Useful School: A Pay-What-You-Can Design School For People of Color

Published

January 24, 2022

Filed under

What if there were a design school out there created for BIPOC individuals specifically—founded by a person of color, featuring work by people of color, and inviting speakers with diverse backgrounds? How might that change the future of design?

With the newly started Useful School, we’re going to find out.

“I think Useful School has been kind of a long time coming in my career, without me necessarily being conscious about it,” said Ritesh Gupta, founder and CEO of Useful School. Ritesh—a Wieden+Kennedy alum and former director at 2 Shark Tank companies—admitted that he didn’t really like his own school experience. In many ways, Useful School is the education he wished he could have had: something intellectually satisfying, incredibly fun, POC-centered, and with a class offering that felt, well, useful.

Theresa Christine Johnson

Theresa entered the world of design through The Dieline. With a background in writing and journalism, she has a passion for discovery and cultivating human connections. Her work for The Dieline is a constant journey to deeply understand all facets of the design process and to investigate what makes designers tick. Theresa’s writing has taken her snorkeling in between the tectonic plates in Iceland, horseback riding through a rural Brazilian town, and riding an octopus art car at Burning Man with Susan Sarandon as part of a funeral procession for Timothy Leary (long story). When not writing, she is planning her next trip or taking too many pictures of her cat.