“We don’t have to shrink our queerness”: Queer Design Club on their history-rich identity refresh

With a community of over 4,000 members from all over the world, Queer Design Club is the largest professional network dedicated to supporting, celebrating, and amplifying queer voices in design. “We have this platform where we get to represent them, highlight them, give them the spotlight, make them a part of our brand,” notes Co-founder Rebecca Brooker. “That, for me, feels like a really valuable contribution, overall, to honour all of queer design history.” Beyond showcasing their roster of creatives and hosting regular industry events, the platform prides itself on its extensive research work, running the “first and only survey of LGBTQ+ people in design,” sharing their findings in insightful resources. That research has exposed both the strength and the challenges of queer designers today – revealing that LGBTQ+ individuals make up 15% of the design industry (an overrepresentation compared to the general population), yet 72% have faced discrimination at work and 40% have had to point out design decisions that excluded queer people. These insights underscore the urgent need for platforms like Queer Design Club, which don’t just celebrate queer creativity but actively advocate for equity, safety, and systemic change within the industry. In the years following the site’s founding in 2019, Queer Design Club has grown from strength to strength, so it was only a matter of time before an updated image was in order. When developing the refreshed identity, Co-founders John Voss and Rebecca Brooker were keen to strike a balance, acknowledging that the brand needed to reflect the community’s fearless, activist spirit while simultaneously feeling celebratory and playful. “We don’t have to compromise or shrink our queerness in order to be seen as professionals,” notes Voss. So their brand refresh, he explains, still retains the fun, playful, camp, loud energy of the club’s original identity.