This is not an article about politics, capital punishment or whether the Fort Hood shooter deserves to be executed in public for his crimes.Instead, it’s focused on the unprecedented parental challenge of handling the near-certain prospect that children will hear of or see footage of the Dec. 3 U.S. execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan if the Trump administration follows through with plans to livestream the event.The danger stretches beyond the broadcast itself, because history shows graphic video from the event could be clipped, copied and pushed into children’s social feeds even if the original stream is restricted.Experts suggest that grownups who care about children start by setting aside matters of politics and public policy like the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections and the debate over capital punishment. Focus instead on how witnessing someone’s death by firing squad might land with young viewers and how best to reassure and protect them.Here are some guidelines that might help.
Keep empathy for kids in mind and facts at hand
Mis- and disinformation reach children, too. It’s important for parents to have credibility with them, especially because their real, unspoken question might be: Are we safe? Have in hand some basic facts about the case and state them gently.“It will be easier to have a position, share your family’s values, and discuss things with a potentially overwhelmed child once you’ve taken the time to gather accurate, up-to-date info and assess your child’s needs,” according to Common Sense Media, which advises parents on entertainment and technology.Trump approved Hasan’s execution by firing squad Dec. 3 at Fort Hood. A few days later, the Pentagon announced the event would be livestreamed.“People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Real America’s Voice, a conservative outlet.Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was convicted of killing 13 people there in 2009 when he walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting checkups and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. He said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims. He made almost no effort to defend himself at trial. The U.S. military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961.The last widely recognized public execution took place on Aug. 14, 1936. Kentucky, the last state to permit them, outlawed the practice in 1938.
Stay updated on the plans
Also, experts suggest, parents should stay updated on how a livestreamed execution would unfold. Many questions remained unanswered, such as whether the moment of death and its aftermath will be shown, whether any age restrictions will apply, and whether there will be a broadcast delay or a threshold for stopping the feed.Be informed about the technology involved. While the government often uses YouTube to carry its livestreams, including those embedded within government websites, YouTube prohibits content that is “violent or gory” and “intended to shock or disgust viewers,” and doesn’t allow livestreams that show someone holding, handling or transporting a firearm.YouTube does make exceptions in select cases for content it deems to be in an educational, documentary, scientific or artistic context or that it determines to be in the public’s interest. In such cases, the content may be age-restricted. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding how its policies relate to the execution.But the danger to kids spills beyond the live broadcast to unexpected exposure on social media in the form of memes, for example.It’s unclear whether the Trump administration is considering children in its decision-making. Emails over two days asking White House spokespeople for thoughts from the president and first lady Melania Trump on the prospect of children seeing the execution went unanswered. Trump said that he’ll soon make a decision on the plan to livestream the event.
Assume kids will at least hear about the execution, if not see it
From the old-fashioned grapevine to social media, grisly news has a way of reaching school-aged children, experts agree. Consider their need for calm and age-appropriate guidance, they suggest.“With young kids, parents should keep it short and focus on reassurance over explaining the events,” said Jill Murphy, chief content officer at Common Sense Media. “Reassure them that they are safe. With teens, ask honestly what they have heard first, then ask whether they need to watch it.”Remember you are your child’s parent, not their friend and don’t overexplain, advises Dr. David Rosenberg, chair of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Michigan. Answer the questions children ask, and don’t be afraid to assert parental authority by, for example, restricting or banning a child’s access to the footage.“It’s okay to say, ‘I don’t have all the answers. But here’s what we know, you’re safe, you’re secure, this is what we believe,'” Rosenberg said.“Where parents get into trouble is when they talk too much, and they usually do that because they’re anxious and insecure,” he added. “What makes a child feel safest, or an adolescent, is can I count on my parents to be calm in challenging situations and give me the information I need?”Choosing to watch the footage, one physician said, doesn’t necessarily indicate a child is psychologically ready to do so.Timothy Lesaca, a Pittsburgh-area psychiatrist, cited a series of studies showing that repeatedly watching footage of events like the Boston Marathon bombings, at least part of an ISIS beheading video and the Oklahoma City bombing can be linked to post-traumatic stress, if not PTSD, in adults and children. He argues that making Hasan’s execution public is a medical and public health issue.“Ongoing anxiety, trouble sleeping or problems with daily life should be taken seriously,” Lesaca wrote in KevinMD.com, an online publication by physicians.
Watch how this event interacts with existing conditions
The people most at risk of negative long-term effects are those who already have clinical depression or anxiety, or who have already been exposed to other traumatic situations, Rosenberg said. That’s because repeat exposure to trauma can cause cumulative damage.The part of the brain that handles executive decision-making, emotional regulation, impulsivity and empathy doesn’t finish developing until around age 24, and so parents should consider having proactive conversations even with their older children who may be away at college or living on their own, Rosenberg said.“We have to at least offer help in these circumstances to be the leaders, to be the decision-makers, to at least help them make informed decisions.”
Associated Press journalist Kaitlyn Huamani contributed.
Laurie Kellman and Rebecca Boone, Associated Press
Bumble has spent the past few years trying everything from a new CEO to AI-powered matches.
