Design, Don’t Resign
🫶 Designing transformational futures is braver than giving up for the past's sake
Don’t give up our future
In times of collapse it can feel easier to shut down (and these days there are all kinds of collapse: personal, social, political, economic, ecosystemic, planetary… the list goes on). We find ourselves sighing out things ranging from “it’s too late”, “this isn’t my problem”, or simply “there’s nothing I can do.” Resignation is an easy way out. It lets us off the hook.
But resignation is a backward glance. Design looks forward.
To design is to choose not to give up. To design is to participate in life, to meet complexity not with fear but with curiosity, imagination, and intention. To design is to say: “this world could be otherwise and I can help in shaping it and co-creating it.” Because this is about all of us, and transformation is shaped through our choices as they impact not only ourselves but all the life forms we interact with in this interconnected planet.
“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.” -John Schaar
The future doesn’t really exist. It forms. Through the sum total of our choices, our efforts and our designs. That’s why those “random” thoughts that hit you with inspiration matter. Because as you start seeing a possibility you start engaging with what could be and you can start transforming from that moment onwards with every new choice you make and action you take.
Everyone is a designer
People often think of design as the realm of experts. That’s where resignation hits. But design isn’t just about furniture, apps, or posters. Design is about possibility.
It’s about how we live, work, care, relate, and repair. About what we do, say, practice and choose. About why we engage, connect, interrelate and act in the ways we do. Every choice we make about how to show up in our lives is a design choice. It’s in everyday things like how we lead a meeting, how we structure our day, how we respond to a challenge. We are always shaping what comes next.
So hold that thought as we unpack it: Everyone Is A Designer.
Design is an act of service
Creating meaning, now more than ever, is a radical act. It’s (r)evolutionary.
Design asks us not only what could be, but what should be. It calls us to serve not just ourselves, but the collective. Not just efficiency, but equity. Not just function, but future. This isn’t about aesthetics, it’s about the shape of the world we live in.
“Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order.” -Victor Papanek
As Colombian-American anthropologist Arturo Escobar writes, “Design needs to be deeply life-oriented. We must design for transitions, for the pluriverse—where many worlds can exist, together.”
To design in this way means becoming attuned to the systems we’re part of. It means recognizing that design is never neutral: it either upholds the status quo or dares to reimagine it.
This is the heart of transformation design: a practice rooted not in mastery, but in humility. Not in control, but in co-creation. Not in the past, but in the potential.
The courage to keep imagining
It takes courage to keep imagining when the world feels like it’s burning. But design gives us tools to hold the both/and: the grief and the dream. The uncertainty and the agency. The collapse and the compost.
“The creative adult is the child who survived.” -Ursula K. Le Guin
In so long as we hold on to the past we will stay stuck in survival mode. Releasing it, means embracing that we have indeed survived and accepting the losses, the trauma, the regret. All of it. So that we can use our human talents of imagination and resilience to design something new.
Because design isn’t about predicting the future: it’s about prototyping it as we go. Learning what works. What is better. Experimenting, iterating, adjusting, learning and trying again. It’s a discipline of hope-in-action.
So take that thought we just highlighted: Everyone Is A Designer. And make it the source of your power. Make it loud and (r)evolutionary and human and real. It’s not about us, it’s through us that design transforms. Through our actions, beyond despair.
“Action is the antidote to despair.” -Joan Baez
I love this quote by Joan Baez. It is so hopeful. There is always something we can do. It may not be obvious or easy. But courses of action, transformational pathways, are always available. And design is action.
Even a small decision, like how we host a conversation, how we show up for others in our daily lives, how we frame a challenge: can shift an entire outcome. These micro-acts of design accumulate into transformation.
Because as Dieter Rams famously said, “Good design is as little design as possible.”
Simple choices, made with care and attention, can ripple far.
Design as an invitation
Collapse and despair are invitations: not to hustle, but to engage. To bring our attention back to what we can influence. To start where we are, with what we have, and make it better: not perfect, but better.
Consider this your invitation to design. Each of us from our corners of the world. Design the meetings that don’t waste time. Design the products that heal, not harm. Design the future that our great-grandchildren will thank us for.
We cannot control what breaks down. But we can design what’s next. That’s where we break-through.
Let’s stop resigning.
Let’s start designing.
And, please: let me know how this lands with you. I’d love to read your comments!
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Many years ago, I came across the concept of Effectuation by Saras Sarasvathy. If you don’t know her work, here’s her TED Talk from 2010 (it’s been 15 years, but it’s still relevant in many ways). One of the principles of Effectuation is called the Crazy Quilt