New show to “remind designers” of their role in protest movements

A new exhibition wants to reclaim graphic design as a “call to arms” to make the world better.

The Right to Protest, which opens in London tomorrow, features 200 posters, with designs from some of the largest private collections in the UK, alongside new work from creatives like Anthony Burrill and Mr Bingo.

“The exhibition is a reengagement with design’s radical past, and a call to arms in a world where our right to protest is under threat,” says John Phillips, founder of the Museum of UnRest, which is curating the show with the Pro Radix group.

The organisers want to highlight the work of activist design groups that they think should be better known, like the See Red Women’s Workshop, the Paddington Printshop and the Red Dragon Print Collective.

Some of the posters in the Right to Protest show

But they want to go beyond nostalgia and look to the future too, so there will be workshops, talks, and what they call “participatory radical acts.”

It takes place during the London Design Festival (LDF), but organisers want their show to be a counterpoint to LDF’s more conservative and commercial offerings.

We spoke with organiser Clive Russell to find out more about the project, and the power of design to engage with society’s most critical questions.

Where did the idea for this show come from? Why does it feel urgent?

The Right to Protest is an exhibition many decades in the making.

When the Museum of UnRest and Pro Radix started working together, we looked at the many ways art and design is failing to deal with the intersecting shitshow of modern crises – the climate crisis, the cost of living, lack of housing, access to education, inequality, the list goes on and on.

Historically, social crises reach the mainstream via protest – which can take many forms. This helps a society re-evaluate and evolve, making it more understanding and tolerant. More caring.

We should remember without protest we would not have a Welfare State, nor an NHS. This happened because of protests like the hunger marches, with marchers making banners and posters to express their ideas.

Recently we have seen many “democracies” openly suppressing protest – in the UK this is evident in recent protest laws passed by the previous government, but also used by the present.

The Right to Protest exhibition uses our recent past, from the 1960s to the present day, to remind the art and design community of its active role in protest. How it has given a voice to voiceless communities, helped explain complex issues and gone beyond commercial gain.

With governments and corporations actively silencing voices they disagree with, the need for artists and designers to be involved in protest is crucial.

You say it’s “an antidote to the branded, more polished and boring world of the London Design Festival.” Why is that needed?

The London Design Festival celebrates the commercial world of design. Which is fine, everyone needs to make some money right?

But if this commercialism is responsible for fuelling many of our modern dilemmas and crises, what does this say about the design world and about LDF?

If design is the conscious process of shaping and making our world, then the design community must address and help to solve the most profound problems which we, and the planet, face.

Yet much of the design world remains mesmerised by the glamour and glitter of consumerism, that is itself fuelling a crisis. The more we consume, the more we produce, the more we produce, the less there is for future and present generations.

It is therefore imperative to draw attention to the history and contemporary contributions of design within debates about how issues might be addressed through both protest and imaginative design.

Mr Bingo’s posters for The Right to Protest show

LDF does not recognise this aspect of design at all.

In only celebrating design’s ability to create and sell products, LDF misses design’s crucial role in shaping society. After all, a choice between different brands is just a choice of different things to buy – which might even be made in the same factory using the same materials.

Do we really need that? Designers can imagine better.

Is there also a sense that graphic art has become less stringent in recent years? What role could/should design be playing, that maybe it’s not playing now?

The evolution of graphic design, from its craft-based past into branding manuals, and onto its data-driven present, has left many designers feeling like a cog in a machine.

A desire for predictable results has created a ubiquitous visual space driven by visual blanding – everyone is racing into the same middle ground. Everywhere is starting to look and feel the same.

This branding of culture promotes a singular view of what is right and what is good, what is good. This has been caffeinated by digital culture.

Predictability of output has never been easier to control but where does that leave creativity and the joy of the uncertain, the truly new?

And it’s not just about graphic design, the questions are wider and applicable to all aspects of design practice and production. Where is the design field’s moral and ethical compass?

Can there be such a thing as “good design” with negative environmental and social consequences?

Maybe design needs a new brief – one that isn’t about production and consumption and predictability. After all branding is something you do to someone, not with someone. These are the conversations the exhibition wants to fuel.

Kristian Buus’ poster in the Right to Protest show
One of the posters in the Right to Protest show
Clive Russell’s poster for The Right to Protest show

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Beyond the work – why design studios are creating their own platforms

In recent years, a growing number of design studios have been juggling client work while actively shaping cultural discourse – hosting podcasts, launching talk series, and even staging full-blown festivals. By choosing to amplify their values through their self-initiated platforms, they’re blurring the lines between maker and curator.

Take, for example, Studio Dumbar/DEPT®, which launched the DEMO Festival; Lucky Dip, with its The NDA Podcast; or Apropos, whose Highly Opinionated platform interrogates art, activism, and cultural resistance through talks, interviews, and workshops.

This naturally raises the question – why are studios stepping beyond their role as creators to become cultural voices, making space for important conversations around creativity and community? What drives the hunger to do more than just design? And how is running these platforms reshaping both their practice and their client relationships?

Often, in launching these platforms, studios are picking up conversations that started elsewhere to give them more space and a bigger audience.

For Lucky Dip, adjusting to remote working meant the team lost the water cooler conversations in the studio. Co-founder Katie Cadwell found herself missing the post-work debrief, chatting about the good, bad, and ugly parts of working in the industry. “It’s hard to have those informal chats sitting on a Google Meet,” she says.

So the team launched The NDA Podcast, an unfiltered forum where designers share candid, behind-the-scenes perspectives on the industry.

The many topics The NDA Podcast has explored

“I wanted to feel like I was sitting around a pub table listening in on a debate between peers. Podcasts really lend themselves to feeling that intimacy of conversation,” says Cadwell.

Cadwell and co-founder Hatty Wytton wanted to bring a truly unbiased view of the industry to the audience, and the fact that The NDA is a self-initiated platform definitely helped. “The beauty of it being a passion project means we don’t need to worry about sponsors or the bottom line.

“We can really focus on the topics. It also allows us the privilege of honesty without fear of repercussion,” says Wytton.

Delving into subjects like motherhood and creativity, managing finances, and the challenges of freelancing, The NDA quickly found an audience.

“The best episodes are the ones where we end with more questions than we started with,” says Cadwell, adding that the community has rallied around the project. “We’ve heard of agencies listening to episodes over the studio speakers, then having heated debates at lunchtime. If we can generate more conversations on tricky subjects, I think we’re doing our job,” she says.

A live recording of The NDA Podcast at Birmingham Design Festival, with host Katie Cadwell and guests Christopher Doyle and Elise Santangelo-Rous

Interestingly, making the podcast has directly shaped the foundations of the studio itself. As Wytton says, many of Lucky Dip’s values (called ‘“Rules of Play”) were pulled from the experience of creating The NDA.

