Design

How do I exorcise a nightmare client and ensure they don't rise from the dead?

With Halloween almost upon us, we've picked a Dear Boom missive that reads like the opening of a horror film. A creative writes: "I've been working with a client for nearly two years. Every job s...

Creative Boom · EN

Henry Chalfant's legendary New York subway graffiti photos pull into Amsterdam at life size

Amsterdam's Straat offers a masterclass in the tricky balancing act of bringing graffiti out of the streets and into the museum: its new show of Henry Chalfant's sublime documentation of New York's na...

Creative Boom · EN

Christmas adverts 2026: Scrooges, Muppets and a BFG with the sniffles – the best festive ads so far

Ghosts of Christmas past, old school pals and a friendly giant with a cold: we're rounding up 2026's biggest festive ads as they land. Then we'll ask some industry experts to pick the winners, the los...

Creative Boom · EN

This celebrity ad shows what a difference it makes when you don't use CGI

We're so starved of practical effects; even a spot promoting financial services can be magical in the right hands. Ads for financial services are not something I go out of my way to watch. I tend to b...

Creative Boom · EN

Swiss Typefaces crafts a warmer, friendlier custom font for Swiss Post

Creating a typeface for Switzerland's postal service took three years, and it came with many challenges. When it comes to custom typefaces, designers are often faced with a dilemma. When clients have...

Creative Boom · EN

Wildwood: a big leap forward for animation that you need to see on a big screen

Laika's handmade epic blends stop motion and CG like nothing before it, and it deserves to win at the box office. Last week I walked into a sold-out cinema screening, and let me tell you: it's been a...

Creative Boom · EN

How&How launches a new name, strategy, visual identity and website

Six years after launching in the midst of the pandemic, the London and LA studio is taking its own advice and turning up its truth. Rebranding a company is a lot of pressure. Multiply that tenfold whe...

Creative Boom · EN

Affinity finally comes to iPad, and illustrators get a free all-in-one app

It's official. Canva has launched Affinity for iPad today. The single app doesn't just make your life easier – the core tools won't cost you a penny, either. If you've ever sketched in one app, turned...

Creative Boom · EN

Best of the Week: Mirrored Type, Foil Slipcases, and Print

Our curated roundup of the best of the week covers custom grotesks, gold-foiled monographs, and print craft from ISO week 2026-W44. Real craft doesn't need hype. Across the studio releases we studied ...

Abduzeedo · EN

Bristol Dockyards: Inside HOW+HOW's New Branding

HOW+HOW gave Bristol Dockyards a louder name and a collage system from its own history, turning one ship visit into a full cultural destination. The first thing you notice is refusal. Where a maritime...

Abduzeedo · EN

andstudio Unveils the Werf Rotterdam Identity

andstudio built the Werf Rotterdam identity on a shipyard tilt of 20 degrees, so menus, bills, and glasses read as work in progress. Werf is a bar and bistro in Rotterdam, housed in a fully operationa...

Abduzeedo · EN

Brand Identity: Waabi Autonomous Trucking by Manual

Manual crafts a grounded brand identity for physical AI trucking pioneer Waabi, pairing geometric wordmark livery with open-road photography. Autonomous vehicle companies almost always reach for dark-...

Abduzeedo · EN

Typography: 3D Embossed Terrazzo by John Kappa

John Kappa explores dimensional typography in Cinema 4D, crafting subtle embossed letterforms directly within polished terrazzo materials. Most digital letterforms rely on crisp fill colors or high-co...

Abduzeedo · EN

Branding: The White & Case rebrand by Uncommon

Uncommon gives the White & Case rebrand its energy: carved Roman letterforms, kinetic serif headlines, and electric Catalyst Blue. Law firm branding usually plays it safe: sober serif, navy blue, ...

Abduzeedo · EN

Editorial Design: Merch by Counter-Print

Counter-Print champions physical branding with Merch, an editorial design survey exploring the strategic power of tactile brand collateral. For decades, branded merchandise occupied a strange, slightl...

Abduzeedo · EN

Alianza Rebrand Is a Masterclass in Brand Identity by Mucho

Mucho gives the Alianza rebrand an open A: a historic Spanish publisher, recast as a cultural brand in bold color and book design. The first thing you notice is how little the system needs to say. A s...

