Design Nexus was born.

The African American Design Nexus was developed by the Frances Loeb Library in collaboration with the GSD’s African American Student Union. As an initiative housed in the library this project is about showcasing black designers as well as providing a resource to be accessed and used by everyone. This underscores the mission of creating a “nexus” of individuals and institutions that are pursuing a pattern break in design education and practice.