By Gaby Holguin (Creative Designer at The Ideas Factory)
In an era where crises permeate even the simplest daily actions, design emerges as a pivotal discipline. Brands must recognise that true transition occurs when creativity fosters environmental and social innovation.
From the devastating effects of deforestation to the surging ocean pollution and social unrest triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is in a state of “permacrisis” (Turnbull, 2022). This extended period of instability affects every aspect of our lives, including how we buy food, furnish our homes, and select personal hygiene products.
In this climate, designers must adopt a self-critical stance and adapt to new challenges with agility and foresight. Contemporary designers approach projects with a more humanistic outlook, driven by a sense of social and environmental responsibility. This shift underscores the critical role of design in addressing the multifaceted global crisis.
Design’s Evolving Role
We have been discussing contemporaneity for over 10 years; the theoretical frameworks (some just mentioned) underpinning the current situation were established over 20 years ago. From a design discipline perspective, it is crucial to understand that our professional practice is at the centre of this contemporary crisis.
Design has never been alien to human social and cognitive development; on the contrary, through its tangible and intangible innovations, it has actively participated in the construction of our material culture.
Concepts such as “liquid modernity,” introduced by sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman in 1999, demonstrate how this “modern” or “contemporary” world has moved from theory, forecasts, and a sort of “academic terrorism” to a tangible and current reality.
Today, designers should act as translators of complex ideas into feasible solutions, making a tangible impact on society and the environment.
Addressing Global Challenges
Concerns about single-use plastics, fast fashion, and gentrification are at the forefront of global discourse.
Consequently, we are aware that entire coastlines are covered in trash in some parts of Africa and Asia, that labour exploitation in developing countries has shifted from being an open secret to apparently the only way (it seems) to respond to the accelerated pace of many consumers.
Have we considered how design can contribute and address several of these global problems?
Designers must ask how their work can contribute to solving these issues. The answer lies in innovative approaches like Advanced Design and Transition Design, which emphasise unconventional collaboration and a deeper understanding of economies and cultures.
Understanding design as a broad area of study, we cannot overlook that for years, this discipline has been strongly linked to mass production of artefacts, mainly tangible ones, thus the materials and production processes involved in their manufacture also have direct consequences for our quality of life.
Advanced Design and Transition Design
These approaches offer frameworks for addressing socio-cultural and environmental problems. Advanced Design leverages the synergy between design, arts, and technology, while Transition Design focuses on sustainability and biocentric perspectives.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, designers and architects sought aesthetic and functional analogies in nature. However, these references today have mutated in such a way that biomechanics or biomimicry are no longer the only possible forms of relationship with nature. Technological advancements in production and manufacturing processes increasingly focus on the development of new materials that allow for a more coherent transition to zero waste, or at least a considerable reduction.
Sustainable Design Innovations
We can now find compostable, edible objects, or those with many acquired functions that allow them to endure over time and not quickly turn into waste. “Trash is a design error,” “if we do a close-up, and we look closely at the trash, we also realise that there are brands in that trash,” says Gonzalo Muñoz. Therefore, it is important to ask ourselves how we are designing, for whom we are doing it, and above all, in what historical moment that design is situated.
The alternatives for the products we design are not utopian. The market is increasingly opening its doors to new ways of materialising objects, such as the case of Impasto, a project by Danish designer Nikolaj Steenfatt, who has received various awards and scholarships.
Steenfatt has wondered, “How can chance influence the outcome of an industrialised process? How can we leverage new materials or processes to create relevant products? How can we achieve more with less?” Thus, with Impasto, he manages to create a line of domestic products from a biomaterial made with wood waste (sawdust) and coffee grounds.
The result obtained from this material allows for the production of thick sheets that later undergo a thermoforming process that enables them to copy the final shape with which the objects are assembled. Some of the reasons why this project is a good case study include the quality of the final product, not only aesthetically but also in terms of performance. The viability of the production process means that it still features mass reproduction characteristics, without generating so much waste, on the contrary, making use of it.
Projects like Impasto, which use biomaterials, exemplify how chance and new processes can create relevant, sustainable products. This innovation extends to everyday objects, demonstrating the practical application of sustainable design.
From Theory to Implementation
We highlight how, in these case studies, areas such as UX/UI Design facilitate tools that increase citizens’ trust in their local and national governments, a relationship that eases the implementation of public policies with medium and long-term implications in the agenda against the global crisis.
Also, through approaches in Experience Design, public/private spaces are configured to meet human needs that are currently more prominent in conversations such as mental health, economic vulnerability, or the visibility of new forms of identity and culture.
In the field of Object Design, detailed attention to materials in terms of social and environmental impact seems to be a more debated and ingrained theme in the essence of the discipline.
Traditionally, it is understood as an operator that serves to structure a complex system through the management of its intrinsic properties by the designer, whose goal is to lead to the optimisation of the functional performance of a product (Manzini, 1986 cited in Alarcón, Celaschi, & Celi, 2020). However, many of these proposals that aim to explore new ways to achieve such innovative and competitive features are still stuck in academic archives, and the truth is that it is time for implementation. There have already been significant proposals, technological developments that enable industry changes to be tangible and not merely conceptual.
Designing Solutions: The Impact of Strategic Creativity
Undoubtedly, companies like TIF, dedicated to accompanying businesses at various stages to improve the quality of their products, to research their markets, to innovate within each of their industries, are key pieces in making this transition possible, through rigorous use of design research when it comes to tangible and intangible products.
Take a look at our recent projects here.
The landscape of design expands as design professionals integrate this expansion into the needs of a society that is crying out for significant change.
We, the professionals who offer design services and products, must build systemic approaches that allow the client to have a multidisciplinary team to address comprehensively, that is, considering the connection between culture and behaviour, the challenges that allow them to achieve their objectives, while remaining aligned with the reality of the context to which the organisation leading the projects belongs. Multidisciplinarity also requires that professionals migrate to a logic that fosters dynamics that invite and generate synergies to broaden the scope.
It is time to act, time to direct our creative vision towards a more responsible, fair, and ecocentric consumption relationship. It is important that strategic creativity is represented in brands, projects, and products with foundations that provide a fresh and resolutive look at the issues that concern us as humanity.
We recognise that it is important that this creation of experiences should allow generating significant economic value, rather, what we want to focus the reflection on, is the fact that it is important to maintain the balance that builds meaningful connections between brands and their audience, companies, and their communities.
Be part of this transformation movement, where each project is an opportunity to respond to the global dynamics challenging our society and environment.
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