Firstly, I realized this weekend that I hadn’t written a Design Shift article in a looong time. It’s not that I didn’t want to. It’s just that life has gotten in the way.
That being said, Design Shift was always meant to be a creative/designy outlet for me, and a way to connect with other designers, wherein we could contemplate, discuss, and design futures together. And…while I may not write and publish something weekly, I am always open to ideas, collaboration, or just the creative sparks that seem to come from the smallest things. Hence, this issue/article.
About 11 years ago I was an attendee at a CreativeMornings SF talk, that featured a speaker (whom I no longer remember exactly), who spoke at length about designing for society. While it was a good talk, when it got to the Q&A portion, the discussion veered toward why homelessness in San Francisco was so bad (which it has been for a long time). The speaker threw up her hands and exclaimed that she was just as exasperated with the problems of homelessness and did not see a way out.
This struck me as a unbelievably WEAK response to a discussion about what designers can do for society. Really!? At the time I was somewhat flabbergasted and kinda muttered out loud that real designers don’t just throw up their hands in the face of uncertainty; they seek to understand the problems, they ideate, and make things!
This weekend I was reminded of this when Rickey's email landed in my inbox. He's one of the awesome co-authors behind the upcoming soon-to-be-classic book, Fifty Classic Trails of America, and he was writing from a chilly New Mexico morning about a few miles of trail he can't stand. A 2013 fire left a tangle of downed trees on the Skyline Trail in the Pecos Wilderness. Packs get torn open. Blood and scratches are the toll. In places, the trail simply disappears. And…rather than whine about it, he did something.
As with many things in life, Rickey’s story rhymes with something I/we are currently experiencing at California College of the Arts (CCA). As I wrote about earlier this year, CCA is closing, and a group of intrepid designers is figuring out what comes next. So who actually shows up when something you love is going away?
What I’ve written below is a rallying cry to designers, design leaders, and design-leaning people who want to create change. Sure, we have all had our moments of hopelessness, shrugging off struggles for someone else to fix. However, I am here to say, we designers have the tools to do so much more than complain. We can make the solutions we wish to see in the world!
— Justin Lokitz
Design Deep Dive
Everybody has an opinion about the mess.
We have all been part of conversations, arguments, rallies, protests, and courses where we exclaim, "Someone should fix that!" The hot take in the meeting, the critique in the group chat, the long sigh at the state of things. I'm complicit in this as well. Even after I muttered, “But aren’t we designers who make things?!” at the Creative Mornings SF gathering, I did not do anything to further the cause/options/solutions to San Francisco’s homelessness problems.
Rickey started in the same place. His distaste for that stretch of trail got so strong that he wanted to go in with a chainsaw and a few gallons of gas and just mow the thing down. One legal problem: it's designated Wilderness, and the Wilderness Act prohibits motorized equipment…which he knows and loves. Plus, with US wilderness laws being bulldozed (literally and figuratively), Rickey figured he should stay within the laws if he was going to do something about this magnificent trail.
Skyline Trail in the Pecos Wilderness, Courtesy of Rickey Gates
Funny enough, I like him more for admitting it. The best doers I know don't start out as saints. NOPE! They start out annoyed, and then they do something with it.
What they actually do
Watch the pattern long enough and you’ll see there’s a pattern of five-ish moves that ALL designers take to make change.
They watch and listen to the people affected, and to the stakeholders. They make something, and it starts as a prototype, not a plan (you know…”the best laid plans…” quote). They act before they feel ready. They pivot when reality talks back. And they tell the story, so other people can walk in.
None of that needs a title or a budget. It needs a willingness to be visibly wrong in public, early. But And…with that willingness to be wrong, they learn something and highlight possible options along the way.
Rickey and the trail
The five steps above are exactly what Ricky did! He talked to friends who knew that section, finding out he wasn't alone. Plenty of people were eager to give back to trails that had given them so much.
