Design Shift: Creative Values for People, Planet, and the Common Good

Examining how creative decision-making is fundamentally tied to our values and modes of thinking in an era of accelerating change and deepening challenges, this book offers a timely reminder that design can be a powerful force for renewal, when grounded in a sense of responsibility, humility, and shared humanity.

Drawing on insights from philosophy, global traditions, real-world examples, and hands-on making, the book explores how creativity can be guided by deeper values of compassion, inclusivity, and conservation. It invites us to reflect on why we create, how we create, and who we create for, and shows how such values can lead to more enduring, meaningful outcomes, and how design can help restore connections, foster equity, and bring us closer to the world we want. More than a design philosophy, it offers a hopeful vision of creativity not as spectacle or strategy, but as a thoughtful, enduring contribution to the common good.

Design Shift will be a key text for designers, students, lecturers, and researchers across design disciplines, craft studies, and sustainable futures, as well as practitioners and policymakers involved in social and environmental reform.

Stuart Walker is an Emeritus Professor of Lancaster University, UK, and the University of Calgary, Canada. He is also Professor of Design for Sustainability at the Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, and Visiting Professor at Kingston University, London. His propositional design work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Design Museum, London, and has been featured in numerous books, magazines, and on the BBC. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers, and many books, including Sustainable by Design (2006), Design Realities (2019), Design and Spirituality (2021), and Design for Resilience (2023).