Designer Drugs

There’s a chemical anticipation that builds in the weeks before FUSE. The twitchy attributes become more accentuated. We find ourselves panning through the agenda PDF thinking, Wow this is Pretty Darn Fantastic. It is as if the name FUSE describes the fire and sparks leading up to an explosion of ideas, perspectives, and nuances of knowledge.

If you’ve made your way over to FUSE before or are in our industry, you can see what is coming and know how to appropriately prepare yourself for the chemical transformation that will consume you and leave you craving more. And If you’re new to this party, keep a strong grip on yourself – Cliché as it sounds, design is a drug, and we’re all riding off its high at FUSE.

The symptoms of the Design drug taking over include:

- Mouth gaping open until it’s bone dry

- Inability or pure resistance to blink due to classic fomo

- Quietly cursing to yourself as you leave a room, in awe and wonderment of what you’ve just experienced
- Preoccupying thoughts to a moderate obsession on where to get your next Design hit

Aside from the socially awkward behaviors above, Design is by no means a debilitating drug. Good Design can, and should make life better for you and others who interacts with it. The Design drug will stimulate parts of your brain which may seem dormant during the other 300+ days of the year spent in conference rooms under fluorescent lights.

Capsule has had the opportunity to spend nearly a decade reporting on this annual event. We’ve spent that decade building up an immunity to the Design drug handed out so freely at FUSE. Yet, we still have moments of inspiration, surprise or a slight giggle to oneself.

There are a few sessions where I know this Design drug will be ingested in heavy dosage. Here are the sessions where our team will be wide-eyed:

Neil Blumenthal, Warby Parker, The Proven Value of Design
Cliff Kuang, Fast Company, Designing the 21st-Century User Experience
Nikki Mamuric, Sprout Innovation Co, How to Reach Female’s in Age of #MeToo
Dr Amanda Parkes, Manufacture NY, The Augmented Body
Jennifer Daniel, Google, Designing for Digital Communication
Jenni Friedman, HelloFresh, Selling Food from the Internet

If you’re not feeling it from the TrendWalk on Monday, just find a good seat on Tuesday and let the intravenous needle slip into your vein of consciousness. For those of us coming back again, we’re just chasing the dragon.

Thank you and I hope we connect at FUSE 2018.

Aaron Keller
Founding Partner
Capsule Design
Author, The Physics of Brand
Blogger, FEI, FUSE and a few others