“‘No egos,’ for example, is something we tell our guests. We don’t necessarily care about your journey or role, just your experience on the topic. It’s also something we use when choosing talent and clients to work with,” says Wytton.

The podcast is a good way for the team to live out their values, and quickly signal to others what they believe in. “Walking the walk as well as talking the talk,” she says.

“It demonstrates how much we love the industry we work in. We care enough to give back, we’re passionate enough to dedicate time and resources to it, and we love it enough to critique it,” adds Wytton. “It shows we plan to be here for the long haul, and hopefully see some of the changes we talk about.”

That same urge to move beyond pure design work and contribute to cultural discourse drove London and Geneva-based agency Apropos to launch Highly Opinionated, a platform that hosts talks, interviews, and workshops. On one hand, the initiative was a way for the Apropos team to unpack their interests, which range from design, architecture, and art, to urban development, climate change, and politics.

“These topics shape and affect the way we live; therefore, it was an innate desire to address them in an open dialogue through the creation of content and events around them,” says co-founder Alexios Seilopoulos.

At the same time, Highly Opinionated was born from a rejection of the ‘white label’ agency model. As Seilopoulos explains, design by nature demands thinking, critique, and challenging the norm. While it inevitably intersects with commerce, it’s not a purely corporate pursuit.

“I never believed in the corporate mantra that business is business and personal opinions should stay out of it. Until businesses are run entirely by robots, there will always be people behind them, and their voices deserve to be heard,” he explains.

A conversation between author and ACT UP member Sarah Schulman and London-based photographer Sunil Gupta on art and queer resistance, moderated by Alexios Seilopoulos

Through its newsletter, talks, and events – such as the conversation between author and ACT UP member Sarah Schulman and London-based photographer Sunil Gupta on art and queer resistance, moderated by Seilopoulos – Highly Opinionated has struck a chord, not just with audiences, but also with clients, who sometimes bring up the platform in early conversations.

“They understand the cultural capital that something like Highly Opinionated can bring to their brand,” says Seilopoulos. “They can see that the emotional connection that’s created through such an activation is immeasurable to any media buy or marketing effort. I’m not saying that standard ways of marketing are not needed, but nothing can beat an honest story.”

For Lucky Dip too, The NDA has become a calling card, reshaping how clients see the studio and what it stands for. “A lot of founders are invested in personal brand and how that can elevate their business. NDA is part of Lucky Dip’s personal brand. So it acts as proof that we know how to engage an audience – visually, socially, and audibly,” says Wytton. It also means that the studio now attracts clients with similar principles; ones who relate to the ideas Lucky Dip discusses in the podcast.

“The biggest shift we’ve felt is in how other agencies perceive us,” adds Wytton. “As a fairly young studio, NDA has put us on the radar for them.

“And we’ve been overwhelmed by the support, particularly from studios that have similar values to us. That probably puts us in the feeds of their client circles, too.”

Even when the support is motivating, it doesn’t erase the reality that sustaining an independent, unfunded cultural platform means constantly balancing time and money against the demands of a design studio. For both Lucky Dip and Apropos, it means setting their own pace.

“The whole process is very hard, and we don’t always get it right,” says Cadwell. “But the value we get from NDA keeps it a priority for us. It will never be a weekly podcast; we’re realistic about how much we can achieve. And luckily, our loyal listeners don’t mind waiting. That takes the pressure off, and allows us to be really proud of every episode we put out.”

The Highly Opinionated newsletter

But as these platforms grow, they ask more of the people behind them.

Studio Dumbar/DEPT® knows this well, having faced the challenge of quickly adapting to the scale and complexity of a growing event while organising the 2025 edition of DEMO Festival, an annual showcase of motion design that takes over public screens in cities around the world.

The idea for the festival, first launched in 2019, came to the team during a visit to a poster exhibition – could they give motion design the platform it had never had? “We envisioned an exhibition that would showcase motion design not just to designers, but to everyone, in the public space instead of an art space,” says creative director Liza Enebeis.

Since then, DEMO has witnessed a meteoric rise in popularity. This year, the curatorial team reviewed an impressive 5,400 motion works submitted from 92 countries, surpassing submissions from the past two editions.

With the display of more than 600 artworks in major cities like Amsterdam, Hamburg, Brussels, Barcelona, Vancouver, and Los Angeles, DEMO reached millions of visitors, further cementing its position as the world’s largest motion design event.

The fact that DEMO is put together by a design studio – as opposed to a cultural institution or media – gives it an entirely different purpose.

A visual from DEMO 2025

“Unlike other design festivals that take place in galleries, conference centres, or invite-only venues, DEMO turns an entire city into an open-air exhibition, using public screens,” says Enebeis. “The focus on celebrating great work, rather than organising a competition with a ranking, is very important to us. We’re sharing instead of competing.”

With projects like DEMO, The NDA, and Highly Opinionated, designers are no longer waiting for space. Instead, they’re creating their own, and using it to amplify their voices and shape culture on their own terms.

“Traditionally, designers and design studios were known to be rather introverted; great creative talent, but not so great in speaking out,” says Enebeis. “The fact that their voice is becoming stronger is really important for the community. We are creators, so coming up with new ideas to communicate is inherent to our craft.”

As Enebeis says, this also signals a larger shift in culture, where both people and brands feel less confined to their traditional corner.

“Cross-overs, exploring new territory, integrating other expertise; everything has become much more eclectic and open, in every field,” she says. “This trend will continue. But it doesn’t mean everyone will or should follow this trend.”

A visual from DEMO 2025

Seilopoulos echoes this, adding that he’d like to see more studios step up as cultural voices. “The question is, why do it? If the answer is an honest need to communicate something you believe in to a greater audience, then that’s the right reason,” he says.

“If it’s to get more clients, or be trendy, then it’s better to stick to a traditional agency model, because people will see through it quite quickly.”

The widening role of the designer – no longer limited to craft but extending into commentary, curation, and entrepreneurship – brings opportunities, but also pressures and pitfalls. The growing ask to be more than “just a designer” can quickly become overwhelming.

“We have to ask why we’re stepping outside of our roles as ‘designers.’ We’re expected to be influencers. Thought-leaders. Entrepreneurs. Podcasters. Speakers. It’s exhausting, really. It risks pulling us away from doing what we love and came here to do,” says Cadwell.

She is quick to stress that there’s no shame in keeping your focus squarely on the craft itself – producing great work and running a studio is more than enough, especially since pursuing side quests is often a privilege not everyone can afford.

“It’s not possible for everyone, and I don’t want to perpetuate the idea that you have to be ‘Creative &,’” she says. “But if people have a real passion and drive to create something that is ‘theirs,’ then power to them. It’s one of the most rewarding parts of my job.”

