This is a podcast on social design for the Spanish and Portuguese speaking community. We publish 2 episodes per week. We have 10000 listeners per month which is currently the most popular design podcast in Spanish.

We have published 180 interviews with selected professionals working in the field of design, mostly in the area of social innovation. The topics on which we focus covers the contribution of design to education, development, health, sustainability, security and public administration. In addition, we have numerous episodes dedicated to communities of designers supporting informal education and designers doing a collaboration with indigenous communities.

The aims of this podcast are to connect researchers and designers in the Spanish and Portuguese diaspora with those communities living in their home countries and to bring together a variety of design researchers and practitioners. We connect designers interested in social change, while speaking and understanding the same languages, yet living in different parts of the world.

We gather and spread social design materials through our Instagram account and our website, disenoydiaspora.org. For example, there are many listeners to our podcasts that regularly make requests for academic papers and publications that we share on our Instagram page. We have many thematic lists that can be accessed via Spotify and our website.

We also collaborate intensively with professors in universities that have used the podcast in their classes. On our blog, we have written four articles documenting this collaboration and the possible uses of the podcast in design education. At the moment we are exploring the possibility to do a series of books based on compilations of interviews done for the podcast. We are collaborating on this endeavor with researchers in the fields of health and public administration as the first two books that we will publish are on design and health and the contribution of design to government. Under Mariana’s initiative, we have gathered a group of designers doing podcasts in Spanish. Now we are 25 in this group and we are developing as a collective and considering our direction of growth. Mariana collaborated with another podcaster from this group to write an article about the state of the art of the podcast on design in Spanish.

This podcast is a team effort. Andrés Fechtenholz, Julian Pereyra, Antonio Zimmermann and Mercedes Salgado are key members. Andrés and Julian are sound designers and co-producers, Antonio does the original music and Mercedes is the community manager of Instagram.

Mariana Salgado is a senior designer and a researcher working in service and interaction design.

Currently, she works in Inland design, an innovation and design lab at the MInistry of the Interior: Inland design.  This lab used to be part of the Finnish Immigration Service where she worked for two and a half years, leading it. In addition, she currently produces and hosts Diseño y diáspora, a podcast on design for social change (in Spanish and Portuguese).

Previously, she has worked in cultural heritage and global health projects always under a participatory framework. Her partners varied from project to project but the setting is always transcultural and transdisciplinary. She has worked in collaboration with different communities such as vulnerable groups of immigrants, professionals in memory organizations, global health experts, and rural citizens in developing countries.

She has a doctorate degree from the Media department (2009) and master degree from the Design Department at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (2002). Her bachelor degree is in Industrial Design from the University of Buenos Aires (1998).

Andrés Fechtenholz is a film director, storyteller, and podcast producer. After 15 years as a cameraman and editor, he gained experience and knowledge in new media exploring new ways of telling stories. He developed his career at the rhythm of the digitization of media’s tools and content. He works with new technologies, hybrid formats, in convergent companies. The starting point was a degree as a podcast specialist in cultural industries in the digital convergence era at the UNTREF (University of Tres de Febrero). He is a co-producer and sound designer in Diseño y diáspora.

Julián Pereyra studies music and sound production at the ORT Institute. He works as a functional analyst in the Secretary of Public Innovation. He is a sound designer in Diseño y diáspora podcast.

Antonio Zimmerman is a composer, teacher, and entrepreneur. He is currently working as a Professor at UNTREF (University of Tres de Febrero). As a composer and sound designer, he makes music and sounds for video games and media. He created the music for Diseño y Diáspora. Also, he developed Oir, an award-winning music game for iOS.

Mercedes Salgado Moralejo is a feminist anthropologist. She is the community manager for Diseño y diáspora. In her free time, she enjoys playing football or learning a new language.

Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2020 recipient