The Toolkit
This Toolkit has been developed from Other Today’s teaching on the Distributed Design Studio at Brighton University and has been developed with the support of the Distributed Design Platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.
It features four guest resources from inspiring design studios covering manifestos, bio materials, batch production and DIY documentation.
This toolkit is intended to grow and distributed design educators are invited to add to it. It is intended to be seen as an additional resource to other design methods out there such as design thinking and circular design
Distributed Design promotes sustainable production and consumption. Examines supply chains, product distribution, alternative fabrication and re-orients the designer towards net zero, open-source distribution and the coming circular economy.
To transition from the take-make-trash products of today we need to re-design everything. Consumerism and the materials, production and shipping of products are a huge contributors to the climate crisis; from carbon emissions to pollution. Planned obsolescence (the desire for new products when they break or go out of fashion) was a design decision.
We need to design it out.
Taking inspiration from biological cycles (there is no such thing as 'waste' in nature) the studio is modifying existing products to eliminate waste entirely and to keep valuable materials in the loop. Our scale of thinking must shift from products to systems - to understand this we start with making.[Design Council, "Beyond Net Zero: A Systemic Design Approach" 2021, p50]
We create prototypes and probes both to test how things work and to reveal the systems around them. Our objects on are not products - they are research objects posing questions about the way things are and proposing design strategies for a hopeful future.
Contents
🏠 Structure
The toolkit is split into three thematic sections, Direction, Design and Distribution. The content can be approached in any order, for example you may want to start by learning about supply chains (a part of distribution) while at the same time developing values (in direction)
This toolkit builds on the double diamond model of a designer’s workflow and on top of topics in the established Design phase it introduces activities to encourage designers to think about their Direction before a project (their values, vision and mission) and alternatives for the Distribution of the materials, value and knowledge of their design after a product is launched.
Direction is the 'Why' of a project. It is an understanding that design is about more than just products. It needs to consider the system that it is operating within and connect this to the designer's vision and values they want to manifest. The toolkit includes activities in
The ethics of design and sustainability and developing a set of values and design principles
Setting out a hopeful vision of the future into which designers can imagine their near and far future to set their mission.
A willingness to get lost - it is a designers job to learn how to find out about themselves, the local situation and the wider global context in order to Identify a specialism or approach that is individual to the designer.
✏️ Design
Design is the "How" of a project and in distributed design this phase should follow the established methods as set out in frameworks such as the double diamond. This toolkit includes activities that distributed designers could do to improve their design and research such as:
Starting with making, some problems can be explored quicker and deeper when thinking with your hands.
Mapping contexts and local manufacturing.
Ideation via materials and manufacturing methods
🚚 Distribution
‘Distribution’ in Distributed Design refers to several things
firstly exploring alternative ways of getting products to people such as sending data, using local materials and making them with digital fabrication instead of shipping materials and goods globally from factory to consumer.
Secondly the distribution of value, knowledge and power as Kate Raworth argues; a new economy is required that is regenerative and re-distributive by design. This toolkit looks at alternative business models and the open sourcing of instructions and sharing of learning through publishing lab books, and methods online.
Thirdly the distribution of material in circular flows considering a material’s life cycle. This toolkit encourages design for the next use and the use of pre-used materials in new products.
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