Design Archives - Welcome to

Ms. Emily Yang is a Brooklyn-based artist, educator, and researcher. She holds a master’s degree in design engineering from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and teaches at the New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City. Ms. Yang’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Yale School of Architecture, the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, and the Harvard GSD Kirkland Gallery. She completed block print and ceramic residencies from the Penland School of Craft, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. Her academic and professional interests center on preserving historical craft knowledge as a means of navigating uncertain futures of labor, and fostering cross-cultural exchange through participatory design. Her work has been published and presented at design education conferences, and she continues to develop experimental methods that integrate traditional craft with contemporary design research.

Ms. Yang’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring Indian block printing as both a cultural tradition and as a speculative design methodology. Based at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, she is collaborating with artisans and students through participatory design workshops that integrate traditional craft with design research. Her project aims to develop an innovative, culturally grounded pedagogy that preserves historical craft knowledge while imagining future roles for labor and making. By merging qualitative research with collaborative making, the project is fostering cross-cultural dialogue and expanding interdisciplinary design education rooted in care, community, and cultural sustainability.

Ms. Abiola Makinde is a Nigerian-American woman from Lagos and South Florida. As a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design, she completed a senior thesis centered around Sickle Cell and Pain Management. As an Emergency Design Council Fellow she collaborated with designers from the IDC School of Design and the National Institute of Design in researching and designing solutions to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children in India. Ms. Makinde has also served as a Design Educator for high school students in an after-school program, which focused on the fundamentals and importance of collaborating in the design thinking process.

Ms. Makinde’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining research design solutions to extend culturally relevant and adaptable hospital and home tools and services for Indian children with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and their caretakers past the hospital and into their homes before and after visits. With the support of Prof. Ravi Poovaiah of The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Dr. Yazdi Italia of the Shirin and Jamshed Guzder Regional Blood Centre, her intention is to understand the patient’s journey and challenge points to find ways, through the lens of design, to positively affect the overall experience of the patient and the caregiver.