Development in Progress, Consilience Project Article

How do you design a thirty thousand word article?

This (online) article explains how our current idea of progress is immature: it is developmentally incomplete. Progress, as we define it now, ignores or downplays the scale of its side effects. Our typical approach to technological innovation today harms much that is not only beautiful and inspiring, but also fundamentally necessary for the health and wellbeing of all life on Earth. Developing a more mature approach to our idea of progress holds the key to a viable, long-term future for humanity.

We designed over one hundred and twenty graphic images in the form of two Airfix sets. Once drawn and laser cut we added colour gradient backgrounds to help illustrate the complexity of the article’s highlighted problems and opportunities facing humanity. 

Each element in the models was carefully chosen to align to the many topics covered in the article. Using photography we were able to show the human touch, craft and sense-making which is central to the project’s identity.