Were entering an era of computing that feels less and less human-centered. Paradoxically, tech companies remain fixated on mining every detail of our personal data. The familiar, task-specific interfaces we once used are being pushed aside, replaced by generative AI and LLM-driven chatbots that upend how we interact with software.
Instead of opening a dedicated app for writing, research, coding, or even emotional support, were funneled into a single chatbot window. OpenAI promises to, Let AI do the work for youdesigned to handle any task, while Anthropic touts Claude as a fantasy-fulfillment engine with the tagline “If you can dream it, Claude can help you do it.”
The pitch is clear: These tools are promoted as a one-stop shop for everything.
The shrinking interface
Search engines have trained us to expect answers from a single field. Now chatbots take this a step further: the text box has swallowed other applications, even as its output often requires endless refinement and fact-checking through a text box. And text isnt the endgame. Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant primed us to learn hands-free interaction, which is eventually coming to replace that text box. Tech companies are chasing a future where speech replaces typing, and the interface nearly disappears. The real prize isnt usability for us, but the value gained from capturing what we say and how we say it, by, and for, them.
This change marks a sharp departure from the last 45 years of interface design. Apple, inspired by Xerox PARC, championed user-centered design: graphical icons, so-called “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) editors, intuitive metaphors that empowered people to create and communicate. For decades, this approach made computing accessible. But with the rise of big data, priorities shifted, as people generated ever-larger archives of digital traces (emails, documents, photos, browsing histories), and were persuaded to store these in clouds for easy retrieval. Tech companies soon realized that, taken together, this data formed a vast global knowledge corpus that could be mined and monetized.
The rise of surveillance-driven business models pushed firms toward increasingly quantitative forms of user profiling. The focus shifted from designing tools to help us get work done to extracting patterns that served corporate goals. We ceased to be seen as people with needs and instead became raw material for metrics, models, and market dominance.
As big data informed the models for AI and LLMs, this shift accelerated. These systems now operate on top of what we do, but without the capacity to understand why we do it. Stripped of the context discovered through qualitative research, quantitative analysis can easily misinterpret intent. Chatbots produce inconsistent answers depending on the prompt, and we must constantly refine queries just to get something useful. For those who mistake these tools as truth machines, the risks are profound: even fatal, as in documented cases where chatbots coached people to commit self-harm.
This lack of contextual, qualitative research isnt new. Appleoften held up as the gold standard for user-centered designinitially resisted user research. Early on, Steve Jobs insisted that people dont know what they want until you give it to them. Pieces of this bias eventually became imbued in Apples culture, where it has persisted in various ways over the years, spreading from Apple through the rest of Silicon Valley and beyond as former employees changed jobs and/or founded new companies. Media and business school case studies perpetuated this myth and as a result, there is a growing tech industry, a culture of quantitative-data-first product design, reinforced by a bias that big data mining is the only measurement for understanding people. Its not.
This quantitative big data collection movement comes with another syphoning of our free labor and time: the survey. Were also being used to nudge companies algorithms via the endless surveys sent to us after every engagement, with nagging businesses demanding our feedback on the agents, algorithms, services, and products that theyve already tracked us engaging withall to collect even more data about us. Its exhausting.
Scaling at our expense
Companies justify this approach as a way to scale an interface (for them). But scaling often means flattening differences among users and does not work well for cultural differences in a global context. The all-in-one chatbot promises universality yet introduces new frictions: translation errors when models are trained on mismatched languages, hallucinations from incomplete training sets, and endless cycles of prompt refinement. Instead of simplifying, these systems demand more labor from users in the form of prompt refinement.
The effect is recursive. We feed chatbots queries, they pass these queries to LLMs that pattern match words to generate answersright or wrongthat then circulate back into search engines, which are themselves increasingly infused with LLM output (making verification a nightmare). Meanwhile, our conversations with chatbots are now being mined to train future models.
The user interfaces on our devices have become less like tools and more like receptacles for collection. Where we once used a tool to get our work done, we now train tools to do the work so that we can, in turn, finish ours. This dynamic exploits our energy and labor, propping up systems that may one day replace us (if they haven’t already).
Todays design trajectory aims to erase the interface altogether, replacing it with conversation under surveillancemechanized eavesdropping dressed up as dialogue. Behind the scenes, algorithms sift and stitch together fragments of training data (not always accurate, not always complete) to generate songs, code, images, or advice pirated from humanity’s corpus built over lifetimes. Sometimes that LLM advice filtered through a chatbot extends into domains as risky as psychological counseling or nuclear operations, putting us in harms way and potentially at great risk. At scale, this is terrifying.
It isnt fair to say that user centered design is goneyet. Its still here, but the target users have changed. We used to be the users centered by companies; now the LLMs are their focus. And like it or not, our role now is to enable that success.
There is a troubling trend spreading across some of todays most recognizable tech companies. Spotify, Shopify, Dropbox, and others are cutting training programs and significantly reducing entry-level hiring. At first glance, the decision might seem sensible: reduce costs, restructure teams, and prepare for a future driven by AI. In reality, it is a short-term move that will cause long-term damage.
The numbers tell the story. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has climbed to 5.8%, higher than the national average and the worst in a decade outside the pandemic. More than 40% of graduates are underemployed, working in roles that do not require a college degree. Entry-level postings in the United States have fallen by more than 40% since mid-2022. Even graduates in traditionally safe majors such as computer science or engineering are struggling to find jobs that match their training.
Young professionals are not just looking for a paycheck. They want a chance to learn, to join a program, and to work with a team that believes in their potential. When companies dismantle these programs, they are not simply shrinking headcount. They are cutting off the future of their own talent pipeline.
AI is advancing rapidly, but despite the hype, it cannot replace human intuition, creativity, and judgment. These are the qualities that truly differentiate companies. What we need now are people who can work alongside AI: analysts who know how to use machine learning to make smarter decisions, design better products, and deliver more personalized customer experiences. That kind of talent is not built overnight. It is developed through years of deliberate investment.
