Design

Designing for system change

Geopolitical tensions, environmental pollution, climate problems, and raw material scarcity remain major global themes that designers are grappling with. Other urgent topics include poverty, loneliness, inequality, violence, death, and polarization – from a global to an individual level (see, for example, Dutch Design Foundation 2023, Bijl 2025, and Arnolds 2024). Designers are focusing more strongly on collaboratively designing a better future, which was evident during recent editions of the Dutch Design Week and during Graduation Shows at various academies. According to the Dd Yearbook '25-'26 The new cohort of graduating students of 2025 is focusing on a number of prominent topics: origin and cultural roots, personal stories in relation to a social movement, and sustainability – no longer as an experiment, but as the norm (Admiraal 2026). Design is no longer just about producing, but also about analyzing, steering, and intervening in systems, or even shaping rules, says Yassine Salihine, head curator at Design Museum Den Bosch, in Dd Yearbook '25-'26Design is therefore increasingly becoming a language to see the world differently and to shape it (Admiraal 2026).

Dutch Design Foundation (DDF) describes on the website of the events it organizes Dutch Design Week (DDW) a number by 2025 missions en perspectives to describe the current design field. These missions and perspectives show a momentum of the most important trends among designers (Dutch Design Week n.d.).

'Designing for systemic change' has consistently reappeared in various forms at Dutch Design Week in recent years, which is leading the way for trends and developments in the design sector. In 2022, the theme of DDW was 'Get Set', calling for concrete steps to be taken and for action to be implemented (Dutch Design Foundation 2022). In 2023, the subject was 'Picture This' – in which the focus was on future scenarios and designers offered new perspectives to involve people in a process of change and to embrace new perspectives (Dutch Design Foundation 2023).

The theme of Dutch Design Week 2024 was 'Real Unreal'. It invited designers to explore the complex challenges of our time and to ask what can be considered truth in an era where the rise of 'fake news' and AI populate the (online) world. In doing so, designers offer answers to questions such as: How do we navigate between the different realities that make up our world today? What is real and what is not, and where do all our very diverse perspectives converge? (Dutch Design Week 2024). And in 2025, the theme was 'Past. Present. Possible': a call to think in terms of possibilities rather than solutions, and to continue making room for experimentation (Dutch Design Week 2025).

Platform What Design Can Do (WDCD) gives designers the opportunity to present world-improving innovative strategies and visions, including through design competitions. Winners receive guidance in implementing these concepts and/or scaling them up within their practice. The Make It Circular Challenge, an initiative by WDCD and the Ikea Foundation, produced thirteen winners this year with promising innovations aimed at a restorative and regenerative future. They demonstrate the power of creativity: from seaweed packaging Mujo en upcycling marketplaces to the Dutch company CoolBricks that makes recyclable and unfired bricks from local cow dung and soil that, for the time being in Uganda, is an affordable, clean, safe and scalable solution for people on low incomes.

Collaboration of design with other sectors

Given the urgent global problems of today, a growing number of initiatives are emerging in which forces are being joined transdisciplinarily to bring about necessary systemic changes, with the aim of having greater clout and designing a better future.
Examples of this include initiatives in the field of climate and the raw materials transition, which are often initiated by, for instance, Rijkswaterstaat, provinces, and municipalities. For instance, the Municipality of Terneuzen (in collaboration with Regio Deal North Sea Port District (NSPD) and the Province of Zeeland) asked a group of designers to create the cultural incubator. Nesse to set up in Terneuzen that deals with so-called 'forever chemicals', such as PFAS and lead. According to the initiators, the underlying idea is not to polarize, but to allow designers to contribute their creative thinking power to the discussion on tackling issues and to devise solutions together (MaterialDistrict Utrecht 2025b). From this breeding ground, Marte Mei, for example, wants to start with her project supported by the Stimuleringsfonds Pfas/Flax to reduce PFAS pollution. In the polluted garden of this incubator, she will grow flax, harvest it, and develop products from it.

What if Lab (part of Dutch Design Foundation) works as a matchmaker and facilitator on long-term, sustainable partnerships between design studios and organizations, such as Fokker Elmo en Leolux, in designing solutions to social problems. So help designers ProRail in the goal of having all NS stations in the Netherlands designed circularly by 2050. Or Vattenfall, which will start the project 'Upcycled Turbines' challenged designers to come up with new applications for wind turbines that have reached the end of their lifespan. Designers came up with surprising solutions by approaching waste as new resources, such as locally produced 'tiny houses' or floating houses as a solution to the housing shortage.

