Strategy, Design and Futures Books I've Loved in 2024

Pegasus Books in Wellington Aotearoa, a great second hand treasure hunt.

A lot has changed in the world over the last few years. The chat around the design cooler has shifted from 'how to get agreement on what our future state products should look like' to 'oh shit are we going to survive this year.' The truth is that incremental improvement of products and services, as innovative as they may be for most organisations, is not enough. What we need are foundational changes to our social, economic and environmental systems, and designerly ways of thinking and doing can help us get there.

My reading list for 2024 has reflected this change. I've happily pulled the thread to try to find those bigger perspectives, the meta views that will help me make sense of the increasing noise in the system. I've also needed a healthy dose of reasons to believe that massive change is possible, which I've found plenty of. Two of my favourites were Less is More by Jason Hickel and The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric.

Here is a list of some of other favourite reads from the last 12 months.

Futures Thinking & Design

• How To Future by Scott Smith

• Future Cultures by Scott Smith & Susan Cox-Smith

• The Manual of Design Fiction by Julian Bleecker

• Designing Tomorrow by Martin Tomitsch

• Future Ethics by Cennydd Bowles

• What We Owe the Future by William Macaskill

• Thinking about the Future by Andy Hines & Peter Bishop

• Design & Futures by Stuart Candy

• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

• Future Stories by David Christian

Strategic Design

• Design Journeys Through Complex Systems by Jones & Van Ael

• Things we could design for more than human-centred worlds by Ron Wakkary

• Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

• Dark Matter and Trojan Horses by Dan Hill

Big Themes

• The Good Ancestor by Roman Krzarnic

• Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie

• Less is More by Jason Hickel

• History for Tomorrow by Roman Krznaric

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

• The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Weingrow

• Humankind by Rutger Bregman

• Atlas of the Invisible: Maps & Graphics That Will Change How You See the World by James Cheshire

• A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough

I hope you'll find these inspiring and thought-provoking.

And please feel free to drop me a book recommendation in return!