The path forward is clear. We need a new model for workforce development, one that embraces what I call Human Digital Resourceshumans and AI working side by side, each playing to their strengths. Humans bring judgment, creativity, and empathy. AI brings speed, scale, and pattern recognition. Companies that design roles and training with this collaboration in mind will outperform those that treat AI as a replacement strategy.
The Danger of Short-Term Thinking
The labor market for new graduates is already challenging. Opportunities are shrinking. Unemployment among recent grads is high, and even industries once seen as secure are slowing their hiring.
Cutting analyst or associate programs may satisfy investors for a quarter, but it leaves companies with a weakened leadership bench for years to come. These programs have always been launchpads for promising talent. They build business acumen, sharpen technical skills, and embed cultural knowledge that cannot be hired overnight.
One financial services firm I know kept its analyst program during a period of layoffs. Today, it has a deep bench of AI-literate, future-ready leaders. Competitors that cut their programs are now scrambling to fill those same roles, paying more to hire externally and facing longer onboarding timelines.
The downside is more than a temporary talent gap. It is the slow erosion of institutional knowledge, innovation capacity, and cultural continuity. These are elements that cannot be replaced by technology or by hiring quickly from the outside.
Human Plus AI Is the Real Advantage
AI is changing the game, but it is not replacing the players. It can process vast amounts of data in seconds, yet it cannot create culture, uphold values, or build trust within teams. Think of it as an open-book test. Without skilled humans who know how to use the book, it is useless.
Even AIs own development proves the point. ChatGPT was trained by thousands of human reviewers, most of them college-educated, who provided judgment, context, and feedback to improve the tool. AI is powerful, but it still depends on human expertise to evolve.
Forward-looking companies are already building Human Digital Resources. They are hiring and training employees to integrate AI into their daily work. At one firm, Gen Z analysts were given early access to AI tools. Within months, they became the companys internal AI experts, streamlining processes, improving efficiency, and teaching senior staff how to use the technology effectively.
A New Shape for Organizations
For most of the 20th century, companies were shaped like pyramids, with a large base of junior employees feeding into progressively smaller layers of management. More recently, some consultants have suggested a diamond model, with a narrower base, a wider middle, and a slim top.
The future will likely be something else entirely: a fluid blend of consulting-style apprenticeships, the flexibility of the gig economy, and AI-enabled work. Professionals will contribute to multiple projects across different companies, with AI acting as a force multiplier.
This model rewards adaptable, multiskilled people who can work across ecosystems. Gen Z is well positioned to thrive in this environment. They are digital natives who grew up with technology and are already experimenting with AI tools. Instead of sidelining them, companies should tap into their curiosity and comfort with technology, reduce administrative work, and give them meaningful problems to solve earlier in their careers.
One leading financial institution recently offered an example of getting this right. It has invested in both culture and technology, treating AI as a tool for empowerment rather than a threat. This approach strengthens talent pipelines while others risk letting theirs dry up.
AI Changes Work, It Does Not Remove It
History offers perspective. The industrial revolution created new kinds of skilled labor. The calculator replaced manual math, yet we still teach math, so people know how to use calculators effectively. The internet reshaped communications without eliminating the need for communicators.
AI will follow the same pattern. It will redefine roles, raise the bar for human skills, and amplify those who are trained to use it well. Technology may become the baseline, but people will continue to create value in ways that are unique and hard to replicate. A competitor can match your tools, but they cannot match your culture, your innovation, your trust, or your ability to execute through people.
Companies that continue hiring and training early-career professionals will be better positioned for this transition. They will have AI-literate teams with deep knowledge of the business. Those that do not will face leadership gaps they cannot fill quickly or cheaply.
Competitive advantage
Learning compounds over time and so does neglect. I have seen companies that invested in analyst programs years ago now benefiting from leaders who came up through the ranks. Those early investments paid off in loyalty, expertise, and competitive advantage.
Cutting these programs today is like removing the foundation from a building to save on maintenance. It might hold for a while, but eventually it will collapse
The future of work is not less human. It is more human. It is more mentorship, more learning, and more collaboration between people and machines. Companies that embrace Human Digital Resources now will lead the next decade. Those that do not will be left wishing they had thought furher ahead
The Fast Company Innovation Festival returns to New York City this September 1518.
Hosted at Convene Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan, attendees can expect four days packed with informative panels, interactive networking sessions, engaging workshops, signature Fast Tracks that offer a behind-the-scenes look at the citys most cutting-edge companies, and intimate dinners at the city’s buzziest restaurants.
It’s a lot to take in. So we’ve compiled the top 11 reasons you should attend the 11th annual Innovation Festival.
1. Candid conversations with leaders
Headliners hitting the Innovation Festival stage this year include:
Jimmy Fallon, Executive Producer and Host, On Brand With Jimmy Fallon; Host, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Bozoma Saint John, Chief Marketing Officer and Mentor, On Brand With Jimmy Fallon
Brené Brown, Research Professor, The University of Texas at Austin; Author, Strong Ground
Tracee Ellis Ross, Host, Solo Traveling With Tracee Ellis Ross; Founder and CEO, Pattern Beauty
Damian Kulash, Lead Singer, OK Go
Jonathan Haidt, Author, TheAnxious Generation
Norma Kamali, President and CEO, Norma Kamali
Justin McLeod, Founder and CEO, Hinge
Myechia MinterJordan, CEO, AARP
Shay Mitchell, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Béis Travel
Brian Niccol, Chairman and CEO, Starbucks Coffee Company
Ego Nwodim, Actress, Comedian, and SNL Cast Member
Artemis Patrick, President and CEO, Sephora North America
Joy Reid, Journalist, Political Analyst, Best-selling Author
Hailee Steinfeld, Cofounder, Angel Margarita
Luis von Ahn, Cofounder and CEO, Duolingo
2. Field trips for adults
Our signature Fast Tracks offer attendees an behind-the-scenes look inside some of New York City’s most innovative companies. There are over 50 Fast Tracks this yearhere’s just a glimpse:
A brownie baking class with Tonys Chocolonely
Playing Pickleball at Life Time
An office tour and pop-a-shot tournament with TNT
An intimate gallery walkthrough highlighting Harlems economic and cultural impact on the arts at GPGallery
A look at the art of hiring and understanding when to kill a product with Ramp executives.
