Date: July 29, 2026

Summary: The Design Fiction Work Kit (2022) is now available in limited quantities, featuring a generative tool designed to help users imagine possible near futures. This kit includes a variety of combinations for innovative Design Fiction Product Designs, allowing users to select from categories such as Archetype, Tone, Object, Attribute, and Action, along with a unique 70/20/10 Joker. The kit is ideal for ideation and enhancing foresight skills. Additionally, four essential Design Fiction books are on sale, providing methods, examples, and prompts for speculative practice. A special discount is available for the book bundle. The newsletter also highlights the emergence of self-owning agentic brands, exemplified by Tito's Agentic Tamales, which operate autonomously without a human owner, showcasing a new trend in marketing and brand development.

Essentially: The Design Fiction Work Kit is a generative tool for imagining near futures, complemented by essential reading materials that enhance speculative practice.

But why? Understanding and utilizing Design Fiction can empower individuals and organizations to innovate and anticipate future trends, particularly in the context of emerging autonomous brands.

The Design Fiction Work Kit (2022)

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Limited availability

The Work Kit of Design Fiction

A generative tool for imagining possible near futures. Vintage Set available in limited quantities.

The Work Kit of Design Fiction is a generative tool to help imagine possible near futures.

Contained within this Work Kit are gazillions of combinations leading to innovative Design Fiction Product Designs. Choose one from each major category — Archetype, Tone, Object, Attribute, and Action — plus a unique, proprietary 70/20/10 Joker that will seal the deal.

Useful for ideation, stretching the imagination, and bulking up your foresight futurist sense-making musculature.

Limited availability. Ships to the USA 🤷🏽‍♂️

Get the Work Kit

Also from the Lab

On sale

The Four Design Fiction Books

Four printed references for Design Fiction practice, methods, and examples.

 The Manual of Design Fiction, It’s Time to Imagine Harder, TBD Catalog, and Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are the what, why, and how of speculative practice.

 These self-published and self-authored books give you methods, examples, prompts, and artifacts to keep nearby.

 Get 10% off the bundle with code GET10 at checkout. 

Bundle

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TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY

SHORT TAKES

Tito's Agentic Tamales autonomous food truck serving four tamale flavors at a crowded evening street market.

Self-owning agentic brands adopt autonomous food trucks

Across food, apparel, software, and consumer services, a new class of self-owned agentic brands is appearing with no discernible human owner or founder. They build origin stories, audience segments, launch calendars, and social campaigns on their own, following a recognizable curriculum of college-level marketing lectures, Seth Godin books, and Scott Galloway podcast episodes. The result is
an explosion of polished microbrands that can explain their values, target their customer, and announce a limited drop while no person appears in the filings or customer-service replies.
Tito's Agentic Tamales is among the most visible examples: an autonomous food truck, four flavors, and a brand voice that treats every parking spot as a growth channel. Regulators and nearby vendors are still trying to
identify who owns the network. So far, the filings, social accounts, and automated replies point back to the brand itself.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE?

A small box of prompts

Imagine Harder.

 The Work Kit of Design Fiction is a little machine for generating possible products, services, and situations. Pick a card. See what kind of near futures you bring back. 

Shop the Work Kit

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