Welcome to ÀROKÒ.WORLD

Welcome to ÀROKÒ.WORLD—a home for critique, reflection, and conversation at the intersection of Blackness and design. This platform is brought to you by Àrokò Cooperative, a worker-owned collective funded solely through our cooperative’s resources and the support of readers like you.

Àrokò Cooperative is a multidisciplinary community of creative practitioners committed to divesting from systems of harm, and building toward collective liberation through design. We started ÀROKÒ.WORLD as an outlet for the questions, tensions, and visions shaping our work.

If you're here, you likely already know: there are a pitifully small number of publications dedicated to the world of Black design. With the closing of Revision Path in 2024, you would be hard-pressed to find a single outlet staffed by Black editors treating Black design with consistent care and rigor.

After the global uprisings of 2020, design institutions scrambled to “diversify.” Books were published. Initiatives launched. And for a brief moment, the field felt like it might shift. But now—nearly 10 years after the start of the Black Lives Matter movement—that momentum has slowed. The funding dried up. Institutional interest waned. But we never stopped.

As Black designers, we are contributing to this conversation because it is personal. We are, for the most part, designers first and writers second, which gives us a unique perspective: we live this work. We make it. We critique it.

As we grow and invite contributors beyond our cooperative, we will remain steadfast in our commitment to centering the voices of creative practitioners.

We wholeheartedly believe that the future of media is worker-owned. We look to outlets like 404 Media, Aftermath, Hell Gate, and others as models for what’s possible in a media landscape dominated by oligarchs, clickbait, and misinformation.

So what can you expect here? Writing that spans art, technology, critique, and culture. Reviews of films, album rollouts and museum shows. Interviews with practitioners across disciplines. Honest dialogue about the tensions and tools of Black design.

We hope to build this platform into a long-term, sustainable hub for Black design criticism across the diaspora. Our initial season will be free to all, funded by a seed investment from Àrokò Cooperative. As we grow, we will introduce subscriptions to support the platform’s ability to stand on its own.

Why should you care? Because if your design canon includes The New Typography but not The Black Experience in Design, you're missing vital history.

Because design is never just about form. It’s about power.

We need independent journalism. We need critical dialogue. We need ÀROKÒ.WORLD.