3. Food for thought
Taste of Innovation is a unique dining experience showcasing powerhouse chefs and restaurant executivesnot to mention some of the best food in the city. At each Taste of Innovation experience, youll dine, drink, and mingle with fellow attendees and Fast Companys editorial staff, as well as hear intimate conversations with leaders in the food space. This year’s Taste of Innovation lineup features:
Sofreh Cafe
Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson
Manhatta
The Bazaar by José Andrés
Naks
4. Workshops to solve work’s biggest problems
Another signature of the Innovation Festival are our workshops. These are sessions that create space for a more hands-on approach to problem solving. Just some workshops this year include:
What Does Your Brand Sound Like?
The Return of Creative Craft
If Your Brand Isnt Awake, Its Dead
Unscrambling the Productivity Paradox
Humans, Machines, and the Art of Teaming
5. New experiential moments
There’ll always be a place for informative panels and one-on-one conversations at the Innovation Festival. But we’re making room for something to really engage your senses and emotions. New this year are our experiential sessions. From using sound to reset your nervous system to reconnecting with play and self-celebration through confetti, these sessions are designed to be highly interactive and deeply personal:
Why Intuition Is the Leadership Advantage AI Cant Replace
The Celebration Lab
Discover and Design Your Personal Sound Care Ritual
6. New breakout sessions
Sometimes 30 minutes isn’t long enough to dig into the topic at hand. Also new this year at the Innovation Festival are breakout sessions which are an extension of our workshops created to give attendees more access to workshop hosts and more time work through their questions and gain deeper insights:
A Deeper Dive into Bettering Your Brain
Networking That Works
Turn a Burning Question into a Bold Next Step
7. Celebrating good times
It wouldn’t be the Innovation Festival without celebratory moments! In addition to our Kickoff Party and Closing Night Party, we’re having exclusive parties for honorees on our recognition lists Innovation by Design and Best Workplaces for Innovators, as well as a dinner for our Impact Council members.
8. Activations and giveaways
Throughout the Innovation Festival Hub are activations including custom bandana embroidery from Teton Ridge and an AI-powered racing simulator powered by IBM. There are also several giveaways at different sessions. On the Innovation Festival schedule page, click the “filter by feature” option and then “giveaway” to make sure you’re in the right place at the right time!
9. Insights on today’s biggest topics
The Innovation Festival is all about exploring the driving forces of business, technology, and creativity. While there’s ample choices in programming, here are some topical sessions worth putting on your radar:
Will AGI Be a Realityand Are We Ready?
From Automation to Autonomy: Navigating the Rise of Agentic AI
On the Front Lines: Inside the ACLUs Fight for Civil Rights
Digital Defense: The Battle for an Open and Secure Internet
How Workforce Inclusion Sparks Innovation
More for Less: Maximizing Social Impact with Minimal Resources
The Changing Face of Aging
10. Networking with your fellow attendees
One of the main attractions of the Innovation Festival is how widely you can expand your network. Year after year, attendees have said this is one of their most valuable takeaways from the event. We have sessions that are specifically catered to networking. However, just hanging out and working in the Innovation Festival Hub is the perfect place to meet someone new.
11. Becoming a better you
The Innovation Festival is a place for you to learn. We pack in a lot during the event, so you can create a robust agenda that’s tailored to your interests, whether that’s in leadership, creativity, branding, technology, or beyond. We hope you take the insights and knowledge you’ll gain over the week and apply it to your work lifeor even your personal life.
Visit our event page to buy your Innovation Festival passes and to stay up-to-date on our session agenda and speaker lineup.And a special thanks to this years Innovation Festival sponsors: IBM, Lilly, NYU Langone Health, Texas A&M University, Delta, Esri, Fetch, GS1 US, Huge, Hyland, Innovate Alabama, Maven AGI, Penske, PepsiCo, Project Management Institute, SAP, Synchrony, Teton Ridge, Uber for Business, Virginia, The Weather Company, Webtoon, Wellhub, and Williams.