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Who would be your dream design conference speakers?

We’re fully in the swing of design event season, with creatives taking to stages around the world to share their work, and their insights.

We asked a range of designers to curate their dream design conference line-up. The rules were simple – they could pick three people, and were allowed a mix of living and dead designers (but they couldn’t all be dead).

Their eclectic suggestions feature lots of designers, but also artists, comedians and musicians…

Wayne Deakin – Ingels, Glaser, Grès

Bjarke Ingels for his bold optimism, Milton Glaser for timeless spark, and Madame Grès for her perfection turned into poetry.

I’ve gone super wide in time, style and disciplines of design because the mix, from physical to graphic, is where the most interesting ideas are emerging today in my mind.

First, Bjarke Ingels. A Danish architect who thinks big, takes risks, and proves sustainability doesn’t have to be safe or dull. He makes important ideas playful. That is design with an attitude I love.

Next, Milton Glaser. I had the privilege of working with him when I was younger and he is a personal inspiration. To bring him back on stage would be electric. He understood design is not decoration – it’s is about ideas, culture, and humanity as one.

Finally, Madame Grès. A sculptor at heart, she transformed fabric into form with a mathematical precision. Someone who chased perfection and found poetry in the process. In today’s fast design culture, her discipline and craft would be a radical reminder.

Wayne Deakin is global principal and global executive creative director of Wolff Olins.

Eve Warren – Bass, Goodspeed, AUGE Design

My first pick would be Elizabeth Goodspeed, an independent designer, art director, and writer specialising in branding, packaging, and editorial design.

As the US editor-at-large for It’s Nice That and author of the newsletter Casual Archivist, she brings a unique perspective on design history and how it connects to contemporary practice.

I’ve followed her on socials for years and always find her take on design both refreshing and strikingly self-aware amongst the naysayers.

My second pick would be the team behind AUGE Design, a fantastic agency based in Florence and Milan. I adore their approach to food and drink packaging, often rooted in incredible typography craft, and their food art direction consistently elevates their work beyond convention. They are best in class.

Thirdly, I would go for Saul Bass. I was a huge Hitchcock fan when I was younger, and I loved Bass’s approach to film, animation and identity design. His craft still resonates today, as his work continues to stand the test of time. I bet he would have a story of two!

Eve Warren is design director at LOVE.

Darren Richardson – Kauffer, Dumbar, Myerscough

The young artist Edward McKnight Kauffer was commissioned by London Underground’s visionary CEO Frank Pick. The posters promoted the range of locations; his modernist art celebrated the energy of the new machine age and urban life. This laid the way for future commercial graphic designers and the industry we know today.

Gert Dumbar’s work has been a constant influence throughout mine and, no doubt, many designers’ careers. There’s a deep intellectual quality to his work, yet it is always strikingly simple in its execution. Staying in style for four decades is a rare quality – I want him to share the secret.

I met Morag Myerscough in 1986 at The Design Solution while on placement. Her transformation from graphic designer to a global graphic artist is inspiring and fascinating. The relationship she has with colour is a story everyone needs to hear.

Darren Richardson is creative director and co-founder at Gardiner Richardson.

Anna Hamill – Lynch, Bjork, Ilori

If you haven’t watched David Lynch’s The Idea Dictates Everything, please go grab a coffee and watch now. He’s someone who thought big and small across everything from sound to costume design, location, casting to dialogue.

He could create worlds and feelings through silence and unusual shots. Someone who followed intuition and collaborated to really challenge convention and create films that people either loved or hated. But they always made you think.

Bjork’s name immediately conjures up images. The swan dress was so iconic when I was growing up, as was her music. I would love to hear her talk about where she goes for creative inspiration, what influences her and how she thinks about the world.

She’s such an original and unique soul; the world needs more totally one-off thinkers like her.

I challenge anyone to look at one of Yinka Ilori’s designs and not smile. I love the full-throttle use of colour, joyful patterns and that it’s all underpinned by traditions and heritage that are true to him and his background.

But he’s not just dusted off old things, he’s reimagined them for contemporary culture. I also love that he’s created a community of architects and designers to take his designs into full-scale architectural projects. I’d love to hear more about how he protects his styles and ideas as he expands to different mediums.

Anna Hamill is London managing director at drinks brand specialists Denomination.

Teresa Ferreira – Rams, Bayer, Ulm

Dieter Rams, as his ability to elevate the mundane into objects of quiet beauty is exactly why I fell in love with design as a discipline that shapes daily life. He also represents restraint and clarity in a world of visual noise, proof that “less, but better” never goes out of style.

Herbert Bayer for the way he bridged art, design, and architecture, truly embodying the Bauhaus belief that design is a holistic force rather than a siloed practice. That perspective feels so relevant to branding today: it isn’t only about aesthetics, it’s also cultural, social, and deeply connected to how people experience the world.

Elliot Ulm, because he shows that design culture isn’t just about rules and history, but also about laughing at ourselves and questioning the status quo. I love his humour, his impersonation of Steve Jobs and the way he exposes the frustrations and quirks of our industry.

Teresa Ferreira is founder of Ferrgood Studio.

Craig Oldham – Not a designer

My dream speaker at a design conference doesn’t have to be a designer. I’d be so excited by someone I’ve never heard from or one that doesn’t lead by a reputation.

Someone not of my community, my background, skin colour, or sexuality, whose identity is formed from their own lived experience not from the work they do.

Someone whose work is not something there to hide behind, lead what they have to say, or be a mouthpiece for their agency, but is something that is an assembly of their outlook on creativity, politics, and life. I think that would actually benefit the obvious and perpetuated pitfalls we see across the board at design conferences.

Craig Oldham is founder of Office Of Craig.

Julia Grandfield – de Botton, Peitz, Klimt

Alain de Botton is not a traditional designer, but an incredible writer on life, relationships and philosophy. At this moment with the rise of the “philosopher-builder” I’d like to hear his take on how we can design AI that can help humans flourish. What does an AI that you can have a healthy relationship with look and feel like?

Sam Peitz designs software that feels like it has weight, light and substance with a distinctly human-made charm. Artefacts that you want to interact with even when you feel sick of screens. I’d love to see a detailed, “how it’s made” session behind one of his experiments.

I love Hilma Af Klimt’s paintings, and am often struck by how they look like they could have been made very recently. What would Hilma be painting in 2025? Maybe it would give us a hint at the aesthetics and sensibilities of the next hundred years.

Julia Grandfield is lead product designer at IDEO.

Richard Edgerton – Lee, Bowie, Wolff

Great design is really just storytelling, creating concepts that move people. Stewart Lee does this so well, his rhythm, timing and surprise keep you hooked, just like great design should. I think we gain by looking outside design, because creativity is amplified when we learn from unexpected places.

