trend & style guides

CASE STUDY No. 1

Trend direction + retail briefs — Pulsar Products

Creative direction

trend direction

product development

Creative direction

trend direction

Creative direction

Categories
Stationery, planners, journals, impulse

SEASON
Autumn / Winter 2027

Scope
6–8 trend directions

The result

Every season, a retailer's product team faces the same challenge: how do you take a cultural moment and turn it into something a customer will actually buy? The trend and style guide is the answer to that question — when it's done right. For Autumn/Winter 2026, I developed a comprehensive trend and style guide for Pulsar Products covering 6–8 trend directions across stationery, planners, journals, and impulse categories. The guide was presented to retail partners and used internally by our design team as the creative foundation for the entire season's product line. Style guides can be shown upon request.

"A trend guide is only as good as what it produces. This one produced a full season of product that sold."

overview

The process

The guide became the creative foundation for the full A/W 2026 stationery and impulse line. Our internal design team used it to develop covers for planners, journals and product across the season — every product in the range traced back to a direction in this guide. Retail customers across our partner network reviewed the presentation and placed purchases for their stores. This is examining one trend, Modern Bauhaus Dopamine. See more results below. For more information on style guide development - it can be provided upon request.

Building a trend guide that a product team can actually design from requires more than pulling images off Pinterest. My process starts with the established sources — WGSN, trend forecasting reports, industry publications — and then layers in the ground-level research that reports don't capture: what I saw at trade shows throughout the year, what's shifting on store floors seasonally, what's gaining traction on social media in real time. By the time I present a trend direction, I've stress-tested it against what's feasible, what's moving at retail, and what the customer is ready for — not just what's aesthetically compelling.