That's the listening move, and it changed the whole project.
He started researching and organizing. He partnered with New Mexico Wild and Runners for Public Lands instead of reinventing anything. In early October, 14 volunteers and six NM Wild stewardship staff spent several days clearing logs by hand. The chainsaw became a cross-cut saw. The lone hero became a crew of 20 rather than hundreds. These weren’t some hired labor that Rickey could complain to (or about). And…he didn’t wait for the government or anyone else to fix the problem.
Rickey and the amazing team of humans who cleared the trail, courtesy of Rickey Gates
That, my friends, is the pivot, and it made the project better. As Rickey says, “What I came to realize, most of all, was that my illicit dreams of single handedly clearing a trail through the quiet beauty of our capital W Wilderness lacked the most important thing of all - community.” That community cleared nearly two-thirds of the bad section, and they're going back in May when the snow melts.
Also worth noticing: he wrote it all up and sent it to his readers. That's the story move, and it's how the next volunteer finds the trail!
Examples of this abound!
As I was outlining this article, numerous examples of this same designers-make-change pattern popped into my head. And…while I would LOVE to write about each of them, I figured I would leave it to you to find the story of change in each. Plus…it’s too much to write in one issue.
Here are a few GREAT examples:
U.S. Digital Response ran the same play at a very different scale. In March 2020, the pandemic hit and government teams were drowning. Jen Pahlka, Cori Zarek, Ryan Panchadsaram, and Raylene Yung started USDR with "a simple Slack conversation" and a few people offering help, and it grew into a community of more than 8,000 pro bono specialists working with almost 300 government and nonprofit partners. Hundreds signed up through a simple online form before they even went public, and their volunteer oath says it all: "Do what is needed most—even if that is unglamorous."
Vote By Design was Lisa Kay Solomon’s design-first answer to get more young people to the polls.
Climate Designers, started by Marc O'Brien and Sarah Harrison, began as a simple landing page for designers who wanted to act on the climate crisis, and it grew into a community of more than 1,200 designers with chapters around the world. The label is deliberately broad: you don't have to quit your day job to count, you just have to be doing something. Boom!
CCA Next, and why I'm telling you this now
This is where it gets a little more personal.
In January, CCA's president told the community that the 119-year-old college will close after the 2026-27 school year. Vanderbilt is acquiring the campus and creating a CCA Institute to preserve the legacy. I chair the DMBA, so I got that email the way a lot of people did, with my jaw somewhere down by my chest.
The easy reaction was grief and commentary, which is super fair. But a group of DMBA alumni, past faculty, and current students immediately stepped into action and decided to do something else. They're calling it CCA Next.
Sofia Nuñez-Morales, current DMBA/MFA Dual student, helps to lead the charge for CCA Next
Now…while nothing has been built yet, what I can say is that the CCA Next community is NOT standing on the sidelines bellyaching or waiting. In many respects, they're at move one, watching, listening, and researching, and just starting outreach to Vanderbilt and other stakeholders across the community.
You should know: as the DMBA chair who’s constantly balancing current student needs with community desires I have decided not jump into action with this amazing group of humans. Rather, they know that I am “here” to help garner resources and info. when/if they need it.
What’s more, I am incredibly proud that the CCA Next team is still at move one. Like Rickey talked to his friends before he touched a saw, or USDR collected hands before it picked projects, doing the listening properly is the work, not the warm-up.
As Sofia Nuñez-Morales, a current DMBA/MFA dual degree student, says, “When initiating CCA Next I did what I learned as a designer: return to craft to process and co-create a world I wanted to see come to fruition; the beauty of CCA living on in the Bay Area.”
What they share
Rickey, the USDR founders, the Vote by Design team, and the CCA Next crew have one thing in common. None of them waited for permission or a finished plan! They started with people, then made something small, and then let the world answer back.
And…with the world changing faster every day, as designers, you can/must also be part of that change!
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