Regenerative design

Regenerative design is working towards a healthy and liveable environment, in which humans become part of the earth's ecosystems, so that natural resources are ultimately strengthened instead of depleted through a cycle (Material District Utrecht 2025b). This goes a step further than sustainability and devising biobased and circular products and systems.

An increasing number of young talents see it as a moral and ethical obligation to work as designers for a better future for people and the planet and opt for regenerative issues, as can be seen, for example, in the catalogue of the Design Academy Graduation Show 2024This is also evident from the subsidy applications for the Design scheme of the Creative Industries Stimulation Fund: more and more projects are about regenerative design and more specifically about material research and making the entire design chain more sustainable, as emerged from discussions with the Stimulation Fund.

While Material District Utrecht 2025, a platform where the latest developments in innovative, sustainable, biobased, circular and regenerative materials are exhibited in breadth, this approach was also clearly visible. Among other things, new building materials from food waste such as eggshells, coffee grounds, cocoa, cherry and date stones and walnut shells, but also wool, felt and mycelium were exhibited as promising materials in projects for healthy (interior) products (Material District 2025a, 2025b).
Forging chains is important for scaling up and commercializing biobased, circular and regenerative materials. The scale of these movements is growing significantly, as is evident from discussions with the sector about the many initiatives that designers are part of in the desire to realize sustainable system changes. They develop value chainsas a model for new economic systems and to make the raw materials transition from a linear to a circular economy.

For example, Studio Humade found a solution for the million tons of sea sludge dredged annually in Groningen by turning it into ceramic products suitable as building material. Together with consortium partners Groningen Seaports, ceramics producer Koninklijke Tichelaar, and knowledge institute Deltares, they are working on this Sea Salt CeramicsIn the four years that Humade has been working on this project as a chain developer and 'connector' of parties and materials, the studio managed to develop a new material technique and simultaneously establish an entirely new circular chain. Their ultimate goal: to apply this solution worldwide in nature reserves with similar problems (Van de Vliet 2026).

Larger parties are also working on regenerative solutions, such as Rijkswaterstaat and the independent non-profit organization. Building Balance, which together with various ministries and provinces implements the National Approach to Biobased Construction (NABB). It is aimed at initiating, stimulating and supporting chain collaborations between the agricultural sector, processors, construction and governments and also puts the inhibiting regulations on the agenda.

Design research

Design research is a way of designing in which the (social) designer is even more of a team player than before and seeks the best solution as they go along. This results in collaborations between designers and the end user, such as policymakers, the police or healthcare professionals where the designer's key contribution consists of conducting creative system analyses and adopting an out-of-the-box approach to arrive at innovative solutions for difficult issues (June 2024).

The importance of design-based research within the public domain has grown in recent years. This is evident, for example, from the multi-year program The Public Design Practice (PONT), initiated by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and implemented by the Dutch Design Foundation, which has the mission from 2024 to 2027 to better utilize creative thinking power in solving complex societal issues. PONT develops the knowledge, organizational culture, and infrastructure to better align a design-based approach with the government. There is now a great deal of activity knowledge shared and numerous successful pilots have been completed, such as the project by the Department of Extraordinary Affairs and the Ministry of Social Affairs to assist citizens with a 'low performanceto assist with (healthcare) allowances, and the linking of Arnhem designers to energy network supplier Alliander to devise practical creative concepts for the energy transition. PONT also collaborates with the NSOB learning workshop to improving collaboration between designers and policymakers for the application of design approaches in working on societal challenges.

In addition, design research is strengthened by new subsidy instruments. In 2024, the Creative Industries Stimulation Fund, together with the SIA Steering Committee, launched the scheme Artistic and Design Research launched, aimed at collaborations between universities of applied sciences and cultural institutions regarding the addressing of societal issues. In 2025, the ADRIE (Artistic & Design Research for Immersive Experiences) scheme followed for consortia wishing to conduct artistic and design research in the field of immersive experiences.

While social design gained increasing societal support a few years ago (Dijksterhuis 2020), it has since become an integrated design approach within the public domain. In the 2025-2028 cultural plan period, the Stimuleringsfonds no longer treats social design as a separate discipline, but rather as an overarching design approach that permeates multiple domains and contributes to the societal impact of design (Stimuleringsfonds 2024). The growth of platforms, research projects, and programs such as PONT further strengthens this position and underscores how designers, with their imagination and systems-oriented way of working, can contribute to urgent societal transitions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing at a rapid pace. Whereas in previous years there was a cautious introduction, experimentation, and considerable skepticism regarding the limitations, normativity, and stereotypes of AI (Junte 2024), AI is now much more firmly anchored in both daily life and professional design practices (see, for example, Struijke 2025, Lamers 2026, and Dijksterhuis 2026). Consequently, the quality of generative systems has improved significantly compared to a year ago and continues to evolve. This text will therefore soon become outdated (at the time of writing, February 2026).

