Artemis II and the Case for Reinvesting in Public Ambition on Earth

Right now, we’re watching a rare thing unfold in real time: a truly public moonshot. NASA’s Artemis II program—a government-funded flyby mission paving the way for future lunar landings—has captured attention and imagination through open coverage, educational content and a sense of shared curiosity that feels unmistakably civic. It’s a reminder of what it looks like when public funding, public institutions and public storytelling work together to make collective life feel expansive and ambitious. 

At the same time, private ventures into space exploration and speculative technologies are often celebrated as the pinnacle of ambition, framed through the logic of disruption and individual glory—think SpaceX-style branding and billionaire mythology—even when they draw heavily on public contracts, infrastructure and research. Billions of dollars are flowing into these future-facing projects, while libraries, schools and other civic institutions struggle to survive. 

Communication design has played a critical role in making this feel normal. Private ambition is presented as bold and visionary, with sleek branding and compelling narratives that win public attention, while public infrastructure is treated as stagnant and expendable. 

Public moonshot vs. private moonshot

This disparity does more than just reflect values; it actively reinforces them, telling us that the future is something being built elsewhere, by private hands, rather than something we are building together in our shared spaces. And the consequences of that narrative are visible all around us. Libraries, some of the most trusted and accessible civic institutions, face closures and budget cuts. Public transit systems struggle to modernize and schools are forced to rely on temporary private funding to fill gaps in resources. 

Meanwhile, when public money is used visibly—as in New York City, where initiatives championed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani pay local residents decent wages to clear snow during storms or deploy crews to repair thousands of potholes—we see how directly people can experience their tax dollars improving the spaces they move through every day. 

As a communication design studio working in institutions today, we have learned to treat design as a civic tool with the power to shape, and push back on, cultural narratives. By reframing collective life as ambitious once more, we can send a powerful message: defending the public imagination is something worth investing in, not just for the future, or on other planets, but for the shared life we’re building here. This is why we need to treat design as a civic tool, and do it responsibly. 

Redesigning ambition

If design has helped normalize this narrative that private ambition is heroic, it also has the power and responsibility to change it. Communication design can reframe public infrastructure as a site of innovation, creativity and possibility.

This starts with making the communal stand out rather than blend in, making its human impact undeniably seen and felt. Libraries, for example, are at a crossroads. Essential for preserving our past and imagining our futures, these vital public spaces face a very real risk of losing the federal funding that keeps them functioning. Now more than ever, we should reimagine a citywide network of library systems with a unified public-facing language that makes their civic role unmistakable as essential places for learning, debate, rest and care. We should communicate clearly visible explanations of how these buildings are funded, and the role that communities can play in shaping what happens inside them, before we lose them.

Design helps frame collective life when it celebrates the “ordinary.” Some of the most powerful innovations happen in the everyday. Post offices, for example, remain one of the last truly universal civic hubs. Everyone passes through them, but few feel invited to linger. A re-imagined post office becomes a civic focal point, combining mail services with exhibitions and other public services, designed to restore trust in shared systems people already recognize. 

Participation is another crucial element. Meaningful civic design invites people to engage, contribute and feel a sense of ownership and belonging so that shared responsibility becomes a daily reality. In civic work, this means creating public-facing points of understanding between funders, institutions and communities to make it clear who the work is for and why it matters. For example, a public-facing sanitation system could embed clear, plain-spoken language into its collection routes, paired with a permanent or semi-permanent Sanitation Museum that showcases the labor, history and public value of keeping a city running. 

We can go further by making the flow of public money itself visible, clearly communicating when residents are being paid through city programs such as those championed by Mamdani in New York, so people can literally see their taxes turning into safer sidewalks and better streets. 

When we show the impact of complex, largely invisible systems in human terms, not just numbers, they start to feel more relevant. The real impact of funding becomes easier to see and understand. Civic design creates narratives that position philanthropies as partners in tangible systemic change, addressing urgent needs and gaps in public life. These visible, on-the-ground programs demonstrate the kind of collective ambition that philanthropy could align with and amplify, rather than chasing only high-profile, privately branded “moonshots.” 

Defending the public imagination

At its core, this shift is about defending the public imagination, reminding people that the future isn’t just something being built in a lab or launched into space, but something we’re building together. When design helps people understand how shared systems work and who is responsible for them, it strengthens civic life. When it obscures those questions, it weakens it. 

Designers have a unique role to play in this effort, holding the tools that shape how people see the world and what they believe is possible. By reframing public infrastructure as ambitious and essential, we shift the narrative away from private ambition as the only path to progress.

The branding and design of civic spaces should provoke, disrupt and refuse to let us look away. At its best, it is a culture-shaping act that makes power visible and challenges inequity. In a moment of severe federal funding cuts and peak shared uncertainty, this work is now more urgent than ever. If Artemis II shows what public ambition can look like, the challenge now is to bring that same clarity, visibility and urgency back down to Earth.