DION
CHANG
FORWARD THINKING WORDS:
No, he’s not a designer. In fact, the last time he designed a piece of clothing was during a brief fling with the Durban Tech back in the ‘80s. He has also had an affair with makeup and styling. But Dion Chang has, admittedly, fallen out of love with fashion.
His new company, Flux Trends, is slowly beginning to gain
momentum in business circles across the country. The type of projects that Flux gets involved in include consulting to advertising agencies and giving directional presentations to upper management. Ooooh. Upper management. It’s a far cry from the catwalk with which he’s usually associated. When Chang tells people that he works in trends, they almost immediately assume he’s in fashion trends, but the truth is that Flux looks at everything from politics to the state of the economy, popular culture, youth, social media and advertising. Flux specialises in the spaces between, looking particularly at the interconnectivity of all things. They simply join the dots. The Flux philosophy understands that there is just too much information out there to gain a good enough perspective in order to decide which course to follow. Especially in business, this is a big problem. The way that most people deal with information overload is by simply switching off. Flux aims to edit down the barrage of information and repackage it into bite-sized chunks. To do this, the company makes use of Chang’s abundant network of key specialists, employing them as pillars of knowledge 54
one small seed
loren phillips
IMAGE:
chris saunders
in their various fields. Flux aligns its thinking with thought leaders who have an exceptional vantage point in their given industry. Last year, Flux published the inaugural 2009 Flux Trend Review and the company is now in the formative stages of the 2010 edition. The 2010 Flux Trend Review will cover various topics from the Human Resource drain to a chapter that looks beyond the 2010 Soccer World Cup and what it all means to South Africa. A world away from what colours to wear this season, Dahling. An iconic South African himself, Chang also has some wellformulated ideas on the distinction between trends and icons. “Whereas trends are transient by nature, an icon fulfills a certain need and goes even further to transcend that expectation, pointing the way forward. Look at Mandela, or the iPod, for example. Both can be viewed as iconic, one political and the other in terms of design. Both filled a very human need, be it freedom and love for one another, or simple and stylish efficiency. Both completely exceeded all expectations and pointed the way forward, one in civic life and the other in technological design. Both gained mass appeal as well as respect and were endorsed by mass culture as setting the compass to how things should be.” In this way, Chang himself exercises his iconic status – leading the way for the rest to follow. Ignore him at your peril.