Now, the embattled dating app company is making another big move: going private.
Ithaca Holdings, a new firm run by former tech executives, is acquiring Bumble for $1.3 billion, the latter announced on Tuesday. Bumbles board unanimously voted in favor of the deal, with founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd recusing herself from the decision.
News of a potential deal was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Bumbles shareholders will receive $6.05 for each share of Class A Common Stock. According to Bumble, this is about 138% higher than its Friday, October 9, closing share price and around 119% over its 30-day weighted average price ending Friday.
The dating app company was valued at about $335 million at the end of business on Friday.
Ithacas co-CEOs and co-founders, Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman, will take over as co-CEOs of Bumble and partner with Wolfe Herd to extend Bumbles original vision to help people find connections in life and love into the next era.
For anyone wondering what this arrangement might look like, this line in the announcement provides a pretty good idea: Ithacas mission is to apply frontier technology to renew and accelerate businesses that enrich peoples lives and create lasting value in a world transformed by AI.
Blackstone, which owns a stake in Bumble, has approved the deal.
Wolfe Herd sang Ithacas praises, stating, In Ithaca, we have found a partner who shares our vision, believes in our women-first mission, and is committed to investing in Bumbles future.
Bumbles journey as a public company
Bumble went public in February 2021, making founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd the youngest woman to take a company public or become a self-made billionaire. It was a success story.
However, in the five-plus years since, the company has struggled to stay relevant in a world that has grown increasingly tired of dating apps.
As of October 5, shares of Bumble Inc. (Nasdaq: BMBL) were down almost 95% from their opening high. The stock has had a relatively steady decline over its half a decade of trading.
That all changed on Monday when news broke of a potential sale. While still over $80 lower than its record high, Bumbles shares closed up 49.61%. As of publication, the stock has been fluctuating close to 4% up during premarket trading.
Attempts to stay relevant in recent years
Dating apps of all shapes and sizes have faced a decline as Gen Z, in particular, moves away from online dating. Match Group-owned Hinge is a notable exception to the trend.
Wolfe Herd stepped down as CEO in January 2024, transitioning to the position of executive chair. Her successor, Lidiane Jonesa former Slack CEOsoon cut about 350 roles.
Joness tenure didnt last very long, with Wolfe Herd returning as CEO in March 2025.
A few months later, Bumble cut another 240 positions, about 30% of its workforce. Shortly after, Wolfe Herd threatened to remove members with low-quality and incomplete profiles in a focus on quality over quantity.
Bumble has also paid attention to its non-romantic ventures. In November 2025, the company launched a new standalone BFF app.
Like many tech CEOs, Wolfe Herd has turned to AI as a potential draw for users. In May, Bumble launched an AI assistant called Bee. Bumble calls Bee a matchmaker, with the tool meant to replace the need to swipe. The company is also testing out having Bee create dates for matches.
Then, in August, Bumble announced it would be getting rid of its distinguishing feature: women messaging first.
The company cited a 2024 internal survey that found two-thirds of women felt less pressure around dating when men made the first move. At the time, the company launched its Opening Move feature, which allowed men to make the first move using preset prompts and gave women 24 hours to respond or the match expired.
Now, anyone can message and users have 72 hours to respond.
Today, our community is asking for more flexibility, less pressure, and more opportunities to create real, meaningful connections and that is what this new experience provides, Wolfe Herd said in the announcement. This evolution isnt a departure from our founding vision, but the realization of it.”
Controversial chatbot platform Character.ai is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the wake of mounting legal challenges and runaway operating costs, the four-year-old startup said in a surprise announcement on Monday.
The move comes as the Menlo Park, California, company has faced a number of lawsuits in recent years, including some that say its AI companions have encouraged users to harm or kill themselves.
In its announcement, Character.ai said it has reached an agreement with Disney Worldwide Services, an affiliate of the Walt Disney Company, to sell some of its intellectual property for $20 million and “transition services” that will help Character.ai continue to operate, at least temporarily.
Disney will serve as a “stalking horse” bidder in the Chapter 11 proceedings, meaning other companies could offer competing bids.
Fast Company reached out to Disney for comment.
Over the past year, Character.ai has taken meaningful steps to sustain and improve its business in the face of significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds, CEO Colin Adams said in a statement. After a comprehensive review of the available alternatives, the board determined that this court-supervised sale process provides the Company with the best opportunity to maximize value for all stakeholders.”
In a blog post, the company said its platform “remains up and running” as it seeks to figure out a path forward. It expects the sale process to be completed by November or early December.
This story is developing…
Family estrangement isnt just a private family problem anymore. Its become a widely discussed social phenomenon. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, reports and polls across the United States have pointed to a rise in adults cutting ties with relatives.
The subject is everywhere: on social media, on talk shows, and in conversations with friends who are navigating increasingly complicated family dynamics.
A 2020 Cornell University study by sociologist Karl Pillemer offered a striking pre-pandemic baseline: 27 percent of American adultsroughly 67 million people reported being estranged from a relative.
