An introduction to Essential Design

An introduction #

Dear reader.
Thank you for being present on this article marking the beginning of a series on Essential Design which I hope will remain evolving, positive and constructive.

In this series, I will develop ideas, rules and practices at the borders of design, ecology and politics, a complementary set that I have been using in my professional activity for several years now. I call this practice Essential Design, because in its purest form, it is indeed a question of reaching an essential, a primordial core, for each project and action carried out, until questioning their very existence.

This practice and these ideas come as much from my professional and militant experience as from readings and conferences directly related to the impacts of digital and humans on our planet. This knowledge and information continues to grow over time, with an increasing number of work groups on the subject. It is therefore with great humility, interest and involvement that I am seeking to merge my militant activity and my professional skills in an honest and educational format. It will allow, I hope, to participate positively in the transformation of the Internet as well as in our collective capacity to invent new imaginaries and new paradigms of society.

We will address the objectives of ecological change, limits of thermo-industrial societies and the responsibilities of design in all of this. We will showcase and learn from the data available, more than fifty years of it to be exact, from the ecological impacts of industrial countries, of the digital world as well as concepts such as the digital commons, negative commons, progress and strategies. I also hope to offer you some guest posts, we'll talk about that in due time.

I wish through this series of articles to be able to offer you keys to a subject that has fascinated me for a very long time, and at the same time advance my own thoughts thanks to your feedback, questions, ideas and sources.

See you soon!
Pierre