Randa Hadi    رندة هادي

Randa Hadi is a Kuwaiti designer, researcher, architect, and informal archivist who uses her positionality as an Arab immigrant to explore the interweaving of themes relating to Arab identity, belonging, and representation. Her work is deeply rooted in visualizing the multiplicity in narratives for clients like The New York Times, Airbnb, the Brooklyn Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Frye Art Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario whose recent exhibition catalogue What Matters Most: Photographs of Black Lives was awarded AIGA’s 50 books 50 covers in 2022. As a Associate Partner at Polymode, Randa has cultivated an (infra)disiplinary practice that delicately weaves architecture and design where archiving, exhibitions, publications, UX/UI, and branding coexist. She has lead both external and internal projects to create cohesive and clear communication across teams. Most recently, she led the internal team to design a Notion project management system to create task flows, project databases, and team bandwidth. She is interested in getting lost in the archive: uncovering, unearthing, and inspiring her design practice that is nuanced, detailed, and multi-vocal.

Randa received her MA in graphic design from North Carolina State University with her thesis “A State of (Betweenness): Narrating Transnational Family Histories Through a Dynamic Digital Archive,” her BA in architecture from the University of Miami, and is a producer and educator for BIPOC Design History. As an educator, she focuses on acts of inclusion, collaboration, and ways to (re)write design education both in the classroom and as an educator for the BIPOC Design History courses.

In 2023, she recieved the Pro Helvetia On the Road Again grant with Mayar El Bakry, Sherine Salla, Nada Ezzeldin, Sohaila Khaled, and Noureldin Ahmed; highlighting voices from the SWANA region to speak to the education, practice, and cultural landscape.

I would love to connect ︎

Resume ︎︎︎            CV ︎︎︎

FEATURED ON
Futuress ︎︎︎
AIGA ︎︎︎
AndSo 2022 ︎︎︎
Futuress 2023 ︎︎︎
Scratching the Suface ︎︎︎
AndSo 2023 ︎︎︎
PRINT Mag ︎︎︎

LECTURES
University of Florida
North Carolina State University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Virgina Tech

MY ORBIT OF INFLUENCE
Victoria Gerson
Grace Herndon
Ab Feldman
Katie Frohbose
Ashley Anderson Sadia Quddus
Mo Jardinico

BOOK ROTATION

• Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp
  
• Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives
  
• Autonomous Archiving
• A History of Arab Graphic Design
  
• Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock 
  
• Out of Place: A Memoir