Design Book (and Writing) Club

WHAT IS IT

O.K./K.O. is a collectively produced critical publication creating space for female voices in design writing. It began as a place-based book and writing club (ten participants, one year, two phases) and is now developing into a printed edition of critical essays on design and its social, political, and cultural intersections.

The club unfolds in two phases: six months of collective reading, discussion, and critical analysis, followed by six months of essay writing, peer review, and mutual support.

WHY

Design criticism has a perspective problem. Very few voices get to shape the discourse and be taken seriously. Many are absent from it, historically, and still.

In Portugal specifically, the landscape of design criticism is limited and has been dominated by male voices. In conversations with colleagues, two things became consistently clear: the absence of female perspectives in design criticism, and the lack of time and space to develop and share critical thinking at all. O.K./K.O. was built to address both.

WHERE IT'S AT

The first edition is underway. Nine essays are currently in development, with contributors writing across questions including: anonymity versus invisibility and the freedom of rejecting individualism; designing for what cannot come to light; the radicality of slowness and the vernacularity of black ontologies; how software shapes what gets designed – access, accessibility, and the opacity of closed tools; criticality between professional practice and active citizenship.

A Berlin edition is taking place summer 2026.

WHO

Female* designers, educators, and researchers – those who make up the majority in universities, agencies, and studios, but remain a minority in public forums and critical writing.

* Female is defined here as anyone who identifies with the female gender: cisgender women, transgender women, and non-binary people who identify with feminine aspects of gender.