Introducing our Earth Centered Design Community

We are an enthusiastic group of designers across the globe who care about the earth, issues of sustainability and climate change. The aim of Earth Centered Design is to examine the status quo to envision a just and sustainable future. We have been working on a manifesto for the last few months, it is now live in a beta version here. It calls any and all other designers to join us to be more earth-centered in our approach.

So far we have 150 in our community from 20 countries with 15–20 attending monthly video calls. Momentum builds each month and we are open to all.

Our name and purpose

Earth Centered Design is our name. It flowed from values generated by the community. We are interested in any form of design that minimises environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes. We have to become good at designing as nature. The 7.7 billion humans are not separate from earth and our work should reflect the delicate interconnections and interrelations between people and planet. Our manifesto flows through the phases of shedding, seeding then budding to create a new path for designing.

Any designer who has a deep passion to create change in the climate space is readily trying to establish their role and ecosystem in support of the crisis. Though many scientific outlooks are bleak, I believe we can bring our skills together and take action. But what can we do? That is the question, and there are no quick answers. It’s as if this ‘emergency’ has created the space for us to slow down and analyse the big picture in order to design for longevity, in all its forms.

There is a pressing need for designers to be in the climate space, but many aren’t sure how to get there. As one of the community members points out in her article, Making the Case for Service Design in the Climate Sector, there are designers who have the enthusiasm and skills, but the full opportunities aren’t there yet. And it’s not just the design industry. Our clients will also need to walk the path towards a world view in which nature is an embedded part of our process. Together, we can work to define and grow this space.

Community focus

The vision of our community group is a safe incubation space for sharing ideas and being generative. We meet monthly on Zoom and continue the conversation in our Slack channel. Here are some of the topics we, as a community, have been discussing:

• Prototyping futures in different climate change scenarios
• A manifesto for designers
• Existing and emerging maps, tools and strategies
• What role can design play in the climate sector and vice versa

Ecological Designer Profiles

In these emerging areas of practise, it’s helpful to see where designers are finding themselves useful. For those of you interested in getting involved, here is a snapshot of what some of our community are doing:

• Kamal is part of a transition design group in Seattle and works in UX/UI for the City of Seattle on sustainability projects, and he makes permaculture cool for diverse groups in the city
• Eliane is building an ecological centre in the jungles of Peru, educating groups and writing her thesis on the coherence of ecological design thinking
• Dan is an educator at Carnegie Mellon who is working with students on prototyping different climate pathways of experiential futures
• Bavo is a consultant UX designer who is working in logistics and pushing companies to be more environmentally friendly in Belgium through good UX
• Aran has been working on a new model and service offering for disaster preparedness and long-term climate adaptation (building off of our work in NYC post-Sandy). She leads a San Francisco based Design and Climate group

Seeding Community

The diversity of our group is strong and could definitely be stronger. We would love for you to join the community to further discussions around regeneration and climate change (we are still trying to figure out the Australasian time zone so everyone can participate). If you’re curious about the group and would like to get involved in the discussions, sign up here for our upcoming calls and our slack group.

We all have a great passion for reigniting the lost sensibility in our animate earth and reducing our carbon footprint. For everyone’s benefit, businesses need to speak to the three most important aspects: people, profit AND planet. In our limited thinking for profit, we’ve designed a mess that now needs untangling. And as human-centred designers, we are capable at meeting the needs of people, but we are often missing the needs of the planet.

As in nature, this group is a mere seedling but with nurturing, through ideas and movement, it has the potential take root, grow and interconnect with many other communities out there.