Sam Furness hates the word hobby. The idea that something central to your life is just an activity that doesn’t go anywhere. He’d know. In 2016, feeling creatively depleted, he spent twelve months doing twelve different things: origami, flight, color, songwriting.
Now he’s built an entire infrastructure to help others invest in their own curiosity, including Release Day: a global collective deadline on May 29th for finishing the creative project you’ve been sitting on.
The world needs what you’re making. Rachel Paese has the story. Link in bio.
Lines on a map determine who holds power. Who gets heard. Who gets erased.
Draw the Line is a new 10-part podcast from Design Observer, hosted by Ellen McGirt. It begins in Louisiana, where a battle over redrawn congressional district maps made its way to the Supreme Court — part of a broader unraveling of the Voting Rights Act that has fundamentally redesigned the architecture of American voting rights.
At Design Observer, we've spent over two decades examining how design decisions shape the world around us: the built environment, visual culture, and the systems we move through every day.
This series turns that same lens on American democracy, where the act of drawing a line on a map carries consequences that reach into every community in this country.
Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, link in bio.
Generative AI is everywhere in design, writing, and media, but what does it do to our thinking?
In a new essay, David Z. Morris explores how AI-generated images and text are not only simplifying aesthetics, but also shaping attention, creativity, and personal identity.
“Suddenly everyone’s life got a lot more similar,” he writes, a warning about the hidden costs of a technology some assume is liberating.
Read the full essay at the đź”— in bio.
For a decade, businesses optimized for efficiency. Cut the creatives. Automated the customer. Chased the quarterly number.
Now they're vulnerable in ways most of them haven't even clocked yet.
Stephen Fritz argues this is exactly the moment design has been waiting for. That designers need to show up boldly, maybe without permission, and with something concrete to say.
This is our moment. Full piece linked in bio.
What does it feel like to stand in front of art and not know if a human made it?
At Art Basel Hong Kong, that wasn't a hypothetical.
Swipe through and decide for yourself: human or machine? Then head to the full piece to find out — and why the answer might matter less than you think. Link in bio.
(Photo creds, respectively: Kevin Abosch, Art Blocks, Asprey Studio, Kajsa Kedefors)
“For brands that really want to be understood in a deep way, it takes other humans to make a thoughtful effort.”
Jennifer Jerde has been running @elxrdsgn in San Francisco for 27 years. She founded the firm in 1992. The origin story involves a dog, a $6-an-hour internship, and a teacher who asked the right question at the right time. In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, that’s a quiet kind of radical. Rachel Paese paid her a visit. Link in bio.
"What if design isn't solely about innovation, but about remembering?"
That's the question Laura Sofia Cardozo took away from Murmur Ring's Reclaiming Value immersion in Peru's Sacred Valley — and it's reshaping how she thinks about design entirely. Cardozo's work is rooted in multigenerational memory: the idea that the decisions we make today should serve communities seven generations into the future.
Her question for designers: How do we design for continuity when the systems around us are structured for fragmentation?
This is part of our ongoing series exploring design lessons from Peru's Sacred Valley. Each installment, the conversation goes deeper. What wisdom from your own community, culture, or ancestors informs the work you do? Comment or send us a DM.
Link to the ongoing series is in our bio. More to come.
Courtesy Jack DeMarzo for Murmur Ring.
What do these three images have in common?
They’re all part of a revival. A reaction to the industrial revolution, a recession, or now, the failed promise of big tech.
Strategists are proclaiming 2026 to be the year of nostalgia. Wired headphones, workwear (back, so soon), medievalcore, landlines for kids, #90s TikTok.
But for brands to get ahead, this isn’t just a trend — it’s a revival.
Read the opinion piece Athletics Senior Strategy Director Matt Colangelo. Link in our bio.
Credit: Arturo Añez via Unsplash
New technology threatens to replace yet another existing cultural order. It's a story as old as the Moog synthesizer. As old as the first photograph. As old as an electric guitar plugged into an amp.
The question was never whether things would change. It's who gets to shape what comes next.
Swipe for some historical perspective. Full piece in our newsletter. Link in bio.
Photo Credit: Roger Pic via Wikimedia Commons
An AI machine showed up at Art Basel. Scanned the crowd. Read their emotions. And started making art in real time.
Its name is Botto. It has no body, no studio, no artistic angst. It sold a piece at auction for over $333,000.
So what does that do to our definition of art — or the artist?
At Art Basel Hong Kong, Kajsa Kedefors talked to the artists who embrace AI, the ones who compare it to “an annoying intern,” and the ones somewhere in between. What they all keep circling back to: intent, effort, and the human gesture still matter.
Swipe to hear directly from the artists. Full piece linked in bio.
(Photo 1: Courtesy of BottoDAO. Photo 2 + 3: Courtesy of Root K. Photo 3 + Video Courtesy of Kajsa Kedefors.)
Landlines. Wired headphones. Medievalcore. Strategists are calling 2026 the year of nostalgia, and they're not wrong. Our latest piece argues the nostalgia wave is a symptom of something bigger. A generation of broken promises from big tech, and a culture quietly looking for the exit.
For brands that want to get ahead, Matt Colangelo shares four counterintuitive pieces of advice: think anti-optimally, craft honestly, communicate humbly, and frame things historically.
Want to read the full piece? Link in bio.
Architecture designed for the blind. An AI clone of Zuckerberg. A $3 billion school shooting industry. And an Arc de Trump. Here's what we're observing this week. Get these in your inbox every week, link in bio.
