HOST: Coming up in this episode of InClear Focus.

Julian: I want to establish the various practices that I intuitively feel leverage imagination as a means of sense making.

HOST: You’re listening to InClear Focus, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising, produced weekly by BigEye, a strategy led, full service creative agency. growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us for our first episode of 2024, which is the second part of my conversation with polymath Julian Bleecker, widely acknowledged as the originator of design fiction.

Today, many leading foresight Insight and innovation agencies employ the practice of design fiction, helping organizations envision possible futures through the creation of tangible artifacts. Now, if you missed it, I’d recommend listening to last week’s episode in which Julian shares how he developed design fiction and discusses large scale projects like designing for the future of autonomous vehicles.

Today, we’ll pick up where we left off, exploring ways in which design fiction can be used to inform strategic decision making and communications. For this conversation, Julian joined us from his studio in Venice, Los Angeles, California.

Today you lead near future laboratory, a design led innovation studio, working with clients to help them translate abstract strategy into tangible items. You’ve worked with clients including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Ikea, Walmart, Warner Brothers, Netflix, and even JLo. So, Julian, what does a near future laboratory engagement with a client or organization typically look like?

Julian: Well, it varies, but the typical thing, like the initial kind of structure is three phases. So, the first phase is understanding where the organization is and where it Desires to go and we do that through a platform that initially started out as a kind of purely public way in which we did this work, but it became so effective as a way of helping unpack some of the ideas and thoughts and concerns and considerations that an organization have.

So we do essentially general seminar and it’s a workshop kind of context, which is we start going through. The future is that they imagine and when you do that, you start finding ways to kind of represent those futures. And so in some organizations, it’s just basically a big, like, here’s all the things that we’re thinking about.

Here’s all the places that we, that we’re considering going into in our future. Here’s our product roadmap and what they’re looking for. From us is less, tell us what to do next in order to get there. They’re looking for the material that’s going to augment and help align the teams to the vision so that it feels a little bit more visceral and a little bit more tangible.

And that part of making that translation from, you know, their imagination and their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their desires, their concerns, the challenges they feel they face, finding an effective way to. Represent that and that’s what I refer to as a design fiction archetype. So the magazine is, is one particular archetype.

Sometimes we’ll do something like use the annual report, the typical corporate annual report as an archetype. So we’ll do their annual report from the future and allow them to use that as a way of imagining into and hearing and feeling what that world might look like and what their CEO might say about the organization if they were to get to this future.

Um, and then there’s the work of actually producing it. So one of the most fun aspects of this. is actually producing this material. And by that I mean material, you know, actually making it. So when we do the magazine or the annual report or the tiny film, actually going through that process and seeing these ideas move from imaginary or even just prosaic things, you know, or metaphorical things, it’s kind of like, but okay, let’s build that.

Let’s make that, let’s make that tangible. Let’s make that something that, that you can feel in a way that is different from Us saying it or even different from us putting it up on a whiteboard and in the workshop or, you know, collecting a bunch of post its and that kind of thing. Like doing that next level of translation is the part where things really start coming to life.

HOST: In addition to commercial collaborations, near future laboratory is the publisher of design fiction books, work kits. And other products, along with your coauthors, you wrote the manual of design fiction now in its second edition, I believe, Julian, what prompted you to write the book?

Julian: Well, I think there was a little bit of an existential component to it, which was, I felt like we had in a humble way been very articulate about design fiction as a practice, you know, just as you are in a relatively small corner of the world amongst.

designers and creatives. And it was gaining some currency. I guess you would say it was gaining some notoriety again amongst 83 people. It wasn’t a huge, huge thing. And it felt like that having almost like a stake in the ground professionally, my professional trajectory, there’ve been a number of times where I felt like I had done something.

That for some reason I wasn’t able to make stand out. It was like, I’d not given up, but I sort of, it felt embarrassing to stake a claim in a particular area or field knowledge. Like early on, I did a lot of video game analysis, like in the late eighties, early nineties, and People were saying like, I think video games are going to be a big deal.

That could be like an area that you could establish yourself in. And I just remember feeling like, I don’t know, establish myself, that feels like it’s full of hubris. And I, I was wrong. You know, it turns out it’s like, yeah, it was a big area and if I’d spent more time and energy focused on it, that could have been something that could have been professionally satisfying, but I didn’t.

