“Look at landfill sites,” says Pepijn Zurburg, co-founder of Dutch nonprofit What Design Can Do. “At one point, someone designed all that trash that’s in them. Everything that we made eventually ends up being a problem for us. Whether it’s food, clothing or other products: if we have been involved in creating this problem, then we should also, as designers, feel responsible for being part of the solution.”
What Design Can Do, an international organisation based in Amsterdam, with hubs in Delhi, Nairobi, Tokyo, São Paolo and Mexico City, began life 12 years ago, when co-founders Zurburg and Richard van der Laken decided to explore design’s impact on society.
The pair – graphic designers who ran an agency together – began with a one-day conference, inviting experts to speak on how purpose drives design and aesthetics. “We liked to work with clients, of course,” says van der Laken. “But when you do your own initiative, you’re also the owner of the contents. As a graphic designer, you could say that you design the cover, but you never write the book.” What Design Can Do is the designers writing the book – and they’re far from finished.
