Scenes from a hopeful future
What will follow are scenes from a possible future where we—as global citizens, and as designers—get our act together and implement climate solutions on an everyday basis. It won’t be set too far in the future and it will not include fancy not-ready-for-production technology like carbon capture machines. The point is not to anticipate all the innovations that we will inevitably* create, the point is to show that today we can overhaul our industries for the better and usher in standard practices that leave the world a better place. These scenarios are not specified to a particular industry, so as to try be as universal as possible, but as a graphic designer, there is definitely some bias.
One final note; not every change in these scenarios are directly applicable to the climate crisis itself, but, instead, are changes that free up designers and the culture of design overall so that we have the freedom to choose to design what is best for us on a personal and planet-wide level, and so, in a more roundabout way goes to work on toward climate justice.
Scenario 1: A near-future workspace
You are a designer getting ready for work. Most workdays for you involve simply staying home and working remotely; the COVID-19 pandemic normalized virtual meetings and the overwhelming backlash to having to return to the office standardized a work from home (WFH) model for as many industries as could do so. Less travel to and from the office reduced emissions and because other industries adopted the practice as well, the rush hour became less congested, leading to reduced travel times. Many companies now hire candidates who live remotely—no longer do designers have to move to design centers like major cities and pay inflated rents and other costs. Today, though, you and your team are meeting with a potential new client and your company policy is to do that face-to-face as much possible.
Your company doesn’t have a standard office building; in fact, it doesn’t own a building at all. The overhead of owning and maintaining a building takes away from wages that studio owners can be investing back into their employees. The energy costs also tend to be exorbitant and the climate is still going to get warmer, even if we end up locking in less than 1.5°C of heating. Design jobs that involve making physical products still have physical locations, but the need for a trendy, glass and steel box for designers and other office staff is quickly going out of style. Co-working spaces, however, are in. A small strip mall has recently been converted to a tiny, multi-purpose, industrial hub with comfortable open spaces for business people to meet and where a few simple cafes that serve drinks and light meals operate during the day. It is on the main public transportation line, so it is accessible even by those without their own vehicles, which in urban areas is becoming more and more common. You meet your team there and wait for your potential client to arrive.
Taking on new clients at your company isn’t just about if the price is right, but it involves researching the impacts of the project on other factors like the environment, and even considers if the project should exist at all. Not having a physical location to have to take care of allows your company to be more nimble and honest when it comes to looking for new work. The saved money also allows researchers to join the design studio in order to better serve whatever audience you may be designing for; sometimes you advise a potential client to rethink a product when research shows that a client’s initial plans need some more attention. In all, the freedom that came from adapting to being decentralized allowed your company to more fully exist in the communities that its employees and clients come from; closing the shop doors opened up new possibilities.
Scenario 2: A near-future workflow
As a designer working primarily in the commercial arts, your work has changed in a number of ways in the past couple of years; adapting to the climate crisis meant finding ways to increase freedom of choice in design. One way that design companies have taken to save money has been to start to diversify the types of software and hardware that they use and to democratize and open up the industry to marginalized communities.
There has been a movement to expand the industry by lowering the cost of entry; between the debt of college degrees and the exorbitant costs of outfitting oneself as a designer with the proper equipment, designers under the old model were either free from debt—often because they had money and privilege to begin with—or were saddled with debt and thus overly dependent on maintaining employment at the cost of empowerment.
These changes especially altered the way that graphic designers and web designers went about their work. Software that did not come with the tether of subscription has been coming back in popularity—it used to be the standard but that mode faded out as constant updates became the norm, but those updates were frequently buggy, and often, the excuse of constant updates did more to justify the subscription than the other way around. Freeing designers from a monthly bill allowed for more freedom in the choice of their clientele too, especially for freelancers on very tight budgets. Normalizing affordable hardware has also lowered the cost of entering design fields. No longer do studios demand one particular brand of computer, because as the ranks of designers became more diverse, what became clear—and should have been all along—was that the quality of the work was what was paramount, not the device or the program with which it was made.
Scenario 3: A near-future that works
The old way of designing things for consumption had a few major flaws that meant that, culturally, the mass of humanity that could really affect the trajectory of future climate events was disincentivized from doing so. Designs communicated themes like competition, scarcity, exclusivity, and a deep-seated feeling of incompleteness that aimed to drive humans to buy more and more. It was the result of socioeconomic changes in design culture like decentralization, democratization, and increased diversity that really allowed forward-looking design work to flourish. As design became less tied to capital and more human- and planet-focused, products and services could finally be designed that communicated everyone’s inherent value; when we were no longer in competition with each other, we could truly see each other for what we were—residents of a planet that was rapidly becoming too hot. Life was no longer the zero-sum game that we had been taught for generations; equity was no longer a threatening term to those with power.