David Bowie reinvented himself constantly, yet always felt authentic. His work fused music, theatre, fashion, and identity into powerful stories of change.

He showed that design isn’t about one style, but about creating meaning through reinvention. Designers can learn from his courage to evolve while staying true.

Michael Wolff understood brand before most people knew it existed. He shows that design isn’t decoration, it’s meaning, identity, and imagination brought to life.

His curiosity and clarity opened doors for generations of designers. Learning from him reminds us to design with depth, humanity, and fearless originality.

Richard Edgerton is creative director of his eponymous studio.

Dani Molyneux – Coppola, Campe, Jones/Goude

Director Sofia Coppola. I know she’s not a designer, but cinema is a real influence for me. I love the mood and style of her work – full of atmosphere and nuance. I get a lot more out of design conferences when they mix up the disciplines.

Chris Campe aka All Things Letters. I’m currently interviewing Chris for my Explore series, so I’m slightly obsessed with her work right now.

I’m inspired by her daily practice and commitment to the craft. I’m thinking a talk by her would give me a good boost of motivation to make something.

Last one is a bit of a cheat because it’s two people. I want to see artist Grace Jones and designer Jean Paul Goude talk through their collaborative work. It sounds like it was a volatile relationship, but I imagine it was this clash of personalities and ideas that brought about some truly iconic work.

Dani Molyneux is founder at Dotto.

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DesignStudio relaunches as Further with magnetic new brand

DesignStudio is relaunching today as Further, as a “signal to the world” that it’s evolving into a different kind of agency.

The rebrand comes after the 16-year-old studio, which has offices in London, New York and Sydney, bought two new companies to extend the services it offers clients, from campaigns to events.

“It’s our bet on the future based on a belief in human creativity,” said DesignStudio CEO Paul Stafford.

Stafford says the studio’s leadership started thinking about the future of the business “just after Covid.”

DesignStudio built its reputation creating new identities for clients like Eurostar, the Premier League, and perhaps most notably, Airbnb. But Stafford says they wanted to move beyond “the bombastic moments of businesses pivoting and rebranding,” to work on more of their clients’ commercial strategy.

Stafford and his team started looking at ways they could “level up” DesignStudio’s capability to deliver these broader offerings, and decided the best approach was to, “go out and buy the best in market, and bring them to the table.”

Last year they bought motion design studio Analog and immersive experience agency Pixel Artworks, and united the three business as the Further Group. Further acquisitions will follow.

The new collective is backed by Waterland Private Equity, and Stafford says that in both the creative and financial partnerships, the studio was determined to ensure “cultural alignment.”

“You can do all the scientific due diligence, digging into past work and asking the right questions,” Stafford says. “But in this field, we’re all experts at selling ourselves. So a lot of it comes down to sitting in pubs together, so people let their guard down a bit, and you can understand what’s important to them.”

The new Further identity

He says that when it came to choosing the right investors, it was vital the financiers appreciated how creative businesses are different.

“We don’t have 12 months’ visibility on our pipeline, and I guarantee that is the same for every design company,” he says. “So we needed people who understood our industry, and who have an appreciation that we don’t necessarily run things in the way that big corporates do.

“We’re more about showing the team a flag, and giving them something to charge at, rather than building really detailed one-pagers on how our values and goals are going to trickle down.”

Stafford explains that Further will still work on rebrands, but these will form part of the studio’s wider services, alongside campaigns, product launches, events and digital projects.

“We’re going to work on what we consider a client’s landmark moments,” he explains. “Yes, they’ve got to be consistent, and roll out all these things in different versions, and languages, and territories.

“But they need to keep seeding these landmark moments, where communities gather, where fandoms are born, and where people start building this love and affinity for the brand.”

In part, Stafford sees the agency’s new focus as rising above the “crappy campaign work” he predicts AI is going to hoover up.

“We need to play in the high impact, high value moments,” he says. “That’s where creativity is really needed, where the world needs to see something that hasn’t been seen before, where genius minds come together to create and curate.”

To reflect this new direction, Stafford says it was important to change the name from DesignStudio.

“It had to happen, because we are entering a new era of what agencies need to do, and we have a completely new offer,” he explains. “The name DesignStudio, and the brand DesignStudio, didn’t capture that any more.

“It’s a risk,” he accepts. “But I think the risks of not changing the name way outweigh the risks of changing the name,” he says.

“It signals to the world that this is a significant shift. And I think the fact that we’re willing to drop the name, because we believe in this new agency, signals to the rest of the business that they should believe in it too.”

In fact, Stafford says he and co-founder Ben Wright always thought DesignStudio was “the shittiest name possible.”

“We struggled to come up with a name, and said, ‘My God, let’s just call it DesignStudio.’ There was always a discussion about whether it was genius or idiocy.”

And the agency’s subsequent success convinced Stafford that in the end, a studio name is far less important than its work.

“The name doesn’t really matter,” he says. “It’s what you create that becomes representative of who you are.”

The name Further, he says, is “a lot more considered than DesignStudio was at the time.” It reflects both the enhanced and expanded work the new studio wants to do, as well as the internal drive to push creativity beyond the tried and tested.

“This name marries our intent, our desire, and our vision of where the business is going,” he says.

To accompany the new name, Further also has a new visual brand, overseen by design director Lorenzo Di Cola.

“We set out to build an identity for an agency that didn’t yet exist,” Di Cola says. “It had to flex across brand, content, experience and motion. It had to showcase wildly different kinds of work. And most importantly, it had to reflect the collaborative spirit and creative energy of the new business we’re building.”

Stafford admits that working on an agency’s own brand is always “a painful experience” and the team had to balance and channel the wide range of input they received. “Everyone in our business is a brand expert, so everyone has an opinion,” he laughs.

There is a new crafted wordmark, with striking 3D motion expressions, while the type family includes Grotesk’s Mono, Peta, Giga and Mega.

“We’ve always believed, from the days of Airbnb, that you need to build something so compelling that it draws people towards it,” Stafford says. “That’s how you build community, and fandom, and advocacy – from the inside out.

“So our new brand is built around the idea of magnetism – such a force that it pulls things towards it.”

Stafford also wanted a brand that would feel “provocative” and make “some people uncomfortable.” This, he believes, will resonate with and attract clients who want to be pushed out of their comfort zone, while filtering out those who would prefer to play it safe.

“We’ve always gone into pitches against businesses like the Omnicoms and WPPs,” Stafford says. “And I wanted us to feel like the antithesis of them. We want to be the agency that, win or lose, people remember us because we scared them a bit.”

