Design Declares

Design Declares is a call to action encouraging teams and agencies to declare a climate and ecological emergency, whilst working towards understanding, measuring and acting on the climate impact we have through our work.

We’ve teamed up with the founders of @design_declares to help shape the change needed throughout the design industry, including service, industrial, digital and communication design.

Design Declares is a website that outlines 8 Acts of Emergency. Along with signatories declaring a climate and ecological emergency, they are committing to working towards these 8 Acts. The acts are:

1. Sound the alarm. Acknowledge and raise awareness of the climate and ecological crisis – including its roots in systems of oppression – in our organisations and our practice.
2. Start the journey. Invest in educating ourselves and our teams on methods of sustainable and regenerative design, and show leadership by making measurable change to our practice. The Design Declares Toolkit is a great place to start.
3. Bring clients with us. Meaningfully consider environmental and social impacts as part of every pitch, proposal and production process. Not every design output will be carbon neutral or fully climate friendly, but every project is an opportunity to make real progress.
4. Measure what we make. Measure the environmental and social impact of our work and design projects, and hold ourselves to account for what we find out.
5. Redefine ‘good’. Encourage, recognise and reward sustainable and regenerative design excellence in our industry through media and awards.
6. Educate, accelerate. Build and foster intra- and cross-discipline knowledge networks to share tools, resources and best practice to accelerate progress in our industry.
7. Design for justice. Create with and for the people who are disproportionately affected both by climate change and by the transition to a lower-carbon world.
8. Amplify voices for change. Enable systemic change by working alongside policymakers, campaigners, ecologists, scientists, activists and others to strengthen local and national movements for change.

To support this journey, the Design Declares team have put together a Toolkit that breaks down each Act into smaller steps and provides resources, tools and insights for further learning. This will be kept updated with new resources, suggestions, content and case studies.

The target is 1000 signatories by the Design for Planet Festival in November run by the Design Council.

Head over to the Design Declares site to sign up, download the Tooklit and join us as we begin to design a climate-positive future.