Designing Anti-Activism: Apocalypse faster!

Abstract

This exploratory paper reviews literature on design activism and looks into the ways, how design can be used to bring matters to a head in our society. Sustainable design can be perceived as design activism, and as such it can be connected to design exploration, seeking to provoke, criticize and experiment. This text studies explorative and participatory design approach in the context of sustainable consumption. Focus of this paper is on a new media project called "Apocalypse Faster!", which was launched in January 2011. This participatory campaign takes an anti-activist approach against consumerism with designerly means.