Five thoughts on the future of creativity from Forward Festival 2025

Last week, Berlin transformed into a creative epicentre as Forward Festival 2025 took over the city with ideas, debate, and bold visions for the future of design. Among the crowd was saintnicks’ Design Director, Luke Jones, who dove headfirst into a weekend of boundary-pushing talks, experimental workshops, and immersive side events.

The festival’s theme — “Turning ideas into action” — set the tone for international leaders to share how creativity can move beyond the conceptual and into real-world impact. Couldn’t be there? Luke distils the festival’s buzz into five sharp takeaways that show where creative agencies and design studios should focus in 2026.

Friction over perfection

Luna Maurer talked about the principle of friction, and how we can use it to reframe our perception of quality through tension rather than polish.

If everything is perfectly smooth, nothing anchors the memory. So, incorporating “snags” into creative work, such as the visible seam, the deliberate pause, or the textured edge, invites emotion and makes meaning stick. After all, no real human experience is ever perfectly smooth.

It’s important to note that friction, in this sense, is not necessarily about conflict though.

As Maurer puts it: “All senses, elements and emotions play a role: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, air, earth, temperature, agitation, passion, joy, sadness… With movement comes friction… Friction is an essential ingredient that makes up our humanness and sparks human connection. Friction is a lively, intrinsic experience.”

In essence, humans feel; machines compute.

AI is another brush in the box

AI is, of course, incredibly powerful and fast evolving, but it’s only as good as the human guiding it. Its value is in enhancing the work and opening new doors for exploration while still fitting the maker’s workflow and style.

The goal isn’t to make work that is generic or machine-like, but to express a clear, recognisable style more efficiently. That means setting simple guidelines and being open; sharing prompts, experiments, and even mistakes with the wider creative community to learn, refine and develop AI solutions together.

Above all, every output still needs a human pass: edit, crop, pace, and choose. Judgment and taste remain the craft. You can read more about this here.

Immerse together, end to end

Great work rejects the relay race of “strategy then design.” Teams immerse together from day one—strategy, design, motion, copy, and tech operating as a single unit.

The flow becomes immersion → strategy → visual/verbal → delivery, with creatives present at every step.

Connection is the force-multiplier: staying humanly connected and openly sharing ideas matters. Nothing beats getting in a room with like-minded people, as different perspectives on the same subject push thinking forward and sharpen decisions. Keep the windows open: show work early, invite artists in, run open crits, and treat the studio like a living lab — test, break, learn, iterate.

Balance business needs with a strong idea and “keep it fucking fun”. When context is shared, choices get braver and more distinctive.

Quality comes from clarity

Great creative work all starts with a single organising idea, strong enough to stretch across brand, campaigns, content and digital.

That idea becomes a system: type rules, colour logic, motion behaviours, layout patterns, iconography, tone. A good system doesn’t strangle creativity; it multiplies it. It provides coherence while leaving room for expression.

Craft is then the proof. With a clear idea and system in place, teams can elevate their creativity to new levels:

Push tools and mix them
Use motion and form to make intangibles feel tangible
Prototype under real conditions (tiny screens, harsh light, fast scrolls, low bandwidth) so the system holds in the wild.

Quality here isn’t preciousness; it’s disciplined clarity that keeps the idea simple and the brand distinct, giving creative teams the freedom to push the boundaries.

Keep the crayons out

Treat today’s tools like paint, protect time for wandering, and let curiosity lead.

Small, regular experiments can compound over time: feeding into live work or even prompting a brief themselves. Explore colour with kids-table freedom, play with 3D to make abstract ideas feel touchable, and explore motion to reveal how a system breathes.

Reach out to new collaborators too. Working with artists and open sharing of experiments feeds the loop — new learnings, new ideas, new briefs.

When a studio is genuinely exploring, audiences feel it, and clients get braver.

These themes form a loop, not five silos.

What it means to be human is central to creativity.
AI accelerates exploration while staying inside a distinctive style and leaving room for friction.
Collaboration keeps people connected and ideas sharper.
Quality comes from clarity, where one strong idea can create a system that survives reality.
Play keeps the whole machine alive.

Looking to push your brand further? We bring creative energy, strategic focus, and a drive to make ideas real. Get in touch and let’s start collaborating today.