/Design/ Last Updated: Tue, Jul 1st, 2025 @ 8:50pm EDT

Fast Company

Dan Harden

Why showing your work is the new mark of great design

As AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous, products that reveal the time, care, and judgment behind their creation will offer a powerful point of emotional and commercial differentiation.

With today’s AI tools, it’s possible to generate a complete brand experience in just a few hours—a name, a logo, a campaign, even a polished website. These systems visualize concepts with startling speed, compressing what once took weeks into an afternoon. And while most outputs remain virtual,...

Yanko Design

Vincent Nguyen

NOI Creative’s Terra Lamps Transform 150 Million Tonnes of Annual Rice Waste Into Nordic Design Icons

When agricultural waste becomes the foundation for contemporary lighting, the results challenge everything we think we know about sustainable design. Lanova’s latest Terra collection, developed by NOI Creative in 2024, demonstrates that coffee grounds, rice husks, and wheat bran can be used to create products that rival traditional materials in both aesthetics and functionality. The lamps emerge from a design philosophy that refuses to compromise quality for environmental responsibility....

Yanko Design

Srishti Mitra

Twin Houses With One Pillar Offer Innovative Multigenerational Living & Contemporary Design

Two conjoined homes quietly anchor their plot in Söcking, near Lake Starnberg, standing as an inventive response to suburban densification. Houses with One Pillar, designed by Buero Wagner, presents a contemporary take on multigenerational living while honoring the site’s modest past—a single 1950s house once occupied the lot. Now, without expanding the original footprint, two nearly identical gabled volumes rise from a lush context, their forms wrapped in black charred timber that...

Fast Company

Lisa Larson-Kelley

How to tell if the article you’re reading was written by AI

So, we’ve all been there. You’re two paragraphs into a blog post. The headline was catchy enough, the intro kind of made sense, and now your eyes are glazing over. You read over a word, a blurb, a sentence that sounds vaguely all-too-familiar and now you’re wondering, “Wait…did a human even write this?”

Odds are, you’re not imagining it. AI-generated content is everywhere. It is impossible to escape. While it’s efficient, especially for meeting summaries and article...

Behance.net

LOBBY BAR DC


Lobby Bar is a restaurant-bar located in Washington, D.C. that seeks to be the meeting point where great conversations are born and barriers fade away with a good cocktail. It's a space where opposites coexist?the capital of unexpected connections.

Yanko Design

Gaurav Sood

Hot Wheels’ ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Jaws’ sets celebrate the magic of big screen

The two iconic movies of all time – Back to the Future and Jaws – are celebrating their 40th and 50th anniversary this year. To make it a celebratory occasion, Hot Wheels wants to jump into the party and offer fans something they’ll love. Yes, you already know where we are going. Hot Wheels is going to have a collectible set for both these cult favorites, with first glimpses to be spotted at Comic Con in San Diego this month.

Nick Karamanos, senior vice president of Mattel Creations &...

Yanko Design

Srishti Mitra

Aston Martin Unveils Minimalist Ultra-Luxury Townhouse To Elevate Tokyo Living

Nestled in Tokyo’s coveted Omotesand? district, the N°001 Minami Aoyama is a new icon of understated luxury. This four-story townhouse is the debut residential project in Asia by Aston Martin, created in partnership with Japanese real estate developer Vibroa Inc. The collaboration signals a shift: Aston Martin is expanding beyond the realm of high-performance cars, bringing its meticulous design language and devotion to craft into the world of modern living spaces.

As you stroll through...

Fast Company

Jennifer Mattson

No tax on tips or overtime, with a catch: What to know as Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill passes the Senate

On Tuesday, the Senate narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” with a 50-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie, to get the legislation across the finish line after an all-night session. The bill now goes back to the House of Representatives for a final vote, as the GOP races to finish passage of the bill before the upcoming July 4 holiday weekend.

Tucked away among the 940 pages of the massive bill are an array of new tax write-offs. Many of...

Fast Company

Mark Wilson

Figma files to go public on the NYSE as ‘FIG’

The collaborative design tool Figma continues its march toward going public in one of the most highly anticipated IPOs in the history of design software.

Wasting no time licking its wounds after European regulators blocked its $20 million acquisition by Adobe in late 2023, Figma quietly filed its S-1 paperwork to the SEC in April. Now, it’s announced that the S-1 has been made available to the public.

That S-1, which you can read here, is full of interesting tidbits, as private...

Fast Company

Sarah Bregel

Minimum wage hikes take effect for 880,000 workers across the U.S.

Workers in about 15 locations nationwide are about to receive a boost in their paychecks, thanks to minimum wage increases that went into effect this week around the country. On Tuesday, July 1, minimum wage increases went into effect in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington D.C. Additionally, 12 cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, are doing the same.