In 2024, BNO members indicated that 70 percent use AI within their design practice (compared to 62 percent in 2023). Consequently, AI has become an integral part of the process for many designers. AI functions have been integrated into widely used programs from companies such as Adobe and Figma, allowing AI to be utilized within the existing design environment. As a result, training one's own style and critically editing AI output is becoming more important than the one-off generation of an image using AI. While prompts were still viewed as a hype and a skill to be learned in early 2025, they have now become part of a broader AI literacy where AI is used not only for generation but also for editing and optimization.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has thus become more commonplace, while at the same time it has gained a stronger counterpart at the other end of the spectrum with the flourishing of artisanal and analog ways of working (see section 'Craftsmanship'). However: craftsmanship applies not only to manual work, but also to digital tools such as AI and 3D scanning. These require just as much knowledge and expertise (Admiraal 2026).

The role of the designer will therefore change under the influence of design. As early as 2023, the BNO predicted that execution and implementation would increasingly be taken over by AI. Consequently, the BNO advised designers to focus more on strategy and specialization. In the Dd Yearbook '25-'26, Maarten Lamers also foresees that the tasks of designers will change: 'The designer conceives and formulates the design goals and direction, and retains final responsibility for the acceptance of the design. However, intermediate stages of design, evaluation, and adaptation are carried out autonomously by AI, no longer by the designer' (Lamers 2026). The role of the designer will thus shift more towards that of curator and director: someone who sets frameworks, makes (creative) choices, and safeguards certain values. Consequently, knowledge of technology, systems, and related ethics is increasingly becoming part of a designer's profile. The advent of vibecoding (where AI makes it possible to write an entire code with a single prompt to build an app or website) underscores this once again: designers can thus build working prototypes faster without needing in-depth programming knowledge. The power of designers to steer creative processes, make meaningful choices, and integrate societal values ​​is becoming increasingly important in this context where AI is producing more and more code. Designer Bas van de Poel of design agency Modem further states in the Dd Yearbook '25-'26 that design is becoming increasingly automated and thereby more accessible to a wider audience. 'That radical democratization has consequences for the design profession. Something that many designers do not yet realize' (Dijksterhuis 2026).

Research by the Boekman Foundation and the Creative Coalition into the impact of generative AI on work and income in the creative sector shows that 65 percent of respondents working in design and creative services fear that employment will decline within five years. Graphic designers and motion designers, in particular, are concerned about their future within the design professions. This research also shows that AI is expected to impact the role of creative professionals, but rather in a negative sense, namely that the role of creatives will be further restricted. “[Among others] illustrators and graphic designers are noticing a shift due to AI. In their explanations [of the survey answers], it becomes clear that they are regularly asked to work with material generated by clients using AI. This involves references, but also visual material that they are asked to incorporate into the final production. Both cases result in reduced creative freedom” (Struijke 2025, 11). This picture was confirmed in a discussion on this matter with the BNO. The results further show that designers previously made use of a opt-outpossibility, where, for example, writers and translators specifically choose to apply provisions to protect their work from AI.

The regulation of AI is taking more concrete form in Europe with the introduction of the AI ActThe aim of the law is to ensure that AI systems are 'safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly' (EU AI Act 2026). The law adopts a risk-based approach, categorizing AI systems according to their potential impact on the rights and safety of citizens. According to the intended timeline, obligations will apply to high-risk AI systems by mid-2027. For designers, this therefore means that they must be knowledgeable not only technically and creatively, but also legally and ethically in the use of AI.  

In the Dd Yearbook '25-'26, a number of designers reveal how they use AI in their design process. Eva Mels, for example, uses AI as an extension of her photography, employing Midjourney to generate images of fictional fossils. 'AI runs away with reality,' says Mels, 'it feels familiar, but if you look closer, you see that all those shells have something strange about them.' Vera van der Burg challenged AI as a sparring partner in her creative process: she trained her own AI model with images of her ceramic works accompanied by descriptions. She then used prompts such as 'sadness' and 'jealousy' to generate new images. These subsequently formed the starting point for eleven new sculptures.

Female gaze

Gender (in)equality, diversity, inclusion, and equivalence remain important themes within the design domain. The role of women in design remains a subject that designers specifically draw attention to. The Stimuleringsfonds also notes this, where a clear increase in applications for projects with a feminist perspective was observed within the Design scheme in 2024 (Bijl 2024).