The numbers now appear even higher. A comprehensive 2025 YouGov poll found that 38 percent of U.S. adults reported being estranged from at least one close family member.
While researchers caution that long-term longitudinal data is still limited, psychologists point to pandemic-era stress, political polarization, and changing cultural norms as factors that may have accelerated family ruptures and made no contact an increasingly familiar choice.
Family ruptures quietly seep into the workplace
The estimated total of all mental health challenges in the workforce costs U.S. businesses $47.6 billion annually in lost productivity, according to Gallup.
Businesses started paying meaningful attention to employee mental health in the 1980s and 1990s, but it became a major mainstream business priority around 202022, largely because of the pandemic, burnout, anxiety, and remote-work disruption. Because the workplace is where most adults spend much of their waking hours, the effects of family estrangement dont necessarily stay at home. The grief and trauma can drain attention, leadership capacity, creativity, productivity, and ultimately, the companys bottom line.
Presenteeism is on the rise
Have you ever felt like you were talking to someone who was physically in the room with you, but their mind was somewhere else? Employees dealing with the emotional fallout of estrangement often suffer from presenteeism at workphysically present but not mentally there in the moment.
Chronic stress, grief, and anxiety that come with family estrangement can lead to significant deficits in cognitive energy and output. This brain drain can also heighten irritability, weaken focus on demanding work, and cause critical meetings and deadlines to be missed.
Heightened emotional strain, especially near holidays
The workplace can often feel like a second home, especially if you are close with your co-workers. The office also tends to mirror societal norms and expectations around family, especially during major holiday seasons at year-end.
Office small talk about holiday plans and family vacations can be a constant emotional trigger. This environment can cause estranged employees to experience spikes in anxiety, depression, and social withdrawaltemporarily lowering team morale and engagement.
Increased absenteeism and health care costs
The chronic, long-term stress of family trauma can often manifest physically. Estranged individuals frequently report higher rates of insomnia, fatigue, autoimmune flare-ups, and mental health crises.
For businesses, this can lead to unplanned consecutive days off, higher PTO or short-term disability use, and increased health insurance premiums.
Confusing professional relationships
The psychological dynamics of family estrangement can sometimes bleed into professional environments without realizing it. Adults who have cut ties with family members, for whatever reasons, may struggle with authority figures or conflict resolution in the office. They can overreact to constructive feedback, take things too personally, and even refuse to ask for help when they need it.
These issues can create unspoken problems between colleagues, which can lead to unsolved problems at scale.
When family crisis shows up at work
I spoke with David Simonse of Creative Solutions Counseling Solutions about when a private family crisis becomes an employers business.
When work is being impacted negatively by a family crisis, then an employer should step in carefully and respectfully, he explained. Ultimately, they should see whether they can be helpful and to determine whether there is a risk to the business itself.
Simonse noted that while HR can help employees navigate some family crises, it cant address every situation. He suggested that companies broaden family leave beyond traditional milesones like birth or death, giving employees more flexibility to manage serious personal crises before they affect their work and morale.
As he puts it, talking with HR about how it impacts their work would be a good start.
Compassion has a business case
Employers cannot repair families. However, they can use their resources on-hand and find the compassion to best support their employees in such challenging times.
A workforce that carries unresolved family loss has thinner reserves. The cost is paid in missed ideas, thinner leadership, and quiet quittingnumbers that compound long after the last work meeting.
Robyn D. Shulman
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
Once you start scribbling a few sentences, youre on your way.
Having gotten stuck and unstuck a lot over the past 325 weeks of writing this newsletter, Ive found a few tricks that help. Pick one to try, and leave a comment to share what you do to get unstuck.
As a little experiment, Ive made an Unstuck Studio page to accompany this post and to help you get unstuck playfully.
As Daniel Pink explains, starting comes first: Action precedes motivation,” he says, “not the other way around.
Talk first, type later
When Im stuck, I dictate rather than battle my inner critic.
The critic assumes theres a better word for whatever Im typing. It urges my fingers to stop and wait. When Im rambling with my voice, the critic is quiet.
We call an idea freeze writers block, not talkers block. When we speak informally, ideas just flow. Because spoken words disappear into air, its easier to avoid self-editing. In a dictated draft, clunky first words are OK because they get us closer to what were trying to convey.
Tools I use for dictating first drafts
Google Docs voice typing works in more than 100 languages. In English you can add punctuation verbally or say things like new paragraph. See more of my favorite Google Docs tips and tricks. Free.
Letterly works well on mobile or desktop. In addition to transcribing, it can give you a summary or format your text. (Its now a free perk for paid Wonder Tools subscribers.) Free with limits, or $80/year.
Wispr Flow lets me dictate into any app or site on my laptop or phone. It works surprisingly well even if I whisper, which helps around other people. I just double tap my Mac function key and start talking. Free to start; $12/month for pro features.
Lispr.ai is a reliable Mac option. It can also translate your dictation. Free.
Simple alternatives: iOS Voice Memos and Notes transcribe your speech for free. On Android, try Google Keep.
