In 2022, designers from ten of the world’s largest organizations joined hands for a charitable cause. Their alliance, Design for Good, brainstormed ideas on how to tackle the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and worked with organizations on the ground to make sure they worked in practice.
“Every time you design something, you’re making an active choice on the future you want to build,” Ben Sheppard, Design For Good founder and former McKinsey head of global design research, tells Fortune.
The Design For Good alliance includes global companies like Microsoft, General Mills, LIXIL, Airbus and DBS, among others, as members.
While designers make up less than 1% of working professionals, they “have to sit up and take responsibility,” he says, given the potential that they have to make change happen.
The first cohort of designers for Design For Good wrapped up their work in 2024; now, their projects are starting to be implemented in real world conditions, and potentially show whether design really can tackle global problems.
