From the products we make, the messages we put out there, and the spaces we craft, design has the power to affect change. Our profession and practices can either harm or help, and a lot of design today is causing harm to people and our planet.
The way we design our buildings is creating inhabitable cities. The applications we build are contributing to an expanding mental health crisis. The messages we craft are making people buy more while feeling less and less satisfied. Design is contributing to harm, and we need to find ways to shift our profession from harm to healing.
And then there are the systems… those large, almost untouchable structures that seem to cause war, increase discrimination, and promote destruction all over the world. Systems and solutions causing harm are not broken. They are working as they were designed to.
As we find ourselves in the interrelated crises of climate change, food scarcity, energy depletion, global poverty, and loss of meaning, it’s easy to see that we cannot continue with design as usual.
Our practices and profession are causing harm, and we need to find ways to shift from harm to healing if we want to support a transition towards a better tomorrow.
“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.”
OUR WORK
DesignShifts: what can we collectively imagine and create?
Through theory, practice, and making we challenge the status quo, imagine better futures, and co-create the DesignShifts needed to aid the transition towards a better tomorrow.
The goal is 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.
We hope to move beyond the border of capitalism and envision new, non-exploitative ways to design and live on this planet. Our work is for designers, researchers, teachers, scientists, citizens, etc. from around the world who are tired of business as usual, and committed to shifting postures, power, perspectives, practices, and the purpose of design.
We’re committed to harm reduction within the current system while dreaming and designing beyond the boundaries of it.
The vision is 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.
Ruha Benjamin said: “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.” This quote inspires me to think about what design we need to leave behind in order to imagine and craft something better for the future. And isn’t that what design is all about — to make sense of what was and what is, and create something better moving forward?
Starting where we’re standing
The American writer and professor Audre Lorde once said: “At the same time as we’re surviving in the mouth of the dragon, we also need to be feeding our vision.” (interview by Judy Simmons, WBAI, New York 1979. This is my attempt to feed a collective vision while surviving in the mouth of the capitalistic dragon. I dream of a future where design is used to help, heal, and harmonize, and I think to get there, we need to create intentional DesignShifts as a collective.
I hope that these shifts will inspire a world where designers “walk hand in hand with those who are protecting and redefining well-being, life projects, territories, local economies, and communities worldwide”. (Quote from Designs for the Pluriverse)
As we imagine design shifting from a focus on company growth to focus on community and planetary flourishing, we’re also imagining this reality for our own lives. Letting go of our endless focus on growth. Shifting from doing to being. Flourishing as human being.
“Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.”
FAQs
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DesignShifts is a project that explores a better future for and through design. We explore intentional Shifts that can help us 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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The vision is to shift design from a tool that serves company growth to a practice that serves community and planetary flourishing.Item description
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The project brings together people looking to Shift the way we design products, environments, governments, policies, messages, etc. We’re designers, researchers, teachers, scientists, citizens, etc. from around the world who are who are tired of business as usual and commitment to shifting our postures, our power, our perspectives, the practices, and the purpose of design in order to aid the transition towards a better future.
We’re committed to harm reduction within the current system while dreaming and designing beyond the borders of it.
In Designs for the Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar writes:
"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."
I hope that these shifts will inspire a world where designers “walk hand in hand with those who are protecting and redefining well-being, life projects, territories, local economies, and communities worldwide”. (Design for the Pluriverse)
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No! You don’t need a design title to participate. As a matter of fact, you don’t need a professional title at all. We recognize that real change happens when different kinds of people collaborate with each other and that expertise comes both from work and life experiences.
Beyond the borders of the professional world we can see that “design” is something everyone does on a day-to-day basis and by many different kinds of people. I hope that this piece of work can inspire and activate people beyond design titles. I hope it can create new connections between people from different fields and walks-of-life. I hope that it can Shift WHO is doing the design and how the design is being done.
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In the article: The Power of Lo-TEK: A Design Movement to Rebuild Understanding of Indigenous Philosophy and Vernacular Architecture Julia Watson writes: “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.” Design, with its problem solving, imaginative and action oriented abilities can aid the transition towards something better.
We believe that design plays a big role in shaping our physical and emotional environment. From the products we make, the messages we put out there, and the spaces we craft, design has the power to affect change. Through design we can understand and access situations, create narratives for a better future, and create actionable steps to move forward. Design has the potential to be part of creating a better tomorrow. -
The project was started by me, Ida Persson, in a moment of personal transition. I was looking to Shift my personal career away from serving corporate growth towards serving communities and planetary florushing. I wanted to create a space where designers could collaborate to develop mindsets and methods that could Shift the current state of design in order to aid the transition towards a better tomorrow. The project is in a constant state of evolution. I hope that the perspectives, processes, and purpose of design will be shaped together as a collective. Once the perspectives and processes have moved and become part of each and everyone’s of our practices, the project will dissolve.
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As we find ourselves in the interrelated crises of climate, food, energy, poverty, and meaning it is important to recognize how the systems, products, and environments that are causing harm today are not broken. They are working as they were designed.. If we want to aid the transition towards a better tomorrow, we must be willing to rethink and redesign our perspectives, processes, and purpose. The time is now because tomorrow it will be too late.
Let’s shift together
I, Ida Persson, started DesignShifts as a Linkedin content series. However, Shifting practices, practices, and the purpose of design is a collective effort. I would love to connect with people who are also exploring the future for and through design. Is that you? Reach out.