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.

A graphic archive of over 600 original paper napkins collected from bars, cafés and restaurants across Spain by photographer Felipe Hernández over more than a decade. Through typography, illustrations...

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...