Gung Ho Trend Report 2025
Hypercycle is a 2025 handbook from Gung Ho and Geraldine Wharry for creatives, brands, and cultural strategists.
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It argues that trend-chasing privileges short-term virality over cultural value and prescribes slow forecasting, community-centered cultural strategy, speculative design, and new ethics-and-metrics (e.g., 'trend emissions'). The 88-slide report synthesizes five years of research, 11 expert interviews, and actionable practices for fashion, media, and creative teams
Report Gung Ho
- Slide 1: Hypercycle: Finding Authenticity in a Post Trend World
- Slide 2: Slowing down when everything is speeding up
- Slide 3: A handbook, not a forecast: seed, audience, goal
- Slide 4: Bias, method, and a two-part learning journey
- Slide 5: We fell for it: the hype of chasing trends
- Slide 6: 'Our future is not a hype'
- Slide 7: Sense Check: speculative approaches to trends
- Slide 8: Author and core team
- Slide 9: Contributors: expert voices and advisors
- Slide 10: Note from Gung Ho: why we wrote Hypercycle
- Slide 11: Contents: chapter index
- Slide 12: Gung Ho Diagnostic: The Pain (Chapter One)
- Slide 13: Our quest for predicting the future and time travel
- Slide 14: What trends mean and don't mean
- Slide 15: Hypercycle: working definition
- Slide 16: What is the future of trends?
- Slide 17: It's not performative futurity: get off the hypercycle
- Slide 18: Trendcasting versus trend forecasting
- Slide 19: The hypercycle has a high casualty rate
- Slide 20: Trends based on out-of-touch virality and the fake internet
- Slide 21: The trends are fake, the users are fake
- Slide 22: Cecile Poignant: strategic futurist on slowdown
- Slide 23: Obsession with the new drives unsustainable trend cycles
- Slide 24: Rachel Arthur: sustainability strategist and writer
- Slide 25: Messy methodology: the lack of rigorous futures practice
- Slide 26: Slow it down: embrace slow media
- Slide 27: Early brand pilots indicate degrowth can be viable
- Slide 28: Un-confusing ourselves: reconnecting with pace layers
- Slide 29: Design shapes and can foreclose possible futures
- Slide 30: Fashion as a pill for short-term satisfaction
- Slide 31: We consume creativity: we don't appreciate it anymore
- Slide 32: Internet microculture vs monoculture
- Slide 33: Brand authenticity against the backdrop of trendcasting
- Slide 34: Anush Mirbegian: Creative Director & Strategist
- Slide 35: How are these trends created?
- Slide 36: What does the ever-quickening lifecycle of trends tell us?
- Slide 37: Seán Boyle: Unitmode co-founder & sustainability lead
- Slide 38: Saher Sidhom: Founder & CEO, Hackmasters
- Slide 39: Our internal compass and clocks are confused
- Slide 40: Diffusion of innovation theory is no longer fit for purpose
- Slide 41: Polycrisis is flattening time and accelerating change
- Slide 42: Internet & social media timeline (1972–2023)
- Slide 43: What is the value of trends today?
- Slide 44: Mobbie Nazir: why trends are your friend
- Slide 45: Nayara Moia: trends as connection and purpose
- Slide 46: We are myth-makers: trends as cultural myth-making
- Slide 47: Trends as myth-making for cultural production
- Slide 48: Where are the visionaries?
- Slide 49: Prescription: the medicine
- Slide 50: Matt Klein: be intentional about feedback
- Slide 51: Futuring 1.0: Rethinking the fundamentals
- Slide 52: Cultural uncertainty as a creative strategy
- Slide 53: Five practical steps to embrace uncertainty
- Slide 54: 21 lessons for navigating the 21st century
- Slide 55: The Forecast Diamond: techniques for foresight
- Slide 56: Cultural strategy: future trends for and with community
- Slide 57: Culture is the client
- Slide 58: The planet is the client
- Slide 59: Felicia Pennant: Season Zine founder and storyteller
- Slide 60: Commit to community: the creator economy
- Slide 61: Saher Sidhom: climate collapse is the priority
- Slide 62: Community‑focused cultural strategy: three takeaways
- Slide 63: Whose future is this?: the ethical side
- Slide 64: Nayara Moia: who is willing to bet on innovation?
- Slide 65: Donella Meadows on systems and humanity
- Slide 66: Embedding ethics in our work: key takeaways
- Slide 67: Cultural theory and media literacy
- Slide 68: Quantified culture: AI expands cultural signal tracking
- Slide 69: Section header introducing 'Futuring 2.0': a shift toward slower
- Slide 70: Slow forecasting: reclaiming space for reflection
- Slide 71: Anush Mirbegian: Creative Director & Strategist
- Slide 72: Implementing slow forecasting: two basic steps
- Slide 73: Futuring 2.0: worldbuilding for cultural producers
- Slide 74: World building for cultural producers and mythmakers
- Slide 75: A slow approach to viral trends
- Slide 76: New metrics: Noah Raford on data limits
- Slide 77: New metrics: visualization of alternative indicators
- Slide 78: Rachel Arthur: Sustainability strategist and writer
- Slide 79: Speculative design for challenging problems that seem unfixable
- Slide 80: The goal of integrating speculative design: multipronged outcomes
- Slide 81: Ally Kingston: Creative Lead, Purpose Disruptors
- Slide 82: Three anchors for speculative futures: Altered, Plural, Emotive
- Slide 83: Speculative futures and future artefacts: examples
- Slide 84: Applied futurism: why fashion needs structural foresight
- Slide 85: The future will be shaped by optimists: Kevin Kelly (TED)
- Slide 86: Key takeaways: practical actions to move off trends
- Slide 87: Conclusion: imagination activism and reconnecting with purpose
- Slide 88: Thank you: a handbook by Geraldine Wharry
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