Time to invest: Get ready for The Me-conomy Trend Briefing

London - The Future Laboratory’s design team has proudly released the branding for the LS:N Global Autumn/Winter Trend Briefing, The Me-conomy, to be held at the British Museum on 15 October 2014.

In The Me-conomy we will explore how and why consumers are becoming more fragmented and difficult to target because their sense of self is changing, in a trend we call The Sharded Self. We will also examine how and why these shifts have radically affected our sense of value in The Meta-value Matrix, and we will look at the opportunities presented by future technologies that will create emotional and meaningful experiences for these sharded consumers in a trend we call Awakening Tech.

As part of the campaign, the idea of The Me-conomy will be presented in different mediums, including a physical invitation, digital projections, communications and films. ‘We were interested in the idea of the crisis of self,’ explains senior designer Joanna Zawadzka. ‘We asked ourselves: ‘How can we express individuality visually?’’

The first part of the campaign is a physical invitation. For this, Zawadzka and The Future Laboratory junior designer Jonathan Cox commissioned award-winning British photographer Kate Peters, who is well known for her portraiture. Peters photographed a model for the invitation who is pensive and free from any subcultural signifiers such as tattoos or jewellery to represent the idea of the self. Then the model’s face was overlaid with a grid-like shape or net graphic.

This net graphic was inspired by radar charts, which are diagrams on which you plot different variables to create a polygon as a visual representation of these values. At a recent LS:N Global Network Evening we spoke to Peter Crnokrak, who described how he is taking this idea to the virtual world by designing a future social media platform that could analyse and depict your emotions and characteristics.

‘The net represents the aspects of ourselves that could be commoditised or valued in The Me-conomy, such as popularity or happiness. We drew it by hand rather than on a computer, to retain the sense of humanness,’ explains Zawadzka.

For more information about the event, contact [email protected].