N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Designing the Future with Bespoke #DESIGNINGCHANGE 36
We want to inspire people to create their own futures. – Rune Toldam
1 Foresight is the act or power of foreseeing.
And in every case where there is no exchange of heat—no friction—the future behaves exactly like the past. The future exists only when there is heat, when you create friction, motion, action, you create change over time. The future is created where there is motion. Interesting? This idea comes from the Book of Futures by Bespoke, a Copenhagenbased Strategic Foresight1 and Experience Design studio, in short—futures design. I journeyed there to speak with founders Nicolas Arroyo and Rune Toldam. Bespoke is phenomenal in many ways. Successful in business without putting business acumen first. The two friends met at Kaospilot, a hybrid design and business school, and soon after started the company. Just five short years later, their team, now twelve, engages with global clients and institutions. They are exploring future of learning with IKEA, planning digital transformation with Electrolux in Sweden, and researching future landscapes of beauty with the Pola Orbis Group in Japan, to name a few. The team also teaches Futures Design courses in Japan, Denmark, Dubai, Brazil, and Spain, and occasionally gives lectures at schools such as Kaospilot, Hyper Island, and the University of Copenhagen and Gothenburg. In between projects they also engage in artistic collaborations. What’s more, being eager dreamers and curious cats, but also a purposedriven, systemic team, Nicolas and Rune
entirely reinvented the futures design domain from scratch by themselves. Curiosity is like quicksilver. It creates a non-linear, expansive mindset. And Bespoke has it in person. We had two conversations—one over Skype (always a bit awkward) and one in person (‘You have to come to our studio to feel the vibe’). In that meeting we shared a lot unconsciously, through being here and now. The meeting struck a chord and gave me a feeling of what makes this collective genuine and successful. Throughout the two conversations Nicolas and Rune always came back to the same ‘non-negotiables’, key insights, and methods that serve them and their clients as a compass. Their decisionmaking ethos showed a lot of integrity, like their rule of defining the life model before business model. Curiosity with Integrity. Virtuously guiding these two opposing energies and mindsets is at the core of Bespoke and of futures design: ‘Being a future designer means becoming curious explorer, but it also means designing systemically, with purpose. Initiating action today to create a desirable tomorrow.’ I came to the meeting from Stockholm where N WIND met with global leaders in design at Doberman. Many of the same words were reappearing—curiosity, designing better for planet and people—but I discovered a surprising new paradigm at Bespoke.