Top Global Consumer Trends

[*Happiness*]

WOW!!! This topic is very interesting. Thanks.

 

[travolta]

the anti-trend

from icon magazine's 21 most influential list:

17.
Entropy, as anyone who read chapter seven of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time will know, is the scientific principle stating that all systems become increasingly chaotic with time. In other words, it describes nature’s abhorrence of uniformity.

In design, entropy can be used as an umbrella term to describe the increasing number of practitioners exploring ways of introducing chaos, decay and error into their work.

Swedish outfit Front allow hamsters to nibble their wallpaper and encourage boa constrictors to make indentations into their clay coat pegs. Joris Laarman is experimenting with moulds that quickly wear out, meaning the ceramic vases within them become increasingly degraded. Tom Dixon has produced coffee cups from natural fibre wear down with washing.

This trend can be seen as a deliberate reaction against the modernist pursuit of timelessness and perfection, and the absolute precision of digital design and mass production. Already, computer-based designers such as Future Factories are experimenting with digital entropy, developing algorithms that lead to a degree of unpredictability in the final (computer-manufactured) object.

http://www.icon-magazine.co.uk/issues/021/influential_5.htm

i think entrophy is another name for anti-trend. it's independent, irregular, authentic, unfabricated, reflects the wearer's lifestyle instead of the other way around, sustainable (meant to wrinkle, be worn in and allowed to pill and pucker and fade out). so wabi-sabi.

 

[fourboltmain]

I am curious, how can anti-trend become a trend? It's an oxymoron. A trend is something that many/majority people follow, right?

Remember when alternative music was actually an alternative?

 

[nr9dream]

i think entrophy is another name for anti-trend. it's independent, irregular, authentic, unfabricated, reflects the wearer's lifestyle instead of the other way around, sustainable (meant to wrinkle, be worn in and allowed to pill and pucker and fade out). so wabi-sabi.

Quite an avant-garde interpretation re. consumer trends I think, but v. interesting- thanks for the Icon link.

Reminded me of leading trendwatching firm http://www.iconoculture.com/

Seems they no longer publish their list of top 'macrotrends' on their site (samples only- currently 'The Dark Side') But site is worth checking out & there's an opt-in newsletter.

Related: their 10 'trend commandments':

Catch The Craze
Thou Shalt . . .

Ok, now that you've identified the phenomenon, how do you jump on it? Iconoculture's Trend Commandments offer some sound guidance.

-Cast as wide a net as possible.

-Sift through the clutter for cultural `passion points'--look for things that elicit an emotional, visceral reaction.

-View everything as a sign requiring decoding--focus on the meaning of things rather than the things themselves.

-Look for connections, parallels and analogies--make links between trends popping up in different categories.

-Look to the margins--trends tend to bubble up from the fringes of society.

-Don't confuse trends with values--think of trends as indicators of deeper social values.

-Use history as an active resource and as a source of memory marketing.

-Expect and capitalize on backlashes. Trends usually reverse directions.

-Creatively surf trends instead of attempting to start them.

-Focus on application, not prediction.

from http://www.entrepreneur.com/

 

[travolta]

interesting, thanks for posting their 20 'trend commandments'.

i think the more 'connected' and 'savvy' we become the less we rely on our periphery vision or common sense -- we start to distrust our instincts. the 'ten commandments' reinforces this. there is this quote by lewis thomas that talks about what sets human beings apart is their tolerance of ambiguity -- "programmed to drift away in the prescence of locked-on information, straying from each point in a hunt for a better, different point". i hope this doesn't come off as too much of a diabtribe, but i think western philosophies, the foundation for our perception of reality, is very untolerant of ambiguity -- almost like surrendering to autonomy ( a very scary thought) machine-people. i think this is unlike eastern philsophies, which makes sense that entrophy be related to wabi-sabi. timelessness/ perfection/ cookie cutter mass production seems almost inhuman, but yet it is the pursuit of many. so to me an anti-trend is about spontaneity, the nitty gritty, and it isn't a formula or a cage.

edit: i mean the fact that the new buzz word flooding business week and other related sites are 'emotion' says something?

 

[Lena]

those ten commantments.. quite on the spot
thanks for posting them nr9dream