Tessa Crews Calls on Designers and Creatives to Rethink Their Role in Building a More Responsible World

Jefferson, Virginia Aug 26, 2026 Design shapes far more than what people see. It influences how people behave, what they buy, how they experience the world, and even how communities interact with the environment. In her TEDx talk, We Designed This Broken World. Now Lets Fix It, design leader, brand strategist, and TEDx speaker Tessa Crews challenges creatives and everyday individuals to recognize the power and responsibility they have to create a better future.

Watch the full TEDx Talk here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8PV0cz3Qk0

Drawing from her unconventional upbringing and professional experience as a visual designer, Crews argues that design can be either a force for positive change or a contributor to some of society’s most pressing problems. Her message is rooted in a belief instilled by both of her parents: when people have the opportunity to use their voice or talents to help others, doing so is a responsibility.

Design Has Consequences

Crews points to the ways poor or irresponsible design has become embedded in everyday life, from manipulative digital interfaces and attention-driven advertising to unrealistic beauty standards and environmentally harmful products.

She argues that designers and creative professionals must move beyond designing on autopilot, where profitability and efficiency are prioritized without sufficient consideration of their human and environmental consequences.

Instead, Crews advocates for a more human-centered approach built on empathy, deeper listening, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship.

Her argument is particularly urgent in the context of environmental challenges. Crews highlights the enormous volume of plastic entering the world’s oceans each year as an example of the consequences of systems and products that were designed without fully considering what happens after their useful life.

Yet her message is ultimately one of possibility rather than pessimism.

We designed this broken world, she argues, but we also have the courage and the power and the integrity needed to fix it.

Three Truths About Better Design

Crews builds her TEDx talk around three lessons from her experience in the design industry.

1. We Are All Designers

According to Crews, design is not limited to professional designers. It is part of the human experience.

Every email someone writes, every trip they plan, and every decision they make contributes to the experience they create for themselves and others. In this sense, everyone is constantly designing their lives and influencing the world around them.

The question, therefore, is not whether people are designers. The question is what they are designing toward.

2. Better Design Asks Different Questions

Crews challenges conventional questions centered primarily on maximizing profit, creating consumer demand, or convincing people that they are missing something.

Instead, she encourages creatives and organizations to ask how their work can celebrate shared humanity, support human flourishing, create authentic value, and protect the health of communities and the environment.

For Crews, changing the questions can change the outcomes.

3. Responsible Design Is Unconventional

Crews believes responsible design often requires people to go against established norms.

In a culture where efficiency, profitability, and relentless productivity can dominate decision-making, she encourages people to identify their own ethical North Star and have the courage to design around it.

She also makes a case for joy as part of meaningful and sustainable change. Rather than treating joy as something separate from hard work and responsibility, Crews believes it can help fuel the long-term commitment necessary to create positive transformation.

Designing for Regeneration

One of the most memorable examples in Crews’ talk is a biodegradable shoe designed to eventually return to the earth and contribute to new growth.

She uses the concept to illustrate a different relationship between industry and nature: instead of treating product disposal as the end of a product’s life, designers can imagine systems in which decay becomes part of a regenerative cycle.

The example resonates with Crews on a deeply personal level because her understanding of cycles, endings, and new beginnings was shaped by the loss of her father.

From Grief to New Growth

Crews shares an intimate story about losing her father while she was planning her wedding. The loss left her questioning whether she could move forward with a celebration while experiencing such profound grief.

A conversation with the rabbi who would officiate her wedding offered Crews a different perspective: life continues, and there can be meaning in choosing to celebrate life, love, new beginnings, and togetherness even in the presence of loss.

Seven months and seven days after her father’s death, Crews married her best friend. One month and one day later, she discovered she was pregnant. The experience became a deeply personal reminder that loss and new life can exist within the same larger cycle.

For Crews, this concept extends beyond personal grief. She connects it to the broader philosophy of regenerative design: endings, waste, suffering, and loss can become fertile ground for new life, growth, and inspiration when people are willing to transform rather than simply discard what has come before.

A Call to Design Differently

Crews’ TEDx message ultimately expands the definition of what it means to design responsibly.

Rather than focusing solely on creating products, brands, or experiences, she asks people to consider the broader impact of every creative and personal decision. What does a person’s work leave behind? How does it affect other people? What does it mean for the planet? And what kind of future does it help create?

Her challenge is to resist the pressure to prioritize profit over people and efficiency over ecological well-being. Instead, she encourages individuals to embrace their values, question conventional approaches, and make conscious choices that reflect the world they want to help build.

Crews believes that meaningful change does not necessarily begin with a massive transformation. It can begin with one conscious decision, one creative choice, or one personal act of responsibility.

You are the designer of your own life, the architect of your own experience, she reminds her audience, emphasizing that individual choices have consequences that extend beyond ourselves.

About Tessa Crews

Tessa Crews is a design leader, brand strategist, and TEDx speaker whose work sits at the intersection of creative thinking and positive change. She currently leads communications strategy for Georgetown University’s Conference Services team. Her work has taken her from the TEDx stage to the White House Forum for Climate Solutions. Her approach combines creative strategy, design ethics, environmental stewardship, and human-centered thinking to explore how organizations and individuals can transform significant challenges into meaningful work.

Crews is also a mother living on a horse farm in rural Virginia, where her personal experience of family, grief, new life, and intentional living continues to influence her creative philosophy.

Her TEDx talk, We Designed This Broken World. Now Lets Fix It, challenges audiences to recognize that everyone is a designer and that the choices people make in their work and everyday lives can contribute to either greater harm or positive change.

Media Contact

Tessa Crews
Email: tessa.crews@georgetown.edu
Website: https://www.tessacrews.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessacrews/
Instagram: @tessaccrews