More than a decade ago, the real estate developer Woodbury Corporation took stock of a site in Vineyard, Utah, that had been home to a WW II-era steel mill. Surrounded by mountain views and overlooking Utah Lake, they saw possibility and a blank canvas, so they began studying growth patterns and infrastructure needs in the area. They quickly realized it would be the perfect site for a new developmentand not just a plot of houses. Woodbury bought 700 acres of land and partnered with Flagship Homes to build a city from the ground up.We had the right land in the right location at the exact moment Utah was experiencing unprecedented growth, says Nate Hutchinson, a partner on the project.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]What they didnt have was a name for the new city they were building.So they made a call to Pentagram partner DJ Stout, who was tasked with creating an identity for a city that was still just an idea.There are 23 Pentagram partners, Stout says. And in our storied history, I don’t think anybody’s actually named a U.S. city before.Cities get their names in various ways. Oftentimes, a community is named for its founder, or to highlight a local geographic feature. Modern developments tend to take a more marketing-centric approach. For every unnecessary e deployed to class up a place (think Wolfes Pointe), theres a vague gesture at historical lineage (Views at the Old Mill) or a moniker so watered down that the branding exercise becomes obsolete (Waters Edge).At the outset, Stout says the Woodbury team was clear that they didnt want their project to sound like a gated community. For one thing, the scale of Woodbury’s ambitions was much bigger. The development was conceptualized as a walkable community that could cater to Utah’s rapidly expanding population, which is slated to surge by 58% to 5.2 million by 2060. Some 30% of that is in Utah County, where the former steel mill sits. Woodbury decided its new city would feature complete neighborhoods with multiple types of housing; shopping, dining and entertainment; a range of business, civic and cultural spaces; plazas, parks; transit connectivity; and an overall focus on walkability. [Image: courtesy Pentagram]Were building an entire urban district on the front door of a transit station, along a lakefront, with healthcare, education, retail and residential all integrated from the start, Hutchinson says.The breadth of the vision gave Pentagram a lot to play with. Stout says his team started with research: Given the nearby Wasatch Mountains, which, like Utah, derive their name from the indigenous Ute people, Pentagram explored similar elements before deciding to avoid plumbing the culture for nomenclatures sake. The area also had a significant railroad history, so coupled with the transit plans for the development, Stouts team ideated some names around that; they explored names tied to Mormon settlers and the Mormon population in the area; they probed nature themes tied to Utah Lake, which is the states largest freshwater body.Stout says they wound up with more than 100 potential namesbut then he had a thought. Texas has a Texas City. Colorado has a Colorado City. Theres Kansas City. Oklahoma City. Hell, New York City. Was there really no Utah City?In Pentagrams first call with the developers, Stout says, they had mentioned that they wanted to some day be as well-known as Salt Lake City or Park Cityand, well, when it came to Utah City, I was like, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe nobody has it.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]THE OBVIOUS SOLUTIONAt the pitch meeting, Stout says his team presented around 50 names. When they got to the end of the list, he recalls saying, I think I have your name. And here it is: Its Utah City.He says he received a quizzical, unconvinced reaction from the head of Woodbury. And then I made the case that if you really want to be that well-known of a city, if that’s your ambition in the state of Utah, just like Oklahoma City or Kansas City, you should grab this name. Nobody has it.That initial reaction wasnt entirely isolated. When the name went public online, it took some hits on Reddit and elsewhereand Stout has seen it. But here he cites Pentagram legend and friend Michael Bierut.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]He’s really good at just basically looking at something and saying, This is the obvious solution. A lot of times the best solutions are right there in front of your face, and they’re obvious, Stout says. And I think sometimes creatives or designers in general wouldn’t even look at that name because it seems too obvious; there’s this thinking that we’re being paid to do a fancy logo or to come up with a fancy name. He notes Bieruts work with United Airlines. When the company was on the hunt for a new logo, Bierut suggested they hold on to the Saul Bass original. There’s this kind of lack of ego of that kind of ownership . . . and so I’m not afraid to think about things that just seem obviousbecause that’s the best solution.At the pitch presentation, the team snapped up the Utah City URLs in real time. Ultimately, says Hutchinson, Pentagram helped us distill the projects ambition into something clear.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]VISUALIZING A BRAND (OR NOT)Pentagram usually delivers a comprehensive identity system, but Stout says the Utah City team didnt want that because they still had a long runway to the project being realized. Nevertheless, Stout and his team created a logo. The team pondered the idea: If this really was a city that could end up on a U.S. map, what would stand the test of time and not look like a mere trend blip?Stout says they played with a few ideas that nodded a bit at the vernacular, but eventually seized on the ubiquitous Us found across the state, with the University of Utah being dubbed the U, the Utah Utes, and other cultural touch points. [Image: courtesy Pentagram]For the logo, Stout took a U and modified it into the shape of the state itself.Again, it’s just a simple solution, he says. If they’re going to own the Utah in their name, then they might as well own the state.Given the intended city emphasis, Stout added the typeface Gotham, owing to its roots in one of the most famous cities in the worldand the branding was complete. Until it wasnt. While the mark can still be seen on the Utah City website, a new logo has emerged on its social channelsa “C” somewhat awkwardly nestled within a “U.”[Image: courtesy Pentagram]After years of development, Utah City has just opened the projects first residential building, a 40,000-square-foot market is nearly complete, and the Huntsman Cancer Institute has broken ground on a 20-acre care and research center. According to Hutchinson, the first phase of Utah City is on track to deliver within the next couple of years, featuring additional housing, a promenade, retail village, wellness center, and miles of bike and walking trails.As the project shapes up, the team behind it says the identity will also shift. A representative for Utah City said they have been working with a local team to refine and expand the brand with a new monogram and wordmark, noting, We saw the need to evolve from an East Coast font and view of what Utah is and can be, and moved into claiming our Western roots.And, well, heycities are by nature amorphous, living things. Perhaps branding one is, too.
As social media users continue to spend more time in their direct messages than posting to the main feed, companies are beefing up their features for private chats.
TikTok recently said it will soon offer users the ability to send pictures and voice notes up to a minute long in its direct messages (DMs) and group chats, while Meta announced filters to sort Instagram DMs by categories like “Story replies,” “Unanswered,” “Followers,” and “Verified Users” for professional and personal accounts with more than 100,000 followers.
[Image: Meta]
The intent is to make the DMs more engaging. TikTok’s DMs will soon be more media rich, while Instagram’s could see more engagement from bigger accounts that would otherwise drown in new message notifications. Both updates are part of wider push to reengineer social media apps for the way people use them now, which is more private and less posting.
A 2023 Morning Consult poll found 61% of adults with a social media accounts were more selective about what they posted online, and 28% said they posted less on their preferred platform than the year before. It’s a change Instagram head Adam Mosseri called “a paradigm shift,” in May, and the implication for social media app design is a greater emphasis on improved messaging.
Meta’s X-clone Threads, which launched without DMs in 2023, finally added them in July. Meanwhile, Instagram has made a flurry of improvements to its DMs since 2024, including editing messages, pinned chats, longer voice messages, location sharing, and scheduled messages. Spotify has added DMs, too, just in case you wanted to use yet another closed platform to connect with someone.
Social media might feel far less social than it once did, but it seems a lot of the conversation is simply going on away from public view. As people spend more time chatting one-on-one than posting publicly, social media apps are becoming a lot more like messaging apps, too.
Blank Street started in 2020 as a coffee shop operated out of a single cart in Williamsburg. Just five years later, its a chain with more than 90 global locations thats become almost more well-known for its over-the-top matcha drinks than its actual coffee. Now, its getting a subtle rebrand that makes the whole identity look like an ice-cold glass of green tea latte.
