Design Shift
Creative Values for People, Planet and the Common Good
By Stuart Walker
- 264 Pages 40 B/W Illustrations.
- Paperback/Hardback
- ISBN 9781041150565
- Published: March 25, 2026 by Routledge
- Publisher: Routledge
Description
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.
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
Part I Helter-Skelter
2 A Worldview in Flux: profits and costs
3 A Bigger Picture: connections and meanings
4 Shifting Technology: design's changing priorities
5 Design for Greed: luxury craft and its alternatives
6 Exit Plans: anti-human, trans-human and fully human
Part II Reset
7 A World Worth Making: things of significance and value
8 Transformation for Good: a foundation for change
9 Journey thru' the Centre of the Earth: turning point
10 Distinctions Disappear: holistic ways of knowing
11 Legend: a tale of transglobal local
Part III Making Meaning
12 Aesthetics of the Tangible: beauty and its implications
13 Aesthetics of the Intangible: beauty in the immaterial
14 The Creator and the Work: art, design and moral dilemmas
15 Meeting Cézanne: a privileged encounter
Part IV Reflection
16 Possessions: sitting on dusty shelves
17 Design without Dimensions: more than meets the eye
18 Feeling
19 Silence: the space not filled
Part V Transition
20 Design Shift: values, priorities and positive change
21 A Quiet Stillness: creative change through tacit ways of knowing
22 Changing the Narrative: product as process
23 Indeterminate Design: taking less, having more
24 Creativity of the Heart: striving towards the Good
Appendix: Pathways to 'the Good'
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
Author
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 and magazines and on the BBC. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed papers and many books including Sustainable by Design, Design Realities, and Design and Spirituality (Routledge) and Design for Resilience.
Reviews
“I was struck by the distinctly different tone, content, and flow. Every word feels considered, and the structure – titles, essays, and parts – acts like stars in a constellation, guiding the reader through a reflective journey. Joyous and deeply enlightening, Design Shift invites us into a quiet, powerful conversation – one that coaches, challenges and ultimately transforms how we should engage, lead, and practise creative design.”
Professor Louise Valentine
Editor in Chief, The Design Journal
Chair: Design Leadership, Heriot-Watt University (Dubai Campus)
As a designer, this book inspires me – it is both critique and contemplation. A whisper amid the noise, it reminds us that to create is not to dominate, but to care. Walker invites us to transform haste into pause, and production into an act of love. It is a quiet manifesto for our times, a masterpiece.
Mariana González De La Rosa
Departamento de Arte, Diseño y Arquitectura
Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Mexico
Design Shift critiques consumer-driven capitalism and calls for culturally rooted approaches to creativity that are grounded in tradition and ecological responsibility. Integrating notions of beauty, goodness, and accountability, Walker shows us how design can change the world. This is an important book, especially for today!
Professor Karl Stocker
University of Graz & Tbilisi State Academy of Art
coauthor Lessons on Change (with C. Hedin & S. Kauper)
“Stuart Walker takes the reader on a transformational journey. Drawing on global philosophy and spiritual wisdom across the ages, he proposes a new set of creative values and ‘product as process’ where design is no longer fixed with beginning and end, but a continuous cycle as we find in nature. A deeply philosophical and spiritual meditation on design for people and planet.”
Cat Drew
Chief Design Officer
Design Council, London
This book is an essential journey into the places where design most needs to head. Stuart Walker charts a course through diverse terrains of ideas, challenges and practices of change – and he does so with imagination and clarity.
Professor Kate Fletcher
Sustainability, Design and Fashion
Manchester Metropolitan University
Drawing on decades of research, observation, and reflection, Stuart Walker crafts a powerful narrative that weaves together logical argument, practice, poetry and fiction to embody new creative values in design. Design Shift is an invitation to reset our ways of being in the world, to turn despair into hope, and imagination into transformative change.
Dr Francesco Mazzarella
Reader: Design for Social Change
London College of Fashion
In Design Shift, Stuart Walker takes on a task that is not for the timid. He connects many seemingly disparate themes, beliefs and trends to show how design can be transformed from a perpetuator of consumerism, inequality and destruction to a force for the good for both people and planet. This is a great work.
Ralf Nielsen
Director of Enterprise Sustainability
Translink, Vancouver
In a time of planetary emergency, Design Shift challenges the dominance of Western logics and opens space for spiritual, relational and intangible ways of knowing and designing. Walker invites designers to reorient away from profits and scalability, and toward responsibility, creativity, and care.
Dr Nicola St John
‘Responsible Design’ researcher and educator
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Melbourne
For designers, there are many paths toward an ecological and just society. Stuart Walker points us toward a spiritual one. Following him on his journey opens new windows on what's possible.
Professor Ezio Manzini
DESIS Network
Politecnico di Milano
