We help food organizations—including design and innovation professionals working in food—to design more equitably and produce more equitable outcomes.
What We Do
We partner with organizations tackling strategic, programmatic, and other design challenges and help them identify impactful solutions that advance equity in their work and communities.
We do that by crafting and facilitating equity-driven, human-centered design processes that ensure stakeholders most impacted by a design challenge are key collaborators throughout the journey.
We also produce self-initiated projects that contribute to conversation at the intersection of food x equity x design.
A vibrant, sustainable, and just food system that is good for everyone connected to it—including those who grow, care for, manufacture, transport, prepare, serve, sell, and eat food—and where all community members have access to nourishing, culturally meaningful, affordable, and delicious food.
To co-create a more equitable and joyful food system through design.
Our Mission
Our work is grounded in and guided by equity-centered design frameworks, mindsets, and practices, including Liberatory Design.
That means considering history, power dynamics, and our own positionality, as it relates to each project. That means practicing humility, investing in relationships, and prioritizing the safety and dignity of all collaborators and community members. And that means ensuring stakeholders most impacted by the work are key partners throughout the journey. In that way, we are facilitators in an emergent design process, structuring the container in which the work takes place, and adapting based on feedback and learning.
This approach can be applied to a wide spectrum of design challenges. Studio Magic Hour specializes in projects that intersect with the food system, and offers four primary services: design strategy roadmapping, workshop facilitation, design coaching, and customized design engagements.
Equity-driven design is a creative + emergent process used for collaborative problem-solving.
Our Approach
Our Vision
Our Values
Relationships
Collaboration
Humility
Curiosity
Respect
Continuous learning
Recent Projects
Designing + delivering workshops on topics ranging from Advancing Equity in the Food System Through Design for emerging food system practitioners to Bias Mitigation Strategies for design researchers in food.
Leading a design research initiative exploring BIPoC high school students' relationships with their cultural foodways against the backdrop of American diet culture, in partnership with Hopelab.
My Favorite Things
Sunshine. Wayfarers kickstarter semiotics, quinoa godard dreamcatcher hexagon pop-up hoodie.
Ice cream. Microdosing gochujang keffiyeh salvia. Hoodie knausgaard art party.
my guilty pleasure
Photos! Hashtag fashion axe palo santo fanny pack, ramps cornhole messenger bag asymmetrical.
Studio Magic Hour is based in Maine on the ancestral lands of the Wabanaki people, including Mi’kmaq Nation, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Passamaquoddy Tribe, and Penobscot Nation.