It could be called 'Predesign'
and its a COMPLETELY NEW THING.
Predesign is not about trying to become a 'Designer Brand',
and it's not about showing your work to the press or buyers.
They are not our market. They are not our audience.
Our products are not mediated through the press, and they do not sell in the shops.
Think instead: We are the stage BEFORE design.
Our ideas, our products are released upon designers & design brands.
They are our audience & market, and no-one else.
We work in secret. Nobody knows we are there,
but we change the world through our influence.
It is not about thinking faster, or thinking more imaginatively.
It's about simply thinking further forward, or thinking further ahead than the Designer.
About pre-empting the present before they design it, make it, sell it.
It's a whole new area of fashion creativity dedicated solely to feeding the really big fashion brands,
giving them the new shapes, new ideas, new themes, new images & effects,
a year ahead of the current design season.
Not predicted, mocked-up or simulated, but the actual real thing, the finished article.
There is now a side to creativity that faces the press or media, and a side which faces the designer.
In the past, this side facing the designer was simply called 'inspiration', 'prediction' or 'trend':
a vague area of possibilities and past styles available for reinterpretation & re-use.
But now we the Predesigners are the new inspiration.
We instead face the Designers, and we show them the future to choose from 'component-like'.
Words by Professor Julian Roberts