Design Declares (D!), a climate emergency declaration campaign to encourage designers to take action on the climate and ecological crisis, has launched in the UK.
The campaign urges designers from all disciplines to acknowledge that we are in an emergency of climate and nature and offers Eight Acts of Emergency to implement as starting points.
1. Sound the alarm
2. Start the journey
3. Bring clients with us
4. Measure what we make
5. Redefine ‘good’
6. Educate, accelerate
7. Design for justice
8. Amplify voices for change
There is no requirement to already have policies and action plans in place, but there is an understanding that, by signing, designers are committing towards an improvement in the reduction of their climate impact.
Design Declares will provide a toolkit, which proposes a set of actions, tools, and insights for each Act to support designers in making changes. The toolkit signposts work by other designers and institutions, including the Design Council’s Design Value Framework. It will be continually updated and developed as the Design Declares community grows.
Initially formed by design and innovation consultancy Morrama and creative group URGE Collective, the campaign has received the full support of the Design Council, as part of their Design for Planet mission. The Design Council is a founding signatory along with Morrama, URGE, design and impact agency Driftime®, service design agency Snook, industrial design agency Studio Wood, communication design studio thomas.matthews and product, space and service design studio Pearson Lloyd.
Design Declares is open to individuals and institutions working in industrial, digital, graphic, communication and service design. To declare, you must be a company with an office in the UK employing at least one full-time designer. It also welcomes declarations from practising freelance designers who are registered as self-employed in the UK. All those declaring will be named on the site.
“If this year’s heatwaves aren’t enough to engage the design industry that there’s work to be done, then try to imagine what it’s going to be like in ten years’ time. We need to create an alternative and positive version of the future through design, and the time to do it is now,” says URGE’s Alexie Sommer.
Jo Barnard, founder of Morrama adds: “As designers working within an industry driven by consumption and reliant on production, we have to acknowledge that we have a role to play in changing this system. This is the most important brief of our lives. Join us as we begin to design a climate-positive future.”
