The new decade will be dominated by populist politics, an AI revolution, an ageing population, an ever-deepening climate crisis and more. How on earth will brands and their agencies design their way through it?

Let’s find out.

2020. TURNER RETURNS

As calls for non-gendered assistants rightfully grow, an intern in Apple’s internal design studio suggests the actor known as Turner, formerly known as Kathleen Turner, as the voice of Siri. With their vocal range hovering indeterminately between female and male, Turner’s voice becomes the instant Siri default – but cunningly, their agent has negotiated a non-exclusive and Turner’s momsy-ballsy tones soon grace Google Assistant and Alexa too. What’s more, Turner’s unexpected fluency in Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Hindi – learned when their acting career was in apparent nosedive – ensure they become the non-gendered voice of choice for every virtual assistant on the planet within the year.

2021. COPY THAT

Fed up with the copywriting ineptitude of multiple agencies, a Bay Area tech firm creates a joke predictive text engine called Copy That – the clichéd copy creator. The tool goes viral. Within six weeks they release an update with amusing brand-build and hard-sell settings. Within another six weeks they release a second update with punning mode, bro-attitude mode, caring-sharing mode, manifesto mode and easy-to-translate mode – every technique a decent copywriter needs. By the end of the year, copywriters worldwide are setting the Copy That tool to work on all kinds of briefs and going to the pub, old-school style. By the following summer, Copy That is rumoured to have written all of D&AD’s Black Pencil winners.