Write it or lose it
The Most Dangerous Writing App erases your words if you stop typing before your timer ends. Choose a 3- or 5-minute sprint, or set a word target. Once you get the hang of it, your hands will keep moving. Edit later. Free
Ilys is an even more challenging way to force yourself to keep writing. It shows your typing just one letter at a time. When your session is over, you can review and edit your words. Free for basic use. Sessions are capped at 808 words, which is more than enough for freewriting. A subscription is $11/month, but I dont need the extras.
One word, then a web
Mind maps help you focus on concepts and ideas, rather than piling words onto the page. Connect your ideas to one another visually. Put one word down. Add a picture if you want. Pretty soon you have an outline to build on.
When Im writing something complex or juggling lots of ideas, mind mapping allows me to assemble the bones of a piece efficiently. Use Apples free Freeform app on iOS or Mac. Or try simple apps like Mindmup or Bubbl.us. Both are free for up to three maps. Miro and Mural, which offer more advanced design features, also give you three free boards.
AI for provocation
Rather than using AI to write, ask it to interview you. Or push it to provoke you. I find that helps me surface my own thoughts.
Prompts to try
Interview me about this. Ask one question at a time. Push me for depth.
Provoke me. Give me a controversial statement to respond to.
Push me to sharpen my viewpoint by pointing out potential blind spots in the ideas Im starting to write about.
Ask me five intriguing questions about this. Dont answer any of them.
Act as a tough mentor. Give me five unconventional writing prompts to pick from.
Ask a surprising question Ive not heard before. Include a feasible writing target to complete in the next 10 minutes.
8 boxes, 8 minutes
This last tactic is tech-free.
Grab a piece of blank paper.
Fold it in half three times. You now have 8 rectangles.
Challenge yourself to put one sentence or phrase into each of the boxes. Set a timer to repeat every minute. Move to the next box each time it rings. Eight minutes later, you have a bunch of sentences to build on.
Slogans tell us that discipline propels people toward accomplishments. That sounds logical. But when Im staring at a cursor, discipline alone doesnt clear the fog. These tactics do.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
Chipotle Mexican Grill has debuted a 3-foot-wide, 170-liter (45-gallon) bag that serves as both a bold fashion statement and a marketing stunt that exemplifies the creative style of its chief brand officer, Fernando Machado.
Within the span of just seven weeks, Machado has rolled out three creative campaigns that point to a buzzier, more social media-friendly approach that intends to lure diners to the brands 4,200 restaurants.
On Tuesday, the company debuted its Big Ass Chipotle Bag, a limited-edition accessory that will star in a national advertising campaign to promote the companys family meal kits.
This follows a campaign that featured footage from 100 content creators, which debuted in August and was the first national ad spot from Machado since he joined Chipotle in June. Earlier in October, Chipotle unveiled a new music track recorded by a vegetable orchestra (yes, really!) at Londons Abbey Road Studios.
Evolving brand messaging, in my mind, is not a total disruption with what has been done in the past, Machado tells Fast Company.
Machado says his plan is to push the boundaries of creativity for Chipotles messaging, while also retaining the food-and-ingredient-focused ethos that gave the brand a distinctive voice in the restaurant sector. He has vowed to avoid making any sweeping changes to the branding, logos, or taglines, moves he says are mistakes frequently made by new chief marketing officers.
A page out of fashion’s book
This weeks Big Ass Chipotle Bag campaign takes a cue from the oversized bag trend thats become a hit on runways and has been embraced by major luxury brands, including Chanel and Bottega Veneta.
This is a brand thats very wholesome, thats trying to do the right thing, and wants to put a smile on peoples faces, says Machado. Its not laugh-out-loud, but its joyful, its playful.
[Photo: Chipotle]
Machado joined Chipotle as the company is in the early stages of a turnaround effort after four consecutive quarters of traffic declines at its restaurants throughout 2025.
In February, Chipotle’s CEO, Scott Boatwright, announced a “Recipe for Growth” strategy that committed to accelerating menu innovations, evolving the brands messaging, strengthening operations at the restaurants, and leaning more on artificial intelligence.
Early indications are that diners are coming back to the Chipotle fold. Comparable restaurant sales have improved modestly for the first two quarters of 2026 compared with last years levels, driven by an increase in traffic. The companys third-quarter results are to be released on October 28.
Yet another business consideration for Machado and Chipotles leadership is a Financial Times report last week that Starbucksnow led by Chipotle’s former CEO, Brian Niccolhad been mulling a $41 billion merger with Chipotle that would be the largest-ever takeover in the restaurant sector. Niccol is spearheading his own two-year turnaround effort at Starbucks. (The coffee chain has since said it is “not buying Chipotle.”)
More evolution than turnaround
Historically at Chipotle, creative campaigns have focused on ingredients and food sourcing, including 2011s Back to the Start and 2013s The Scarecrow, both well-reviewed animated short films that lambasted industrial farming practices.
[Photos: Chipotle]
In 2018, Chipotle debuted its For Real campaign that lauded the chains real ingredients, and a year later, Behind the Foil focused on the chains employees and kitchen operations.
I dont think this is a brand thats in need of a turnaround, says Machado of Chipotles past creative work, which he says helped make it a fast-growing restaurant concept. This is a brand, just like any other brand thats successful, that needs to evolve.
