This is What Design Can Do
Last week I attended What Design Can Do in Amsterdam, a conference about how design can impact the world’s biggest challenges (climate and social). Thank you Richard Van der Laken for organising such an awesome event. Thank you Petra, David Kester and Saskia Van Stein for making us feel at home too.
Attendees ranged from designers, through activists to business owners who wanted (and are) having a positive impact in the world. Below is a photo of me with Sunny Bergman (filmmaker and activist), Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (Al Jazeera journalist) and Sunny Dolat (creative director for The Nest Collective). I hold it as a dear reminder of all the work I have ahead of me.
I was at WDCD because I share the ambition — together with the team at Common Good — to use design for good. Below are the stories of the wonderful humans I was lucky enough to meet and what I learnt from them.
Leadership
@HazeloneWhite recently shared a report on valuing the impact of design. The report, by @jsheau, reveals that leadership, community and building design capacities within organisations is the key for design to create value. I believe these requirements are similar for system change.
Leading the change are, as always, some amazing women like Marina Willer. What a gift to meet her and see her shine on stage. She is the first female partner at Pentagram, a graphic designer and filmmaker, she has worked with Tate, The Southbank Centre and The Serpentine Gallery and has created logos the Macmillan Cancer Support and Oxfam. But most importantly she is South American like me and loves to dance :)
I said hello and congratulated her on her work. I thanked her for being so unapologetically herself and letting her personality shine through her work. She‘s recently told her story in Red Trees, her latest film. In it Marina traces the journey of her father’s family, survivors of the Nazi occupation of Prague during World War II. Marina is obviously a brilliant designer, but her creativity and wealth of knowledge goes well beyond visuals and into magic. Thank you for giving me a tiny bit of your time.
Sunny Dolat leads The Nest Collective. He’s created a platform for multidisciplinary artists within film, fashion, visual arts and music in Nairobi, Kenya. Stories of our lives, a censored film released by the collective, is how I knew about Sunny’s work. It was such an honour to meet him and pick his brain.
Sunny used to work in advertising, but felt something wasn’t quite right…I’ve been there. I asked him if owning your own business and having a strong purpose is exhausting and similar to working long hours in advertising… His answer came mostly through body language.
He closed his eyes, shook his head and reassured me. “Listen, not pursuing meaningful work is what’s exhausting. The rewards are so big, they make up for any inconvenience… You have to do it.” I was sold.
Guto Requena, got on stage on day two of the conference. With an impeccable green suit and a shocking personal story of loss. His father was killed in Brazil when he was just a child, but instead of focusing on hate, he’s been focusing on how to bring back love and humanity through architecture.
His latest concept “Mapped Empathies” is an easy to build, piece of urban furniture. Still at concept stage, Guto has created an interactive space to sit, where people can listen and see (with light) each others heartbeats. As he says “I read an anonymous quote that has always stuck with me that goes: empathy is feeling with the heart of another…”
I congratulated him after his talk and asked the same question: what is it like to go on your own and follow your purpose/vision? He looked at me straight in the eye and said that a couple of years ago, he had over 30 people in his team, a lot of work and clients in the pipeline… but he felt something was off too. Soon after he closed the studio and started again, to pursue pieces of work that meant something to him. Guto says his tiny team of three are doing great and that he is the happiest. No regrets.
Community
Dave Haakens decided to work on plastic as a final project for university. He created a machine anyone could build use to recycle common plastic items. He travelled the world to make sure everyone had the raw materials to make one of these machines. His project is now called ‘Precious Plastic’ and has thousands of machines around the world, with an interactive map offering you a global view of where interested people are. You can get involved and make your own. It’s all open source, it’s all free.
When we were chatting I asked if it still surprised him that people around the world were using his open source material. He said that seeing his material spread the best bit, when “someone does something” on the other side of the world. In response to the volume of creativity and recycled items made, Dave created the Bazaar. The Bazaar is an online shop, that closes the loop between making recycled objects and using them. In terms of what’s next, he said he’s looking to scale the idea and make a recycling workspace that can take larger plastic items. Like a recycling plant… that you or me can build. Can you imagine?
In terms of spreading the knowledge he said no to a book, but a documentary is definitely in his plans. (Vice are you reading this?) As he puts it: “a decent video, about the whole cycle of plastic would be great. It could show all the problems and opportunities around how to do it. It could also show different types of people/organisations how to recycle…” We had to stop brainstorming because lunch was coming. The point is: follow him. Build a machine. Work in the open. Be like Dave.
Building capacity
Joel Towers blew my mind. He’s the Dean of Parsons School of Design in New York City. He also serves as an Associate Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design.
Quoting Marten Luther King Joel said: ‘We must confront the fierce urgency of now. That is what the Anthropocene means. It is the time in which design must play a transformative role in rethinking how we are to live in this world. As an architect and educator, I find this an incredibly optimistic moment to live in. If we take the agency of design and work collaboratively, if we reframe the criteria by which we evaluate the success or failure of our actions, then the Anthropocene is a turning point in history in which we realise the potential of our species to transform this planet for the good.’
We had a chat about how to implement systemic positive change. He said: “I’d look to places where change has happened fast, and altered behaviour and then figure out what are the lessons that you can learn from them.”
What about the circular economy? - I asked. “Circularity is a natural progression from sustainability, to resilience to circularity. As I showed in my keynote, resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb change over time. Circularity is essentially another way of framing resilience.” I asked for his opinion on ‘growth’ having recently gotten into this TED talk by Kate Raworth.
He said: “Growth is a formulation outside of resilience. It is a counter intuitive notion, very much predicated on the capacity of externalisation of waste.”
We cannot externalise waste and expect businesses or economies to grow forever. We (humans) must learn to be ethical, responsible, smart designers who consider our impact in the world when we act. I would even argue that it is mandatory to first consider our impact, and only afterwards implement our designs.
If you want to read more about the speakers, please click here. If you want to attend the next event, visit this link. If you get the opportunity, connect with other who are striving to have a positive impact in the world. The system can change, we just need to get started and work together. Take a look at how we do it at Common Good here.
In the meantime, I’m personally going to go back to practicing human centred design, to learning every day and follow the above examples. There’s a lot of work to do!
