Curious
A positive guide to serious change. Curious is our substack exploring ideas, insights, and prompts across culture, creativity, and change. Each piece is written to help brand leaders cut through the noise, think long-term, and move from reacting to shaping.
Available Now! The Mindset for 2026
Available now! The nouvôt futures 2026 Mindset Deck helps brand leaders cut through cultural noise, reframe challenges, and plan with pragmatic optimism. Includes a curated cultural calendar to turn foresight into action.
Coming Soon: nouvôt futures 2026 mindset
Feeling overwhelmed by the present but still expected to plan ahead? The nouvôt futures 2026 Mindset Deck helps leaders cut through the noise with clarity, optimism, and actionable signals for the year ahead. Coming soon!
From Burnout to Trust to Tension
From creator burnout to the erosion of trust, the cultural signals are clear: the old extractive models are breaking down. Here are three shifts shaping how brands can build real, lasting value in 2025.
Stranger than Friction
Friction is neither the silver bullet nor the enemy, just as an easy, frictionless future might not be the utopia we can make it sound like. Intentionality. It’s what we crave.
Beyond the Bait
The question for brand leaders is pretty simple: will you be an early adopter and lead the shift away from addiction-based engagement, or a laggard clinging to a failing model until it completely collapses?
Unknown Unknowns
“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know…there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”
What About Trust?
What comes to mind when you hear about declining levels of institutional trust? Is it numbness? Overwhelm? Paralysis? A general sense of “well obviously, but what exactly can I do about it?”
Grace Stratton on Building Inclusive Change
“Do something small everyday that is aligned with how you want the world to be.”
A Guide to Being Solution-Oriented
Be less shit and more solution-oriented and we can start to right some wrongs. Think big by starting small. And it’s never too late to start.
The problems aren’t for posting, they’re the work to be done.
The World We Were Born Into No Longer Exists
What aspects of our present world do you want to no longer exist in the decades to come? What alternative can you build towards? What needs to be true today to create that future?
The New Rules of Engagement
When existence feels chaotic, creating smaller circles of trust becomes a means for survival. Control through community. Agency through back-channel belonging.
The Future isn't Inevitable, it's Intentional
When 70% of young people report feeling worse after spending time online, that's no longer a niche experience. That's pretty massive design failure.
Creative Upheaval & The New Rules of Relevance in 2025
The Lyst Index Q1 2025 got it right in saying “One word can describe how the industry started 2025: turbulence.”
Soft Power 2.0
It sounds like the opening line of a terrible dad joke, but what do a what do a scholar, a pope and a musician with a piano on his back tell us about Power changing? Or better yet, what does a 90s geopolitical concept have to do developing your brand and content strategy in 2025?
The End of Escapism
There’s real opportunity in designing systems people can connect and benefit from within, instead of just consuming from. That can look like circular supply chains, mutual aid models, or shared ownership platforms.
It will feel messy. It will take time. And best to start small. But it’s something we can build - together.
What the Dark Mode missed
“Everything starts to look like everything else—not because of shared meaning, but because the system demands it.” Kyle Chayka, Filterworld
The Power of Quiet Influence
After over a decade of desperately seeking virality, we’ve reached a point where there are entire agencies promising it by design. To which I ask: if anyone can buy virality, why bother?
Curiosity as a Strategy
What if the most powerful strategy isn't having all the answers, but asking better questions?
In Conversation with Orsola de Castro
This industry has absolutely zero intention of being disrupted. I used to say the same at the start of fashion revolution. That's disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. I have completely changed my tune and my tone.
Now I say that the only way is to construct.
Literacy is in Decline. Here’s how we Revive it.
Seeing such a data set can feel shocking and overwhelming, but change is a constant and we can always turn things around. That’s not to say it can be reversed overnight, afterall, the decline itself was over the course of a decade. It will take some time and effort. But we also can’t sit back and wait for policies or schemes to come into effect. We can’t let literacy become a luxury.
Case in Point
Real-world examples of change in action. Where strategic thinking meets creative doing — stories of how brands turn uncertainty into opportunity.
Get in Touch
Change starts with a conversation. Let’s talk about what’s next for you.