Predicting the future without a crystal ball

I received an interesting document recently; it was a trend report from this year's Milan Furniture Fair by the Research, Trends and Strategy team at design company Seymour Powell.

While I'm not one for horoscopes or palm readers, I do find myself strangely fascinated by the people whose job it is to predict future trends. The ones who take take the cultural temperature and exclaim: THIS is what you will be thinking and doing and wearing and buying in the months to come.

The two women behind the report are Mariel Brown and Karen Rosenkranz. I imagine this glamorous duo working in a sleek, large-windowed office with mind-blowing mood boards and spinning-around chairs, shouting buzz words at each other.

These zeitgeisty pearls are then used in marketing and branding campaigns for the company's consumer clients. Here's what they had to say about design right now:

Now I guess we just wait a year to see if they were right...