By Alex Butenko

This month I was tasked with briefing back some insights from FutureFest – a fascinating event, which gathers some of the planet’s most radical thinkers, makers and performers, who together create an immersive experience of what the world might be like in decades to come.

 There were 5 ideas in branding and design that particularly jumped out at me and I’ve chosen to report here…

Scentee

Scentee is a smell adaptor device for iPhones. Professor Adrian Cheok showed us how his program works with a variety of apps and can (potentially) deliver any scent straight to your phone. Cheok and Mixed Reality Lab explored the idea of ‘Everysense Everywhere Communication’, which focuses on creating and sharing digital senses through taste and smell. Scentee have already collaborated with the American meat company Oscar Mayer to create a bacon-scented alarm clock, allowing the brand to connect with their customers in a quirky and sensorial way. The system of using smell in branding isn’t new, it was actually introduced in the 60’s. However, when combined with our portable devices in the social-media driven digital world, it creates new exciting possibilities.

Water Sommeliers

Food futurologist, Dr Morgaine Gayne, was asked what would be the ‘future of drinks’. There wasn’t much of a pause before she said “water” and added that she had recently spent a reasonable amount of time in Coca Cola, where the water brand teams are busier than ever.

 As people are becoming more concerned with the shortage and quality of water, the new reverence around water and ice is starting to develop. This leads us to the new type of drink professionals – water sommeliers. Imagine a classic sommelier but removing the traditional wine and using water instead. America’s only water sommelier, Martin Riese is the General Manager at Ray’s & Stark Bar in LA, where the water menu is 44 pages long. The idea of water sommeliers might sound unusual or unnecessary, but with water prices increasing people are becoming more obsessed with the quality of their water. $12.64 for a bottle of water might not seem that huge for us in a few years time, as that’s the average price of the water on Ray’s & Stark’s menu, which might make having a water sommelier by your side very handy.

Savoury Tea

Another big food trend Dr Gayne talked about was using vegetable flavours and how it’s the next big thing in drinks and food. Dr Gayne’s innovation project based on incorporating vegetable flavours into tea particularly interested me. The idea of having a pot of beetroot and cabbage tea with your Sunday brunch was fascinating, but bizarre. Yet, you never know, you might enjoy it, as Dr Gayne said: “When we think about the future of food we often think ‘We’ll never eat that’ however, that doesn’t mean that we won’t”. Although I’d give it at least a couple of years before I decide whether to take milk with my Broccoli Cilantro cuppa.

Reactable

Music journalist and writer Adam Harper shared his thoughts on the question, ‘What is the future of music?’. His talk introduced the concept ‘musicing’, which can be described as the interaction between music and what you experience from being a part of it, whether it’s as a creator or a listener. Reactable is an innovative electronic music instrument that brings this idea to life. The instrument has been designed so it uses a tangible interface, where the players control the system by manipulating real objects. The unique graphic interface allows you to play and experiment with sounds creating unique music. There is no doubt that having an education in classical music would help when creating music. However, Reactable allows everyone to enjoy the ‘musicing’ experience.

Vitamin-Infused Champagne

The ‘health’ trend that’s infiltrating all aspects of our lives wasn’t forgotten at FutureFest. Mr Lyan took this to a different level. What if, we made the ‘bad for you’ more like the ‘good for you’? Yes, I am talking about making alcohol better for you, infusing it with something beneficial for your health. Looking at a utopian 2050, Mr Lyan suggested that instead of promoting the culture of hatred against alcohol, which causes duty taxes to go up every year and makes it so hard for the smaller businesses in this industry to do their job, we should educate people about alcohol consumption. What if the government promoted healthy drinking, advising people to ‘have your five drinks a week’. Those five drinks will then have to be somehow healthy for us and the award-winning mixologist Mr Lyan worked out what these drinks might be. To my mind, his best creation was Blueberry and Elderflower Vitamin Enriched Champagne. The drink is made from carbonated base vinegar, which perfectly preserves the vitamins. Having seen low-calorie light drinks storm the markets, I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind-of drink would make it to bars in a few years.