Abduzeedo · EN

Forget Zillow. Vermonters are fighting the housing crisis with catalogs

One state is preapproving a whole neighborhood’s worth of home designs in advance, and it’s a step that a growing number of local governments across the U.S. are taking to build more homes—and fast. In Vermont, state officials are preparing a 10-home catalog called 802 Homes that’s named after the state’s sole area code and is expected to be released early next year. Once it’s out, the catalog’s blueprints will be free to use for home builders and developers, and since those designs have already been approved, they can expect to zip through the zoning and approval process. The U.S. is short 10

Fast Company Design · EN

As AI slop floods feeds, luxury brands are going all in on handmade ads

In the age of AI , handmade work is becoming radical (and chic), and consumers are taking notice. Prada’s new holiday campaign, Drawing Prada , celebrates craft and process, earning praise on social media for its use of handmade animation. The campaign transports the actors Chen Haoyu, Luther Ford, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke, and Sadie Sink into a fairy tale–like animated forest, complete with a cozy cabin and charming woodland creatures. In one scene, Harrison Jr. walks through a snowy path only to be hit by a snowball thrown by an animated cat-like figure who quickly turns around and wh

Fast Company Design · EN

A new California museum is a beautiful and complicated ode to the Eameses

When the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity released renderings of its new museum last week, it aimed to show how a museum campus could encapsulate the legacy of the 20th century’s most famous design couple, Charles and Ray Eames. The architectural project—helmed by museum design heavyweight Herzog & de Meuron, along with local firm EHDD and landscape architecture firm Field Operations—is meant to be more a celebration of the Eameses’ philosophies and ideas than an Eames theme park. “We try to ask as frequently as possible, ‘What can only happen here?’” says John Cary, the institute’s found

Fast Company Design · EN

NYC will flip the streets from Halloween to the marathon in just a few hours. Here’s how

New York City is gearing up for another big weekend. This year, there are just eight hours between the end of the Halloween parade and the start of the marathon. Organizers of the former expect 80,000 participants in costume and 2 million spectators, while the latter will host 60,000 runners and 2.5 million fans on the sidelines cheering them on. The two routes don’t intersect, but the streets will be unusually busy. And preparing them for the crowds and their aftermath will involve an army of hundreds of sanitation trucks and workers. “I think the great thing about New York City is that there

Fast Company Design · EN

Inside KFC’s big plan to win the chicken wars

On a busy street in Dubai, there’s a building that’s impossible to miss. Its bright red facade glows with electric white lights. Three giant archways offer passersby a glimpse of a two-story screen playing constant editorial-style videos. Inside, a stark, almost brutalist construction is offset by two-tone red furniture and a neon wall mural. It’s not a club or a luxury store—it’s a KFC. We’re in the middle of a modern chicken war , and KFC wants to reclaim its icon status. Chicken—more specifically, the chicken tender—is undeniably having a moment, even as the rest of the fast-casual food spa

Fast Company Design · EN

Going to the gym just got easier for residents at this Paris homeless shelter

At the nonprofit Emmaüs Solidarité homeless shelter in Paris, it’s not uncommon for new residents to have sleepless nights. But since the summer, residents have had a new way to cope with the stress of a restless evening: head to the courtyard and do a few circuits on their new outdoor gym. Through a partnership between the city, the nonprofit, and Omnigym, a Finnish fitness company, this new installation of outdoor exercise equipment seeks to not just help provide access to fitness gear, but build community and self-esteem. Consisting of four pieces of workout gear set up in the garden next t

Fast Company Design · EN

How Fanatics and the NHL used cryptic marketing to hype 32 new special-edition jerseys

Fanatics ’ newest collaboration with the NHL is a collection of 32 custom jerseys that use font, color, and symbolism to pay homage to the history of each team’s home city. The collection, called Hometown Remix , is a leaguewide special edition uniform, apparel, and headwear program designed in-house by the global sports platform Fanatics. It includes a bespoke jersey for each NHL team that will be worn at multiple points throughout the season, as well as a matching line of fan gear. Every jersey was made through a series of workshops between Fanatics and the team to land on a look that repres

Fast Company Design · EN

Starbucks is spending $1 billion to undo its biggest mistake

Starbucks spent years solving a very specific problem: making it easier for customers to buy coffee. As a result, it spent a lot of money on things like mobile ordering and r edesigning its stores to accommodate customers picking up drinks. The idea was to get people in and out as quickly as possible. In the process, however, it made a mistake that may have cost the company far more than it realized. It forgot why people wanted to go there in the first place . Now, under CEO Brian Niccol, Starbucks is spending more than $1 billion to bring back the thing it spent years eliminating. Sure, it’s

Fast Company Design · EN