What’s inspiring our next wave of insight: human-made, mythic, and meaningful
5 cultural currents shaping how we think at Dazed Studio.
It’s been tough to know where to look in 2025.
Estimates predict that in late 2025, the average person is consuming around 100GB of data every day. To put that in layman's terms, that's 33 hours of HD Netflix streaming, over 2,300 hours of standard-quality music streaming, or 60-200 hours of video calling.
It’s having an impact on our brains - we’re overwhelmed, inundated. “Meta-stress” as a phenomenon (stress about being stressed by our environment) has surfaced as a direct result of constant connectivity and notifications, especially among young adults - even resulting in a 30% rise in attention disorders (such as ADHD diagnoses) amongst adults in recent years.
This week, Dazed Studio is bringing insight and inspiration to you through personal recommendations. This is our counter to the clutter: where intuition, curiosity, and creative chaos lead the way.
Human-made > AI made; finding beauty in the imperfect
“I've been rewatching Alan Yentob's Imagine series it’s nostalgic, pre-algorithm, and I love the lo-fi picture quality. The content still stands. Also William Kentridge’s ‘Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot’ — it’s human-made, fun, and you can feel the hand.”
- Lilah Francis, Associate Creative Director
Youth culture is craving the tactile, the human, the unpolished. After years of frictionless feeds and generative perfection, “human-made” feels like a new luxury.
The brand strategy:
Reveal your process through storyboards, behind-the-scenes, handwritten notes, and sketches. Authenticity now means visible authorship.
Folklore, history & the mystical
“I feel like we are in a culture where we don’t know what to trust anymore. That’s probably led me more into my obsession with the mystical, the magical, and things that sit outside the contemporary discourse of current events and more towards the historical, ancient, speculative, pseudo-religious category. I take more comfort and interest in attending online lectures at Treadwell’s Books about mythology, Welsh folklore and witchcraft.”
- Bunny Kinney, Executive Creative Director
Amidst socio-political inundation and hearing arguments crafted from logic, mysticism feels like a form of resistance, a refusal to accept algorithmic logic as total truth. Folklore, mythology, and the “grey areas” of belief reconnect us to intuition and imagination.
The brand strategy:
For brands, this signals a shift toward symbolic storytelling, mythic design, and emotional depth over merely data-led certainties. Create campaigns that feel contemplative rather than declarative — ambiguity can invite emotional engagement.
Big ideas in small doses
“I’ve been reading these microscopic books - there’s one called Gaia and Philosophy, and the other is called The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. They are really big thoughts but very small - it really helps my ADHD mind to grasp really difficult concepts.”
- Louise Grosjean, Junior Art Director
We’re drawn to micro-forms that make macro ideas digestible, from slim philosophical paperbacks to the looping textures of ambient music. This is culture as sensory minimalism: calming, repeatable, grounding.
The brand strategy:
Brands can embrace sensory minimalism by delivering deep, resonant ideas through calming, digestible formats that honour attention as a limited and emotional resource in our contemporary digital landscape.
Peer to peer platforms and moral media
“In terms of platforms, I think Novara Media is the one sticking out for me atm. It's quite refreshing to hear a news source that won't sell out to right-wing grift. Novara reminds me that decentralisation still matters; crowdfunded, not invested, and still with moral clarity.”
- Harvey Wood, Junior Designer
“I’m really enjoying following The Progressive International’s work - it’s inspiring to see activism and young political leaders advocate for and achieve change, and I love that Art of Internationalism aims to make art communal. I’ve also found Forensic Architecture’s investigative reports so relevant and important - potentially now more than ever, given the amount of disinformation online.”
- Mina Polo, Junior Strategist
Within a media landscape that is marred by disinformation, trust is a new premium. Audiences increasingly gravitate towards independent, values-led media and peer-powered platforms.
The brand strategy:
Brands, too, can learn to speak with conviction; take a clear ethical stance and show how you live by it, transparency is creative currency.
Recalibration and slow consumption
“Ambient music is huge for me right now, it's the only way I can consume something - I still get the satisfaction of listening to great music but I don’t get inundated with words. The Malibu album is a good example of this.”
- Louise Grosjean, Junior Art Director
“Pre-algorithm culture had space to breathe.”
- Lilah Francis, Associate Creative Director
We’re seeing a collective craving for deceleration; the next wave of creative energy isn’t about pace; it’s about taste and attunement.
The brand strategy:
For brands, this means building less around reach and more around resonance. Create opportunities for learning as aesthetic experience. Brands could host bite-size lectures, 10-minute listening sessions, or ambient learning playlists.
Simplicity and a desire for quality
“I keep thinking about Perfect Days, Wim Wenders’ quiet film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner, something that’s really stayed with me, which is a rarity these days. Honouring your work and doing one thing really well I believe is inspiring. The film captures a kind of quiet resistance to modern culture’s obsession with optimisation, speed and self-importance. The film is simple, honest, and beautifully crafted with a great soundtrack. I think that it mirrors a wider cultural yearning for slowness, texture, and authenticity in an over-designed world"
- Izzy Farmiloe, Group Brand Strategy Director
The brand strategy:
What if the most radical thing a brand could do was to say less and mean more? Strip away the noise. Focus on substance, craft, and continuity over hype. Build equity through behaviour, design, and real-world presence, not just messaging.
The takeaway for brands
Culture is recalibrating from overload to intentionality. Youth are craving humanity over AI automation; symbolism over strategy; curation over noise.
To connect in this new landscape, brands must trade attention-hacking for attunement, building presence, not pressure.
