The Design Journal

Design Leadership, Worldwide Practices: Past, Present, and Future

Thirty years ago, the late Distinguished Professor Lady Rachel Cooper and Jack Ingram, with a pioneering international group of 27 academic design management researchers, including Brigitte Borja de Mozota, Margaret Bruce, Roger Coleman, Carole Gray, Patrick Hetzel, Mike Hope, Birgit Helene Jevnaker, Lorraine Justice, Wolfgang Jonas, Tore Kristenson, Earl Powell, Mike Press, Lisbeth Svengren, Cal Swann[1] and Liz Swinburn, came together to create a new product and service: The Design Journal.

Celebrating its 30^th Anniversary in 2027, The Design Journal is offered as an example of Design Leadership, conceived and created as an “opportunity for ‘design’ to be considered as a scholarly discipline as well as a respected profession” (Cooper, 1997:1).

Design Leadership is often understood as the organizational capacity to turn accumulated capabilities into market-facing propositions that are distinctive, culturally resonant and strategically coherent. At a strategic level, it shapes visions for how and why products, services and systems might contribute to better futures for users. It also concerns the cultivation of organizational cultures able to foster innovation, inclusivity, empathy and action across diverse competing stakeholder priorities.

That account is being tested by the growing complexity of global geopolitics and economics, heightened awareness of multiculturalism, rising mistrust of scientific knowledge and tangible facts, and increasing reliance on automated creation. In these conditions, Design Leadership may be considered a strategic, creative and critical practice of shaping how organizations, communities and systems work, interdepend, and act in the present, while imagining and making possible more desirable futures.

Such practice involves interpreting complex conditions, reframing problems including structural resistance, and bringing material, financial, evidentiary and ethical considerations into relation. Yet it also raises a central question: what makes this distinctively Design Leadership, rather than leadership undertaken within a design context? One possible answer lies in the ways design imaginaries engage ambiguity, uncertainty and volatility: making futures visible, available for exploration, testing and negotiation through envisioning, curating, prototyping, storytelling, experimentation, visualization and participatory sense-making. It may also lie in the capacity to remain with uncertainty for longer than is comfortable, rather than seeking premature resolution. It may also have nothing to do with either of these.

Through this call for papers on the future of design leadership, we welcome contributions that interrogate, develop, or offer alternative perspectives on the subject - its practices, theories, case studies, methodologies - within the traditional design businesses, disciplines and organizations and those emerging through interdisciplinary work and emerging markets. This Special Issue welcomes but is not limited to the following six areas:

Envisioning changes and futures through design: How adequate are Human-Centred Design methods when designing for complex, networked, or non-human systems? What alternative frameworks, be they philosophical, ecological, or political, might better account for the entangled agencies at play in contemporary technological environments? How transferable are participatory futures methods developed in specific local or institutional contexts to other cultural, political, or economic settings? What role does design have in researching the future with AI as the leading technology?

Organizational development through design: How can organizations harness design to manage persistent paradoxes? How should researchers reframe design value metrics for latecomer contexts, where survival, market entry, and incremental improvement may be more relevant benchmarks than radical innovation? Does design-led innovation perform differently in manufacturing versus service industries, or in public organizations?   

Policy making through design: What is the state of design policy in public institutions in different countries? How do public organizations and/or municipalities approach design as a strategic way of leading or developing a city? Can public institutions be understood as moving through analogous stages of design integration — from passive product design and service delivery to active co-designing? What would that upgrading trajectory look like?

Interdisciplinary solutions for global challenges: During times of geological upheaval, how can we leverage design to manage extreme polarization? How are designers, the practices of designing and design research continuing to innovate through knowledge exchange and enterprise projects with other sectors and industry professionals? Case studies of product, service, system innovations from teams.   

Transformation in design education: What is the future role of design schools delivering design education in a world where design is diffused in other disciplines? Case Studies of emerging Design Education models: Transition Design and Regeneration Design. Design Education Leadership Practice: what does it look like today, and why does it matter that we recognize and value it? Glocal: How Do You See the New Business of Design Education, 2027-2035? What soft skills are essential for future design practitioners working in AI-driven, post-digital, and socially polarized contexts? Furthermore, how to foster and implement them in design education and practice? 

[1] Professor Cal Swann passed away peacefully at home on 19th July 2026, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just two months ago