The minimum wage hasn’t changed on a federal level since 2009. It remains stuck at $7.25. However, local governments have been moving the...

Yanko Design

JC Torres

Nothing Headphone (1) Review: Transparent Design, KEF-Tuned Sound

PROS:
Distinctive Transparent Design & Premium Build
Exceptional Audio Quality with KEF Partnership
Innovative Tactile Control System
Strong Sustainability Focus
CONS:
Average Phone Call Performance
Long Two-Hour Full Charging Time
RATINGS: AESTHETICSERGONOMICSPERFORMANCESUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITYVALUE FOR MONEYEDITOR'S QUOTE:The Nothing Headphone (1) proves that distinctive design and audiophile engineering can coexist beautifully.

Nothing’s debut into over-ear audio territory...

Yanko Design

Sarang Sheth

I Predict The Nothing ‘Glyph Matrix’ will eventually become bigger + spawn an App Store

It took 8 phone models (across the Nothing and CMF brands) to get to the Phone (3), and now I can finally say with confidence that Nothing is genuinely building a phone that feels ‘fun’. No, I didn’t think the Glyph Interface was a gimmick (although the one on the Phone (2) didn’t feel substantially better than the predecessor), but I definitely knew it wasn’t Nothing’s magnum opus. To me, it was just a placeholder for something better… and the Glyph Matrix on the Phone (3)...

Fast Company

Eve Upton-Clark

What is the pearl earring theory? The TikTok trend blaming jewelry for being single

“Girl with a Pearl Earring” has taken on a new meaning on social media.

TikTok loves a theory, especially ones that attempt to explain dating struggles. The “pearl earring theory” is the latest to go viral, claiming that the classic freshwater gemstone could be the reason you are chronically single.

Why? According to TikTok, pearl jewelry gives off the impression of being expensive and, as a result, high maintenance.

“Woke up and found out there’s a ‘pearl earring...

Fast Company

Mariah Alanskas

Microsoft says AI can diagnose tough medical cases better than physicians

The digital health market is growing, and according to Microsoft, its new AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) is among the latest in generative, artificial intelligence to support accurate, complex medical diagnoses—and it’s doing it better than human doctors. 

According to the tech company, the new system acts as a “virtual panel of diverse physicians” that bridge the gap between needing multiple real-life general physicians and specialists in the search to be diagnosed. They...

Yanko Design

Gaurav Sood

Wuyang-Honda E VO is a neo-retro electric café racer for urban riders

Honda has hinted at all-electric motorcycle concepts in the past, but it has rarely gone all-in for two-wheeled electrification with a production version. That seems to have changed with the Wuyang-Honda WH8000D bike developed in collaboration with a Chinese joint venture, Guangzhou Motorcycle Group.

Before the E?VO, Honda’s focus was on practical scooters and underbone motorcycles that had limited appeal. Their new electric café racer marks a radical shift from their usual offerings....

Yanko Design

JC Torres

Modular and Stackable Desk Organizer Concept Brings Order and Style to Your Desk

There’s something oddly familiar about starting the day with the best intentions, only to find your desk slowly buried under a growing mountain of notes, pens, gadgets, and little things you swear you’ll put away later. The quest for a clutter-free, efficient workspace is nearly universal, whether you’re a designer, writer, or just someone who likes to keep things neat. It’s no wonder so many of us are always on the lookout for smart solutions that bring order to the chaos.

Enter...

Fast Company

Sarah Bregel

Palestinian aid fundraisers face hurdles on GoFundMe

Over the past 20 months, as Palestinians have suffered under Israel’s increased military presence, crowdfunding websites have become one way for monetary relief to reach those in need. However, a recent Al Jazeera report claims that a number of GoFundMe pages with funds meant for Palestinians have had funds frozen or even refunded, the organizers say, without proper cause.

Frozen funds

Hala Sabbah, the founder of The Sameer Project, told Al Jazeera that GoFundMe refunded more than...

Fast Company

Reuters

6 Questions U.S. stock investors are facing as the third quarter kicks off

The U.S. stock market completed a roller-coaster first half of the year at record-high levels, but a host of factors could knock equities off their perch over the rest of 2025.

The benchmark S&P 500 is up over 5% on the year so far, rebounding from an April plunge after an economic scare stemming from President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff plan. Here are some of the key questions facing U.S. stock investors at the start of the second half.

WILL TARIFFS BITE, OR JUST...

Yanko Design

Ida Torres

Roundish Bed is a modern design for comfort and play

Most affordable beds tend to follow a straightforward formula, which is usually a simple rectangular frame, ready for a standard mattress, offering a place to rest and recharge. But with the rise of modern design, the landscape of bedroom furniture has changed dramatically. Designers now approach the bed as much more than just a spot to sleep; they create thoughtfully crafted pieces that transform the bedroom into a true sanctuary, reimagining what comfort, style, and function can look...

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