Good Morning Friends,
How was your summer? I hope you took some time off to recharge your batteries. I had one lovely week at the sea and did nothing but swim and read. The book I read was beautiful, inspiring and very close to a subject I am concerned about.
If you follow my lectures, recent articles and work at Dark Matter Labs (https://led.darkmatterlabs.org), I am working on giving Design a new life in a post-growth world. There is a lot to unpack in this sentence, but I will try to keep it short.
Design has been and still is a very powerful aid in growing businesses. You just need to have a look at the worth of brands (https://interbrand.com/best-global-brands/) or the news that an American company lost 100.000.000 USD in Stock after changing their logo (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cracker-barrel-cbrl-stock-down-200-million-loss-new-logo-change/) to have the evidence of how relevant Design is for capitalism.
We know at least since the last century that unlimited growth on a finite planet is a myth. (https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/) Since this century, we not only know, but we also feel it. We need some sort of degrowth and prepare for post-growth. (https://doughnuteconomics.org) I am very positive that design will have its place in this world. Maybe not as much as a promotional tool, but more as a relational tool. (https://flexiblevisualsystems.info/resources/conversationaldesign/) You have heard me say that designing Flexible Visual Systems is like designing languages. This is exactly what we need, flexible language systems to have better conversations. Conversations between humans, humans and machines and humans and more-than-humans.
The author of the book I read at the beach shares the same optimism. (https://timjackson.org.uk/ecological-economics/postgrowth-book/) I can really recommend it. It’s a fun read. Not as depressing as it might seem, but full of wonders we will rediscover once we stop chasing the impossible and focus on what makes our life rich.
I wish you a beautiful week,
Martin