Welcome! You’re in good company.

If you are reading this, you probably want to use your design skills to help solve climate change, but don’t know where to start. You’re not alone. UX/UI designers, visual designers, service designers, design strategists, design researchers...I have met so many designers who care deeply about climate change, but feel powerless to do something about it. In these conversations, the same questions keep coming up: How can design help? Where can designers make the most impact? Are climate-focused organizations even hiring designers? How can we make sure we are doing good, not harm? What counts as sustainable design, anyway?

In 2019, I realized I could no longer deny the moral obligation I felt to work in climate. I started searching for opportunities and other designers who shared this goal. It took me 9 months of stumbling, networking, asking questions, googling, and doubting to get my first contract. I put together this guide so you can skip right to doing the work.

I hope that this guide helps you and that you can help it grow. I know my experiences alone can’t address all the ways designers can get involved; my plan is to update this guide monthly with suggestions from readers. I encourage you to reach out with feedback, questions, and suggestions for what else you want to see included at [email protected] or by commenting on this article.

We’re in this together. Let’s get to work. - Aidan

Defining climate design and sustainability

Climate Design

Climate design is an evolving term that encompasses many design disciplines. For the purposes of this guide, climate design is design with the explicit goal of implementing a sustainable future. This is an intentionally broad definition, because building a truly sustainable world requires action from almost every angle.

Climate design can involve:

• Reducing environmental impacts: Through our design choices, we have the opportunity to reduce the environmental impacts of our work and the work of others by identifying and implementing ways to make products or processes less carbon intensive, less wasteful, and less toxic.
• Helping build socially and environmentally sustainable solutions: To maximize our impact, designers should ask how we can help design solutions that aren't just less bad, but are actively beneficial for people and planet. This might look like advancing sustainable development and a just transition to a green economy, creating carbon-negative, closed-loop products and services, and strengthening ecosystems.
• Helping mend existing harms: Designers can look for opportunities to help counteract past and ongoing environmental harms, especially those imposed on communities of color, Indigenous, and low-income communities (1). This might look like getting involved in existing efforts to advance environmental justice, restore habitats, or remove carbon and pollutants.

1. Learn more about inequitable distribution of environmental degradation and climate impacts