The new branding, crafted by the agency Wolff Olins, includes a new logo symbol inspired by that original coffee cart, new custom fonts, and a greater focus on green. It stays true to the brands quintessential neutral aesthetic while adding a few original touches to be just a bit more distinctive. George Lavender, creative director at Wolff Olins, says that, given the brands massive growth, Blank Street was due for a visual touch-up.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
The company currently operates locations in New York, Boston, D.C., London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and is gearing up to expand into L.A. soon. According to a June profile in the The Wall Street Journal, Blank Streets current valuation is around $500 million, and it earns an estimated annual revenue of $149 million.
A large chunk of that income is thanks to the monumental popularity of Blank Streets matcha creations, which includes flavors like its best-selling strawberry shortcake matcha, blueberry matcha, and cookies-and-cream matcha. Matcha’s popularity has exploded in the U.S. in recent years, with some reports estimating that the beverage’s sales have reached beyond $10 billion over the past 25 years.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Mohammad Rabaa, Blank Streets global creative director, says that matcha now accounts for more than 50% of the business.
It started as a coffee cart in Williamsburg and snowballed, becoming this thing that was much bigger than they ever thought it might become, Lavender says. I think it was a good moment for them to stop, reflect, and try to reestablish who they are.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Refining a brand designed to be neutral
Blank Streets former branding centered around the idea of its identity being almost an empty vessel, Lavender saysa metaphorical blank space that customers could fill with whatever drink they like best. To that end, their logo was an ultrasimple sans-serif wordmark, complimented by a palette of black, white, and fern green.
With Blank Street, you have a company that’s highly creative and expressive in their creations, Lavender says. In order to have a sense of balance to that, their own identity needs to be so neutral, because every seasonal campaign is so wildly different.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
He adds that the existing identity was clearly working, but it was veering into a territory that was almost too neutral. That’s why, through this process, we really wanted to make the evergreen Blank Street brand just a little bit more special.
Lavenders team started by adding a literal blank space as an added symbol in the logo. It’s a plain rectangular box thats designed after the dimensions of the window on Blank Streets original coffee cart, and it will start to appear on the brands cups, signage, packaging, and socials this fall.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Alongside the box motif, Wolff Olins also swapped out Blank Streets former public domain fonts for two custom sans serifs, developed in partnership with the type foundry Due Studio. The refresh also includes a warmed-up version of Blank Streets signature green hue, paired with a palette of various other greens that the brand can use in secondary applications. The goal is to eventually phase out any former black and white branding (which still remains on the outside of some small format stores) in favor of the new green and cream logo.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
A more matcha-forward brand
Blank Street, which used to be called Blank Street Coffee, is also in the process of dropping the coffee from its name, including by moving the word to a secondary position on signage. The branding changes, alongside the name edit, seem to point to the idea that Blank Street is embracing a new identityperhaps one that emphasizes its fan-favorite matcha over its coffee beverages.
They are shifting away from Blank Street Coffee to Blank Street, and I’m sure that’s a very conscious move based on the strawberry shortcake matcha being their most popular seller ever, Lavender says.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Lavender adds that the companys creative direction was never to explicitly mimic matcha, but the drinks growing popularity was more of an unspoken thing throughout the process. According to Rabaa, green was the company’s core color even before introducing matcha, and any similarities between the new branding and the green tea drink itself are not a nod, but more like a happy coincidence.
Either way, Blank Street’s sales numbers show that matcha is definitively its stand-out productand now, it has an identity that looks the part.
For most of his career, Mike Kelland worked on software. But after selling his last startup in 2016, he decided to focus on climate change instead.
He zeroed in on one key part of the problem: Cutting emissions is no longer enough to address climate change on its own. He’d read an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that explained that well also need to remove hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. We’re 30 years beyond the point where decarbonization alone was enough, Kelland says.
He spent nearly a year meeting with scientists to learn about potential new carbon removal technology, and eventually met a researcher working on ocean alkalinity enhancementthe process of adding alkaline minerals to the ocean to help it store more CO2. The method can also help reduce ocean acidification. But the tech was stuck in the lab.
I said, this is the moment to take this and turn it into something, Kelland says. In 2019, he cofounded Planetary, a startup focused on commercializing the idea. Now, at a site in Nova Scotia, the company is actively adding its antacid to the ocean.
Earlier this year, it sold independently verified carbon credits to British Airways, Stripe, and Shopify for CO2 that it had already removed. And in a recent deal, Frontiera coalition of tech companies and others that are trying to help the nascent carbon removal industry grow committed $31 million to buy more than 100,000 tons of carbon removal from the startup over the next four years. It hasnt yet been tested at a large scale. But the goal is to scale up to remove gigatons of CO2and do that at a very low cost.
How Planetarys ocean antacid works
The method works by adding small amounts of minerals like lime (calcium oxide) or magnesium oxide into the ocean near the coast. Making the water more alkaline accelerates a natural process so the ocean can absorb more CO2 from the air. The CO2 reacts with the minerals to form bicarbonates that are dissolved in the water and can lock up carbon for thousands of years.
The company works with power plants and other industrial facilities that already discharge water into the ocean, and then adds its minerals via those existing pipes. “Our philosophy is really the more that we can reuse existing infrastructure, the cheaper and more scalable this is going to be,” says Kelland.
[Photo: Planetary]
In Nova Scotia, the startup works with a power plant that circulates ocean water through its systems for cooling. On a tiny corner of the power plant’s property, the startup produces the minerals for the process, and then adds them to the power plant’s pipes before the water goes back in the ocean. The size of its operation is roughly 8% of a direct air capture plant, but can capture more carbon, Kelland says.
The minerals aren’t unique. “This is literally Tums,” Kelland says. But because the standard way to make the product has a relatively large carbon footprint, the company couldn’t buy it off the shelf. Instead, the company uses alkaline byproducts of existing industrial production and mining that would otherwise end up in landfills. Then it purifies them so no harmful heavy metals or other pollutants are added to the ocean.