And this was one thing where I said like, no, no, no, you got to get over that and you have to do the work to establish. That you wrote an essay and it meant something to people. It touched people to the point where it’s circulating and it’s a value to people. Don’t shy away from having helped people to engage in a particular practice that clearly they were desiring to create, to be a part of.

Help it. Move it along. Be of use to people in that way. Don’t move away from it. And that was sort of the motivation. It’s like, hey, let’s put a stake in the ground, let’s write something, and let’s call it The Manual of Design Fiction. So it’s very clear. Here’s an important corner of this practice that we feel is of value, and we feel that can grow, and that we want more people to do.

So doing the book was a way to do that. And I remember there were like long and hard debates about what it should be called. And I wanted something that felt so instrumentalized. In other words, nothing long winded. It’s just like, this is the manual design fiction. No question about it. No question. That’s it.

And so that was essentially motivation. I felt that near future laboratory Which started as my blog, you know, just near future laboratory. com, like back in like in 2005 or 2006 was going through a kind of long transition into something else. And I wanted some kind of bookmark. It’s like I wanted an album that represent, you know, like the double two album set that represents, okay, I think this is the transition, the evolution into something else.

And that album, people will be able to go back and say like, oh, that was, that’s, that was when it changed, you know, in this beautiful way. And it felt like I needed something material. Something, you know, an object to kind of stand in for that. Well, you

HOST: also produce and host the Near Future Laboratory podcast.

You maintain near future laboratory Discord community, and you’ve recently held some special events, both online and in the real world, focused on particular areas of futures thinking as well. So Julian, how do you curate the content and themes for the podcast and for your events?

Julian: So, my main motivation or approach for this kind of curation is I want to establish the various practices that I intuitively feel leverage imagination as a means of sensemaking.

I’ve just kind of come to this feeling that the more we can bring imagination into all different kinds of practices, the more we can like highlight it, not as a, as a loose kind of expression of. Good feeling or something that feels in some ways adolescent, but as with the import and the semantic weight, as if you said engineering, or as if you said technology, or as if you said Finance, because I think that there’s an instrumental character to it that they can help in an exceptional way, particularly with some of the big existential challenges that we’re facing.

So when I think about the things that I’m curating, it’s like, I want to talk about and represent and share and elevate more of that kind of. Activity is different places in which it can mean something more. And so, you know, when I think about the podcast, when I think about the conversations in the discord, when I think about the kinds of work that I want to do and the clients that I want to work with and things like general seminar and super seminar, it’s all around that sense that we need to imagine harder and let me offer to you, you know, the modest audience that I have, let me offer to you all the different ways in which we can do that.

So general seminar, let’s imagine a possible future. In which, take your pick, in which blockchain is as normal, ordinary and everyday as a television remote control. No, no big deal. People barely bother to think about it. What is that future? And I think there are two things going on in that particular example.

One is to imagine something that feels futuristic, blockchain, you know, whatever that means to you. And then the other thing is, how do you imagine something that doesn’t quite. Exist or that you might be confused and unsure about or where your first reaction might be like, well, I have no idea. I don’t know what blockchain is.

So keep me out of this conversation. It’s like, no, but you have an imagination. I know you do. You had it when you were a little kid and somehow maybe it got atrophied a little bit because you don’t exercise enough. Come into general seminar. It’s like Pilates for your imagination. We’re going to work out and we’re going to figure out what it is, what it takes to imagine.

So that’s the kind of undergirding of the podcast. It’s about having other people in conversation, talking about the ways in which they engage in the kinds of activities of doing futuring and doing imagination or creating different contexts in which creativity and imagination are really brought to what I refer to as structure, really brought into enterprises that you wouldn’t normally think that they would have.

Futurist, but they do. Okay. So let’s talk about that. What is it and how does it operate? And I feel like the more that we have these conversations, the more people hear about it, the more the words are articulated, the more sense is made of what imagination and creativity. can bring into the world beyond just the, what we normally think of, like, you know, artistic practice and these other very important aspects of human creative consciousness, but actually in other areas, in other aspects of the work that we do and the kinds of work that is necessary in order to address some of the existential challenges that we have.

