RUSUDAN
DUSHUASHVILI
INFORMATIONI BELIEVE
Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award
https://ibelieve.cargo.site/
2026RISD MID Thesis
Advisors: Ilona Gaynor,
Benjamin Jurgensen
&
Joshua Glenn
How do products become believable and desirable through the stories that surround them, and how does design enable the continuous cycle of desire that defines consumption?
This thesis investigates how products become believable and desirable through the stories that surround them, and how design enables the continuous cycle of desire that defines consumption. Drawing on the underlying structures of myth-making, identity, and belonging that allow consumer culture to function, it argues that consumer culture operates through the same instruments older systems of belief have always used - narrative, ritual, sacred objects, and shared language, and that design is what makes the story stick to the object.
“I Believe” is an archive of objects collected from contemporary consumer culture. Half are products found in the marketplace; the other half are designed to blur the lines between religion, branding, mass production, and drop culture. Displayed in a museological setting, the collection records how we live, what we believe, and what we are willing to buy into.