Unbound Trajectories
Today’s transformations confront individuals, communities and decision-makers with systemic and contested questions that are inherently complex, layered and multifaceted. Each trajectory provides a conceptual framework for navigating this complexity by revealing interdependencies, forging new conceptual connections and opening further lines of inquiry. Its themes situate challenges within their broader systemic, social, cultural, political, ecological, technological and economic contexts. At the nexus of these fields, Unbound Trajectories is moving between observation, research and analysis, conversation, intervention and consultancy. Collectively, the trajectories articulate an – incomplete – agenda for design: a set of objectives and imperatives that orient critical inquiry, collaborative creative experimentation and responsible action through real-world projects.
Strategy through Design
Framing choices under uncertainty
Strategy as Design understands strategy as a holistic practice of framing, imagining and directing collective action. It explores how organisations interpret a rapidly shifting world, define what matters and make decisions amid growing challenges and constraints. Adaptation becomes an ongoing capability: sustaining continuity often requires change, agility and a willingness to engage with the unknown. This trajectory brings foresight, systems thinking and organisational imagination into conversation with values, purpose and responsibility, particularly as artificial intelligence and agentic systems increasingly influence decision-making. It asks how public and private organisations can develop new possibilities while acknowledging institutional identity, trust, memory and knowledge and attending to their social and ecological consequences.
Strategy by Design
Design-driven transformation and innovation
Futures literacy and strategic imagination
Design of change
Design leadership: from consulting to co-creation
Identity, Design and Representation
Corporate identity, design and representation of organisations
Representation, legitimacy and trust
Cultural identity, inclusion and belonging
Image politics
Tagged with: Strategy through Design
Public Design
Institutions, civic trust,
and shared value
Public Design examines how design shapes the institutions, infrastructure and public discourses through which people live together. The focus is on the conditions of citizenship: how access to public services is organised, how political decisions are explained, how collective decisions are made, how identities are represented, and how participation in the deliberative process is facilitated. This research focus links democratic life with public institutions and the conditions of public space. It views design as a means of strengthening the prerequisites for genuine trust, accessibility, accountability and collective agency, whilst at the same time acknowledging the unequal distribution of power, information and resources. Public Design asks how design can contribute to a fair, comprehensible and resilient public sphere.
Democracy, Citizenship, Inclusion and Design
Politics, trust and design
Public participation and deliberation
Civic technologies and digital democracy
Designing for the public good
Design of Public Institutions
Government design and communication
Public service design
Corporate identity of governmental organisations
Public-sector innovation and design capacity
Tagged with: Public Design