Stafford says pivoting the business in this way has thrown up challenges, but his biggest learning has been to remain present and available to listen to people’s concerns.

He thinks this communication matters less in the formal moments – like all-hands meetings and company emails – than in the informal ones.

“I think it’s about turning up at an event in the pub with the team,” he says. “When someone’s three pints in, and is confident enough to ask the boss, ‘What’s going on?’ Where you connect with people, on a real level, is really important.”

But despite these challenges, Stafford is ready to embrace start this new chapter. “I feed off moments like this,” he says. “It gets me energised.

“I feel like there is an opportunity right now, to figure out what is the role of a design business in the future. And I feel like we’re in a good position to do that. It’s nerve-wracking, but it’s exciting.”

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“An amazing strategist” – the design legacy of Otl Aicher

In 2006, Benji Wiedemann joined forces with Alex Lampe to open their new design consultancy, that would later become Wiedemann Lampe.

He found, running his own business, he was more in control of his own schedule. And that gave him time to indulge his new passion – hunting down examples of designer Otl Aicher’s work on eBay.

Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe

Drawn to Aicher’s work, which included identities for Braun, Erco, Lufthansa and the Munich 1972 summer Olympics, it was a bit of a homecoming for Wiedemann.

He had spurned his native German culture when he first moved to the UK to study. But as his taste in music and design had “matured” he found himself returning to work that felt “true to him.”

“What is so beautiful about Aicher, he’s incredibly analytical, while also being an artist at heart,” Wiedemann says. But, compared to other names of 20th Century design, Aicher’s works could also be snapped up for a few Euros. “For me, that entry point is thrilling,” he adds.

Almost 20 years later, having built relationships with collectors Bernd Brandt and Stefan Haberl, and made visits to Aicher’s former studio in Rotis, Wiedemann Lampe has now been entrusted with the Aicher archive, from which the new LDF show has been curated.

The Rainbow Olympics

Much of what Wiedemann found on eBay were posters and ephemera from the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Arguably the project he is best-known for today, Aicher led a large and capable design team to produce an identity remembered for its colour – it was dubbed the Rainbow Games – as well as its innovative sporting pictograms, and its breadth and detail, consistent and considered across the enormous scope of its output.

The designer Jack Renwick first came across Aicher’s work via one of these posters in the local gymnastics club she attended as a child.

“I remember seeing it – not having a clue that people design these things – and having such a motivating feeling to it,” Renwick remembers. “It was just so striking on this wall, and I looked a bit like that gymnast with short brown hair. I thought, ‘God, I could be her’.”

Renwick did not become an Olympic gymnast, but did end up following in Aicher’s design footsteps. She remembers at art school realising that Aicher was the person who designed that poster she had loved as a youngster, and being “blown away by this whole epic identity system” she discovered.

While the visual output of Aicher’s work is compelling for Renwick and many others, it’s the thinking behind the visuals that has been most influential.

“An amazing strategist”

Designer Mark Holt first became interested in Aicher’s work around the same time as co-founding studio 8vo in the early 1980s. Pushing against the British design scheme of the time, he found in Aicher’s work a similar ideology he says, where design was “a conscious, reasoned act, an objective one, never to be aesthetically-led.”

Holt, who in 2019 published Munich ’72 The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept.XI, explains that many of the celebrated design elements were the work of the other designers working for Aicher: Gerhard Joksch drew the pictograms, Elena Winschermann created the mascot Waldi the dachshund, and Rolf Müller, Aicher’s deputy, was responsible for advertising and publications – as well as bringing much of “the sweetness on the eye,” Holt suggests.

Mark Holt’s Munich ’72 The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept.XI

Holt was compelled to create the book to document “easily the most far reaching brand identity, or corporate identity, as it was back then, ever produced.”

For Aicher to win this work at the age of 33 was evidence of the designer’s persuasive vision. “He could tell very good narratives,” Holt explains. “He could bring people along with him, get their empathy.”

Above all, Holt says, Aicher was “an amazing strategist.”

Meaning and social responsibility

Born in Germany in 1922, Aicher’s outlook was shaped by his experiences of Nazi Germany. In 1946, with activist Inge Scholl, later his wife, he co-founded a school for adult education in Ulm (vh Ulm).

It was built around the idea of freedom through education, and built on the White Rose resistance movement that Scholl’s siblings had participated in, and been executed for.

In 1953, he also set up a design school, the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, founded with Swiss polymath Max Bill.

Inspired in part by the Bauhaus, and employing designers such as Josef Albers, it carried the vh Ulm’s ethos of social responsibility through a holistic design curriculum, encompassing politics, philosophy and science.

From the school’s visual communication department, Aicher led influential graphic design projects for clients such as Braun, (then working with new designer Dieter Rams), and Lufthansa.

Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe

It was a crucial period of rebuilding in Germany, and Aicher, “took on a very societal role – he was very much interested in design serving a purpose,” Holt says. “You know, he had no time at all for embellishment.”

The Olympics work, “demonstrates Aicher’s philosophy to understand the current state of the world and recognise a need to create a positive impact through this global opportunity,” Renwick says.

Alongside the great designs, she wants more people to appreciate this “moral responsibility in action” that characterised Aicher’s approach. As design feels the pressure from the rise of AI, she thinks we need to be thinking about, talking about, and educating new generations in developing these ways of thinking.

“You can just ask AI to come up with a design for you. But AI can’t do the philosophical understanding of our society, and people’s mindset; of why it would be creating something,” she says.

Thinking and making: a human touch

For Bob Young, creative partner at Alphabetical, it is easy to “take for granted the complexity and visual impact of Aicher’s work in modern society.”

“Our daily lives are oversaturated with creative imagery that are basically assimilations of each other, that feel familiar and comfortable and fit into a genre so that audiences understand precisely what they are.”

There was a bravery to Aicher’s work, he argues. “Admittedly, many of Aicher’s typographic approaches would not pass accessibility standards today.

“However, as much as you have to admire the control and clean grid systems he regularly used, there are wildly experimental type treatments that often responded to unique compositions and ideas within his work that still inspire, and may never be seen again in such wide-reaching public-facing designs.”

Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe, part of the London Design Festival

Compared to the present day – where “we’ve reached peak mock-up” as Wiedemann puts it – the new show features Aicher’s laboriously-made ‘logograms,’ where he would present hand-cut elements of the design system on one page.

It is this human touch that Wiedemann wants to share with visitors to the exhibition.

“To look at something that is so striking, so considered, it’s so beautifully reduced, but it’s so warm and human, for me, it’s disarming,” he says.

Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe
Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe
Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe
Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe
Posters featured in Otl Aicher: The Legacy Archive at Wiedemann Lampe

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Duzi Studio’s identity helps Picoso rewrite the rules of non-alcoholic branding

When Tish Carless gave up drinking in 2020, she quickly realised how little choice there was for people who wanted something beyond tepid imitations of alcohol or sugary soft drinks.

