The United States has found its first chief design officer in Joe Gebbia, a billionaire co-founder of Airbnb who said on Saturday that he had ambitious plans to beautify the government’s online presence.
Do those plans include any of the heavy gold flourishes that seem to dazzle President Trump? Mr. Gebbia is imagining something a little sleeker.
“My directive is to update today’s government services to be as satisfying to use as the Apple Store,” he wrote in a post on X.
Mr. Gebbia’s appointment came after Mr. Trump signed an executive order last week to create a new federal design initiative that aims to improve experiences like renewing a passport or applying for a small business loan. The order called for a National Design Studio that would work to “update the Government’s design language to be both usable and beautiful.”
Beyond the executive order, Mr. Trump has not addressed Mr. Gebbia’s appointment.
Mr. Gebbia has charted an unusual path from art school to a post in a Republican administration. He was a graphic and industrial design student at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, where he met Brian Chesky, another Airbnb founder.
Over the years, Mr. Gebbia also founded a modular home start-up, designed a line of office furniture, attended the Met Gala with a North Korean refugee and joined the board of Tesla. He now lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, the Brazilian model and nuclear power influencer Isabelle Boemeke.
A donor to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Mr. Gebbia made waves in the design profession when he announced in January that he had voted for Mr. Trump, declaring that the Democrats he previously supported had “lost their way.” Soon after, he joined the Department of Government Efficiency run by his close friend Elon Musk, with a goal of modernizing the bureaucracy’s retirement system.
Representatives for Mr. Gebbia declined to comment on his new role.
Mr. Gebbia has become a polarizing enough figure in the design industry that some prominent professionals declined to weigh in on his appointment. Others said they were dismayed that he had taken the job.
“I thought he was better than that,” said Debbie Millman, a writer, designer and host of the “Design Matters” podcast. She said she was not surprised that Mr. Trump had selected Mr. Gebbia, whose work at Airbnb had earned him a reputation as a success story in the industry. But she worried that his skills would be used to make harmful policies appear more palatable.
Cameron Moll, the chief design officer of the digital product agency Desquared, and a former head of design at Facebook, was more optimistic. The new role, he said, signals that designers should be incorporated at the highest levels of both tech and government.
“Setting aside who’s the current president, and what your politics are, this is absolutely wonderful news for our country,” he said in an interview. Still, when he reacted positively to the news on LinkedIn, he received so many harsh comments that he ended up deleting his post.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has sought not just to reshape how the federal government works, but also how it looks. He signed an executive order calling for federal public buildings to respect “classical architectural heritage” on his first day in office. He decorated the Oval Office with gilded décor and proposed a $200 million White House ballroom that startled historic preservation experts.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Gebbia’s tastes will be more restrained. He has cited the midcentury industrial designers Ray and Charles Eames as influences, and the newly unveiled website for the National Design Studio features spare, sans serif text on a black backdrop. (Mr. Gebbia’s role in the website’s design is not known.)
Critics of Mr. Trump’s new initiative pointed out that the government had wiped out much of its existing design staff in recent months.
In 2014, the Obama administration created units known as 18F and the U.S. Digital Service to help government agencies design software that could connect Americans with federal services. Dozens of technology specialists, including designers, lost their jobs when the Trump administration eliminated 18F this spring. After the U.S. Digital Service was rebranded as the Department of Government Efficiency, more than 20 staff members resigned.
“Let’s break it, and then we’re going to come back and fix it — it’s a little strange,” said Cesar Rivera, the national board president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
Mr. Rivera was the visual design branch chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until this spring, when he and his team of 30 designers were notified by the Trump administration that their jobs would be terminated. He said he had a glimmer of hope that the newly created studio would elevate the importance of design work in the federal government.
While Mr. Gebbia worked with the Trump administration before being named chief design officer, a White House official said he had not been involved in the elimination of 18F. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss personnel matters.
Dan Hon, a civic technology consultant and former editorial director at Code for America, said he had not seen any evidence that Mr. Gebbia had been listening to the people who had already been working to improve the government’s design capacity.
“It looks a little bit like a stunt hire,” Mr. Hon said.
At RISD, Mr. Gebbia revived the school’s basketball team and sold butt-shaped cushions designed to make all-nighters in the studio more comfortable. Alumni reacted with a mixture of surprise, disappointment and “no comment” when asked about Mr. Gebbia’s pivot to government design.
“I’m, frankly, surprised — he had not demonstrated an interest in this topic in our interactions,” said Ashleigh Axios, a former creative director in the Obama administration who overlapped with Mr. Gebbia as students at RISD and later served with him on the school’s board of trustees.
The new role comes with the potential to make systems more accessible and strengthen the public trust in the government, she said. But design is about more than just aesthetics, she added — it affects whether Americans can access the services they need.
“The risk is real,” she said. “If the role is about ego or prestige, or if design becomes just surface polish, it can reinforce harm rather than repair it.”
Madison Malone Kircher contributed reporting.
Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times.
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