[Photo: Planetary]
The impact on marine life
One benefit for marine life is clear: Locally, in the parts of the ocean where the minerals are added, the process can help reduce acidification. Extra CO2 in the ocean creates acid that makes it hard for species like oysters to form shells. (The bicarbonate formed by Planetary’s process, by contrast, helps form shells and coral.) Since the industrial revolution, the ocean has become around 30% more acidic.
“That has really nasty effects on ecosystems, from the base of the food webthe tiny little plankton that form shellsall the way up to shellfish that we eat,” says Kelland. Fisheries are already being impacted by ocean acidification. Because of the ocean’s enormous scale, Planetary’s process can’t bring its pH back to pre-industrial levels. But if it’s done at scale in coastal zones, it can help counterbalance the pressure from human emissions.
Like any form of geoengineering, this type of work also has risks. “Unintended consequences from ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) are still an active area of research, and the risks depend largely on the mineral used and how much alkalinity is added,” says Melissa Meléndez, an oceanographic researcher at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. “Some minerals could introduce trace metals that might be harmful to marine ecosystems, and certain organisms are more sensitive to abrupt chemical changes than others.” Because there’s still uncertainty, she says, field testing and monitoring are critical.
Kelland argues that the risks can be controlled. There’s a risk to marine life if the water becomes too alkaline, but that’s already been well studied for the billions of tons of water that industry discharges into the ocean each day, which has to meet certain pH requirements. The levels can be monitored, and the system can stop immediately if needed. It’s also possible to carefully measure the amount of undissolved particles that go into the water and control that. The company can meet existing regulatory limits.
Since Planetary is doing something new, though, it’s also continuing to work with scientists to do in-depth research on potential impacts. One large ecotoxicology study, for example, looked at the potential impact of the antacid on lobster larvae, and found no effect.
Kelland argues that the science is already well enough understood for the copany to scale up to larger projects, though more research will be needed before the gigaton-scale would be possible.
Even if there’s some environmental risk, the risk to marine life from climate change and ocean acidification is larger. With ocean acidification, for example, “we know that it poses very significant risks to any creatures that form shells in the ocean, which are a substantial portion of the food base,” says Brad Ack, CEO of Ocean Visions, a conservation organization that works on climate challenges to the ocean and studies approaches like ocean alkalinity enhancement. “So we’re already running a very signifiant risk just by letting this happen. You have to weigh the risk of doing things against the risk of not doing things.” (Ocean Visions has no relationship with Planetary or financial interest.)
[Photo: Planetary]
Scaling up
Ocean alkanity enhancement has the potential to scale quickly, says Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier. “We think you can get to gigatons of scale,” she says. “It has a minimal physical footprint. It requires very little energy and it piggybacks on some existing coastal infrastructure. So from a pathway perspective, we are really excited about this category.”
In the carbon removal industry, companies are aiming for a cost of $100 or less per ton of captured CO2. But Planetary has calculated that it could get as low as $17 per ton. The low cost depends on sourcing its byproduct very close to its coastal operations. (In a pilot that it had planned earlier in the U.K., the startup ended up canceling the project because the cost of delivering materials was too high; now, material supply is one of its key criteria.) In an analysis of locations where it could access the right supply chains, it calculated that it could eventually scale up to around 2.9 billion tons of CO2 removal per year. Right now, society’s total global emissions are around 40 billion tons a year.
[Photo: Planetary]
Community opposition could be a challenge. In the U.K. pilot that the company scrapped for supply chain reasons, protestors fought the project, saying that they were concerned about marine life. Right now, the company operates under existing regulations for discharge from industrial plants, but it’s possible to imagine that some communities might pass new legislation banning the new practice.
Still, the company managed to get widespread support for the project in Nova Scotia, including from indigenous communities like the Mikmaq. In some cases, Bebbington says, communities may actively want the company to set up operations. “We’ve actually seen that a lot of fisheries have been interested and engaged in this sort of ocean alkalinity enhancement,” she says. The technique can help support populations of oysters and other important food species.
Business support is necessary to help the work grow, since carbon removal companies need to sell that service. While environmentalists often argue that supporting carbon removal is a distraction from the work of cutting emissions, Bebbington says that both are necessary.
Frontier is working with Stripe, Google, Shopify, McKinsey Sustainability, Autodesk, H&M Group, and Workday to purchase carbon removal from the startup. (Other companies, from Canva to Zendesk, are participating through a partnership that Watershed, a corporate decarbonization program, has with Frontier.)
“We make these commitments to proactively ensure that there will be carbon dioxide removal solutions in place to meet our net-zero target at the end of the next decade,” says a spokesperson from H&M. “As the first fashion retailer joining Frontier as a member, we want to inspire others in our industry to follow our example and become early buyers of carbon removal.”
“When you look at what the IPCC report says, in order to limit global warming to either 1.5 or two degrees, we are going to need to both radically reduce the emissions we emitthat’s sort of 80% of the challenge ahead of usand then also proactively remove carbon dioxide permanently,” Bebbington says.
Scientists estimate that we’ll need to remove between 5 billion tons and 10 billion tons of CO2 a year by 2050 (and even more if we miss targets for cutting emissions.) So far, we’ve only removed a paltry 100,000 tons.
Getting to the goal “requires deploying technology, refining technology, scaling technology, bringing technology down the cost curve, which takes time, takes capital, takes talent,” says Bebbington. “The mandate today that we encourage corporates and countries alike to adopt is a dual mandate: You both need to radically reduce your emissions and starting today, work on proactively scaling carbon removal. Because if we wait until 2050, you can’t just flip a light switch and expect that we’ll have gigaton scale carbon removal that is safe, responsible, cheap, effective. That market, that technology, takes time to develop.”