Before joining Chipotle, Machado spent more than seven years as the chief marketing officer at Restaurant Brands International across brands like Burger King and Popeyes. He also held the CMO title at the plant-based food company NotCo and the video game developer Activision Blizzard.
He has established a reputation for buzzy, stunt-forward campaigs like the Moldy Whopper. That campaign depicted Burger Kings signature menu item going moldy, but framed the gross, decaying imagery as a positive sign, because the chain had removed all artificial preservatives.
At Chipotle, Machado says hes keeping a fresh eye on how conversations have evolved on social channels, where younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha diners are more inclined to express their opinions.
Brands, he says, are better defined by what people talk about on social, rather than what the brand asserts about itself on TV.
[Photo: Chipotle]
Accordingly, Machado let content creators go into the kitchens at more than 50 restaurants to work alongside Chipotles workers as they prepared the companys new limited-edition Pollo Asado and Chili Lime Chips.
There was no script and no shot list, and Chipotles own marketing team submitted not a single shot of brand footage in the campaign that ran across national TV, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
They know their audience better than you do, says Machado. I know it may sound a bit nerve-racking to give away control, but thats what we did.
Earlier in October, Chipotle embraced a whimsical and irreverent campaign that also leaned on the companys real ingredient messaging with the original track “From Ground to Sound,” which featured playable instruments including flutes made from corn and trumpets built using jalapeos.
We want to do things that stand out, that get people to talk about the brand, says Machado. I think you can only do that if you do something thats different and uniqueand also hopefully only something that your brand can do.
Around 71,000 BCE, someone in a place now called Blombos Cave, on the southern coast of what is now South Africa, scratched crosshatched lines into a piece of ocher. No computer. No code. No prompt. But according to The Living Timeline, launched by digital art institution Le Random, the drawing is a work of generative art, just like your latest AI-styled photo on Instagram.
The Living Timeline is an interactive history of generative art, with 1,147 moments running from 71,000 BCE to 2026 that cover artworks, ideas, and exhibitions connected to the human-made algorithms and machines that made them possible. It includes examples as disparate as those primitive etchings, the 1804 invention of the jacquard loom, and a video processor from 1974.
According to Peter Bauman, editor-in-chief at Le Random, the timeline helps explain to people outside of the space why certain works are important. He believes you cant judge 1960s plotter art by its appearance alone, for example, because you also have to consider the context, and how difficult every single thing they were doing at the time was.
Bauman wrote The Living Timeline with contributions from Sasha Stilesa Kalmyk American poet and AI researcherand Vuk Ĉosiĉ, a Slovenian pioneer of the 1990s net.art movement known for his ASCII-based work.
[Screenshot: Le Random]
Take those 73,000-year-old crosshatched lines in the Blombos Cave, the first known drawing by humans and the first entry in the timeline. According to art theorist Philip Galanter, professor emeritus at the Texas A&M University College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts, They qualify as generative because the placement of individual marks has not been decided by the artisan, but dictated by a manually executed symmetrybased algorithm.
Galanters definition of generative artpublished in a research paper in 2003strongly influenced Baumans own definition, which in turn influenced the timeline. Generative art is an art practice in which an artist uses a system (natural-language rules, a computer program, a machine, or another procedural method) that contributes to or completes the work.
[Screenshot: Le Random]
Galanters thesis that generative art is as old as art itself is a provocative, but solid, idea. Still, it doesn’t mean that all art is generative.
To know what’s generative you have to ask a simple question: Did the artist give a rule, process, material, or machine some room to make decisions? The timeline does that, connecting generative art to looms, music composed with dice, code-controlled plotters, and neural networks. The artist creates a system, and if the system helps or makes something, that’s generative art.
By that general rule, however, I can see many different rules or algorithms used to create art through the ages, from the realism provided by the perspective grids and optical mirrors that dictated the appearance of a masterwork like Diego Velázquezs Las Meninas to the strict geometric and chromatic limits rules set by Piet Mondrian for his de Stijl-style paintings.
[Screenshot: Le Random]
AI has joined the chat
Perhaps thats why the timeline is so useful at this moment in history, as a tool to understand art under a different set of lenses. It doesn’t treat AI art as an alien object that crash-landed on culture the day somebody typed astronaut riding a horse into a text box. It puts AI in a long history of artists ceding part of the creative process to algorithms.
That’s what Bauman himself said in 2023: In a way its that classic Philip Galanter artist ceding control to an autonomous system. Bauman believes AI art is generative, and that AI is an autonomous system with different degrees of autonomy.
The code invented by the Blombos cavemen, for instance, directed the movement of their hands, ceding some autonomy to the algorithm but retaining final creative control. When we give an AI video generator like Seedream 2.5 a few assets with a prompt, we cede most of the autonomy and creative control to the algorithm.
The timelines AI guide treats todays image generators as the latest step in the history of AI systems, which kicks off in 1955 with the Dartmouth proposal, a paper in which John McCarthy and his peers formally coined the term artificial intelligence.
