How can design add value to communities?

Despite naysayers calling time on print, a bi-annual journal launched during the pandemic is defying convention by thriving in an increasingly digital media landscape. Deem Journal is a Los Angeles-based print publication and online platform, dedicated to disrupting the design canon as we’ve known it. Launched by Nu Goteh, Alice Grandoit-Šutka and Marquise Stillwell in spring 2020, its credo is to establish design as a social practice, ask what design can do for communities, and create intergenerational and transdisciplinary conversations. In doing so, Deem hopes to uncover meaningful narratives, connections and patterns that can help us better understand our histories, and imagine a collective future.

It’s an ambitious ask for the trio, who have pursued design-adjacent professions rather than working primarily in design themselves. However, in accordance with ’s belief that design is everywhere, their combined