Introduction

The climate and biodiversity crises, and associated social injustice, are the biggest challenges facing humanity. Design has huge potential and a responsibility to be part of the transformation we need to make a more regenerative world.

Our Design for Planet mission aims to galvanise and support the 1.97m strong UK design community, as well as the commissioners of design, to address the climate and biodiversity crises, by putting our planet at the centre of everything we design.

To achieve this, design must evolve to act more systemically. In 2021 we published our Systemic Design Framework and System-Shifting Design reports. They set out new approaches for designers to work with people beyond design and shift us to alternative regenerative systems, rather than a faster, bigger version of our current model (which is failing the planet). This toolkit now draws on further research with designers, and knowledge from our Design Council Expert network, to provide a set of practical tools for designers to use with businesses, public sector and community commissioners, giving people the skills, confidence and first steps to design for planet.

When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.

lya Prigogine