We are thrilled to present this forum for individuals like you and leading design organizations around the globe to come together, engage in lively conversation, and collaborate across disciplines and continents to promote a consistent and holistic understanding of sustainability thinking in design.

This site is structured to capitalize on the power of an open-source knowledge exchange—we hope you’ll dive in, speak your mind, and make the creative community’s collective intelligence accessible to designers of all stripes.

At the heart of The Living Principles lies the framework we developed last year. It aims to clarify the multiple and interrelated dimensions of sustainability and make them actionable in everyday practice, considering how the things and systems we design and the messages we create affect the environment, people, economies and culture.

Sustainability is complicated—and this is often the largest barrier for turning motivation into action.

The Living Principles framework synthesizes and contextualizes aspects of sustainability relevant to design thinking and provides a clear and practical roadmap that empowers designers, business leaders, and educators to ask the right questions for an integrated approach to sustainability.

As the name implies, The Living Principles are meant to be an ever-evolving framework and an open-source repository of best practices, tools, stories and conversations developed collaboratively. We look forward to co-creating future iterations with the partners and individuals engaged in this pan-disciplinary community as our conversations and knowledge mature.

Our voices will reveal the transformative power of design in business, society and culture. I can hardly think of anything with as much potential to change the world for the better.

Gaby Brink
Editorial Director