Tomorrow never knows: Visualising the future

Our teams always have one ear to the ground to understand where growing trends are today, and perhaps more importantly where they were yesterday and beyond. With this knowledge, we put ourselves in a good position to try to predict the future.

One of the benefits of operating Poppins across multiple pillars is that we understand how brands live and breathe today, not just digitally, but socially and physically. Our teams rely on each other to keep abreast of all the latest developments throughout the customer journey. From sustainable materials to TikTok innovation, sonic and animated identities to digital design systems.

Back in 1966, the Ford Motor Company commissioned famed designer Paul Rand (IBM and UPS logo designer) to rethink their approach. In this rejected logo you can see a concept that wouldn’t look out of place today. With almost every automotive company streamlining their logos to better fit a world of luxury electric vehicles, digital screens and modernism, this would fit right in, right?

Maybe. We’ll never know the exact reasons Ford rejected this design, but if I had to guess I’d probably argue it was too much of a departure from tradition, from years of brand equity they were afraid would be thrown out with a reinvention so clearly focused on the future. Sound familiar?

At Poppins, when we’re tasked with visualising the future for a brand, we often look to architecture as a starting point - the rules we build digitally aren’t a million miles away from the physical rules of the past. We’re building ecosystems with restrictions on how big they can be, how many people can (and should) use them, how they’ll use them, and we’re limited largely by how many hours they’ll take to build (and the investment needed). Our visions of the future try to blend influences from the past with modern technology in an attempt to create something new.

Take The Jetsons for example; a cartoon launched in the 1960s depicting what life would be like in the 2060s predicted the future pretty well, from voice activated lights to smart fridges re-ordering groceries. Their approach? Blending the past with the future, and sprinkling in some hope. The post-war atomic age and the space race gave the world a reason to believe in a brighter future, paving the way for innovation.

On a similar plane, Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 often utilises Brutalist architecture layered in with modern technology to showcase a vision of a slightly bleaker vision of the future than The Jetsons, but an effective and believable one nonetheless.

Does the same theory apply for product design? Yes. Let’s look at the movie ‘Her’ and the phone/AI technology therein: here the phone screens mimic paper with housing clearly inspired by vintage cigarette cases. Once again blending the beauty of the past with the technology of the future, it provides a warm familiarity that goes a long way to building trust. Something the board at Ford felt was lacking from Paul Rand’s vision of their future.

The point I’m trying to make is that brands often get caught up in trying to be completely original, the first ever to do something, so focused on the future they forget how much beauty is in the past. The past can exist either in their story (heritage) or if they’re starting afresh–in stories of architecture, artistry and craft throughout the ages. Truly successful visions of the future are simple, modern interpretations of days gone by.

While I’ve written broadly about these visions of the future, what does this actually mean for brands? The answer lies in the process. At Poppins, we pride ourselves on thinking laterally across channels, technologies, industries and regions in order to find the right opportunities for our clients. Identifying opportunities with insights is the first step, designing within those gaps is the second step, and pushing your vision forward in all the right places is the third.

There’s no one true answer of what tomorrow looks like, we can’t predict it, but we can plan for it.

If anything you've read here piques your interest, we'd love to hear from you at hello@poppins.agency