THE DESIGN WAY

“As human beings, we continuously create things that help reshape the reality and essence of the world as we know it…To come up with an idea of what we think would be an ideal addition to the world, and to give real existence — form, structure and shape — to that idea, is at the core of design as a human activity.”

— The Design Way

what is design?

Design is a practice of inquiry and iteration, a lineage of creating for the masses by studying the specific and individual, and then leveraging those emergent questions to influence ongoing experimentation. It is a creative process that moves between the universal and the particular. It is vulnerable not because it is always heartfelt or personal, but because it is inherently imperfect and never complete.

What makes design different from art is its intention of inventiveness. Often design is thought to be a process for problem-solving, but in its essence design is about creating tangible ideals. It is world-building that doesn’t gain satisfaction by stopping at the self, and instead always aims to include others.

GOOD DESIGN

Good Design is an online group experience that aims to teach design principles and processes to activists, creatives and emergent leaders. In honoring of the design way, Good Design is an iterative offering — never perfect, never complete. View its ongoing release schedule below.

WHAT WE’LL COVER:

What is design as a philosophy, as a practice, and as a version of the creative process.
How the tech industry works, why it works so well, and how tech took over.
Why design matters most now, and how to start implementing it in your work as an activist, creative, and/or business owner.
How to research and experiment iteratively so that you’re never siloed and never stuck.
Getting out of a closed loop of self-study and into universal curiosity. What to do when we’ve navel gazed our way into an isolated system.

schedule

SESSION 01: August 17, 10-11:30am MT
SESSION 02: August 21, 6-7:30pm MT
SESSION 03: August 24, 10-11:00am MT (Q+A)

Sessions will be available for replay until the following release (likely 2 months).

WHY

The world is always in a process of being created, though often by accident. However, the extreme and absurd of our modern world didn’t just emerge through happenstance, but because people leveraged design principles and processes to build their ideals and solutions intentionally. Every system, technology, organization, non-natural environment, and man-made process has been touched by design in some way. Don’t you want to play in it, too?

my why

Besides the fact that design is one of my first and main loves (I graduated art school with a BFA in Communication Design), I can tell you that I’ve personally struggled immensely when I forget to implement these principles into my own creative processes.

As someone deeply passionate about participating in the evolution of our world, I often find myself frozen in perfectionism. As a teacher and business owner, I too often think I need to have more answers than questions. Earnest exploration seems like a disadvantage in a business world that operates on selling solutions, until I remember how the tech industry operates…

I’m offering this because I love design, know its value, and actually don’t think the future I want will come into fruition without more people understanding and using design. I have thirteen years of experience in the tech industry, and the value of these years in my life (besides monetary) hasn’t felt clear to me until this moment: I now know I have to teach people what the inside of this beast looks like. It’s brilliant, it works, and it functions entirely off of a shared discipline that aligns with the principles of design.

I also want to experiment with trusting the design way in my own work, and hope it will help me to get out of my own way and start shaping the world more deliberately, earnestly and imperfectly.

YES

To join the upcoming cohort (August 17-24), send payment via Venmo or Paypal. Payment is a sliding scale of $60-150 (with $150 being the ‘fair’ price). Please share the name of the course (Good Design) in your note.

VENMO: @Fiona-Nodar

PAYPAL: www.paypal.com/biz/profile/evaorallc

IMPORTANT
Once you’ve completed payment, please fill out this form so I can collect your email address and some information to design the class specifically for you ;)

releases

V.01 — August 10-17, 2025
V.02 — TBD

LINEAGE

ABOUT ME:

Graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY with a BFA in Communications Design.
Spent ten years in the tech industry as a full-time employee. At my last job, I worked at a rapidly growing startup and went from being a solo designer to building a team of fifteen multi-disciplinary designers and researchers, while designing systems and cultures for growth.
Lots of years doing freelance design in branding and consulting in product design.
Currently I spend part of my time with designers, creatives and engineers in tech guiding them in the process of self-leadership under the guise of career coaching.
I also have a certification in Holistic Feng Shui because designing intentional environments has been a lifelong passion of mine.

“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.”

— David Graeber (thanks, Mark!)