Trend Forecast of 2017: A Year of Duality

For a trend forecasting project in my Master's project in Branding at the School of Visual Arts, the team and I observed the signals that shaped our culture and identified the trend of the year - duality:

Affordable but luxurious, inclusive but exclusive, natural but manmade - the concept of duality has never been more definitive than it is in the world today.  With the advance of technology such as the prominence of social media and the rise of virtual reality, the world is moving at a faster pace beyond what humans could have ever imagined. Despite these advancements, humans desire to return back to the past (#tbt anyone?). In fact, the course of history has shown that the advancements in technology is far outpacing the natural evolutionary speed of humanity. Our inherited limbic brains (responsible for emotions and memories) still live in the primitive but fundamental “fight or flight” mode. So driven by the security of the familiar, a sense of insurance we fight to develop complexity and embrace it as a singular identity. Therefore, we add to the observable tensions in our times, the smashing of binaries - obvious opposites, constant contradictions and a world full of fluid connections. This is the year of duality!