At Design Indaba’s 25^th Edition, British political art collective Led By Donkeys delivered a captivating and entertaining talk to demonstrate how design can become a powerful tool for activism. Formed during the height of the Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom, the anonymous group began as a guerrilla poster campaign exposing contradictions, broken promises and public statements made by pro-Brexit politicians. What started as a late-night act of protest quickly evolved an influential political communication movement.

During their presentation, Led By Donkeys reflected on how frustration with political misinformation and media failure motivated them to take matters into their own hands. Using little more than ladders, wheatpaste and billboard space, they transformed politicians’ own words into public interventions. They reproduced archived quotes and social media posts in highly visible urban spaces, to draw attention to what they describe as political hypocrisy while inviting citizens to engage more critically with political discourse.

The collective explored the role of humour and satire in political engagement, with many of their projects being deliberately provocative, their work relies on wit, using irony and visual simplicity to reach broad audiences across ideological divides. Campaigns such as purchasing the domain name thebrexitparty.com and offering to sell it back to Nigel Farage became examples of how creative interventions can generate public debate while exposing contradictions within political narratives.

Led By Donkeys presentation showcased how graphic design can move beyond branding and commerce into the realm of democratic participation. Their presentation highlighted the power of creative activism to challenge authority, provoke conversation and re-engage citizens in political life. Through satire, public intervention and strategic communication, they showed that design can be both a cultural weapon and a tool for collective accountability.

Watch the full Design Indaba talk here.

Yinka Ilori’s, British designer of Nigerian heritage, known for his bold colour and playful interventions that bring delight to public spaces, has opened his latest exhibition ‘Joy through Resistance: He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best’. The exhibition is his most personal body of work to date, shifting the conversation away from joy as an aesthetic and towards joy as a form of survival. For Ilori, joy is not an escape from hardship, instead, it emerges through it. The exhibition’s title, borrowed from a proverb familiar across many cultures, speaks to perseverance rather than celebration alone, the “last laugh” belongs to those who endure.

Showcasing at London’s Cristea Roberts Gallery, the exhibition marks Ilori’s first solo gallery presentation in his home city. The exhibition features paintings, prints, sculpture and an immersive sound installation. Visually, floral motifs pair the Nigerian yellow trumpet flower with the British daffodil, creating a visual dialogue between Ilori’s Nigerian heritage and his London upbringing. The recurring use of lace references both memory of home life and the ceremonial traditions of West African communities, where fabric becomes a symbol of dignity, pride and self-expression.

Music and sound play an equally important role. Handmade congas and lace-wrapped percussion instruments form part of an immersive installation developed with composers Peter Adjaye and James William Blades. Through layered recordings, hymns and rhythms, the gallery becomes a space where memory is experienced as much through sound as through visuals.

The exhibition also echoes themes explored in the accompanying film Joy Through Resistance: He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best, which positions joy as a collective practice rooted in community, culture and shared experience. Rather than presenting optimism as naïve or passive, Ilori frames it as an active response to uncertainty and displacement – promoting joy as a form of resistance.

British industrial designer Tej Chauhan for Motorola Nursery has designed a soothing device that acknowledges the emotional experience of caregiving. The S1soother is designed to move effortlessly between utility and companionship. Inspired by the soft, approachable form of a seal, the compact device combines a dimmable night light with soothing sounds and lullabies to help calm infants during bedtime, creating a reassuring presence within the home.

Created as part of Motorola Nursery's design-led PIP collection, the S1 reflects Chauhan's long-standing belief that technology should feel approachable and emotionally engaging. Challenging convention, Chauhan’s design avoids presenting itself as another piece of childcare equipment and uses soft curves, playful proportions and a friendly silhouette to establish an immediate emotional connection. The soother features seven mood-light colours, ten soothing sounds and a rechargeable portable form. What distinguishes the design is its emphasis on emotional utility. The calming form serves as a reassuring companion during moments when parents cannot be physically present. By giving the product a recognisable personality. Chauhan’s thoughtful design shifts the focus from pure functionality to the broader experience of comfort and connection. The result is a product that creates a reassuring presence within the home.

The winner of the 2026 Rimowa Design is a wearable device that aims to solve for the communication barrier between hearing impaired and hearing communities. The Nura bracelet, designed by German students Samuel Nagel and Paul Feiler, translates sign language into spoken language while simultaneously converting speech into text. The device uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to detect the electrical muscle signals in the forearm generated during signing to enable real-time translation between the different modes of communication.

NURA form was inspired by the graceful shape of a manta ray and conceived as an elegant accessory that users would choose to wear. The designers sought to challenge the stigma often associated with assistive technologies, demonstrating that accessibility and desirability can coexist.

