This Is Us, Generation Flat.

Allow me to move away from my recent posts on people, products and ideas that I enjoy and post something more critical of our current situation.

We are the new generation. A generation that I have come to term as Generation Flat. Why is that so? Let me use this quote I found which best describes Generation Flat:

Everything is on the surface; there is no deep meaning to anything, including history.

This is the era of consumerism, probably the richest man has ever been in terms of money. We are bombarded left, right, front, center and back with information, with advertisements on a daily basis. Nowhere is safe, not even the sanctity of our own bedrooms. With the internet on hand, we as consumers have been more accessible than ever before. Most households in the world already have TV and radio, soon enough computers as well. And I stress on the “s” in computers, as most homes will have more than 1 computer.

How many of us have more than 20 bookmarks or websites we visit on a daily basis?  What we have here is sensory overload, it’s like you can’t even stay focused on one thing then another comes along. There’s too much things and you can’t take the time to appreciate and understand the context of whatever that thing is better.

Globalization has opened up many things, in terms of economy, travel and cultural exchange. This essentially is a good thing, but like most good things, it needs to come to an end. What we see now in different mediums that we devour on the daily is a bastardization of culture. It’s all mished and mashed without any clear direction. The whole hipster movement best describes that, a subculture that borrows from different eras and subcultures with complete disregard for the history behind it. This is why we are Generation Flat, we have no depth at all, we have nothing and we are moving towards the end of creativity, if it isn’t already over.

Look at the whole retro perspective, sure, critics would say that trends come and go and come again in full circle. Doesn’t that sound like just an excuse? Since the mid-90s, what we have done is to simply re-hash the old without acknowledging the past. We don’t encourage kids to dig into the roots of whatever they are getting into, they are simply jumping on and moving on the next.

That’s what we have become now, simply another face, another market. We are happy to be this way because of the feeling of stability. Face it, who wants to be unstable and unsure? We are this way because we are afraid, we have lived lives that are too comfortable.

And sure, while there are still people out there that are making something new and creative, they just get lost in the information struggle. They don’t stay in people’s radar long enough to make an impact. Maybe another reason is that because there are too many people in this world. I think we sometimes get lost in what is really creative, it’s almost like we have been brainwashed and while we think it’s creative, don’t you doubt yourself sometimes and think to yourself, “is this really creative? or is this just one of those things that the media has done to make you think it’s creative when really it’s not.” How can you discern that?

And yes, yes, I am guilty of this as well. I belong to this generation. Call me a hypocirte, call me whatever, but this is my opinion and you are free to share it as well. Really I’m not even sure if I make sense to you, I hope I did.

The Adidas Consortium aZX Project Primer: Superstar 35th & Adicolor

In one of the most exciting Adidas promotions since the Adicolor series in 2006. Last August 08, 2008, during the opening day of the Olympics, Adidas released the 1st batch of sneakers for the aZX Project.

What is the aZX Project? The aZX Project is a series of 24 adidas ZX shoes worked by 24 of the top Adidas Consortium stores. Adidas assigned each letter of the alphabet to a corresponding Consortium store, all are represent except for, ZX.

The ZX stands for the ZX series which the stores will use as their canvas for their collaboration with Adidas. There hasn’t been an event with so much hype since 2-3 years ago, first with the Adidas Superstar 35th Anniversary and the year after, the Adicolor series.

For the 35th anniversary of an Adidas classic, they collaborated with different sources of inspiration to form 5 groups of sneakers: the Consortium series, Anniversary series, Music series, Expressions series and Cities series. The Consortium series is similar the aZX project in terms of working with top Consortium stores such as Union, FootPatrol, Undefeated and Neighborhood, which become one of the most sought after shoe of this series.

The Cities series represented the top cities where Adidas has had deep cultural impact, while for the Expressions series, they collaborated artists from different background. The Expressions series also gave us the first glimpse of the Adicolor series and the new campaign branched out from the Adicolor version of the Superstar, where-in included in the package are 5 different colored laces which allows the user to customize the shoe to his favorite colored lace.

The Adicolor series which primarily draws from the shoe customizing culture during the 80’s. Kids wanted their kicks to look fresh and would paint or draw on their sneakers to have that sense of individuality. Since that time, sneaker customizers have taken customizing to another level, using different materials, paints and methods, even selling them at high prices, almost like art pieces.

For the Adicolor series, Adidas used 6 primary colors: white, red, blue, yellow, green, pink and black. And from that selection, took 6 different models and worked with different designed to put their own touch into it, with the limitation being they had to work along their color group. Another series not shown in the chart is the white series, which consisted of jackets, caps and shoes along with painting materials which allows the buyer to customize the item with their own preferred colorway. Other things that are customizable in this series aren’t visible much to the eye, some shoes allow the changing the color of the 3 Adidas stripes, sticking additional buttons/logos to the shoe, or being able to change the color of the tongue and laces.

So for this year, the buzz is around the aZX Consortium Project. The first batch, which consists of letters A-G, has already been released. The chart below shows the preview and I will talk more about this series in the next post.