Predicting the future can be fun, but you get the sense Judge Amit Mehta wasn’t having much of it in his ruling that declared the long-awaited remedies in the Google antitrust case. Although the case centered around how Google achieved its dominance in search over the past 20 years, Mehta also considered what’s to come, specifically the emergence of AI chatbots like Gemini as go-to information portals for large numbers of people.
That’s important, especially to people in the media, many of whom were disappointed that the remedies weren’t harsher. While Mehta discarded industry-altering solutions like forcing Google to sell Chrome or Android, the ruling does recognize AI assistants as core distribution infrastructure in the media ecosystem. They may be a different animal from search engines, but Mehta writes that there’s enough overlap that the courts should regard them similarly: “…the use cases for GSEs [General Search Engines] and GenAI chatbots ‘are not identical but they do overlap in a number of places’ like ‘a Venn diagram’.”
That recognition is a significant step toward building a future AI ecosystem that works for everyone. There are of course myriad lawsuits and licensing deals between media companies and AI companies, and the ruling is a signal that the courts will treat AI assistants as critical distribution channels on par with browsers and search defaults.
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Exactly what form that takes is far from clear, but something else is: publishers need to build for that future now. AI isn’t an add-on or a feature. Flawed as they may still be, AI portals are the new battleground for where the best information providers will duke it out, just like SEO used to be. There are different rules for AI answer engines (governed by GEO, or generative engine optimization), but the fundamental gamebeing the source that gets citedis the same.
The shift from clicks to citations
As AI engines grow in popularity, there’s been a parallel trend of declining search traffic. This was entirely expected, but reports from both Pew Research and Similarweb have put numbers on that uncomfortable and rapidly accelerating reality. In addition, TollBit’s most recent State of the Bots report showed the meteoric rise in AI scraping as well as the abysmal click-through rates from AI summaries.
All of this has sent the media world in a panic since a great deal of the industry’s business model depends on that click-through traffic on search engines to fuel ad impressions. The understandable focus on revenue, however, overlooks the less tangible benefits of ranking in search: brand visibility and authority benefit from prominent placement in search resultsboth for publications and individuals.
That same logic carries over into AI answers. Although click-through is borderline negligible, users do often see the source that’s being cited, even if it’s just a publication name in a footnote. It’s like being quoted on the evening newseven if you weren’t able to directly monetize the mention, it reinforces your credibility. In other words, the impression (meant both literally and figuratively) still matters.
If your publication is cited in AI answers repeatedly, that can drive demand indirectly. Seeing the same name repeatedly in authoritative answers can influence whether that user decides to subscribe, recommend a source, or follow a journalist or outlet. Its a softer conversion path than direct clicks but not meaninglessakin to share-of-voice in traditional media measurement.
The hidden value of AI summaries
This isn’t to say such intangibles make up for lost revenue from referral traffic. But they do help publishers answer the question, “Why would you want to?” when considering whether they should compete for placement in AI summaries. And it’s not like monetization is out of the question: larger publications continue to sign licensing deals with AI companies, Perplexity is architecting a revenue-sharing system, and pay-per-crawl programs from the likes of Cloudflare continue to grow.
In fact, seeking placement in AI answers and measuring success will be key data for any publication when the time comes to negotiate with AI companies on licensing. And there’s every chance that court rulings could force the issue in the future, especially now that Judge Mehta has established the importance of AI information portals.
And let’s be real: If you choose to opt out or ignore AI summaries, someone else is going to be cited. As users often don’t just read answers, but copy them and even use them in their own documents and web pages (Perplexity even provides a button for this), that could have a compounding effect as at least some of that material ends up in data for AI training and web crawling. Since AI answers rely on citations more than links, it could be difficult to unseat a competitor once they secure a popular summary.
The other shift the ruling underscores is that, in an AI-mediated world, discovery isn’t a single-platform game. The decision requires Google to share data with its rivals. And with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot all pushing aggressively into AI answers, publishers will need to think beyond optimizing for Google. That means monitoring how content surfaces across various AI gateways, each with different rules for visibility. Just as SEO once became a core newsroom discipline, the coming challenge will be multi-engine optimizationtreating AI portals as the front doors for audiences they are rather than optional experiments.
The AI-first discovery era begins
Many were hoping the Google ruling would rebalance the power between Google and publishes. While that mostly didn’t happen, it did create a clear signal that AI engines will be the next frontier where content will compete for attention. The rewards for publishers are less tangible, at least for the time being, but there are rewards. And they beat the penalty: disappearing from discovery altogether.
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Some people are simply better at transforming casual human connections into social capital. Their network is their influence. My first career break was a simple introduction to a social entrepreneur. It led to who I am today. Networking isnt just social leverage. Its the art of making people remember you when they shouldnt have to. Its creating pull so strong, opportunities orbit you, not the other way around. You make yourself impossible to ignore. Turning networking into career gold is about playing the long game: human connection, done with intent.
Start with a constellation
Think of every person you meet not as a contact, but as a star. A single star is just a point of light. But connect a few and have a constellation. Connect enough, and you have a galaxy that can change your life. Your career is not a ladder; its a night sky. Your job is to populate it with bright, interesting stars. That means talk to everyone. The person next to you on the plane. You might as well make the most of it if you are going to spend hours with them. Introduce yourself to the quiet ones in the corner. Youre not pitching. Youre connecting. Youre finding out what makes them light up. Thats how you connect the dots. You never know who will say, Hey, I know a guy . . . Thats the constellation at work. Serendipity is just what happens when your network is wide enough for luck to find you.
Give. Then give again. Expect nothing
The fastest way to kill the magic is to keep score. How can I help you? is my mantra. If you find a book that reminds you of someone who might find it useful? Send it to them. Hear about a project that aligns with a contacts skills? Connect them. Your value isnt what you can get; its what you can give. It builds a currency of trust. People remember generosity. They are hardwired to reciprocate. But you cant do it by waiting for the return favor. You have to give like its your job. But dont expect them to return the favor. The ROI is trust. And trust is the only currency that never inflates.