Within this movement, designers ridicule the male gazebo and address topics such as feminism, femicide and misogyny, as an antidote to the dominant male perspective (Junte 2024, 90). In addition, they design solutions for problems that only women face and they know how to put underexposed taboo subjects in the spotlight. An example of this is Nienke Helder, who specializes in female sexuality, including her project Sexual Healing. Femicide is addressed by designers such as Rachelle Jeuring en Stephanie Charis Bakker. And Anna Aagaard Jensen, who plays with traditional role patterns and prejudices about gender and manspreading, is the first radical feminist designer with a solo exhibition in a national museum (the Centraal Museum Utrecht) (Junte 2024b).

There are many more examples: the Professional Organization of Dutch Designers (BNO) placed portraits of female designers online under the heading 'Female Gaze', Warehouse de Zwijger started with FemCity an intersectional feminist platform that advocates gender equality, and in the Design Museum Den Bosch you can see the exhibition Women as technology discover four equally important and problematic roles that women (can) play: women as homemakers, calculators, incubators and lust machines (Design Museum Den Bosch 2025).

Female designers are on average overrepresented at the various design academies, but are subsequently underrepresented in the professional field and at exhibitions in museums and galleriesThe figures below show the number of female alumni in the bachelor's programs Visual arts & Design, and Design or Form. In 2023, 66 percent and 70 percent of the alumni of these programs were women, respectively. If we then look at figures from the Collective Selfie 5 regarding the number of women working in the labour market in various visual and design professions, a different ratio emerges. In 2023, 45 percent of graphic designers and product designers were women, and 58 percent of visual artists were women. It is difficult to determine in which professional group designers ultimately work: not all graduates of the above-mentioned programmes who ultimately work in their field will be registered in the labour market in the aforementioned professional groups. Nevertheless, even if we look at the average of the other professional groups for comparison, the percentage of working women in the labour market is always lower than the percentage of women who graduated.

Crafts

Perhaps as a counterpart to AI, and even to the computer, there are a remarkable number of handcrafted (interior) designs with a literal fingerprint of the maker. The Graduation Shows of various academies and fairs as Object Rotterdam (2025), made it clear that the artisanal, analogue way of working is flourishing.

It seems to be a striking trend that the makers want to have everything in their own hands. They also design their own tools and creative machines in order not to be dependent on, for example, producers and distributors. At the DAE (Design Academy Eindhoven), designers Kiki & Joost have the Studio Thinking Hands set up, a study program that design students can follow, where no computer is used in the design process. This studio strengthens the desire for and plays on craft work.

Crafts are also becoming an increasingly strong part of all other design education. Students are encouraged to learn crafts themselves, or work together with craftspeople in their design process. This was also emphasized in conversations with makers/designers, who further explained that craftsmen are often less visible because they work little with a gallery or public institution and often sell their work on the internet. Furthermore, the Creative Industries Stimulation Fund has launched the 'Open Call Contemporary use of crafts', with which the fund aims to strengthen equal cooperation between designers and craft practitioners with a view to a sustainable future of crafts (Stimuleringsfonds 2023).

The Stimuleringsfonds has noted that a remarkable number of projects in the applications for the Design 2025 scheme return to craftsmanship, as was evident from discussions with the fund. Applicants do this both to bring 'slowness' back into the design process and to return more to the core of certain craft technologies and methodologies. This is often accompanied by broader research into, for example, one's own family history or migration background in relation to specific forms of cultural heritage and craftsmanship. An example of this is the project 'Between threads and woven stories' by Weaving studio Leatemia, a multidisciplinary cultural project aimed at creating, discussing, reinterpreting, renewing and presenting the craft and cultural heritage of Ikat together with participants.

Fair pay and fair practice

Fair pay is not always the case in the professional group of designers, just as in many other creative professions. A large number of designers are self-employed, others are employed by a design agency, and a third group works as employees within companies, (semi-)public organizations, or social organizations where design is not the main activity. In all these different structures of the profession, the question arises as to what constitutes fair and appropriate remuneration for designers (Arnoldus et al. 2022). From the government, for example, there is also ARVODI (General Government Purchasing Conditions for Services) not properly aligned with the profession. Platform ACCT (Labor Market Cultural and Creative Future) is committed to designers by, for example, helping the sector with a publication on rate structure. Fair pay remains an urgent issue that requires attention in the design sector.

Furthermore, in the context of fair practice, in September 2025 the Pitch code 2025 signed by eight trade associations, including the BNO. For the first time in the sector, the Pitch Code establishes a widely supported set of ground rules. pitches on the table. The Pitch Code provides, for example, clear guidelines for drafting a briefing, the number of participants in the pitch, the pitch fee, and intellectual property. Rules are also included regarding the responsibilities borne by the parties involved (both clients and pitching designers), how transparency can be provided, and how supervision of a fair pitch process must take place.