You describe it as curating. It’s like, I wish it was like as organized as that sounds. It’s very instinctive. It’s very, Ooh, it would just be great to talk to this person. This would be an amazing project to do. Or this would be encouraging in a kind of mentoring way the activities that, you know, emerging or senior level professionals are doing.

Like, that sounds like a thing. Like, let’s talk about it. And see another aspect of being useful to people, which is talking more to folks. So every time someone joins the discord, we grab a coffee. Like we, you know, we spend 20 minutes, usually ends up being an hour. And that’s part of what you’re describing as curation.

It’s like building community, building a sense of here’s a place where you can feel at home when you’re like a highly imaginative, highly creative individual that is looking for a place to just feel like you belong and then encouraging people, it’s like, it can’t just be here. You have to find the ways to bring it into the enterprise.

Because it’s important, and people will sense it, there’s not going to be a lot of pull for it, but if you’re there doing it, then I think we can definitely make this kind of work into the kind of thing where it’s like, it’s as vital to every organization as having a bookkeeper. You know, it’s just like, well, who’s your, who’s your chief futurist?

What is that? We don’t have one. So you want to have, you want a world where it is just a normal, ordinary, everyday thing. You

HOST: mentioned community. What are some of the most notable or recurrent themes to have emerged from the near future laboratory community, would you say?

Julian: There’s been a thoroughgoing interest, I think, because it’s the community is fairly, it’s quite a bit open to things that are just at the kind of vanguard.

So things like in and around solar punk. Regenerative design has been an area that people are interested in. So this kind of falls into the category of, I guess, broadly, like, how do we address the difficulty of imagining a world in which we have, if not overcome, managed to sustain ourselves. in a world that’s been kind of addled by the, the effects of climate change.

So how can we get there? And I think one of the biggest challenges just for that one particular area, which is why it’s important and why I think people in the community have been so inclined to, to focus on it is that we don’t have a really good imaginary of what that world is. There isn’t a very good vision that we can feel into.

Most, uh, science fiction, particularly science fiction film, because, I guess, because they feel like they need to be dramatic, it’s an apocalypse. Like, it hasn’t worked out at all. It’s really bad. And I think things like Solar Park and as a literary visual genre of an articulation of an imagination which says, like, hey, I want to see and sense into a world that hasn’t completely fallen apart where we’re all stockpiling ammunition and water and living underground.

It’s a generational desire where it’s like, I don’t want that kind of collapse. So I’m going to start representing in a beautifully naive way. Naive is the wrong way to put it, in a beautiful way where it’s kind of like, I don’t care if you’re telling me that the world’s going to be terrible. I’m going to show a world that isn’t.

And same thing like with regenerative design more as a practice. Those have been areas of interest. There’s also a lot of interest in the future of work. Probably as a result of the challenges of what work is and what it’s been through the years of the pandemic and lockdown, people just sort of wondering like what else happens, but I think there’s a bigger thing.

It’s like, as people sense into the ill effects of the confusing. Distribution of wealth, they want to understand, are there other means of mechanisms of value exchange where I can do the things that I enjoy doing and obtain value from them? In other words, you know, something that comes back to me that I can use for exchange of other things.

So maybe it’s not cash. I don’t know what it is that you get paid for when you do this kind of future of work, but there’s been, you know, just, it’s a, it’s a wonderful kind of open topic, which Requires a lot of imagination because we, you know, we all kind of grown up in a world where work as we understand it in a kind of pedestrian sense, like you go into a job and the organization might be owned by someone else and you feel fortunate to just even be there, but you could be let go at any particular moment.

And you’re only hoping for places that you work where you feel like you are making a substantial and meaningful contribution. So you are of use. You’re not just kind of grinding and toiling away. It’s very difficult to imagine alternatives. It’s not impossible though. And so that’s when you do these kinds of explorations of what the future work might be.

And so that’s actually literally a project that we’re doing internally and in the design fiction mode. We’re, we’re doing the research and we’re having conversations, we’re having general seminars that are open to the public and deeply engaging in it and doing various kinds of fun exercises with the intent that we will represent all this research and our insights and our kind of imagination in the form of an employee manual, employee handbook.