Be a person, not a profile
Nobody connects with a LinkedIn headline. They connect with a human. Talk about your failed startup. Your weird hobby. The time you made a mistake. And of course, how you bounced back. Vulnerability is a superpower. Its the secret that bypasses the professional face and goes straight to the person on the inside. Your specific, unapologetic self is your greatest asset. Authenticity is magnetic. It draws the right people and repels the wrong ones. Its a filter. Use it.
Get the follow-up right
You met someone great. What now? If you send a generic LinkedIn request, youve already lost. The gold is in the specificity. Your follow-up should reference something unique to the conversation. Great talking about the future of work yesterday. Heres that book or post I mentioned. No need to reply. Just thought youd enjoy it. That simple follow-up makes you a person. A thoughtful one. Not just a networker. Youve added value immediately with zero ask. Youve deposited into the trust bank. Now youre not a forgettable face.
The goal is to be a connector
You gain more social capital by connecting other people than by connecting people to yourself. If you see a developer who needs a designer. Connect them. You hear a problem and know the right person who can solve it. You make the intro. You become a value creator. Youre the person everyone wants to know because knowing you means access to a whole world of other interesting, capable people.
Thats when youve truly made it.
Dont just be interesting, be interested. Be a giver, not a taker. Be a person, not a profile. Build your circle of influence, one genuine connection at a time. The gold was never the asset you acquire or invest in. It was in the people you meet along the way.
Most of us will work for a really bad boss at some point in our lives, perhaps more than one. Research by the Harris Poll bears this out, showing that more than 70 percent of workers have had at least one such noxious manager in their career. These difficult managers can range from inexperienced and incompetent bosses to truly mean-spirited individuals who have little regard for human suffering. Researchers have found that when we experience incivility in the workplace, about half of people intentionally decreased their work effort, more than three-quarters said it decreased their commitment to the organization involved, and more than one in ten said they had left a job because of poor treatment/behavior.
Whats interesting is that many people think Its all their [the bosses] fault when, in fact, we often play a role in the difficult relationship. When we have a less-than-ideal boss, its also helpful to look in the mirror, for there may be some things we are doing that contribute to the situation. In addition, its easy to mistake incompetence for ill intent toward us. Keeping this in mind may give us a bit more empathy for a previous bad boss because we learn our own leadership skills by leading others, just as that previous bad boss had to learn to lead by leading us.
Really bad bosses can be soul-crushing and draining to work with. It helps us realize that when a boss, or any other person, treats us badly, their behavior may have very little to do with us and more to do with what is going on in their own world. But although we cannot control how others think or behave, we do have control over ourselves and our behavior.
When you have an insecure boss, there are some things you can do to make the situation more palatable. First, let them know, and feel, that they are in charge. Dont challenge them, particularly in front of others. Keep track of your own contributions and successes so they will be top of mind when they tell you that you have not made any contributions. And learn as much as you can from them while youre there and network widely to expand your learning, contacts, and opportunities. Sometimes the biggest learning from these situations is that you never want to make anyone feel the way this boss makes you feel. Thats still a valuable lesson.
If you work with a difficult person, keep in mind that you cannot change them and their behaviors. Only they can make these changes. Their own self-understanding and ability to self-manage is not up to you or even about you, but it can have a strong impact on you. When you have a really horrible, no-good boss, one that is demeaning or abusive, it may be helpful to remember that their behavior says more about them than it does about you. Although its never pleasant to have an abusive manager, remembering this may help you to not take their behavior personally. It doesnt excuse their behavior, but it may help you put it in perspective. You own your behavior; they own theirs.
This advice may be helpful in not exacerbating an already difficult problem or avoiding having your behavior become what gets singled out for punishment. But if you continue to work with an abusive manager who diminishes you, it can negatively affect your motivation, confidence, mental health, and career. In these situations, you may want to take the learning and move on.
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
The answer to this question is, like so many others, It depends. It depends on what your goals are for your career, for learning, for experience; your appetite for comfort versus adventure; how you think about remuneration and learning; and how uncomfortable your current situation is. There is no promise that the situation you are in will get better, and theres no guarantee that a new job will have a better manager. Many of us have stayed with bad or even very bad bosses longer than we should have, and we have left other difficult managers whom we might have stayed with longer and learned from.
Just as our boss can fire us, we can fire our boss by leaving them or the organization. Some helpful should I stay or should I go questions to help you assess whether its time to begin looking for another position and manager include these:
What have I learned from this person, and in this position, so far?
Is there still an opportunity for me to continue to learn and grow in this position, working for this manager? If so, what is it that I want to learn, and how might I go about obtaining this knowledge and growth?
To what extent are the skills Ill continue to learn be transferrable to other jobs or careers I may want in the future?
Do my reasons for considering leaving this man- ager have to do with ethical lapses in the manager or organization?
Is working for this person negatively affecting my mental health?
Are there people higher up in the organization whom I admire or aspire to be like?
Even when your answers to the above questions point to I should go, there may be times when leaving a bad boss may not be a viable short-term solution. In these situations, it can be helpful to focus on what you can learn while you remain there, which may include taking on new projects or challenges, networking widely within the company, or practicing dealing with a difficult, demanding person. However, working with a bad boss comes with an emotional and sometimes physical toll, and the longer you continue to work with them, the larger the overall toll it will take.
When leaving a bad boss or situation, as hard as it may be, plan to make a graceful exit. Rage quitting, including creating an ugly scene on your way out or leaving a mess for your manager, others on the team, and the person who comes in behind you, may feel satisfying in the moment or even justified based on the way youve been treated, but its rarely a good option for your long-term reputation. Making a graceful exit means making a transition plan to help the person who comes in behind you understand the relevant processes and know where to find key information, thanking your manager for what youve learned from them, tying up as many loose ends as possible, being constructive in explaining why youre leaving, and offering to answer some questions in the weeks following your departure.
Excerpted from Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding. Copyright 2025 by Margaret C. Andrews. Available from Basic Venture, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
