Futures Tarot

For a large-scale cross-school planning event at London College of Communication, Supra Systems Studio worked with graphic designers Ricardo Gonçalves and Paloma Moniz to develop Futures Tarot (March 2019), a card deck that would allow audiences to explore socio-technical systems and pluralistic futures.

In a design school, much of our work is tied up with imagining and materialising emerging worlds and their component parts. We wanted to stimulate discussion around how the sprawl of social, economic, environmental, political, and technological factors kick at assumptions around neat and shiny techno-futuristic products and landscapes.

Inspired by an older version of Futures Poker designed by two SSS members, this deck comprises sixteen different fragments of a near future - rural communes, meme linguistics, short-term monarchies, full vaccine coverages, and more.

By drawing different hands of cards and considering how the pieces fit together, our players considered how these themes intersect, amplify, and co-exist in their imagined future. Rather than building out worlds where a single event dominated, we wanted our audiences to take a full systems approach, exploring how events and issues interact with each other.

Participants: Ricardo Gonçalves and Paloma Moniz.