Design Observer

Last year, just as we were winding down for our annual (and very much needed) winter break, I scheduled a handful of check-in calls with some of Siberia’s closest clients. I framed them as year-end retrospectives — a chance to reflect on what had gone well, what hadn’t, and how we could work together better in the coming year. Frankly, I expected polite conversation and mutual congratulations. During one of those calls, one of my favorite clients, a Chief Design Officer who is raz

Editor’s note: If you prefer, find a version in Spanish below Nota del editor: Si lo prefiere, encontrará una versión en español a continuación Guillermo Flores Pacheco has a distinctive illustration style: vibrant colors, birds, lush plants, whimsical characters. It’s a style that has landed him projects with big companies like Adobe, Apple, Nike, Sephora, Burning Man, Marc Jacobs, Citi Private Bank, and Cirque du Soleil. Flores Pacheco has cultivated a 20-year career as an art direct

I’m not sure about much of anything right now. The world is <waves arms around> a lot. How about you? Here’s something that might help. I recently caught up with Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and chair of the Leadership Initiative. We were together to record an episode for the upcoming season of the Design of Business | Business of Design podcast, talk about her wonderful new book, Genius at Scale:

The launch of Kimi K3, the latest version of the Kimi chatbot, sent shockwaves last week and deftly tested the theory that open-weight models were no match for the closed-model giants from Silicon Valley. Kimi is the AI chatbot and family of large language models built by Moonshot AI, a Beijing startup founded in 2023 by former Google/Meta researcher and legendary Pink Floyd fan Yang Zhilin. Moonshot is considered one of the highest-value AI companie

Editor’s note: In his first opinion piece for Design Observer, AKQA CEO Helder Santo explores the unintended consequences of AI and our growing reliance on technology for validation. He offers an unusual, and deeply human solution: to do your best work, stay doubtful.  Doubt has a bad reputation.  It’s treated as a flaw to be coached out of people, the thing that slows a meeting down, the hesitation before the bold call. But sit in any room where good work gets made and you&#8217

I was fortunate enough to come into my own as an agency executive when design-led businesses were experiencing a golden age. Chief design officers had a seat at the table, and design was framed as a consistent driver of business success. I believe another golden age is possible, but it will not arrive on its own. It will be built, company by company, by leaders who decide that the customer experience is worth designing. But first, we have to reckon with what happened. The decline of “design-f

What makes you feel like you belong, particularly in a space that may feel intimidating or unfamiliar? I turned to an expert for answers. In 2025, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City welcomed 6.3 million visitors, and certain events brought in roughly 20,000 visitors in a single day — and that’s only the people who were physically there. Across web, social, and email channels, The Met reached over 45 million people last year. Welcoming this massive audience falls to a d

In 2025, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City welcomed 6.3 million visitors, and certain events brought in roughly 20,000 visitors in a single day — and that’s only the people who were physically there. Across web, social, and email, The Met reached over 45 million people last year. Welcoming this massive audience falls to a dedicated audience engagement team, who understands that not all of their 6.3 million visitors walk in feeling confident that they “know art.” There need to be

It was hotter than July on the Fourth in New Orleans this year, and still, it was a better vibe for America’s 250th celebration than was evidently found elsewhere. I was in New Orleans to debut our latest podcast, Draw the Line, at a special day-long activation at Essence Fest, hosted by the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. As you might expect, it was a mix of truthtelling, celebration, and earnest reflection on the lives and needs of Black women. This year, there was a pa

The lines we draw On a clear March morning, hundreds of Louisianans rally at the State Capitol to defend the right to vote. Weeks later, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais guts the Voting Rights Act — declaring the court’s own remedy for racial discrimination unconstitutional. In the premiere episode of Draw the Line, host Ellen McGirt travels to Baton Rouge to meet the organizers, legal experts, and everyday citizens on the front lines of the fight

Author’s note: This performance review is a literary device meant to examine democratic governance through the familiar structure of workplace feedback. The goal is to help us evaluate whether our public institutions are living up to the values they claim — and our role in holding them accountable when they do not. United States, Two hundred and fifty years is an unusually long review cycle. What follows is necessarily incomplete. This review period spans wars and social movements

We reached out to the Design Observer community with a simple question: what book made you a better designer? We use bookshop.org for our affiliate links; proceeds from book sales support local booksellers and our editorial programs. Design as Art by Bruno Munari It was Munari’s way of seeing — curious, playful, visionary, systematic, and human all at once — that shaped Giorgia Lupi more than any other book, she tells Design Observer. The information designer a

During a recent reporting trip touring Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” I listened to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents, published in 1999. It’s the second installment in a prescient trilogy, set in an America barely hanging on in 2032: environmental degradation, economic chaos, widespread violence, a wave of detentions, and a zealous tyrant running for President. It turned out to be… an interesting choice. “We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crise

With America 250 upon us, brands, museums, and civic institutions are busy shaping how the nation will see itself at this milestone through logos, exhibitions, campaigns, and public narratives.  The official America 250 identity, with its star-shaped logo built from red, white, and blue ribbons, presents the anniversary as a broad national celebration centered on unity and civic participation. Yet state-level campaigns interpret that story differently. Virginia’s “VA250” initiative, for

I was barely nineteen years old when I got my first true glimpse of gay culture.   Telling no one, I had taken a train from college in Providence, RI, to NYC — of course, there was a boy to meet — and we found ourselves walking up and down Christopher Street looking for a gift for his Uncle Andrew. Christopher Street in the early 1980s was really an extraordinary experience, even for a newcomer to adult life. At the time, it reflected a growing civil rights movement (pre-LGBTQ+ acro

The Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais gutted the Voting Rights Act and rewrote the rules of American democracy. Draw the Line spends ten episodes telling the inside story of Louisiana’s fight over power, maps, and who gets left off them. As goes Louisiana, so goes the rest of the country. Who’s fighting for your vote? First episode drops July 4. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Draw the Line is produced with the support of the Power Coalition for Equ

“I’m 82, I’m going to die. We die because we are born.”  It was April 2020 and British artist David Hockney was writing to his friend Ruth McKenzie. The emotional correspondence later appeared in his last book, Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, part of his attempt to capture the liminal space of the COVID-19 lockdown. “The only things that matter in life are food and love, in that order, and also our little dog Ruby. I truly believe this, and for me, the basis

A colleague of mine, a designer with over fifteen years of experience and someone I respect, recently came to me frustrated. Another senior executive showed up to a meeting with prototypes. Folks whose domain, until five minutes ago, was limited to PowerPoint or Excel. They were bringing AI-created prototypes and ideas to the table and, in his view, undermining the design team’s judgment, process, and role. I understood the feeling, but I also told him I thought it was a good thing. 

A colleague of mine, a designer with over fifteen years of experience and someone I respect, recently came to me frustrated. Another senior executive showed up to a meeting with prototypes. Folks whose domain, until five minutes ago, was limited to PowerPoint or Excel. They were bringing AI-created prototypes and ideas to the table and, in his view, undermining the design team’s judgment, process, and role. I understood the feeling, but I also told him I thought it was a good thing. 

Is there nothing Zohran Mamdani can’t do? The charismatic mayor of New York City is barely six months in office, and kids are getting day care, potholes are being filled, and the Knicks are in the finals. NYC is in a very good mood these days. So, it should come as no surprise that his first big outreach to the design community is for city-owned grocery stores. “Grocery prices are rising faster than wages, so we’re launching 5 city-owned grocery stores with lower prices,”&nbsp