Activist Designers: Design 99

Gina Reichert, an architectural designer, and her husband, artist Mitch Cope, are the duo behind Design 99, an organization in Detroit that creates everything from bathroom tile designs to neighborhood planning strategies. They set up shop—–quite literally as a shop—–in August 2007, offering design services for 99 cents a minute or $99 per house call. “We put design in a retail environment because people know how to enter a store and ask questions,” Reichert says. “A lot of people disregard design not because they’re uninterested but because they don’t think they have access to it.”