Examining how creative decision-making is fundamentally tied to our values and modes of thinking in an era of accelerating change and deepening challenges, this book offers a timely reminder that design can be a powerful force for renewal, when grounded in a sense of responsibility, humility, and shared humanity.
Drawing on insights from philosophy, global traditions, real-world examples, and hands-on making, the book explores how creativity can be guided by deeper values of compassion, inclusivity, and conservation. It invites us to reflect on why we create, how we create, and who we create for, and shows how such values can lead to more enduring, meaningful outcomes, and how design can help restore connections, foster equity, and bring us closer to the world we want. More than a design philosophy, it offers a hopeful vision of creativity not as spectacle or strategy, but as a thoughtful, enduring contribution to the common good.
Design Shift will be a key text for designers, students, lecturers, and researchers across design disciplines, craft studies, and sustainable futures, as well as practitioners and policymakers involved in social and environmental reform.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction Part 1: Helter-Skelter 2. A Worldview in Flux: Profits and Costs 3. A Bigger Picture: Connections and Meanings 4. Shifting Technology: Design’s Changing Priorities 5. Design for Greed: Luxury Craft and Its Alternatives 6. Exit Plans: Anti-Human, Trans-Human and Fully Human Part 2: Reset 7. A World Worth Making: Things of Significance and Value 8. Transformation for Good: A Foundation for Change 9. Journey Thru’ the Centre of the Earth: Turning Point 10. Distinctions Disappear: Holistic Ways of Knowing 11. Legend: A Tale of Transglobal Local Part 3: Making Meaning 12. Aesthetics of the Tangible: Beauty and its Implications 13. Aesthetics of the Intangible: Beauty in the Immaterial 14. The Creator and the Work: Art, Design and Moral Dilemmas 15. Meeting Cézanne: A Privileged Encounter Part 4: Reflection 16. Possessions: Sitting on Dusty Shelves 17. Design without Dimensions: More Than Meets the Eye 18. Feeling 19. Silence: The Space Not Filled Part 5: Transition 20. Design Shift: Values, Priorities and Positive Change 21. A Quiet Stillness: Creative Change Through Tacit Ways of Knowing 22. Changing the Narrative: Product as Process 23. Indeterminate Design: Taking Less, Having More 24. Creativity of the Heart: Striving Towards the Good
