Since 1997, Pearson Lloyd has designed for the future. In that time, the world has transformed. The challenges faced by our society and our planet have evolved, becoming ever more urgent and complex, and the solutions we design today are shaped by different values than yesterday. The environments in which we live, work and travel – and the products and systems that define them – are in flux.
For 25 years, Pearson Lloyd has created designs that embrace innovations in materials and manufacturing, outlast shifting aesthetic trends, pre-empt changing consumer behaviours, and withstand the test of time. Working strategically with brands, businesses, institutions and public bodies, the studio has developed systems and services that drive behavioural shifts to ensure positive outcomes, as well as products that provide genuine, life-enhancing benefits to their users.
Change Making delves into the past two and a half decades to explore key pieces of Pearson Lloyd design, revealing the ideas and decisions that made them what they are. Why do they work? What do they say about the design landscape of the time? And what might be different if they were made today?
Taking in the design landscape of the present, the exhibition examines how changing values and priorities to new sustainable models, approaches and metrics of success that position the planet as a co-beneficiary of the making process. Exhibits will also look forward to the years ahead, considering how emerging technologies, new global challenges and further behavioral shifts are likely to change the landscape. What does it mean for an object to be ‘well made’ in a world where the values and stakeholders that define design are changing? How do we predict what those values might be in 25 years’ time? How do we best adapt to navigate the uncertainties ahead?
Change Making offers visitors an opportunity to consider how the design landscape has changed over the last 25 years; asks them to think about how and what we’re designing now; and challenges them to imagine how things might change in future.