Fengjin Yu
Sustainability topics have become as an increasingly complex and contested issue within UK higher education in the field of graphic design. While the sustainability topic is widely acknowledged as an important educational concern, tensions remain over how it should be taught, how it should be translated into practice, and how it should be situated within broader social and ecological responsibilities. This paper approaches these tensions as a systemic design issue involving value negotiation, ethical reflection, and collective meaning-making rather than simply a pedagogical problem.
This research initially aimed to develop a support toolkit for teaching sustainability topics in graphic design education through semi-structured interviews and co-design workshops involving educators, students, and researchers. However, the study found that the emerging toolkit functioned less as a neutral educational resource and more as a collective expression of shared educational values and future aspirations. Throughout the research process, discussions increasingly focused on how sustainability should be taught, and on what kinds of values, responsibilities, and forms of systemic thinking in design education should be cultivated within HE graphic design.
Based on these findings, the paper proposes the concept of ‘Toolkit as a Manifesto,’ arguing that educational resources such as toolkits can also as a manifesto-like format for value negotiation and systemic reflection. Rather than presenting a fixed solution, toolkits have the possibilities to become a reflective and participatory joint statement through which multiple perspectives on ethics, responsibility, and design futures could be expressed and negotiated within in a specific context. In this sense, this paper argues that the ideal co-designed toolkit for graphic design education in sustainability topics resembles as co-constructed manifesto, shaped collectively through dialogue, reflection, and collaborative discussion rather than a singular authorial position.
By reframing the toolkit within graphic design education as sites of collective reflection and value expression, this paper contributes to ongoing discussions on Systemic Design Pluralism. It argues that this new perspective about ‘Toolkit as a Manifesto’ can support more participatory, critically reflective, and ethically situated approaches to design education in contexts of social and ecological complexity.
Keywords: Graphic Design Education, Systemic Design Pluralism, Systemic thinking, Co-design, Toolkit as Manifesto