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

DesignShifts is an experimental lab, learning platform, and community exploring new ways to design, work, and relate to the world in times of systemic transition.

We work with practitioners and organizations seeking alternatives to extractive models of growth and new ways to contribute to a more just and regenerative world.

Through theory, practice, making, and community, we challenge the assumptions that shape our world, imagine futures beyond the systems we have inherited, and co-create the practices, relationships, and infrastructures needed to shift toward care, structural equity, and collective well-being.

Our work happens across three connected spaces,
each feeding the others:

Theory: Research, ideas & reflections

By weaving together systems thinking, ecology, and social economics, we investigate why systemic issues exist to build a shared vocabulary and tools for an alternative, non-extractive creative practice.

Visit our substack

Practice: Collective learning & exploration

We create spaces to learn, unlearn, and experiment together. Through courses, events, and community practice sessions, we explore new ways of thinking, relating, and working towards more just and regenerative futures.

View events and cohorts

The Making Lab: Our studio Experiments & real-world projects

Through The Making Lab, we bring ideas into the world. We collaborate with organisations, communities, and practitioners on research, strategic design, and practical experiments, while developing tools that help put alternative approaches into practice.

Explore current initiatives

DESIGNSHIFTERS

New Design Roles Responses
For a Shifting World

DesignShifters

From Architect of Distraction to Steward of Attention

From Manipulator to Transparency Tracer

From Symptoms Specialist to Systems Weaver

From Solver to Supporter

From Planner to Pathfinder

From Individual Contributor to Community Facilitator

From Efficiency Optimizer to Experience Expander

From Commodity Creator to Care Crafter

From Extractor to Regenerator

Explore all archetypes

Later initiatives

shapes from nature and in the middle is the text nature dates

Nature Dates: Re-membering our relationship to nature

Learn more about Nature Dates

Designing Otherwise: an experiential, practice-based cohort for composting the dominant design practices and seeding new possibilities

Learn more about Designing Otherwise

View all initiatives

Explore Shifts

Featured

DesignShift: From Force to Flow

DesignShift: Shifting Within and Shifting Beyond

DesignShift: From Built to Break to Built to Compost

How did we go from building cathedrals to building trash? When did "built to break" become our business model?

Our great-grandparents built houses that stood for centuries and tools that outlived their makers. Today, the average smartphone dies in two years, fast fashion dissolves after a dozen wears, and appliances break the day after their warranty expires.

We live on a planet drowning in our creations, yet we can't stop creating. Every factory churns, every 3D printer hums, every assembly line rolls forward, adding to a world already choking on abundance. The old answer was built to last: make it once, use it forever. The current answer is built to break: make it cheap, toss it quick: planned obsolescence. When "disposable" stopped being a convenience and became a catastrophe, neither approach worked for a finite earth with infinite appetite.

So what if the future of making isn't about lasting longer or breaking faster, but about returning home? hashtag#DesignShift: from build to break to built to compost.

What if we started designing like nature does—where nothing is waste, everything feeds something else, and the end of one thing becomes the beginning of another? We can keep creating, but only if what we create knows how to die well. Built to compost means built to complete the circle, to honor the cycles that sustain life itself.

In a world that doesn't need more things, maybe we need things that know when to become something else entirely.

DesignShift: From Architects of Distraction to Stewards of Attention

The world is on fire, and our interfaces are still asking people to “swipe to buy.”

For decades, we, designers have been the architects of distraction. We've optimized for convenience, for frictionless experiences, for the path of least resistance. “Good design,” we’ve said, “doesn’t make you think.”

But in an age of interconnected crises—ecological collapse, social fragmentation, and spiritual emptiness—we must ask ourselves:

What if the ease we've designed for has made it too easy to ignore what demands our attention?
What if the design we've celebrated has accelerated our collective crisis?
What if the metrics we've optimized for have measured everything except what truly matters?

Explore all 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 design and the world at large, away from extraction towards care, justice, and connection.

Through theory, practice, community, and making we’re now expanding these ideas alongside designers, dreamers, strategists, scientists, authors, parents, etc. who recognize that the old model is breaking. The next one is not yet formed.

Together, we work in this transition — building the practices we need now.

Learn about our work