Trend reports, like trends themselves, can be a waste of time or they can shed some light on the cultural climate. David Report, produced by Swedish designer and strategist David Carlson, always seems pretty right-on to us. His most recent publication profiles 5 key design trends, most of which have been in heavy rotation on Apartment Therapy for a while now...

The report splits up the current landscape of design into 5 categories:

• Cooltural: stresses regionalism, authenticity, and uniqueness
• Responsibiz: humanistic, stresses sustainability and ethical production
• Sensuctive: poetic design that appeals to the senses and engages our emotions
• Breaking Boundaries: an approach that blends things that seem to be polar opposites
• Rationaissance: functional, iconic, participates in a dialogue with modernist history

A few concrete examples:

The report goes into each of these trends in greater depth, examining how they relate to political and cultural sea changes. To read the full report, click here.