McCarthy’s ideas set in motion the events that led computer science to conceive the earliest artificial neural networks or algorithm-driven machines like Harold Cohens AARON, a computer program that autonomously controlled a plotter in 1973.
[Screenshot: Le Random]
The archive also charts the transition to emergent machine learning. It starts with the work of digital media artist and VFX software developer Karl Sims, who used genetic algorithms to evolve digital creatures in 1994.
Two decades later, we arrive at the generative AI boom of the mid-2010s, with the first generative adversarial networks (GANs). Today, the latest diffusion models are so perfect that they have destroyed our reality as we know it, creating an endless stream of slop, lies, and art.
[Screenshot: Le Random]
The tools have dramatically changed since that very first line drawing, but the foundational impulserelinquishing creative control to an autonomous systemhas arguably remained constant.
One timeline, many angles
The relaunched timelines UX offers many different exploration paths. You can move through the history chronologically or play an automated, animated tour. You can also travel by ideas (which shows an interactive ideas cloud), threads (the interweaving strands of all the movements in generative art history you can explore through time) or people (the same, but with people grouped by different arts and organized in time on a concentric rings map, like the age of a tree).
[Screenshot: Le Random]
The timeline also allows you to play with the real algorithms used at different points in history with a collection of 36 interactive and playable machines of generative art. Instead of merely reading about all those tools, you get to play with them.
[Screenshot: Le Random]
Or perhaps you can go full meta and explore the timeline using one of the simplest algorithms ever used to create art: Roll the dice. Go to the main page and scroll down until you see the button that says roll a moment under the head Leave it to chance.
Clicking there will send you to a random moment in history, a play on Johann Philipp Kirnbergers Musikalisches Würfelspiel, an algorithm the composer invented to create music back in 1757, rolling dice to select precomposed measures to assemble his piece.
Its a liberating time to be a graphic designer. You would think so, anyway, after reading Jarrett Fullers new book, Graphic Designers After Graphic Design, published this fall by Princeton Architectural Press.
Fuller, a designer, writer, podcaster, and professor at North Carolina State University, makes an optimistic case for an expansive definition of graphic design. Through conversations with practitioners working across publishing, research, changemaking, performance, and artistic practice, he argues that graphic design is much more than the production of posters, logos, and websites.
Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of his podcast, Scratching the Surface, which highlights practitioners overlapping with graphic design, the book turns its attention specifically to graphic designers with expansive, blurry, and very public practices.
[Image: Courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]
As fellow design educators, Fuller and I caught up about what this broader understanding of design means for the current generation of graphic designers. As he puts it, graphic designers are inherently insecure about their discipline’s identity and relevance. But rather than trying to resolve that uncertainty, what if we embraced it? We talked about the confidence it takes to define a practice on your own terms, and the possibilities that open up when you do. Below is a conversation we had over Zoom, which was edited for clarity.
Nika Simovich Fisher: Congratulations on your bookI really enjoyed the expansive, blurry multidisciplinary model of all of the perspectives. I think it’s important to have an optimistic perspective right now.
In class yesterday, I had a sophomore student ask me if, in my opinion, right now is a good time to go into the interaction design field. I thought of your book immediately because it does a great job of encapsulating how design can be part of many different realms, and I responded in that way. But I also did hear her anxiety, and I was curious, how would you have responded to her?
Jarrett Fuller: Yeah, I mean, look, that’s a great question, and not to make this too much about the book right away, because I know you’re asking generally. But I think one of the arguments that I’m making, and one of the very real experiences of my life, and I’m sure your life also, is that its kind of never a good time to go into design.
It’s always at risk. There’s always something that is threatening to kill it or to take it away from us. That’s the first thing I would say: Theres always an existential risk. There has always been an existential risk, but whatever that new thing is that’s supposed to kill it means that we get to make it something new. We get to find some new way to practice it.One of the thingsI think this is a line explicitly in the bookis that every generation gets to redefine design for themselves. The design of tomorrow is different from the design of yesterday. That’s really scary, and I’ve been there, but it’s also always been like that. So instead of trying to avoid that, let’s just embrace it. Let’s figure out what it could be together and where it could go next, as opposed to abandoning it.
I think that’s the optimism that you’re talking about. I feel like I’ve gone through all these cycles of grief for design, and I’m kind of just over it now. Let’s just make it what we want it to be. That’s so much more fun.
[Image: Courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]
Absolutely. It’s very freeing in that sense. I have a research assistant this semester, and at our meeting today, she was wearing a shirt that she picked up at the Printed Matter book fair that said, Print is dead. It was really funny and brilliant because it’s this throwaway line that weve heard since we were in school. And yet here we are, talking about your book that came out in print just the other day.
Right. It’s true. I heard that when I was in school, which is 15 years ago now, and it persists somehow.
It’s an interesting answer, but it’s not the right question, I guess. It’s not about print, or design, going away or not, but things changing, knowing that they’re going to change, and having the skills to lean into that friction. Thats what I took away from a lot of the respondents in your book.
