A better future for and through design text with images of leaves, butterflies and larva

DesignShifts is a collaborative learning journey exploring a better future for and through design.

Through theory, practice, community, and making we explore different DesignShifts that aim to move design from a tool that contributes to division, destruction, and isolation to a practice that unites, rebuilds, and reconnects us to our inner selves, each other, and nature.

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Explore the latest DesignShifts

WHAT WE DO

Theory, practice, and making: co-creating the future we want

DesignShifts was started as a small content series asking big questions. We wanted to explore how we can Shift perspectives, processes, and the purpose of design in order to better serve people and the planet.

Through theory, practice, and community we’re now expanding these ideas alongside designers, dreamers, strategists, scientists, authors, parents, etc. looking to use their talents and time to improve the world around us and the world inside of us.

  • “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.”

    Ruha Benjamin

  • "At the same time as we’re surviving in the mouth of the dragon, we also need to be feeding our vision."

    Audre Lord

  • “With environmental and societal collapse imminent in the coming decades, design at the intersection of anthropology, ecology, and innovation is the most pressing discussion of our time.”

    Julia Watson

  • "Could it be that another design imagination, this time more radical and constructive, is emerging? Might a new breed of designers come to be thought of as transition activists? If this were to be the case, they would have to walk hand in hand with those who are protecting and redefining well-being, life projects, territories, local economies, and communities worldwide."

    Designs for the pluriverse

  • “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

    Ursula K. Le Guin