“Creating Synergies: A Handbook for Design Activists”
Few designers have been able to detach from the dominant paradigm of generating wealth for markets, who have taken a critical stance on profit-led design practice. By positioning environmental and social issues at the top of their agenda, they have demonstrated that design can play a vital role in helping to bring about positive social changes and thus challenge the status quo. These are the designers who are considered design activists.
Yet it is not uncommon to find commercially-driven, client-led designers employing their skills within markets who are interested in integrating new elements of environmental or social character into their work. This act gives rise to questions concerning whether this type of design practice should be regarded as a form of activism.
“Creating Synergies” is a handbook on design activism. It argues that design activism may arise from all sectors of the economy- public, private and NGOs. Independently of whether this has been carried out under a profit-led scenario, this should not limit its role from being perceived as an activist act. “Creating synergies” calls on all those designers, who have shown through their work that design is able to bring about positive social changes, to initiate a dialogue between them and take collaborative action.