The project was awarded first prize in the fourth annual Rimowa Design Prize, which challenged students from leading German design schools to rethink the theme of mobility. In a bold stance, Nura expanded the definition of mobility to include the freedom to communicate, participate and connect. While still in development, the designers hope to expand the system beyond its current vocabulary and adapt it to a wider range of regional sign languages.

NURA’s inclusive design serves as functional and aesthetic bridge between the hearing impaired and hearing communities.

Image credit: LVMH, Samuel Nagel, Paul Feiler

Global Graduate, Thai landscape architect and urban designer Ratchu Vaan Surajaras brought presented his award winning design for climate adaptation in one of the world’s most flood-prone megacities, Bangkok. As part of the Design Indaba’s Global Graduates programme, Surajaras explored how landscape architecture can become a form of environmental infrastructure, helping cities respond more intelligently and compassionately to rising sea levels and climate change.

Focusing particularly on Bangkok’s increasingly precarious relationship with water, Surajaras explained how Bangkok’s historic canal systems and wetlands once functioned as natural flood management networks before decades of urban expansion disrupted these ecological systems. Today, the city faces severe seasonal flooding, Surajara’s project ‘Recharging Bangkok’ proposes adaptive urban systems that work with natural hydrological cycles resulting in public infrastructure that integrates flood management, ecological restoration and community use. The concept envisions parks, waterways and public spaces capable of absorbing, storing and redirecting water during periods of heavy rainfall while remaining active social spaces throughout the year. Through diagrams, speculative models and urban research, Surajara demonstrated how cities can transform environmental vulnerability into opportunities for resilience and collective wellbeing.

Watch the full Design Indaba talk here.

At Design Indaba’s 25th anniversary, Swedish graphic designer and branding strategist Jakob Trollbäck delivered a message about the role of design in shaping a connected world. Founder of the New York-based studio Trollbäck+Company and sustainability agency The New Division, Trollbäck explored how branding, storytelling and visual systems can influence global behaviour and collective action. Trollbäck advocates for communication to be used as a force capable of mobilising positive cultural and societal change. Best known as the architect behind the visual identity and communication language for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Trollbäck reflected on the challenge of translating complex global ambitions into a simple, universally recognisable design system. The colourful SDG wheel and iconography have since become one of the world’s most widely adopted visual frameworks for sustainability, used by governments, NGOs, corporations and educational institutions across the globe. Trollbäck emphasised the importance of clarity, emotion and accessibility in communication design. Drawing from decades of experience, Trollbäck explained that successful design must balance “beauty and logic”, a philosophy that underpins both his practice. Reflecting on the growing responsibility designers hold in an era defined by climate crisis, misinformation and social fragmentation, Trollbäck suggested that sustainability has a “storytelling problem”, where data and urgency alone are often insufficient to inspire behavioural change. Change must be made attractive, aspirational and culturally engaging if it is to gain widespread public support. Blending strategic insight with optimism, Jakob Trollbäck’s talk shared a compelling vision of design as a language capable of connecting humanity around shared goals and futures.

Watch the full Design Indaba talk here.

For Design Indaba’s 25^th Edition, Finnish empathy designer and Global Graduate Enni-Kukka Tuomala challenged the audience to rethink empathy beyond a passive feeling, but as an active design outcome. Based in London and trained in Global Innovation Design at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Tuomala uses design as a tool for breaking down social barriers, fostering dialogue and addressing what she describes as the world’s growing “empathy deficit”.

Tuomala’s talk is cantered around the idea of “radical empathy”,  a concept that frames empathy as a collective social practice capable of transforming politics, communities and institutions. Tuomala argued that contemporary societies are increasingly fragmented by polarisation, fear and exclusion, describing the modern world not as a “melting pot” of cultures but as “a mosaic of segmented communities”. In response to this, Tuomala called on designers to become “catalysts for empathy”, using creative practice to rebuild trust, understanding and human connection.

During her talk, Tuomala shared examples of her participatory empathy projects developed across London, Helsinki, Tokyo and New York. One of the most significant involved her ongoing collaboration with the Finnish Parliament, where she worked with six members of parliament from five different political parties to develop “empathy tools” for political dialogue and decision-making. The initiative sought to redesign interactions within systems of power, encouraging more humane, equal and constructive forms of communication between political opponents.

A memorable interactive moment in her talk, Tuomala invited the Design Indaba audience to participate in a simple empathy-building exercise using pink balloons placed on each seat. The interactive gesture transformed the auditorium into a temporary space of collective play and connection, illustrating her belief that empathy must be experienced physically and socially rather than discussed only in abstract terms. Tuomala’s talk showcased the catalytic power of radical empathy.

