We Build Culture
How Àrokò Cooperative designs radical solutions for individuals and organizations.
For those who don't know, Àrokò Cooperative is more than just what you read here on ÀROKÒ.WORLD. We also run a non-hierarchical design studio, working with aligned businesses, non-profits, and cultural organizations who value liberation and care for the Earth and her inhabitants.
You can see our portfolio here and reach out to us with any projects at contact@aroko.coop, and you can learn more about our approach below.
What we do
At Àrokò Cooperative, we specialize in print, brand, and web design. Think books, posters, websites, and brand systems. With a broad range of experiences, our members are industrial designers, writers, creative directors, researchers, artists, and designers of all sorts. That broad range of experiences is supported by a shared cultural knowledge-base. Our members come from across the African diaspora (and globe), giving our work a unique point of view rooted in those aesthetics and ideologies (you see what we're looking at on Are.na).
We understand design as a living, relational practice—rooted in ancestral knowledge and transformed through collective action. We do not design in isolation. Our work is circular, intergenerational, and grounded in ecocentric ways of being. That means not just imagining better worlds—but building them. Through systems, objects, stories, and tools that seed equity, uphold dignity, and restore harmony with Earth and all of her inhabitants.
Our largest client project to date, The Land, Food, and Freedom Journal covers brand design, print design, and web design.
How we do it
Our organization itself has been a long running design experiment, and we apply all of those lessons to how we design with others. These principles set the table for each of our projects.
Our task is as mechanical as it is artistic.
Design must work—art doesn’t have to. Co-design begins as diagnosis and analysis, to accurately define the needs of our partners; only afterwards would we propose a solution.
A functional report design for Black Sustainability Incorporated that also needed to be editable by non-designers.
We build a shared imaginative infrastructure.
We facilitate a co-design process founded on clear goals and relationships between—and among—us and our Partners. Only by blending our expertise with the expertise and goals of our partners can we arrive at design solutions.
Our references are simply different: see how work for Black Love Convergence was rooted in African print designs and patterns.
We are non-hierarchical.
Partnering with Àrokò Cooperative engages the entire organization, with all members having visibility into any project, no matter how small. Though client teams will have a lead point of contact, any member on a project is an expert in their own right and may bring solutions to the table that may not be on their 'job description.'
Our Design to Divest manifesto was co-designed and co-written by all 9 members of the cooperative.
Trust builds good work.
Members build internal trust through consistent, honest engagement, and we ask the same of our partners. Projects are managed in clear phases with regular meetings, and we strive for full strategic and operational clarity; the best solution can only be achieved with all the relevant information and full participation.
Two small projects for Positive Deviance and Mil Mundos on tight deadlines, that were completed through direct and rapid communication.
And lastly... Our principles are non-negotiable.
We will not work with any entity that is actively antagonistic towards any of our core goals as they relate to liberation and care for the Earth and her inhabitants.
Design work for Third Space, a radical book fair run by Radix Printing & Publishing.
Work with us
Check out our portfolio here to read larger case studies on these projects and others, and if you like what you see, reach out to us at contact@aroko.coop to schedule a discovery call. We look forward to working with you.
