Beyond consumption

Great design needs to create meaning without spinning a hamster wheel of consumption

Can we approach design as fellow citizens, rather than consumers?

In this little video, I reflect on Jon Alexander’s book Citizens. He challenges our default role in society of being consumers - where our sense of power is, crudely, that of a shopper. We decide what we want and use money to get it. The trouble is, this often puts on a hamster wheel of doing work of questionable meaning to buy what are often products with limited real value.

Instead, he suggests we think of ourselves as citizens, co-creating the future with each other, less enslaved to hype and using up the planet’s limited resources.

We’d say that unhurried design should be about creating real value, not simply making unsustainable products seem easier or more beautiful.