Watch the full Design Indaba talk here.

Spanish engineering company IDOM is demonstrating how ocean waves could become a viable source of clean electricity through its floating wave energy converter, MARMOK-A-5. Recently redeployed off the coast of Bilbao at the Biscay Marine Energy Platform, the 42-metre steel buoy represents one of the world’s most advanced experiments in wave-powered infrastructure. The system operates using Oscillating Water Column (OWC) technology. As waves move the floating structure, water rises and falls inside a cylindrical chamber, compressing and decompressing air within the buoy. This airflow drives a turbine that converts wave motion into electricity, which is then transmitted ashore through subsea cables. Unlike fossil-fuel infrastructure, MARMOK works with natural ocean rhythms rather than extracting finite resources.

What makes the project significant is both its engineering and resilience-by-design. The buoy has survived Atlantic waves of up to 14 metres over multiple winters, proving the durability of floating renewable infrastructure in extreme marine environments. As cities rethink their energy futures, MARMOK-A-5 explores the oceans surrounding us as sources of clean energy generation.

Taking to the stage at Design Indaba’s 25^th Edition, Japanese design engineer and innovator Kinya Tagawa explored how technology can become more emotionally intelligent, humane and socially responsive when guided by empathy, experimentation and what he calls “pendulum thinking”.

Founder of the multidisciplinary design innovation studio Takram, which works across fields such as industrial design, software engineering, mobility, interactive art and data visualisation, Tagawa shared how Takram navigates the space between seemingly opposing ideas: art and engineering, abstract thinking and practical execution, human intuition and machine intelligence. Tagawa approaches technology as an innovation that should deepen human connection and expand society’s collective imagination.

Tagawa focused on a series of speculative and real-world projects that embody this philosophy. These included the HAKUTO Flight Model, a lunar exploration rover developed for the Google Lunar XPRIZE initiative, as well as interactive installations, mobility concepts and data visualisation systems designed to make complex information more intuitive and emotionally resonant. By combining rigorous engineering with artistic sensitivity, Tagawa illustrated how design can humanise emerging technologies rather than alienate users from them.

Tagawa’s underscored the importance of prototyping as a form of inquiry and discovery,  describing Takram’s process as one of continual experimentation, where ideas evolve through making, testing and interdisciplinary collaboration. This fluid approach allows the studio to move seamlessly between physical products, digital systems and speculative futures while remaining grounded in real human needs and behaviours. Tagawa also reflected on the growing role of data and artificial intelligence in shaping society, cautioning against purely utilitarian or efficiency-driven approaches to technology. Tagawa advocates for systems that preserve wonder, emotional richness and ethical responsibility. His vision of “techno-progressivism” proposes a future where technology is carefully woven into cultural and social life in ways that support humanity.

Watch the full Design Indaba talk here.

A stretch of interstate in Dallas Texas (Interstate-35E) that once divided communities has been transformed into an intervention for socially driven urban design. Designed by HKS and SWA, Halperin Park has been built in the historic Oak Cliff neighbourhood to reconnect areas that were severed by highway construction in the 1950s.

Oak Cliff neighbourhood holds deep historical and cultural significance within African American history. Once home to a thriving commercial corridor, the community was dramatically reshaped in the 1950s when Interstate 35E cut through the area, demolishing homes and businesses while severing long-standing social, cultural and economic connections. Decades of disinvestment, pollution and infrastructural neglect further deepened these divisions. When the Texas Department of Transportation announced a major reconstruction of I-35E, local leaders and residents recognised the opportunity to repair the urban and social fabric fractured by the freeway.

The project approached as an opportunity for civic repair, is built on a structural deck spanning 14 lanes of traffic, the park restores pedestrian connections through the tree-lined 12th Street Promenade while introducing gardens, play spaces, water features, shaded plazas and a large public lawn. A defining architectural feature is the flowing glulam bandshell, an engineered timber structure that provides shade, acoustics and gathering space while reducing structural weight and embodied carbon. Sculpted landforms inspired by Oak Cliff’s geology buffer highway noise and create elevated viewpoints across Southern Dallas.

Crucially, the park’s design emerged from extensive community engagement involving more than 500 residents, businesses and organisations. This “Community First Plan” shaped programming around health, equity, cultural identity and economic opportunity. “While it’s a park to reconnect communities, it’s also a park that we wanted the communities to feel like they helped design; they helped influence the programming,” says Todd Strawn, managing principal for SWA’s Dallas studio and lead designer on the project.

By reclaiming infrastructure for public life, the Halperin Park is an active demonstration of urban design as tool for restoring social equality by providing a great public realm space as an anchor for community.