So describing that world. And that thing that you get, you know, people understand you get like first day, like, okay, right here it is. This explains the nature of your role here and how you fit in the larger goals and ambitions, the organization, whatever they might be. But I suspect, I don’t know, but I suspect it won’t sound like the usual kind of job.

There’ll be something quite a bit different about it. And then having it as this materialized design fiction artifact, I think just helps tell that story more effectively. And it’s the kind of thing that I think there’s so many nerds like me who’d be like, yeah, of course I’ll have that. Why wouldn’t I want an employee handbook from the future?

What does that even mean? But give it to me.

HOST: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after this message. Each month, in partnership with our friends at Kogan Page, the Big Eye Book Club features books by industry thought leaders. Our featured book for January is Organic Social Media, How to Build Flourishing Online Communities by Jenny Fowler.

The book provides practical guidance on enhancing brand growth through effective social engagement, with strategies for selecting the right platforms, streamlining approval processes, and building an organic presence aligned with organizational objectives. You’ll also find advice on social content planning.

Goal setting and resource management as an in clear focus listener You can save 25 on a print or electronic version of this month’s featured book using the exclusive promo code Big eye 25 the code is valid for all kogan page titles Including free orders and their free paperback and ebook bundle offer Shipping is always free to the us and uk when you order directly from kogan page And it supports the authors as well.

So to order your copy of organic social media, go to kogan page.com. Welcome back. I’m talking with Julian Bleecker, artist technologist educator originator of design fiction, and the founder of Near Future Laboratory. Well, today I’m wearing a pin that came with one of my purchases from the near future laboratory shop, which reads, imagine harder.

Now, one of your recent publications is entitled, it’s time to imagine harder. In what kinds of ways do you think folks working in marketing and advertising roles could benefit from integrating design fiction practice into their existing creative or research processes?

Julian: A bunch of different ways. I’ll focus on two.

One is sort of in the research context. And then the other one is in the creative communications context. So advertising and, and marketing and, and I guess PR to a certain extent. So in the research context, I’ve been on enough, like kind of consumer studies, Boards, you know, just kind of unrelated to anything professional just every once again, someone calls you up and says like, Hey, do you drink whiskey?

If you do, we’ll pay you 200 for a couple hours of your time to answer some questions and be part of this research. Okay, cool. That sounds good. Or come into your house and have a look around and poke into your cupboards. Interesting. Cool. Okay. Let’s, I’m curious what’s going on here. And in the research context, I’ve experienced.

Projects with clients where they just wanted a little bit more for the thing to be pondered over. So they wanted something other than, and I think this happens, typically this will happen, especially if it’s, let’s say a brand marketing consultancy, let’s get it, let’s, let’s ask humans what they think, or this packaging.

You know, like let’s let them open it up and go through it and sort of see, you know, all the technical issues, like how does it open? Well, all that kind of stuff. Beautiful. I love this kind of stuff because it is in this way you’re trying to establish and manage from a product design perspective, a future.

It might seem very flat footed. It might not seem futuristic, but that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to help guide and inform your decision making with very analytic kind of considerations. I mean, you know, maybe there’s some qualitative stuff there. Like does this. Tagline, make you feel happy or anxious or, you know, whatever it’s like, okay, that’s useful stuff.

I also wonder about in a broader sense, creating design fiction artifacts that become the things around which maybe longer term decisions are made. So this isn’t a decision that you’re going to make because in six months you got to get printing done. For the advertising campaign, or you got to get the packaging finalized.

This is more like broader senses of direction that, that maybe an organization might go and creating the actual artifacts that represent these worlds. And even creating things that are not so didactic as like, you know, here’s our new phone, which one do you prefer? Or this one has these features and this, and this one has these other features, which do you prefer?

It’s more broad than that. So, you know, in my mind, it’s like, it’s actually. Creating something like we mentioned the magazine or the product catalog in order to provide a little bit more set dressing around the world in which people might be exhibiting. So richly experiential forms of doing research. So it’s not just the object, but it’s like you can almost production design the entire environment in which people are and ask them to consider this or kind of immerse them into the effectively.

Send them off into this world that you’re imagining in order to do these kinds of richer, more experiential assessments and help, you know, again, back to this idea of helping to guide and inform and shape decision making. The other aspect is a project that we did with ADM, so Archer Daniels Midlands companies.

