The Fluid Generation

Personal identity is an increasingly fluid thing. What’s behind this generation of identity shape-shifters? The internet. Digital-everything. The ability to see new ways to live forever scrolling past on the screen in front of you. The acceleration of everything may be hard to understand and follow, but it’s easy to feel. So we started to wonder: what does that mean for brand identity — something that’s typically sacred and fixed?

Personal identity is a work-in-progress. Yet we tend to look at audiences in a way that’s static and flat. Here’s how we think we need to evolve.

Earlier this year, Zeus designer Francine Thompson spent a weekend in Boston at a conference centered around Black Futurism. “I felt in between in so many ways.”

Businesses want to create efficiencies in operations, but what they end up doing is creating rigidity that makes them less flexible and capable of evolution. We think it’s time to look to fluid systems in nature — and one creature in particular is a world-class example of putting fluidity into operation.

How do you create work that’s reflective, respective, and inclusive of individual fans?

A generation declares freedom. We explored the intersections of identity and fluidity to understand how Gen Z forms and expresses their identities.