Date of Award
Summer 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Industrial Design
Department
Industrial Design
First Advisor
Ayako Takase
Second Advisor
Shoham Arad
Third Advisor
Tim Maly
RISD Fleet Library Catalog Record
Title: MEMEGANDA Author: Zhengxiang Huang Program: Master of Industrial Design, 2025 Description: MEMEGANDA explores how meme culture and speculative design can transform everyday objects into covert tools of communication under censorship. Drawing from personal experiences and global events, it examines how humor, ambiguity, and symbolic rebellion are encoded into physical artifacts—ranging from wearable technologies to urban interventions. By reimagining delivery workers, graffiti, and analog devices as agents of resistance, the project proposes a design strategy for expression in surveillance-heavy societies.
Abstract
MEMEGANDA investigates how meme culture and speculative design can transform everyday objects into covert communication tools under authoritarian censorship. In environments where digital expression is heavily restricted, memes—often dismissed as entertainment—emerge as a powerful medium of resistance. This thesis reimagines physical artifacts such as delivery helmets, receipt printers, and hotel carts as vehicles for hidden messages, bypassing digital surveillance systems. Drawing on personal experience, historical symbolism, and global examples like the White Paper Movement and banned protest songs, the project centers blue-collar workers as unlikely messengers of dissent. By embedding emotional, political, and satirical content into mundane urban materials, MEMEGANDA proposes a new design language: one that speaks through silence, camouflage, and irony. It is a critical response to shrinking spaces of expression worldwide, and a speculative blueprint for how humor and design can safeguard truth and build solidarity in plain sight.
Recommended Citation
huang, zhengxiang, "MEMEGANDA" (2025). Masters Theses. 1501.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1501
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.