Soon after moving from Madrid to London, she spotted the gap – there were hardly any drinks that could sit confidently in the hands of both drinkers and non-drinkers.

Together with co-founder Tom Bowerman-Wake, Carless launched Picoso, a range of premium spicy sodas developed in Mexico and infused with carefully selected chillies.

Drunk on its own, or stirred into a cocktail, Picoso defines a category in its own right. “It blurs the lines between drinking and sobriety,” Carless says.

That challenge – carving out a category rather than fitting into one – called for an identity with the same sharpness and energy as the drink itself.

Duzi Studio’s brand for Picoso

To build that brand, Carless and Bowerman-Wake turned to London-based strategic design agency Duzi Studio. “We knew that we wanted to work with an agency that would be able to create an entire brand world instead of just a pretty logo,” says Carless.

“It’s actually quite easy to create beautiful identities,” says Ella Donald, co-founder and director of Duzi Studio. “The more difficult challenge, especially for creative agencies these days, is to deliver a genuinely purposeful brand that has a story, and represents the vision of the product.”

That vision became central to the narrative that Duzi Studio built the identity around.

This is felt in the brand language (Zesty Lime cut with Scotch Bonnet), and is translated into the illustrations and the typography, which bring much of the flavour to the identity.

The bespoke wordmark, given prime real estate on the can, features letterforms with unexpected cuts and angles that inject flair. “Its stretched form is intentional, giving Picoso both shelf presence and the stature of a premium, crafted brand,” says Donald.

A visual from a campaign shot in Mexico, capturing the vibrancy of the country where Picoso was developed

Supporting this is the Highway Gothic type family, chosen to represent the brand’s confident voice, designed originally for maximum legibility on US road signs.

“The boldness and impact of these fonts now echo Picoso’s energetic spirit and command attention,” says Donald. The sharp letterforms, especially in the Condensed cut, echo the elongation of the logo, creating a cohesive visual rhythm.

This energy is tempered by Hal Four Grotesk, which introduces neutrality, providing balance and clarity for longer text, while Mashine Rounded adds nuance and character where needed. Together, the trio creates a system that shifts easily between impact and clarity.

The wordmark’s nod to the central narrative is extended to the suite of illustrations, which draws on the tactile quality of woodblock and linocut.

The angular, jagged forms common to the techniques become a visual metaphor of the sharpness of the chilli heat that cuts through the fruity notes.

Duzi Studio’s brand for Picoso

This is reflected in the emblem of a dragon, a reinterpretation of Mayan iconography with a contemporary twist. “It was important for us that the identity captures the Mexican roots of the product, without feeling gimmicky and resorting to stereotypical Mexican visual elements,” says Carless.

The symbol, which was crafted to scale effortlessly, sits comfortably alongside the illustration of the flavour profiles that punctuate the brand world, and appear on the back of the can rather than the front.

“A lot of beverage brands put illustrations of fruits and flavours on the front of the pack, which is very helpful from a shelf perspective; it conveys a sense of deliciousness,” says Donald.

“But with Picoso, we really didn’t want to put the flavour so overtly on the front. Instead, we wanted the story to take centre stage.”

Duzi Studio’s brand for Picoso

It was also important for Duzi Studio to take visual cues from the branding of alcoholic drinks, “so that when you’re holding a Picoso in an environment where people are drinking alcohol, you don’t look like you’re drinking a soft drink,” says Donald. “This speaks to the idea of inclusiveness that’s very important to Picoso.”

The team looked at the labels of alcoholic beverages, and leaned on a clean, considered typographic layout for the front of the can, lending the product a premium, polished look.

This decision is already paying dividends. “Our sales strategy from the get-go was to target bars, restaurants, and hospitality before pushing into retail,” says Carless. “And in a lot of those spaces, we sit in the fridges behind a bar. The look of the drink is drawing attention – people are asking what it is.

“To add to that, many venues avoid serving cans because glass feels more premium, but Picoso’s design is so strong that venues are willing to serve it on tables, which helps the brand’s visibility.”

A visual from a campaign shot in Mexico, capturing the vibrancy of the country where Picoso was developed

While the branding has helped Picoso to move confidently into new spaces, Duzi Studio was careful to design beyond the launch. “When we started working on the identity, we always thought of designing a brand, not a product. It’s always a mistake when people start from the point of view of product,” says Donald.

That long-term view means the framework isn’t fixed but flexible – robust enough to anchor Picoso today, while adaptable enough to stretch into new flavours and formats tomorrow.

The visual system can be pushed, pulled, and remixed effectively, ensuring the brand has the elasticity to evolve without losing its bite.

Duzi Studio’s brand for Picoso
Duzi Studio’s brand for Picoso
Duzi Studio’s brand for Picoso
A visual from a campaign shot in Mexico, capturing the vibrancy of the country where Picoso was developed

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How is &Walsh using AI?

&Walsh is a New York-based creative agency that specialises in branding and advertising for clients like Lex, Google and Coconut Cult. The studio also runs its own type foundry, Type of Feeling. We spoke with creative director Jessica Walsh to find out how the studio uses AI, and how she feels about it.

You can see all the articles in this series here.

Broadly speaking, are you excited for how AI will change the design industry, or nervous?

Both truthfully. AI has incredible potential to democratise creativity and speed up parts of the process that used to take days. But it also brings big questions around ethics, authorship, and how we value creative labour.

I think the designers who’ll thrive are the ones who use these tools thoughtfully to enhance their work.

Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?

We’re in the process of shaping a more formal policy, but the guiding principle is this – we only use AI when it supports our original thinking, not as a substitute for it.

We’ve had internal discussions about transparency, copyright, and ethics, especially around client-facing work. It’s a learning process, and we’re trying to stay flexible while staying grounded in our values.

When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?

It really hit me when I saw early Midjourney and DALLE outputs that looked eerily polished. Suddenly, image-making at a high level was accessible with just a few prompts. And now of course these tools are even more powerful. They democratise design and open it up to so many more people.

Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?

We’ve done some sharing of knowledge and best practices among the team. People will bring in tools they’ve tried or prompt techniques they’ve figured out, and we experiment together.

It’s more of a collaborative playground than something more formal. The biggest impact is simply learning how to ask better questions, which applies to both AI and design.

How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process? What is it good for? Where are its shortcomings?

We use AI mostly to support the early stages of our projects in moodboarding, rapid ideation, and generating unexpected references. It’s great for pushing past creative blocks or exploring a weird visual territory fast.

But it’s not good at nuance or strategy. It can’t replace the emotional intelligence or cultural specificity that real human work requires, so we rely on our creative point of view in those situations.

Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?

Some do, especially if it raises questions about originality or authorship. Others are more curious and open, especially when we’re transparent about where and how we use it.

Clients care most about the quality of the idea and execution. If AI helps us get to something better, and we’re upfront about its role, it tends to be a non-issue.

Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running your business?

We’ve started using AI to help with some admin tasks like organising research and summarising meeting notes, like a lot of other studios and businesses I suspect.

It frees up time so our team can focus more on the work that really needs a human brain. It’s not glamorous, but it’s incredibly useful.

Beyond the best-known tools, what is one AI tool that you would recommend to other design studios?

We’ve been exploring and testing a wide range of models lately. It feels like every week something new and exciting comes out, so we’re always keeping an eye on how these tools might fit into our workflow.

Lately, we’ve been especially interested in Google Flow and other video generation models. We’ve been using them to gather visual references and quickly build TVC animatics, which helps us explore creative directions faster and communicate ideas more clearly with clients, while still leaving plenty of space for human creativity and craft to shape the final work.

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“Designers need to broaden how and where they get inspiration”

Eye of newt may be the first thing that springs to mind when we think of a spell’s ingredients, but using the same recipe over and over only dulls the magic. 

Creativity works the same way. It thrives on fresh perspectives – yet too often our industry recycles the same voices and calls it revolutionary. Rebrands blur into one another, design trends loop endlessly, and there’s a spell of sameness in the air.

If we want to make work that is distinctive, resilient, and impactful, we need to invoke wider sources of inspiration.

That means stepping outside the circle of advertising and design, and looking instead to the messy, unpredictable, and diverse world beyond it.

Breaking the spell of sameness

Creatives have always drawn from a wide well of inspiration – music, fashion, architecture, literature and nature and more. The strongest ideas come not from staring harder into the void within our own industry, but from exploring unexpected places. Fresh perspectives spark connections that our own echo chambers can’t.

That’s why SheSays created Night School, a free, month-long online learning programme designed to upskill and uplift the creative community.

A key part of its curation was to bring in unconventional teachers – from a dominatrix to a Samurai Deshi to a British Museum curator and a real-life mermaid – inviting them to share their lived career advice with a creative audience. 

The point wasn’t smoke and mirrors style novelty. It was to show that by widening the input, we open up new ways of thinking about communication, leadership, resilience, and storytelling. Real magic.

Widening our design inputs

The same principle guided the design team behind the campaign.

The identity was built on a tension between the familiar and the fantastical. The inspiration came from both everyday school structures and the otherworldly aesthetics of Tarot and witchcraft.

The result felt both familiar and intriguing: a reminder that identity work doesn’t have to be locked to design trends. By combining cultural references, opposites met in the middle to create something new.

The Night School identity

For Night School’s senior motion designer, Den Salazar, bringing the visuals to life meant embracing imperfection. His inspiration came not from other brand films but from sketchbooks, chalk marks, folklore, and nature. In this particular project, it’s the unpredictable flight of moths that breathed life into the campaign mascot, Nyx. 

The lesson is clear – looking beyond polished references grounds creative work in something more human and resonant.

The video lessons of Night School were shaped by video editor Faye Wessely, whose aim was to ensure the content didn’t just look good, but be inclusive and engaging too. Subtitles, graphics, and careful pacing made the content accessible for different learning styles.

Accessibility itself became a creative influence – a reminder that design isn’t only about aesthetics, but about who gets to be part of the conversation.

Collaboration as alchemy

Working in silos limits us. Collaboration across disciplines, backgrounds, and perspectives multiplies creative possibilities. When writers, designers, editors, and motion artists brought their skills together, they didn’t just produce assets – they built something bigger than the sum of its parts. 

That’s true for any creative project. Diversity of thought and practice is what fuels originality.

Curiosity is one of the strongest spells in the creative toolkit. Widening inspiration sources – whether that’s looking to other cultures, disciplines, or lived experiences – does more than add variety. 

It makes work more resilient to sameness, more inclusive of audiences, and more relevant to a fast-changing world.

It also makes creativity more sustainable. In an era of AI disruption and rising burnout, human creativity must be grounded in curiosity, collaboration, and accessibility. Narrow inputs risk making us obsolete – wide inputs keep us inventive and adaptive.

The temptation is always to stick to what we know – to scroll the same platforms, look at the same case studies, replicate the same trends. But sameness is safe, not creative. Real breakthroughs happen when we lean into difference – voices that unsettle, ideas that challenge, disciplines that collide.

The future of our industry depends on it. If we want to tell our own fortunes as creatives, we must be open to listening, learning, and evolving with diverse perspectives. That is where the real magic is.

Terri Witherden is senior brand designer for Night School by SheSays .

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design/leader: Middle Boop’s Gordon Reid

Gordon Reid is founder and creative director of Middle Boop. The London-based branding studio works with clients like adidas, Vim Coffee and Havana Club rum.

Design

What would your monograph be called?

When everyone’s going one way, go the other. This is something I say a lot to clients, and to myself. No-one ever stands out by being the same. If your competitors are going down, go up.

I remember watching my son in the park. All the kids were queuing at the top to go down the slide. My son wasn’t the least bit bothered with waiting. so he climbed up the slide rather than queuing and went down.

Don’t wait for your turn. Don’t follow everyone else. If you want to get ahead, go the other way.

Be different. It’ll get you noticed faster and you’ll stand out more.

What recent design work made you a bit jealous?

I know it’s not ‘new’ new any more, but the Lloyds rebrand from Wolff Olins and subsequent digital roll-out from the product team is absolutely magnificent – the lengths they went to to play on the heritage of the brand, whilst making it feel super fresh.

To me, it’s a rare story of when brand and product work harmoniously. But to get that harmony and alignment, a lot of good work has been done behind the scenes between agency, internal team and buy-in from some brave stakeholders I’m sure.

Wolff Olins’ brand identity for Lloyds

What’s an unusual place you get inspiration from?

Anywhere I can switch off and focus away from the screen. Usually running helps clear my mind. I’ve got some awesome routes near me, Hampstead Heath, Highgate Woods, Alexandra Palace. Anywhere like that really helps clear the mind and focus.

I also get inspired a lot by conversation with people out of my realm of creative. I’ve found the best ideas have come from chats with developers, marketeers, product managers – basically just completely different points of view that really help you look at solutions in different ways.

Name something that is brilliantly designed, but overlooked.

Stay with me on this one. A design that’s quite literally overlooked is the sewers. I’m big into London history, and think it’s fascinating. They were created in the the 19th Century – Joseph Bazalgette was the man behind it – and most of it’s still in use.

