READ WHAT THEY FEAR. FIGHT LIKE NOTHING’S FREE.

Censorship is here. It’s real. It’s happening right now. As designers and as citizens, we can’t afford to sit out the fight.

As Banned Books Week approached, we knew we had to confront power with the skills, tools, and energy we have in tow. We decided to extend the momentum of our CENSOR THIS! event by partnering with indie bookstores and community book spaces across all five NYC boroughs to give away our new, limited-edition screen printed posters. Declaring “Free Speech Ain’t Free,” the poster features a rattlesnake coiled around a pencil; a reclamation of revolutionary American iconography from Benjamin Franklin’s Join, or Die. and the Gadsden flag’s Don’t Tread on Me. Historic symbols meant to warn of tyranny now defend the freedom to read at present.

five Boroughs
five Bookstores
600 Limited-Edition Posters

Our partner bookstores embody the diversity and importance of New York’s literary ecosystem.

Brooklyn
Books Are Magic: A beloved family-owned business with two shops in the borough.

The Bronx
Bronx Bound Books: A bookmobile bringing literature directly into neighborhoods in need.

Manhattan
Word Up: A multilingual, collectively-run community hub.

Staten Island
Every Thing Goes Book Cafe and Neighborhood Stage: The borough’s only independent bookstore.

Queens
Kew & Willow Books: Independent, woman-owned and operated bookstore, founded through community crowdfunding after all Barnes & Noble locations in the borough closed.

The posters are more than keepsakes. They are vessels of meaning, designed to be shared and displayed as acts of cultural resistance. In a year defined by escalating bans, silenced media voices, the misappropriation of patriotism and faith, and a government shutdown currently underway, we believe design must get off the screen and into the world. Posters are tangible reminders that democracy erodes when symbols are surrendered and stories erased.

History Doesn’t Wait. Neither Do We.

We’ve been here before. As a studio, we took to the streets to fight for women’s rights during Trump’s first administration. We redesigned and printed the Constitution to remind students and artists that these texts were meant to protect us, and that we cannot afford to lose them. We worked with nonprofits to highlight needs ignored by those in power. We use art and design to show that communication is never neutral; it is always designed and shapes how rights are remembered, or erased.

When 2025 began, the country was moving into Donald Trump’s second term. Soon after, women’s rights were rolled back. Communication became a weapon to distort truth and vilify entire communities. Technology fractured the country, feeding lies to millions and replacing connection with manipulation. We watched Trump win again, but we were determined not to let history repeat itself. Instead of retreating, we sharpened our resolve. We stepped back into the fight.

In May of this year, NYCxDESIGN Festival declared the theme “Design is for Everyone.” At the same moment, headlines screamed of ICE raids and the banning of words and ideas in the press, on government websites, and in grant applications. We knew we needed to push back. We created CENSOR THIS!, a one-night-only, fully immersive event dedicated to exposing censorship as the most critical issue facing design and communication today. Two hundred designers and co-conspirators entered our studio and confronted a “Dead Library” of banned books, experiencing what it means to see literature erased in real time; rediscovering the urgency of defending our right to read. It was visceral. It was a reminder that none of us can afford to be passive. Steven Heller took notice and covered it in The Daily Heller. We knew we’d struck a nerve.

This past summer, Alexis, our high school intern and IB diploma candidate, transformed the Thought Matter studio into her own laboratory of imagination. She created a speculative fashion piece: a reusable bag for carrying banned books, sewn from the pages of a destroyed book itself. The prototype challenged her peers to hold their books close, to protect them, and to carry their right to read as a visible act of defiance. Her work affirmed two of our beliefs: the next generation refuses to be lied to, and creativity is a tool of dissent.

Imagination as Resistance

Throughout history, censorship has carried devastating consequences. Nothing good happens when power is concentrated by a few at the expense of the many, when speech is silenced, when societies forget their agency. Tyranny thrives in that darkness. Design can’t legislate, but it can illuminate. It can rally collective imagination toward resistance.

As we near the end of 2025, we stand where we started: fighting with pencils, pixels, and design. Our work is small compared to the scale of the threat, but every gesture of defiance matters.

Free speech ain’t free.
Read what they fear.

Artfully printed by Kayrock Screenprinting in Brooklyn.