DESIGNSHIFTER ARCHETYPES
New Design Roles Responses For a Shifting World
DesignShifter Archetypes are 10 emerging roles responses for people working to shape more just, regenerative futures. They invite us to look beyond the roles we have inherited and explore new ways of using our skills, redirecting them away from productivity, consumption, and extraction, and toward ecological restoration, justice, and collective wellbeing.
The framework poses the question: “What is our contribution in a world already full of things, but lacking in meaning?” and invites practitioners to explore how we must show up differently as we navigate the current crises of climate collapse, inequality, and democratic erosion.
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
From Functionalist to Dream Guide
Workshops online and in-person
We partner with organisations, teams, and event organisers to bring DesignShifters workshops into different contexts, helping people explore new roles for design and how they can contribute to systemic change.
We've facilitated workshops with organisations and at conferences, creating space to reflect on our practices, challenge existing assumptions, and imagine new ways of working. Interested in hosting a workshop with your team?
More about the archetypes
The roles responses described here are archetypes that can support a future that centers justice, caring, and pluriviersal ways of knowing.
These DesignShifter archetypes are not job titles to claim or boxes to check. These are not fixed roles or definitive categories. Rather, they are transitional responses: ways of showing up in the moment we’re in. They help us leave an old path to and embrace new practices that together move toward a more equitable, ecological, and more-than-human future for design. They places our technical skills and aesthetic sensitivity in service of something larger; the wellbeing of people, communities, and the living world we’re all part of.
Who’s a DesignShifter?
A DesignShifter is someone who questions the way things are designed today and explores how they could be different. They look beyond products and services to the systems, relationships, and conditions that shape how we live, work, and relate to one another. You don’t need to have the title “designer” to be a DesignShifter. You need a willingness to question the status quo and imagine what else is possible.
DesignShifters challenge dominant ways of thinking, experiment with alternative approaches, and help create pathways toward a more just and regenerative world. They may be designers, strategists, researchers, facilitators, founders, or simply people who want to contribute to meaningful change.