Miriam Rayman works as a consultant with agencies such as Mother, DDB, and The Future Laboratory on brands such as Nokia, Coke Zero, Thorntons, Absolut, VW, PayPal and Energizer. She is a trends spotter, talks to people and keeps her antenna tuned. She knows why you are doing something before you know yourself. We learnt that Designer Breakfasts is part of a trend, or two, to be exact. It made me feel proud to be at the beginning of one and fascinated to learn more. Thirty designers who came to our Christmas Breakfast thought so too.

Small design business owners recognised Miriam’s first observation: that it’s difficult to see the difference between work and leisure. Her first trend described the ‘shape shifters’: that’s the generation whose attitudes towards work and leisure are blurred, as is the space between being on and offline (kids go shopping, not internet shopping), public and private (social networking sites), real and virtual (farming or pet care online), real and virtual (uploading your life in real time - Twitter, Fotolog if you can’t be bothered to write, Bambuser). She calls this the slash/slash or five-channel generation – you have lots of identities now. Over 45s are struggling with two or three but kids brains are built differently now. Women have always multi-tasked but this is different. We are seeing the emergence of people who are needing individual gratification, constant stimulation and risk-taking.

Shape shifters values are convergence, the fluid use of space, high mobility and searching for an augmented environment. Baroness Greenfield (brain guru) says they are homo hedonists, craving stimulation and taking more risks. New technologies are bringing 3D animations to our screens and if you type in a code you can get this on your computer too. The i-phone is the ultimate shape shifter gadget for plugging into networks. You need few possessions, provided you have the net.

This is a friction-free life led at high velocity. Traditional boundaries are blurred and you crave stimulation.” Is this your future?” asked Miriam.

The audience was totally captivated as she went on to tell us about the ‘minivists’, a second trend. Once again I realised that I was one of these too, a mini activist – forming a residents’ association with my neighbours in frustration with local councils’ failures to look after our inner city environment. Another example: the Women’s Institute is experiencing a surge of popularity as young people want to connect face-to-face in real, not virtual, life. Minivists are not protesters, they are disillusioned, they ask questions and seek authenticity.

“Is global corporate identity dead?” asked Miriam. Starbucks in Seattle have removed the branding from their cafés and instead commission local, honest and authentic fit-outs. We’ve reached a crisis point in trust, we are angry, discontented and disillusioned, Miriam reminded us. To create trust in our worlds we want to do it ourselves. Trends are towards philanthropic retail and growing your own in allotments – Tesco will provide the allotments. Minivist activists can download stickers to put on things you don’t like. People contribute time free to their local store and help bring the prices down. Mini economies are being established with local currencies to keep trade local: Lewes and Brixton are well-known examples. Barter cards, which have been on the fringe for a long time, are growing as active currency.

Minivist values are trust, altruism and being real.

Occupying the centre ground is a virtual farm in Turin where you grow your own vegetables virtually, in real time, and then have them delivered for real. Hub Culture is another example – a global network of hubs with its own digital currency, the ven, Their MD Michelle Vanderparys was in the audience. She explained how you can buy ven, just as you would dollars or euros, or earn it by contributing something of social value. You can use it to trade knowledge and items or services at its online and its real stores, or to pay people or donate to charitable causes. It has two shops in the UK, one around the corner from our breakfast venue in Kingly Court, London.

Michelle said there was a trend towards paying for knowledge in small bites (such as 5p for reading this article). There is residual value to be realised from knowledge transfer. The audience came up with several examples showing this potential, eg Getty trading Flicker images. Designer Breakfasts think the idea of micro payments was very interesting – perhaps one to explore at a future breakfast.

Miriam mentioned crowdspring.com who sell off-the-shelf logos. Javier Garcia talked about ideasbounty.com where people put up ideas and only get paid for what is used. Great, as long as your idea isn’t pinched, people thought, although many designers take that risk and if you’re young it’s a way to progress and search out opportunities, get noticed and make contacts. Miriam says it’s building up the ‘me’ brand.

The conversation turned to examples of sharing resources and collaborating. Helen Atkinson mentioned a printer who advertises print runs; as long as you like the same paper stock, you run your job up with someone else’s and share the costs. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Facebook page for gardeners to help find free space for growing vegetables, is another example. Jonathan Creswell told us how Walkers are offering a percentage of profits for new flavour ideas.

Mike Abrahams asked if mega-corporations were taking advantage of people’s ideas. Miriam thought open pitching could work like slash/slash.

Tom Harle suggested there might be a backlash against Starbucks’ authentic local fit-outs as people got wise and Miriam thought the key was transparency. Chris Burridge said it exemplified a shift that big brands were making towards social corporate responsibility and new ways of franchising in which people could do what they want within corporate/value guidelines.

To see Myriam’s presentation go to http://www.slideshare.net/miriamrayman/blurring-the-boundaries-and-keepi...