Cumulus Design Declaration 2025

The present Cumulus Design Declaration has as its precedent the Kyoto Design Declaration of 2008, which was proposed to express the responsibility of design in an era marked by the challenges of sustainability and globalization. The Cumulus Association has been the platform for this, and over the years the values of the Declaration have been adopted by its members and partner institutions, such as international companies, governments and sister organizations. Given the pace of change and the contemporary challenges we face as a society, the association set out to revisit the Kyoto Design Declaration and reaffirm design’s commitment to society and the planet. This has been done in an open and collaborative way by means of a two-year process involving surveys, workshops and discussion forums for the participation of associates representing 400 educational institutions and more than 40 institutional partners worldwide, all accompanied by semantic and data analysis to co-create an evolved version of the original Design Declaration.