The mood
One of our plans for 2023 from our annual Strategy was to get back out into the world. The whole 2021-2023 pandemic era had limited us from in-situ contextual research and ethnography in China; from running projects in other countries; and had normalised the framing of life via Zoom. Running an asynchronous, largely online business had become seamless and there were upsides; but physicality is a fundamental for understanding people, places, and cultures. It's also key to relationship and rapport between people, and critically to the generation of a certain type of thinking that doesn't so readily emerge through screens. Our May has allowed us to get back into the world - traveling to locations across China and Asia. It was also a cruel reminder of those earlier times, with a second Covid wave finally hitting China and slowing things down. As summer warmed up, we got outside for BBQs and an internal photography project on the topic of 'Truth.'
The work
We got out into the world. We were blessed to work with incredible clients and partners on a foresight project about 'The Future of Food', we went to lower tier cities to understand sports, and we went to South Korea to understand kids' style evolutions.