It didn’t happen all at once. Designers were a critical part of the process; they had to show the world what change could look like.
Messaging was critical to success. Many power-generating technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal power plants already existed and could get economies off of fossil fuels. Investments in electrical infrastructure took off as more and more products were being electrified. Eco-friendly products were being designed and advertised not as novelty alternatives but as the new paradigm. Office buildings and homes ditched gas stoves and furnaces for induction ranges and heat pumps as the public began to understand through optimistically designed ad campaigns that cheaper and more efficient products existed. What people were used to seeing were either just blatant disinformation campaigns that made the public uncertain about renewables or renewable-powered technologies or advertising ploys that were meant to continue to drive consumerism by playing on the public’s growing concern about a nebulous climate crisis. The public began to make changes when they saw in concrete ways that there was a hopeful and obtainable future out there.
One of the ways that we embarked on to reach that future was that products were made to last longer. Consumers began to demand that their economy work for them. Designers were there with signs and websites and protest campaigns for a new consumers' bill of rights, but they also came through with durable, reusable packaging that made it easy for customers to return for re-use. The smartphones and tablets that connected so many were designed so that they lasted longer than ever before. Smart device bodies were made to be more modular; easier to disassemble, and easier to replace parts as “right to repair” laws were strengthened or added to governments around the world. Items such as phones, clothes, shoes, and cars still existed, but improved build quality made it harder to just throw out something. Advertising and media companies played their part in transforming culture by promoting the idea that keeping things for longer was the cool thing to do.
The diversity of perspectives that came from expanding the pool of people who call themselves designers also led to products that were made to liberate communities, not subjugate them. Products and services were designed by and for the communities in which they were used. This allowed marginalized groups to have a louder voice on the global stage and they were able to enjoy having things designed for them that were intuitive and made with greater care. A decentralized perspective coupled with the increased voices of everyday people meant that so-called “sacrifice zones” weren’t just abstract ideas that were far away from the minds of most consumers, it also meant that marginalized communities became less marginalized.
The climate crisis was powered by carbon dioxide but it was driven by the idea that humans could consume endlessly and that more resources—and the labor necessary to process them—were always just around the corner. Sure, sometimes there were people living where those resources were located, but dehumanizing those people, and othering those areas allowed some of us to imagine that the machine of industrialization could run indefinitely. But it is not possible to strip humanity from someone else; we can only dehumanize ourselves. When everyone is given the ability to speak, to problem solve, to communicate—in short, to design—it becomes clear that there are none that are expendable. When designers didn’t just start working more for humanity, but looking more like the humanity for which they designed, there was no longer just an “other.” There was only each other. The mission was clear. And we designers did what we do best. We revised, we iterated, we listened to old and new ideas, and sat through criticism. And what progress we helped usher in in response to those ideas and critiques served everyone better. You see, design has always been a tool of communication; it has pointed people and culture in many different directions, but progress is not the inexorable force that many think it is—progress is the result of sustained action. It was optimism and hope that, when communicated, enabled us to design something better, together.
*We have a habit of assuming that the future will always just get better—that baseless optimism is almost certainly is one of the mental roadblocks that get in the way of climate action—and that, obviously, we will invent our way out of the crisis, but nothing has ever been invented that way. Invention requires effort and it requires active participation, big or small.
So, call-to-action time
What would you add to this scenario? How could your specific industry reinforce the hope and optimism that our present-day tech and ideas already afford us? What would you do differently? I’ll leave you with this quote by Eric Holthaus from his book, The Future Earth: “This moment in history needs you. Knowing what you can personally do is easier than it seems. You already know what issues you’re passionate about. You already know what kinds of things you’re good at. Where those overlap is where you should devote the rest of your life.” (emphasis mine)
Head over to the Climate Designers community space on Mighty Networks and let us know what you think.
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This entry was written by
Matt McGillvray
Matt is a designer and illustrator living near Portland, Maine, and has been working for more than a decade doing branding, illustration, web design, print design, social media posts, and even a little SEO.
When not designing he’s usually reading, writing, or running. His current big writing project is a book about design and climate change. He is a chronic teller of puns and will not apologize for that.