Szilveszter Makó’s surreal portraits have become nearly as recognisable as the celebrities he photographs. Our US editor-at-large considers what subjects bring to a signature style – and what happens ...

One of the more surreal things about getting older is that design made in my lifetime has slowly become design history. Seeing this happen has inevitably begun to affect the way I think about collecti...

Everyone wants to know who will win New York City’s grocery store RFP – the more interesting question is what public identities should actually do.

Everyone wants to know who will win New York City’s grocery store RFP – the more interesting question is what public identities should actually do.

I’ve always had a soft spot for design made by non-designers. When I tell people this, they usually think I’m talking about punk flyers, or the kind of sweetly naive drawings of fruit that one might f...

Great stories from the world’s independent publishers

Online, images are increasingly treated less as singular works than as pieces of a broader aesthetic puzzle – each with a distinct label. But what gets lost when creativity is compressed into searchab...

Despite enjoying the look of stamps, I’ve avoided becoming a philatelist for the same reason I’ve avoided getting too into record collecting: I really do not need a reason to be buying more stuff, esp...

Without designers writing about their own work, design is easy to misunderstand. Writing helps designers work through what they think – and makes that thinking visible to others.

Without designers writing about their own work, design is easy to misunderstand. Writing helps designers work through what they think – and makes that thinking visible to others.

Today’s collection is a set of Ottoman-era data visualizations from Cerîde-i Adliyye (The Journal of Justice), a Ministry of Justice publication printed in Turkey in the mid-1920s.

As AI and digital tools make polish effortless, analogue imperfection has taken on new cultural weight. But what does “analogue” actually mean when most things are made, shared, and consumed digitally...

As AI and digital tools make polish effortless, analogue imperfection has taken on new cultural weight. But what does “analogue” actually mean when most things are made, shared, and consumed digitally...

Podcast Episode · Works But Makes Noises · 01/26/2026 · 1h 5m

Today’s collection is a series of moon-themed ads from 1969-ish. I found these via my local library book sale, which is put on twice a year by a group of chatty octogenarians (plus one sprightly fifty...

The question of what counts as a “studio” – and what you call one – reveals the industry’s ongoing tension around identity, ambition and scale.

Explore the histories of Los Angeles's iconic Sunset Boulevard through the photographs of artist Ed Ruscha.

Explore the histories of Los Angeles's iconic Sunset Boulevard through the photographs of artist Ed Ruscha.

Custom type has become branding’s newest obsession, promising control, originality, and ownership – but its rapid rise is reshaping the culture and economy of type design itself.

YouTube video by Air

Designer-led platforms promise to let you make money from unused concepts. But as off-the-shelf brand identities become the norm, designers risk losing the equity, authorship, and evolution that come ...

Today’s collection is an archive of materials from the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a short-lived British youth movement founded in 1920 by John Hargrave, a Utopian polymath described as an “author, car...