Antony ButtsAward-winning futurist and videographerLet’s talk

Design fiction.

Products, contracts, campaigns and everyday objects from a possible future. Make the world tangible enough to question, explore and act on.

Discuss a design fiction

Your country needs your gran.

Care Home Troopers: a recruitment campaign from a world where pensioners go to war.

Design-fiction recruitment poster: “Let them grow old.” Marion, 74, a combat drone operator in body armour and leg exoskeletons, points at the viewer in a ruined town, with robot pack mules and a drone behind her. “I’d rather it was me than my grandson.”

Let them grow old.

Marion, 74, combat drone operator: “I’d rather it was me than my grandson.”

Find
CHT-01
Object
Recruitment poster
Date
Not yet
Design-fiction letter on a kitchen table, beside glasses, a pill organiser and an old family photo: “Your mandatory over-70 service assessment”, from the Joint Service Assessment Unit and the British Army, dated 17 May 2041. Mr Colin Ward, 76, is eligible with adaptations as a front-line combat drone operator. Declining means no state-funded residential care and a reduced State Pension.

Your mandatory over-70 service assessment.

Colin Ward, 76: eligible with adaptations. If he declines, he loses state-funded care and part of his State Pension.

Find
CHT-06
Object
Assessment letter
Date
17 May 2041

Design fiction from Care Home Troopers, made with AI image tools and directed by Antony Butts. Not real campaigns or government documents.

Explore the campaign and its world
Balance of Power title over a city skyline at night, with the question: How will you prepare us for the future?

Balance of Power

I turned a policy document into an award-winning political thriller.

An ambitious energy minister wants to become president. Every adviser has an agenda. Your choices shape the future—and getting them wrong shows why the decisions matter.

Conceived, written and directed by Antony Butts, with &Ranj for USEF. Public Engagement winner, Energy Institute Awards 2019.

Explore the game

What would you bring back from that future?

A recruitment letter reveals who has a choice. A contract reveals who holds the power. An interface reveals what someone can do—and what they have to pay for.

I research and develop the world, then make the artefacts and experiences through which people encounter it. We can begin with your existing scenarios or find an unfamiliar possibility together.

Build a world with your teamExplore strategic games

Bring a possibility to life.

A campaign, a product, a service, a film or something from everyday life in another world.

Discuss your project