They incorporated a few of London’s lost rivers into them, and the manhole covers are super-cool too – there are different ones all over the city that you’ll walk past every day.

It’s hugely practical design, on a mass scale that’s lasted for literally hundreds of years, and helped wipe out diseases. Not bad.

For the two of you that are still reading this, there’s a really well-designed book by Stephen Halliday that is worth checking out.

What object in your studio best sums up your taste?

It would have to be this framed, signed Crystal Palace kit. I got it from Sky’s creative director, Ceri Sampson, after doing a talk in their offices a few years back.

It’s survived relegation from the studio wall to the attic on numerous occasions – much like the team have avoided relegation again and again. And it’s signed by such greats as Johnny Williams, Bakary Sako, and lots of other players you’ve never heard of.

Gordon Reid’s signed Crystal Palace shirt

Leadership

What feedback felt brutal at the time, but turned out to be useful?

“We didn’t quite get it – we’re going with someone we feel is more qualified to push us on.”

We’ve all heard something like this at some point in our career, but this particular one was tough, as I felt we had really nailed the proposal and knew we’d be able to drive value and grow the particular brand.

What turned out to be majorly useful about this letdown was that it became a “sliding doors” moment. At the time, we’d been banging our heads a bit trying to win over the type of clients we knew we could be of huge benefit to.

We spent a lot of time reflecting on this loss, and came to the conclusion we just weren’t speaking the right language of the founders.

We focussed too heavily on design and concept, but nothing on how the creative could help to return tangible business growth, or how our work could go any further than standing out on shelves. Lesson learned.

What’s an underappreciated skill that design leaders need?

Empathy and trust – these are fantastic traits that lead to an environment of support and comfort for creatives to be able to actually create, push boundaries, and grow.

I personally love it when a younger creative comes up with an execution or idea I wouldn’t have thought of. And vice versa  – when I was younger, there was nothing more of a confidence boost than doing that for one of my bosses, and actually seeing that idea pushed forward.

These two backed up by self-awareness and being unflappable create a safe space where creatives will hopefully feel like they’re really being listened to and, most importantly, protected when the pressure is on.

Stress can trickle down and affect the whole team, but if there’s calm and harmony at the top, those further down the chain will feel more comfortable, and ultimately produce better work.

What keeps you up at night?

Ensuring our work and services are ahead of the game and different enough to keep us relevant, progressive and in the minds of the right decision-makers.

In our game, there is so much competition, and finding any way of standing out is really hard. So that keeps me up, as well as keeping the lights on, the state the world’s in. All the big stuff.

What trait is non-negotiable in new hires?

Grafters. Not in the sense of putting in the most hours, but those who work smarter with their time. The endlessly curious, who are constantly pushing to set higher standards.

Complete this sentence, “I wish more clients…”

…worked with studios as true collaborators rather than suppliers, and were braver to really push work on.

It’s tough, I totally get it. I’ve been in those stakeholder meetings where the key players just don’t want to budge on anything other than safe.

There’s a lot to think about, and often so much at stake. But I know from experience, the best work always comes from truly bold movers who trust themselves enough to know doing something boundar- pushing will always be of more benefit to the product or service than staying safe.

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“Amid this terrifying climate crisis, designers need to step up”

In the course of my career, I have seen a lot of design talks. But none have shaken me quite like Indy Johar’s presentation at yesterday’s World Design Congress in London.

It all started innocently enough, as the architect joked about the challenges of keeping people’s attention in the dreaded pre-lunch speaker slot. Pleasantries duly dispatched, Johar went all-in.

“We have to look the future in the eye in a much more realistic way,” he said. Climate change is here, and it’s happening. If, as current projections predict, we end up with a planet that is about three degrees warmer, “the cascading effects are numerous.”

What Johar did, with a precision that was paradoxically even more terrifying, was show how a hotter planet will fundamentally change society. It goes so far beyond people having to move away from coastal areas.

And I know that for many people closely, deeply engaged with the climate crisis that isn’t news. But Johar brought it to life with chilling reality. Crime, health, inequality – everything changes when the world heats up.

“The rest of us are at the mercy of what you decide to do with your imagination.”

There are practical consequences – did you know, for example, that our railway network here in the UK buckles at 39 degrees? But more than infrastructure challenges, the pillars we count on as humanity, without even realising it, start to crumble. “You lose predictability,” Johar warned.

And again, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I don’t come across this brutal brand of honesty enough. Much of the discussion at the conference, which was convened and hosted by the Design Council, focused on solutions, tactics, optimism.

And that’s great. But Johar set the stakes.

“We need ideas and practices that change how we, as humans, relate to the world,” he told the audience. Ignoring the climate crisis, he warned, “means you’re an active operator in the genocide of the future.”

It doesn’t get much starker than that.

And yet, there was hope in his talk, and his vision of the future where designers can, must, should, get to work tackling this existential threat.

Design’s role, Johar believes, is “desire manufacturing,” not just creating a greener and more sustainable world, but rewiring society to want and expect that version of the future. It will be hard. It will require radical thinking. But that’s the work that needs doing.

“These are beautiful and interesting and dangerous and clever questions we’re going to need to engage with,” Johar said.

Designers, he believes, “need to break away from legacy institutions and languages, and embrace a really incredible world that is waiting to be built.”

He ended with an invitation, couched in a critique. Designers must not just embrace “Post-it workshops” but develop “new competencies” that shape the future.

At a panel discussion later in the day, COLLINS co-founder Leland Maschmeyer picked up the theme. He argued compellingly for design to up its ambition. “I think we fundamentally misunderstand design,” he said. “It’s not the icing on the cake – it is the cake.”

Aesthetics, he argued, is just one strategy for designers to employ – “A very powerful strategy, but just one of many.”

Design, he suggested, is about, “What do we want to do? What do we want to become? How do we get there?”

And picking up the baton so thrillingly thrown down by Johar, Maschmeyer said we should be thinking more about “ontological design” which he defined as “facilitating the jump from one fishbowl to another.”

We name and define the times we are living in, he pointed out. So design’s role should be shaping what we want the world to become.

“We need to make another reality as real as possible,” he said, “inspired by new context and the potential that holds.”

His fellow panellist Sarah McCullough, who led Selfridges’ huge sustainability commitments, added a neat analogy. When we want our kids to eat more vegetables, do we put up posters admonishing them for the dietary choices? Or do we try and make vegetables fun and interesting?

“We need more joy,” McCullough said.

Closing the conference, Design Council CEO Minnie Moll quoted two speakers who encapsulated the opportunity, and the responsibility, facing the design industry.

“It’s a phenomenal time to be a designer,” Kate Raworth said.

But as climate activist Tori Tsui said, “The rest of us are at the mercy of what you decide to do with your imagination.”

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