I want to add to that because I think you’re right. That is where the anxiety comes from: this sense that design is really hard to define and is always changing, always different. There are questions of, well, what is design history, and who gets to be included? Why are there not more venues to write about design? All of this is just laddering up to this thing of: Are we actually a real thing? Is graphic design a real discipline?
I actually think we should embrace that blurriness as opposed to complaining about it, living in fear of it, or trying to put walls up around it in some way.
I 100% agree, maybe thats more honest, too. Its noteworthy that were both professors at universities. At yours, you’re a professor of graphic and experience design, and Im one of communication designsingular communication, not the plural, as you pointed out in the book. It’s interesting that we’re able to talk about the same things. We’re teaching similar classes and can trade notes, but technically they’re qualified i these other words.Yeah, what is that? I don’t even know what all those different terms mean anymore. Thats another thread in the book: Because we dont know what we are, we dont know what we do, because we always feel like were at risk, were always trying to come up with new names. Maybe that’s the wrong question. Finding a term to define it doesn’t actually do anything because then that term is just at risk of all the problems of the last term in some way.
Once you claim it as something, then youre kind of saying its not other things. But in this book in particular, youre saying that publishing, research, change making, performance, and artistic practice are actually all parts of graphic design, too.
I really enjoyed those categories. Were there other candidates as well? How did you land on those?That’s a surprisingly hard question. Yes, there were others, and those emerged through the writing process, through the research process, and through the interviews. As I was trying to figure out how to group people, those were really broad categories that could contain a lot.One of the challenges in the book is that a lot of the people I feature could sit between those categories or could sit in different sections. So there was a lot of zooming in and out: How broad should these categories be versus how specific?Early on there was a version with film and video, but then that fell aside. One thing I tried to avoid was including other design fields.The final categories span the production process. It’s everything from the creation of original ideas all the way to giving that knowledge shape or form, to the distribution of those forms out into the world. It’s taking design out of that sliver of image-making or visual production, and it’s moving it to both sides: to the production of the ideas, and then also the distribution of those ideas. I think those together made for this nice process of communication, if you will.
I think you had written that in the book too, this idea of making it public becomes part of it. On that note, this morning I got your [email] newsletter. You were talking about releasing the book and how theres this time gap between finishing writing the book and now seeing it come to fruition. Does it feel like a new chapter of this project?
Yeah, it does. When I saw the final PDFs, and then when I saw the printed one, it was like, great, this is the book now. Now on to the next thing. And now that I’m actually talking to people who have read it, it’s opening up new readings for me and helping me see the book in a new way. It is that idea of making it public, of putting it out into the world, and that actually continues the creative process in some way.
The other thing I was worried aboutworried is a strong wordwas, how is the world going to be different by the time this book comes out? When I knew it was done, and then when I saw what the publication date was, it’s like, is this still going to be relevant? Are these topics still interesting?
I think they’re more relevant than I realized. That existential threat that your student felt at the beginning of this conversation, I think that’s more front of mind for people. Not just for students, but also practicing designers and design professors are all wondering, what are we doing here, and how do we make sense of it? Hopefully this book is a way to give some shape, or some map, or some ideas of how to push some of these ideas forward in 2026, with everything going on in the world.
By distributing it in the format you did, it felt quite formal and educational, almost like a textbook. Was that your intention?Yes and no. When I was working on it, I was really thinking, this is a book for students who are studying graphic design, to show them a really diverse range of practices that you can have with the skills that youre learning.
Theres a really broad, diverse range of practices that one can do after they have studied graphic design, with the language and the methods and the skills of graphic design. In that sense, thinking about it as a textbook, sure, I like that reading. It’s very much a map of what you can do.
On the other hand, one of the reasons why I wanted to feature real designers who are all what I call emerging and midcareerso they’re all [about] 40 and younger, basically a book of millennialsis that when you talk about the future of graphic design, or alternative ways of practicing graphic design, or what graphic design can be, that can get really theoretical and speculative really fast.
Especially when you talk to students about it and say, “Oh, you can do this kind of stuff, there’s no way to actually comprehend how you turn that into a practice.” I really wanted to root this in real people who are actually doing it and talk to them, some of them very candidly, about where the money comes from. How do you fund these projects? To show that this isn’t just an idea of graphic design. There are real people who are doing it like this today.
They all have active practices that fit into this discipline of graphic design that could be academic, but also is very much engaged with the public.
Right, exactly. You said it better than I did. I also wondered if a book was the right format for something like this. In some ways, I also wanted it to be a record of right now. Who are these people right now? How are they thinking about their work in this moment, in this generation? In the future, we can look at it and say, heres how a bunch of people thought about graphic design in 2026. Theres also a historical thing that I think a book is still kind of the best at.And with a book, you can notice little details within it. For example, I appreciated that the birth years of the interviewees were prominently listed in the margins. I think the oldest person was born in 1978 and the youngest in 1998.Yeah, that was the thing. I pushed my editors on that. They weren’t totally sure they wanted to do that, and I was like, I really want this to be a generational argument. I want to show that this is a cohort of people who maybe don’t know each other, who are maybe not in dialogue with each other, but they all are coming through a similar system and are saying something about what it’s like to make graphic design right now.
