Designers in Residence invited this year young UK based designers to respond to a brief set by Deyan Sudjic, the Director of the Design Museum. For 2014, this theme is disruption. “More than most, ‘disruptive’ is a term whose meaning is dependent on the context,” says Deyan. “It’s conventionally considered almost a bad thing — difficult pupils, bad neighbours, ill-considered town planning — it is now the most sought after quality in a new product.”

Patrick Stevenson-Keating has created several new financial products as a way of highlighting our normally passive role within the global economic system — and how we could use the most mundane of financial transaction as a force for good.

The British designer has reimagined the financial system to create a banking process intended to encourage users to think more about their purchases. He took inspiration from an experimental demurrage currency trialled in Austria for a brief period in the 1930s. A tax was levied on the tender and its value decreased the longer it was kept. Keating-Stevenson responded by creating Reciprociti – an imaginary bank with its own bank note, debit card and cash dispenser, and playful branding that promises to solve a wealth of economic problems.


Photography by Luke Hayes