Why did LA’s graffiti artists target these downtown luxury apartments?
In the heart of Los Angeles stands three skyscrapers once destined to house luxury condominiums, a five-star hotel, a shopping mall, and more. Now, it’s completely abandoned and covered in graffiti. What happened? Since the year 2019, a trio of massive skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles have been left completely...
Current in Design
Lyle’s Golden Syrup changes logo for first time since 1883
In an effort to appeal to a younger market, Lyle’s Golden Syrup has changed its logo for the first time in nearly 150 years. It’s a pivot toward flat design, a trend that continues to dominate labelling, packaging, and marketing across many industries. If you’ve ever bought Lyle’s Golden...
Are these drive-in parks the ‘petrol stations’ of the future?
A new kind of refueling station has popped up in the Danish town of Sønderborg. Rather than filling up on petrol, the facility has been designed to allow drivers to ‘recharge their minds’ alongside their electric vehicles. Most petrol stations only look good when captured on a retro film camera...
Samsung reimagines the London Underground map in new campaign
For the first time in 90 years, London’s public transport map has been redesigned. The circular layout was put forward by Samsung in promotion of a new feature on its Galaxy S24 smartphone. Although the vast majority of Londoners will have at least partially memorised the city’s public transport map,...
Google’s Lumiere generates realistic AI videos from text prompts
AI video is fast turning from uncanny valley to genuinely realistic, and Google’s Lumiere is the most sophisticated text-to-video generator we’ve seen to date. Evoking a sense of awe – and a hefty dose of unease – Google recently exhibited how sophisticated AI video has become in just a few...
Can wooden wind towers make renewable energy even cleaner?
Eradicating carbon-intensive materials from the production of wind turbines, like steel, Swedish start-up Modvion is creating easy-to-assemble alternatives from wood. Is this the way forward? Solar maybe the current undisputed king of the renewable energy farmyard, but wind is a close runner-up. There’s a global consensus that any chance of achieving...
14-year-old develops new bar of soap to treat melanoma
Heman Bekele may have found a strikingly simple answer to skin cancer treatment: a bar of soap. Despite extortionate amounts of fundraising and tireless research, a cancer cure still often feels like a pipedream. But as far as cancer research goes, it's long been suspected that the answer to one of humanity’s biggest killers could lie anywhere, or be discovered by anyone. This week, a 14-year-old from Virginia is the latest...
How structures made from oyster shells can help prevent coastal erosion
Reef Design Lab based in Melbourne uses locally sourced oyster shells mixed with concrete to build structures that reduce coastal erosion and support marine wildlife. Along the shore of Port Phillip Bay in Australia, large dome-shaped modules sit submerged just below the water’s surface. Though they resemble large sand dollars at first, these structures have been man-made by the Reef Design Lab in Melbourne. They were constructed using a blend...
The ‘Future Library’ is humanity’s sustainable literary time capsule
In 2014, a project was set underway to plant one thousand tree saplings in Norway. Their destiny? To be turned into books a century from now, as part of the Future Library project. When you imagine what the world will look like one hundred years from now, you probably don’t think about which books humans will be reading. Perhaps after reading this, you will. Deep in Norway’s Nordmarka forest sits...
The benefits and challenges of pedestrianizing Central London
Around the world, people are expressing the desire to live in a ‘walkable city’. Let’s look at some of the challenges of pedestrianizing inner-city streets, with London as an example, as well as some of the challenges to doing so. Whether or not a city is walkable greatly impacts the quality of life of those who live there. While many cities in the US are lagging behind on this feature,...
