The Danish design collective SUPERFLEX has filled the Tate Modern’s (London) Turbine Hall with a framework of three-seater swings, called ‘One, Two, Three Swing!’. “The work invites the audience to combat social apathy through collaborative action, joining together on the count of three,” said the Tate.

As we can read in the press release the work will evolve over time as the framework continues to grow and new swings are added, spreading outside Tate Modern, into London and further. “The work explores the potential of energy generated by social movements, drawing unexpected connections within, between, and beyond institutions, and proposing new uses for urban public space (Tate)”.

In a more than ever connected society, everybody and everything is connected due to digitalization. We connect with family, friends, and brands online. We know from our trend research that people are addicted to interactivity, but not exclusively to online experience. Don’t forget that offline interactivity still plays an important role in people’s life. We can see it in art installations, but also brands are playing with it. For example KLM with their ‘Bonding Buffet‘ at Schiphol. During Christmas a lot of people spend their time alone at airports, but with this buffer KLM helps people to bond with each other (instead of their devices). So whether you swing or swipe, don’t underestimate the effect of interaction.

For the second year in a row we got the chance to speak at the Juice Summit in Antwerp. It’s the leading annual conference for fruit juice executives from all over the world, so both industry players as well as suppliers. Every year the agenda covers a variety of topical issues which determine the business environment of today, as well as challenges for tomorrow. This year TrendsActive’s keynote speaker Aljan de Boer presented our Women trend.

From our trend research we know that women are in charge – for example, they are responsible for the majority in household spending. Nonetheless, most of them do not feel represented accurately in advertising, nor that advertisers tailor to their needs and desires. Therefore Aljan took the stage to share our insights on female consumers and how to engage them.

We had a really nice time at the 5th edition of the Juice Summit and met a lot of people with interesting stories (did you know that people can peel 50 bananas within one minute?).  Thanks for having us and enjoy the second day of the summit in Antwerp.

We’ve been working on the new website of Florismart for the last few weeks, and we are happy to say it’s now online! We are really proud of our work, and whether you’re a florist or not, it’s worth checking out this new beautiful website we designed for Florismart.

Last August we wrote a blog post about Florismart and their unique position in the flower market. They connect florists directly with growers, cutting out the middleman – a disruptive and innovative business model in the flower industry! Everything they do relates to their motto: ‘Buy smart. Work smart. Buy more competitively, manage your business efficiently’.

We’ve been working with Florismart since the beginning, and it has been a pleasure. We have created their corporate identity and now the new website, which also includes a webshop. The main goal of the new website was to design a platform that serves the florist community  in the best way: not only a place where you can buy, but also a spot where you can get expert advice and inspiration. We are sure that Florismart will be successful and that business will continue to bloom.

This week a BBC article talked about an illustrated “dummy-proof” shopping list made by a Indian woman for her husband that went viral on the internet. Era Golwalker explained to BBC that she created the shopping list to “solve a weekly problem”. Her husband, Gaurav, was keen to learn cooking (which is not so common for a lot of men in India), but has little experience with buying groceries or anything related to cooking. The vegetable vendors eventually picked up on Gaurav’s naivety and took advantage by selling him substandard products. In order to avoid having Gaurav send photos of produce on WhatsApp to get her approval, Era decided to write a compressive shopping list with detailed drawings for each item to eliminate any potential confusion. Just to give an idea of this looks like, Era even drew out what a medium-sized potato should look like, and gave explicit reminders not to select spinach with holes in them.

On one hand this is a funny and light-hearted example depicting the trials and tribulations that newly weds face in everyday life, on the other it also nicely highlights how gender roles are changing in modern society. Our gender trend research suggests that while the role of women is increasingly prominent in the public sphere, men are more and more involved in domestic, household chores. Millennial men especially have more egalitarian attitudes about family, career, and gender roles inside marriage than generations before them. And while not every man is naturally a gastrosexual (yes, just a cheeky term to describe how being a good cook in the kitchen is a way to impress the ladies), it certainly doesn’t hurt to take the initiative to do the groceries to win favours… especially now that Era’s “dummy-proof” shopping list is available on the Internet!