Currency Futures
What symbolic systems do we use for signaling and promoting our values, and how might we design better ones?
Client:
Project Outputs:
Panel discussion
Team:
Jake Crahan
SJ Bowden
Samantha Caruthers-Knight
Jono Melamed
Humaira Tasneem
My roles:
Researcher, futures + systems thinker, graphic designer
As part of my M.A. in Collaborative Design / Design Systems, our Strategy and Foresight class explored the what, how, and why of personal and societal values. In particular, what symbolic systems do we use for signaling and promoting our values, and how might we design better ones? We call these value-signaling systems: currencies.
Led by faculty member Howard Silverman, our class worked from August to December 2020 to learn foresight techniques, explore currency design, and consider how we might use these techniques to engage in the currency space. I designed a brand language and publication summarizing our complete exploration. The class concluded with a publication and a panel discussion with currency design experts: Jean Russell, Michael Linton, and Siddharth Sthalekar.
