Design as an Agent of Change: Alice Rawsthorn at NeoCon 2025

Part Two of The Raygency’s NeoCon 2025 Keynote Series

Few speakers command a room the way Alice Rawsthorn does. With poise, precision, and a quiet intensity, she delivered one of NeoCon 2025’s most compelling keynotes. A longtime design critic for The New York Times, a writer for The Financial Times, and a director of the London Design Museum, Rawsthorn is known for intellectual rigor and cultural fluency. At NeoCon, she wove together history, crisis, innovation, and optimism in a talk that felt less like a lecture and more like a map—a route for how design can meet this moment.

The central message? Design is not a decorative overlay; it is a powerful agent of social, political, and ethical change. Rawsthorn challenged the audience to reframe design as a mindset rooted in resourcefulness, empathy, and urgency. In doing so, she called on designers—especially those working in interiors and product development—to see themselves not only as creators of beauty but also as shapers of systems, policy, and public trust.

Highlights from the Talk

Design as a Tool for Crisis Response

Rawsthorn opened with a bold reframing of design’s historical role—not as a luxury, but as a necessity. From prehistoric tools to the raised fist symbol used by civil rights activists, she demonstrated how design has always helped societies adapt to change. This lineage continues today with the astonishing ingenuity of Ukrainian designers in their response to the war. She described how fashion designers pivoted to make military uniforms within days of Russia’s invasion and how architects reimagined civic infrastructure to shelter displaced families. A poignant example is a campaign by Ukrainian graphic designers who replaced all place names on road signs with “The Hague”—a gesture of defiance that redirected the enemy and invoked international justice. These weren’t high-tech design interventions; they were fast, clever, deeply human responses to immediate needs. “Design,” she said, “can be an act of resistance.”

Expanding the Definition of the Designer

Rawsthorn emphasized that many of today’s most impactful design leaders are not classically trained or are working far outside traditional disciplinary boundaries. She highlighted figures like Yasmeen Lari, the 84-year-old Pakistani architect now recognized for her work in “humanitarian design,” who has built over one million flood-resilient homes following historic monsoons that displaced 33 million people. She also introduced Sehat Kahani, a telehealth platform founded by two Pakistani women doctors that connects patients in rural areas to home-based female physicians via video link. These projects aren’t just about products; they’re about access, equity, and empowerment. Rawsthorn encouraged designers to look beyond their immediate client briefs and consider where their skills might serve broader, more urgent causes.

Rawsthorn speaks in front of images reflecting graphic design as an act of political resistance in Ukraine. Photo: Leah Ray

Technology, Intelligence, and Caution

In a time when AI is reshaping every discipline, Rawsthorn argued for both optimism and vigilance. She described how digital tools, such as open-source intelligence, crowdfunding platforms, and mapping apps, have democratized design, enabling independent practitioners to act quickly and meaningfully. But she also warned that intelligence and ethics must keep pace with innovation. Referencing Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI, she reminded the audience that design has a duty not only to deploy emerging technologies but also to interrogate their implications. “Design isn’t a panacea,” she said. “But it can help us address complex problems—if it’s deployed with care, collaboration, and context.”

A Renaissance in Interior Design

Rawsthorn noted the evolving role of interior design. Once dismissed as mere decoration, interiors are now recognized as spaces that tell sensory stories, preserve cultural memory, and foster emotional well-being. She pointed to designers like Rose Uniacke, whose work includes the use of humidity and ambient sound to create atmosphere, and Formafantasma, whose furniture and objects act as critiques of extractive industries. Rawsthorn predicted that the interiors of the future—whether in offices, care facilities, or public spaces—will require more than visual flair. They’ll demand narrative, nuance, and ecological responsibility. And, she added, they’ll be led by designers who understand that materials, textures, and even scent can play a role in creating spaces that feel meaningful, not just marketable.

Global Voices and Vernacular Futures

Rawsthorn urged the audience to look beyond familiar design capitals and embrace the explosion of talent in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. She spotlighted designers like Nifemi Marcus-Bello in Nigeria, who reinterprets West African vernacular objects into contemporary furniture, and Fernando Laposse in Mexico, who collaborates with indigenous communities to transform native materials, such as loofah and corn husk, into refined, sustainable designs. These practitioners, she noted, are not just offering aesthetic alternatives—they are proposing fundamentally different relationships between design, land, labor, and culture. As the climate crisis accelerates and migration reshapes cities, these alternative models will be essential.

Why It Matters—for Designers and Communicators Alike

At The Raygency, we believe that design should mean something, do something, change something. In this keynote, Rawsthorn didn’t just call for better design. She called for braver design. More innovative, more inclusive, more interdisciplinary design. And she reminded us that if we want the world to take design seriously, we must speak about it seriously—with the urgency, empathy, and eloquence that it deserves.