Supermarket to the world, I think it’s still their tagline. I remember that when I was a kid. It was much more of a longitudinal design fiction project that involved their chief scientists. You know, this is amazing. So yeah, the chief scientist for nutmeat oil sounds very specialized. It’s like their nutmeat oils and everything.

You’re kind of like, Oh, okay. So it’s a big deal. I get it. And so the question that was being asked was what are food futures? And ADM wanted a way to represent that they were thinking deeply about these things. We’re not just an old line kind of brand that just grinds out ingredients. We do a lot of research work.

We’ve invested heavily in trying to Think about the things that are going to feed the world and how we’re going to actually do that. And so in this case, we actually produce food products from these futures that were grounded. So these are things that the scientists were talking about and we just sort of translated because you know, because they’re scientists, they’re talking at a level that doesn’t always communicate directly to a consumer.

So you have to translate it into like, what is that? In some kind of future, what does it look like? And how is it packaged? How is it represented? So actually creating these artifacts, these food artifacts, and some of which they actually produced. And the idea was that, you know, they were edible and they weren’t horrible.

You know, it wasn’t like a bar of pure protein or something like that. It helped them and it helped their, actually their sales channels to represent to their major clients. It’s like, yeah, you know, it was the more effective form of schwag. You know, it wasn’t just like, here’s a ball cap and here’s a hoodie.

It was like, here’s some things that we’re actually thinking about. We’re not actually the final manufacturer, but here’s some things that are kind of in and around the world, you Nabisco and the world that you’re in could represent. And it was like, you know, actual packaged things. And then we also worked with them to create a vending machine.

And the idea with the vending machine was that this is something that provided a context in which other people could experience it. You know, like, there it is. What is this thing? What are these products? And it takes you into that future. The design fiction is the materialization of possible futures in a particular form.

And this became that sort of container for it.

HOST: Julian, what’s next for you and the near future

Julian: laboratory? Now, I refer to it as like evolution three. So evolution one was, you know, my blog back when people used to that. Evolution two was a bit like a bunch of guys who kind of hung out and occasionally did a project together, um, enjoyed each other’s company to the degree that we were, you know, we all sort of felt that this is genre.

Of doing design work futures work was compelling and was effective and it was fun, you know, so I sometimes refer to this as like the dad band phase like when you do is hanging out in a garage and you’re kind of playing instruments together and occasionally doing a little show at the corner bar. Or playing at someone’s bar mitzvah or whatever it might be.

And evolution three to me is where I just wanted to put more energy into it at a company previously. And I, and I sold that company and then I was sort of like, well, what do I want to do next? And I didn’t want to leave this behind. It felt like too important. And once I felt into the value of it, not just as an approach to doing business, not just as a design approach that maybe I could corner a little bit of the, you know, very small part of the marketplace, I felt like it was really.

It was much more significant than that because there was this undergirding sense that I felt very strongly that was able to bring imagination back to the table. And I had gone through, you know, like a phase that I think very many people went to where there’s a lot of imagination out there that was being brought to things like the evolution in technology and the internet.

And at some point, imagination kind of got beaten down. It’s almost as if structure, the other sides, part of it was like, okay, cool, we figured out how this internet thing is going to work best. It’s going to be very much transactional. It’s going to be an opportunity for connecting people in marketplaces.

And that’s all cool. Like I’m not anti that. I mean, I had a company that was a commercial company and it sold a product and it made very good use of the internet. In that way, what I felt like is like we need another sort of ignite, a kind of renaissance of creativity to find the ways in which we can evolve and develop and imagine into the next iteration of more habitable world.

And I, I felt that was such a passion that is like, okay, I need to put more energy, I need to put 150% into what near future laboratory is. And, and that’s the project now. And I recognize that can happen. I think that can happen most effectively, particularly that sensibility, if Neo4j Laboratory is more like a traveling music festival than just, you know, like a small studio with a few people kind of working earnestly in a very kind of modernist mode of, okay, let’s get clients.

Cool. That’s okay. What are our billings? Like, we’re trying to angel run rate a week going for not that that stuff isn’t important and not that I don’t focus on it. But before I focus on that, it’s almost like proselytizing. It’s time to imagine harder. And here’s a way in which I can do it. And one of the ways in which you can proselytize, I guess, and not a very religious guy, you kind of get the word out of there.

