Our new year’s revolutions

The world certainly seems to be a little bit more chaotic than usual right now. Most of us have finally left our lockdowns, but we’re still living in an age of large-scale protesting, a seemingly ever-growing number of crises and rapidly evolving technological developments, raising new questions about who we are and how we live. These changes affect every industry, including ours, so with the new year ahead of us, we wanted to share some of the major developments that keep us talking.

We can’t ignore one of the biggest players in the creative industry this coming year, which won’t be a someone, but rather a something. Serious breakthroughs in AI-driven image-, text- and code-generation have presented us with a raw creative power, readily available at our fingertips. Not only to a cultural elite, but to any two-thumbed kid that wants to try. Projects like DALL-E and the work of artists such as Refik Anadol have surely created a general buzz around AI and its infinite possibilities, while worries about creative professionals and ‘humanity’ becoming obsolete continue to grow. We are following the human-AI debate and the new exciting feats that AI has to offer closely, and are deepening the discussion at our offices on what these developments mean to us personally and the creative industry as a whole.

AI-generated image

The climate crisis has been a primary factor of change for years. Take the growing demand for packaging-free supermarkets for example, or the Dutch word ‘klimaatklever’ — referring to activists gluing themselves to artworks to raise awareness — becoming the official word of 2022 in the Netherlands. A growing mass of critical consumers expect brands to think and act proactively, to not only look good, but to join discussions that are relevant to their DNA and to actually make a difference by solving problems that matter.

There seems to be a general sense of rebelliousness in the world, a need to reclaim control. The decentralizing power of Web3 enables users to reclaim ownership of their personal data and copyrights like never before, and the accessibility of AI and No-code development continues to break down thresholds for creatives everywhere. Protests concerning humanitarian issues such as women’s rights, housing, repression and war are on the rise as well. We expect the handmade visual language of protests and the waves of sobering news footage to leave their mark on design.

But let’s keep it real. In a sometimes overwhelming world of Al, AR, VR, MR, green-, pink-, and bluewashing, massive data-leaks and reality-distorting deepfakes, there also seems to be a growing demand for honesty and ‘realness’. The direct transparency of booming social media platforms such as TikTok and BeReal inform a more realistic, grounded take on design, dictating real photography and confidently present, bold typography.

In short, these are trying times, and the world is slowly evolving to meet its challenges. Luckily, there’s plenty of inspiration to go around, and some of the most pressing issues of today are now faced with a freshly generated army of conscious creators, leaving all of us with a simple question: How will we contribute?