“I don’t design objects. I design ways of seeing. My process is about uncovering what’s invisible, the systems of trust, power, and connection that quietly shape our lives… Ultimately, I am trying to create frames that invite people to rethink and feel differently, to make meaning for themselves. We tend to focus on and celebrate visible outputs in design—like the fruit or the blossom of the tree—but the true power of design thinking lies in the roots, where the unseen foundations take hold.”
-Rachel Botsman
The ethos of designer and academic Rachel Botsman (above) lies at the core of her latest work, Roots of Trust— presented at the London Design Biennale in June. After unearthing the first organizational chart, created by Daniel McCallum and George Holt Henshaw of the Erie Railroad Company in New York in 1855, Botsman was captivated by the way the artifact visualized systems of power. Unlike the pyramid hierarchy we’re familiar with, McCallum’s and Henshaw’s organizational chart posited a different form: delicate strokes and organic lines that depict leadership as roots that support an organization that flourishes outward.
Etched onto a large, floating, transparent panel, Botsman’s Roots of Trust installation reimagines this 170-year-old organizational chart, casting shifting “shadowscapes” throughout the space to depict the complexities of human dynamics, along with the fluidity and complexity of human experience. Botsman also collaborated with New North Press to create a limited-edition handmade print of Roots of Trust set in wood and metal type from New North’s archive, screen-printed tote bags and litho-printed postcards. The thoughtful consideration of materials and longevity went into producing each version of the design.
Botsman elaborates on her long-held urge to question systems embodied in Roots of Trust below. (Conversation lightly edited for length and clarity.)
When did you first start questioning systems and the status quo? Where did this urge of yours to dismantle originate?
I honestly can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t questioning the systems around me. As a child, I was always asking, especially about rules and the people in charge: Why is it like this? Could it be otherwise?
I became fascinated by how authority worked. How something as simple as a timetable, a bonus scheme, or even the layout of a classroom or office could shape behavior and zap/generate energy. Later, I was drawn to the invisible dynamics such as power, loyalty and trust, that quietly shape our lives. We tend to fixate on the visible structures, but it’s often these hidden frames that most powerfully direct how we relate to each other.
I like unravelling things, pulling at threads to see what comes loose. I don’t think of it as dismantling so much as revealing and then redesigning. If you take any mechanism apart, whether it’s a toy car, a contract, or a culture, and study both the original intent and how it functions, you can then ask: If we put this back together differently, what new possibilities might emerge?
That instinct to rethink the status quo has always been about making systems more human. It’s less about breaking things down than creating better experiences for the people who live within them.
I like unravelling things, pulling at threads to see what comes loose.
At what point did you begin applying these ideas to your art practice?
I’ve always seen the world through a visual lens. I studied Fine Art at Oxford University, surrounded by an extraordinary group of creative people, and that way of looking never left me. Even when my career pulled me away from the studio, I would storyboard speeches or sketch ideas as a way of making complex things simple. It took me a long time, though, to find the confidence to take the ideas I was teaching and writing about and begin to explore them through an art practice.
I felt a deep need to craft experiences through space and reimagined artifacts that could prompt people to think differently. When I was teaching or giving a talk, I noticed how much harder it was becoming to slow people down, to bring them into a different rhythm or state of mind. Art and design can do that in ways words alone sometimes can’t.
Organizational chart created by Daniel McCallum & George Holt Henshaw,
New York and Erie Railroad Company, 1855. Source: Library of Congress
That realization drew me to explore the intersection of visual environments, deep historical research, and storytelling. It’s there that I now see my art practice growing.
How did you first come upon the organizational chart by Daniel McCallum and George Holt Henshaw? What about it grabbed your attention and made you want to explore it in your work?
I first came across the organizational chart about three years ago, oddly enough while on sabbatical studying landscape design. I was looking at how motifs from nature influenced Victorian thinking, and the chart kept resurfacing when I began exploring artifacts that revealed the origins of our ideas about work. At the time, I was constantly being asked about the “future of work”—how AI would reshape jobs, what the workplace would look like—and it all felt like noise. So, I did what I often do in my work: I went to the past. I asked, what did people first imagine when they thought about hierarchy or human productivity?
What I discovered was a treasure trove of design artifacts. In the 1800s, around the time of enormous innovations like railroads and synchronized time, people were wrestling with these questions, but they weren’t management gurus or business consultants. They were polymaths, musicians, philosophers, scientists, artists. Without digital renderings, they sketched their ideas by hand, and the artifacts they left behind are stunning.
The first ever organizational chart designed in 1855 chart by Daniel McCallum and George Holt Henshaw struck me because it was so different from the top-down, rigid structures we see to today. I was fascinated that leadership sat at the roots, with employees flowing out through the branches. That inversion sent me on a journey to uncover its origins, and ultimately to reimagine it as a contemporary artifact. It felt so relevant to prompting new ways of thinking about how we might redesign workplace structures today.
What was the process like collaborating with New North Press on Roots of Trust? Why was partnering with a letterpress printer important to you for this project?
I knew it was important to partner with a printer who could work with the same methods and techniques used in the 1800s: metal-engraved plates and hand-cranked presses. That’s how I found the brilliant Richard and Graham at New North Press who immediately understood the importance of the project. Their studio in Old Street is like an Aladdin’s cave is filled with some of the oldest printing equipment still in use in the UK.
At first, we experimented with printing on paper from the same period, but it was too small to capture all the intricate details. The process of finding the right approach took months, balancing clarity, scale, and quality, and I’m so grateful for their patience and commitment. In the end, the original metal plate had to be cleaned with a cotton swab between every single impression, which is why we were only able to produce 30 limited-edition prints.
One of my favorite moments is seeing a magnifying glass held over the tiny words Timekeeper and Clerk. I knew how much work had gone into making those letters crisp, especially the E’s!
How does this very specific original medium of Roots of Trust inform and support its message?
Roots of Trust now exists in very different mediums and at very different scales. The letterpress print speaks to the original materials the designers used. All the details have been respected, but the shift in paper and scale gives it a contemporary quality. I also chose to remove the detailed descriptions of the icons and history, because I wanted viewers to be able to project their own stories and relationships onto the design.
It struck me how much we are drawn to imagine ourselves at the centre of systems.
The large engraved light-and-shadow installation at the London Design Biennale (2,966 mm high and 1,855 mm wide, a nod to the original year it was designed) offers a completely different experience. It plays with light, shade, and space to prompt reflection and takes on ethereal quality. Watching people in the room, I noticed how often they positioned themselves at the very centre and asked someone to photograph them there. It struck me how much we are drawn to imagine ourselves at the centre of systems.
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