He’s like, you open it up. So let’s open the doors up. Let’s create a community of people who are around this. And the mantra is like, amplify, coordinate, and collaborate. Across practices across institutions and organizations and enterprises and across the different agencies that otherwise might want to in a modernist mode stay very siloed, stay very kind of like close lipped.

You mustn’t look over here because that’s our special sauce. It’s like, no, no, no, no. That’s not the way it’s going to work. This has to feel like. Glastonbury or Coachella, everyone’s got to be able to come in and feel the energy and vibe and the potential and the possibility. That’s essentially the future of it.

Starting with community, starting with growing people’s sense of being able to participate in whatever near future laboratory means to them, and then continue to evolve and develop and introduce and draw the practice into the very large organizations that are the ones that we’re going to need, that are going to have to help us create a more habitable world because, you know, I can’t do it alone.

And I don’t think any, you know, small individual studio can do it alone. We can create the vibe and essentially create the genre to use the music form, create the genre. Now everyone’s got to really feel into it and everyone’s got to enjoy it. And it’s like, Oh, you know what? I’m going to try to create my own remix of what you guys did.

Beautiful. Great. That’s what we want. We want this to grow. Julian, if

HOST: InClearFocus listeners would like to learn more about you and your work with Near Future Laboratory, maybe participate in a general seminar, what’s the best way to do so?

Julian: The first best way is to read the books, and so that’s why I created the big box of design fiction, which includes three of the main books that I think give one a really good sense of what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it.

So it’s the manual design fiction, It’s Time to Imagine Harder, which I. referred to as the reader’s guide to the manual design fiction. So why design fiction? And then TBD Catalog, which I think is probably the best example of what design fiction looks, feels, and kind of senses like. And then there’s, I refer to the manual design fiction, it’s like the world’s first book to come with community.

So Everyone who gets the book gets an invitation to join the near future laboratory discord, which is that place where there are now a couple thousand people who are engaged in the topic and trying to figure out how to engage more. That’s also where, you know, a lot of the announcements kind of happen when we do a general seminar, or now we’ve got a couple of super seminars.

Teed up, which is a much more in depth introduction to particular topic. So those are a couple, those are a couple of points of entry. And one thing I think is important to add in the spirit of what I’m trying to do and what I’m trying to build and grow. We never want anyone to be unable to access the vibe because of their financial circumstances.

So we always say like, if that’s you. If you’re like a student or if you’re in a position where it’s like, Hey, look, I’m between jobs and really trying to figure things out. I can’t quite afford this stuff. Then I just say like, I got an inbox. Just let me know what’s going on. Let’s talk and we’ll figure it out.

And so I think those are other ways in which, you know, a variety of tiers. I do expect people who are kind of professionals in the practice who essentially have jobs. It’s like, look, there’s value in this material. There’s value in it. And I expect value back from, you know, what we poured in. It’s like, it’s a very simple exchange.

And just because it sort of falls in the category, it’s like, well, it’s just knowledge. Can’t you just send me the PDF? It’s like, no, no, no, no. That’s not how this game works. Nothing’s for free. You got to bring something to it. And that might mean participating actively in what we’re doing and what we’re trying to build and trying to grow in some fashion that we can talk about how you can do that.

The money that you would spend to get the big box of design fiction is probably less than you spend on coffee in a week. So put it in those terms. So let us know that this is meaningful to you and that it’s unique and it’s something that isn’t meant to just be kind of given away because you have to feel enough into it.

And if you don’t, if you don’t feel into it, that’s also cool. That’s fine, then it’s not for you.

HOST: And we’ll also include links to the Near Future Laboratory website, the podcast, and the shop where folks can find your design fiction books and related products to help us all imagine harder. Julian, thank you very much for being our guest on In Clear

Julian: Focus.

It’s my pleasure. Super fun talking to you.

HOST: Thanks again to my guest, Julian Bleecker, design fiction pioneer and the founder of Near Future Laboratory. As always, you’ll find a full transcript of our conversation along with links to the resources we discussed on the Big Eye website, bigeyeagency. com. Just select podcast.

Thanks for listening to In Clear Focus, produced by Big Eye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.