Critical Playground is a global platform at the edge of creative technology, design, and culture. We are interested in publishing articles, essays, projects, and opinion pieces that ignite ideas, challenge norms, and explore the evolving intersections of art, design, and tech. If you have a perspective or project that pushes the conversation forward, we’d love to hear from you.
We are commissioning in-depth articles (typically 800–900 words) that situate projects, studios, labs, exhibitions, or technologies within broader cultural, institutional, or technical contexts. We do not publish press releases, product announcements, or promotional copy.
Pitch submissions must include:
• Working title and subtitle
• 150–250 word pitch
• Proposed primary editorial theme
• Preliminary image references
• Author bio (included on site if article is published)
Commission Details
• Rate: $300 per commissioned article
• Length: 800–900 words unless otherwise agreed
• Rights: Contributors retain copyright
Send pitches to submissions@criticalplayground.org
All submissions are reviewed by the editorial team. Selected contributors will be contacted to confirm commissioning details.
Editorial Themes:
Designing with AI - As Cultural and Infrastructural System
This theme considers AI as embedded infrastructure rather than discrete software. Contributions may examine how AI systems reshape authorship, decision-making, creativity, and labor, as well as the cultural assumptions and institutional priorities encoded within them. Relevant work often addresses training data, automation, agency, evaluation metrics, or the redistribution of creative responsibility.
Materials That Behave
This theme focuses on materials whose behavior is responsive, adaptive, or emergent. Contributions may explore smart materials, bio-based systems, responsive architectures, or environmental interactions, emphasizing how material performance arises through structure, context, and use rather than fixed form. Articles should connect material behavior to broader questions of design intelligence, sustainability, or situated practice.
Politics of Platforms
This theme interrogates the economic, political, and institutional frameworks underpinning creative production today. Contributions may address platform labor, algorithmic governance, intellectual property, moderation systems, or infrastructural inequities. The focus is on how platforms shape visibility, value, and agency—and how designers and creators navigate, resist, or reconfigure these systems.
Post-Digital-Hybrid making across hand, code, and machine
This theme examines practices that dissolve binaries between digital and analog, automation and handwork. Contributions may explore hybrid fabrication, computational craft, or practices that reframe traditional skills through contemporary tools. Articles should consider how craft knowledge evolves when embedded within software, machines, and networked production environments.
Designing for Collapse & Continuity
This theme foregrounds design under conditions of ecological, social, and infrastructural stress. Contributions may address climate-responsive design, maintenance cultures, repair practices, or strategies of care and stewardship. Rather than speculative futures alone, articles should attend to continuity—how design operates across breakdown, adaptation, and long-term responsibility.
Creative Research as Practice
Creative Research as Practice treats making as a primary mode of inquiry. Contributions may examine studio-based research, practice-led methodologies, or hybrid academic–independent research models. Emphasis should be placed on how knowledge is generated through experimentation, collaboration, and situated engagement, often outside traditional research metrics or outcomes.