During my final term of design school, I undertook a 12 week independent study out of curiosity for a theme that repeats through history, culture, and art: utopia. From religious depictions of paradise, to literary explorations of different societies, to implemented plans on large scales, the pursuit of utopia seems to be everywhere.
Throughout my study, I began to see utopia not only as a recurring cultural theme but as a pattern of thought, one that felt very familiar to me. The same impulse that drives utopia also drives design: both start with dissatisfaction and the belief that things could be better, and both excel when they are bold enough to imagine and humble enough to adapt.
At its core, utopia stems from the belief that things could be better. Sir Thomas More first coined the word in his 1516 book Utopia that described a fictional island society with perfect laws and values. Written during a period of corruption, unrest, and moral uncertainty in Tudor England, the island of Utopia featured common ownership, fair labor, universal education, and greater religious tolerance1. More’s book envisioned a more just version of his society and gave a name to an idea that appears everywhere.
The same pattern of thought that inspired Thomas More to write Utopia - recognizing dissatisfaction with the present and imagining an alternative - is present throughout human history. Defining utopia this way made me recognize it everywhere:
-
Religious and spiritual traditions depicting perfect lands free from sin and suffering, from the Judeo-Christian Garden of Eden to the Islamic Jannah2.
-
Literature and fiction imagining radically different societies, many of them utopian: Star Trek’s Federation, Ecotopia, and Bank’s The Culture each describing ideal civilizations2.
-
Political theory and nation building documents, like the Communist Manifesto or even the U.S. Constitution, being used as blueprints for better societies3.
The word “utopian” has negative connotations, often used to describe idealistic but ultimately unrealistic plans. Thomas More himself wrote Utopia with a degree of irony; when naming his perfect island, he intentionally used a double meaning3: ou-topos, “no place,” and eu-topos, “good place.” Utopia is foundationally tied to a feeling of impossibility, even naivety and danger.
The entire concept of dystopia, meaning “bad place,” comes as a response to utopia. In George Orwell’s 1984, the pursuit of “perfect order” results in surveillance and repression. In Brave New World, the pursuit of “perfect happiness” erases freedom and autonomy. In The Giver, the pursuit of “perfect harmony” erases individuality and memory1. Each story exposes the same pattern: when ideals are imposed, perfection becomes oppression.
Similar patterns appear when utopian ideals are attempted or imposed in the real world. The French Revolution imagined a society built on liberty and equality, but its pursuit of moral perfection led to the Reign of Terror, a time of paranoia and violence where ideals were enforced through fear4. Free-market economic theory promised opportunity and fairness through competition, yet it often rewarded exploitation, concentrating wealth and power while leaving workers increasingly vulnerable5.
More recently, tech utopianism promises progress through innovation, imagining a more open and connected world. Yet social media, intended to unite and empower, has often produced isolation, polarization, and the commodification of connection7. Artificial intelligence, often framed as a tool to remove the mundane from human life, raises familiar questions: who controls the data, who bears the environmental cost, and who is left without work? Across these examples, dreams of perfection create unintended outcomes.
In both fiction and reality, utopias fail when they try to engineer perfection. When one version of good is treated as universal, or when systems are too rigid to adapt to the unpredictability of human life, utopia becomes dystopia.
With all the dangers of utopia, why do we keep imagining it? What does it do for us? I struggled with this point for a while. After considering the failures and pitfalls inherent in utopian thinking, it becomes difficult to see any benefit. However, giving up on utopia would be giving up on progress.
Utopia allows escape, hope, and a vision to work towards. Dreaming of better futures gives us hope by expanding what feels possible, helping us question what we take for granted and experiment with what could replace it. The strength of utopian thinking is its freedom to be bold, imaginative, and creative; it only loses that strength when it becomes rigid.
Looking at utopia this way made me realize how similar its logic is to design.
Design is inherently utopian. It starts with dissatisfaction (or as designers would say, problem identification) and responds with imagined alternatives (solution generation). Design and utopia share the same foundation: both are acts of envisioning improvement.
Because they share an intellectual foundation, design and utopian thinking also share many of the same strengths. Where utopia gives us a vision to work towards, design gives us the tools to do so. It allows us to improve our world and push beyond what currently exists. In this way, design is an application of utopian thought, making alternative ideas a reality.
But design, like utopia, is never neutral. Every design makes a core value claim about how life should be: more convenient, more connected, more efficient, more beautiful10. For example, increasing automation in cars makes driving easier, but it also assumes convenience is more important than skill or autonomy.
If the normative claims behind design are never questioned, it risks the same failures of utopian thinking: rigidity, exclusion, and detachment from real life. When imagined in a vacuum, design falls short in the real world; when imposed or prescribed, it has the potential to be destructive.
Given that design shares both utopia’s power and its fragility, its success lies in its implementation. Design, like utopia, is at its best when it is bold enough to imagine and humble enough to adapt.
In practice, boldness means challenging assumptions, imagining radically new systems, and thinking speculatively. It requires taking risks and asking questions. Humility means listening, iterating, and accepting that no single design is universal. It requires reflecting on the normative claims behind each design and the potential unintended consequences. This balance between imagination and humility is what makes design meaningful.
At this point, I found myself reflecting on questions that had played on repeat throughout design school: Why do you want to design? What will your designs do for the world? How will you shape the future through design?
These questions once felt abstract and lofty, but through the lens of utopia, they become tools for designing responsibly. They serve as reminders that every design carries a vision of a better world, and that it is the designer’s responsibility to understand what kind of “better” is being built, for whom, and why.
Working on this project made me more aware of my own role as a designer: to ask what kind of world my work contributes to, and to approach that task with curiosity, care, and humility.