Everybody who I’ve talked to about the book has commented on the birth dates in there. I’m really happy that you like that.I do. I like that it’s not the traditional years for millennials or Gen Z. It’s a little blurry, which supports the argument.
Outside of their ages, something else all the people in the book have in common, is that they really are making a design career work. It was Silvio Lorusso who was talking about testing out design ideas and doing these speaking opportunities to support it. You said it’s like the stand-up comedy approach to graphic design, and I loved that so much. One, it was funny, but two, there was something really relatable to hear these other people validate this way of working and say, this is where I’m testing out ideas, and I get to distribute my work organically, and that’s still design./p>
There’s two things that I would say about that. One, I also love that moment, and I didn’t want the book to be a how-to book. I didn’t want it to be, here’s how you work outside of a studio system or a startup system. I didn’t want to go through that, but I did want there to be references to how people make it work.
The idea of, I will give a lot of talks, and that money gives me space so that I can sit and write a book. But that also gives me an audience that I can test these ideas with for when I go to write the book. Or talking to Nicole Killian, who has this publishing practice, and they get grants from their university that they put toward publishing the work of other artists. They have this ratio of what they bring to book fairs so they can be sure that money will come back to them. All that’s embedded in there sort of secretly, without being explicitly a how-to book.
[Image: Courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]
But then, in some ways, I’m also a millennial. I’m also part of this cohort. The book was a way for me to validate what I’m doing. I come from graphic design, but like you, do stuff that doesn’t really look like graphic design. Being in dialogue with these people was also a way to put my work, that sometimes can feel isolating, into some sort of larger cohort or generational thing.
The podcast, the writing that I do for Fast Company and other places, are all ways to test out these ideas. Then they go back into the classroom, or the classroom goes out into an essay. They’re all testing out the same ideas in different places.
What you said about writing reminds me of two of the conversations in the book. First, Tiger Dingsun was talking about how in poetry, you see the interior of the person, but in design you do not. Similarly, Silvio Lorusso was talking about how writing and design to him are not the same. He said that design is all about being straightforward, getting to the point, and writing has more romance, essentially.
Is that something you thought about, as you were writing your book?
That’s a really good question. I’m conflicted about it because I understand both of their arguments, and I think the argument that I’m trying to make is a yes, and argument. Yes, I agree with that, but can’t design also be like that too?Why do we say design has to be efficient and immediate and trying to sell you something, or trying to communicate something in a clear way? Why can’t design be poetry? I want graphic design that’s more poetry and less graphic design that’s problem-solving, in some way. I think the collection of people here are trying to make that case: It can be both. It doesn’t just have to be the commercial, efficient, market-capital way we think about graphic design.All too often, we let the profession and the industry win out, and this other stuff, the cultural side of it, gets pushed to the side and is seen as outside of graphic design or alternative. Or we call it something else. This isn’t graphic design because it’s not doing these other things, so we’re going to call this art or fine art or studio practice.
I’m trying to have a big umbrella for graphic design, to say it can include all of those things, and it does include all those things. So why do we keep segmenting them out as different?
There’s a really interesting thread of a lot of the people I talked to had a similar experience of waffling between feeling optimistic about design, then constricting, and finding ways to make it work. Many tried to get away from design, and then came back to it with a bigger understanding of it.
I love that that is a theme, and it’s something that’s very relatable if you are working in this blurry state of design. In your book, Nicole Killian also talked about how they wouldn’t be able to do the work theyre doing now without having the design knowledge. It’s an empowering narrative.
It seems that for many, design becomes this psychological process, which feels very honest and relatable. In Mindy Seu’s section, she talks about finding the thing that you think about obsessively. I really loved it when she said that after graduating undergrad and studying design, her peers were getting these design jobs, and she felt like, why am I not doing that type of work?
Then she saw that her peers were more interested in form, and she realized that was never her thing. She leaned into what she does naturally, which is gathering resources. I appreciated that part of the conversation because it shows that we’re all different, and we all have different strengths. In your book theyre all valid options.Right, and why do we have to say that one is right and one is wrong? I think that’s the tension that Mindy’s talking about. You see these people getting these quote-unquote good jobs, and you think you’re supposed to be doing that, and it’s actually much more pluralistic.
That’s where the book is very biographical for me too. I wanted to be a designer for a really long time. I go and study it, and then I get my first job as a graphic designer in New York, thinking I’d made it. I just didn’t like it. I was like, oh, this is not as interesting. There were all these other parts of design that were also interesting to me, and there was no space for that in those types of jobs.
I had to find new ways to keep doing the thing that I was doing, but in different sorts of contexts. That’s Mindy. I mean, that’s everybody. That is the book. It’s to show that that’s not a departure from design. It’s an expansion of graphic design.Just now when you said bioGRAPHICAL Im reminded of the suffixgraphicalyou articulated in the book. I didn’t know that that word came from both to draw and write together, which is so perfect.Yeah, that’s my big surprise in the book. That’s the thing that I feel explains everything that comes before it. We think of graphic design as visual. We think of graphic in graphic design as visual, but that’s actually a very limited definition of that word.As were talking about all these different paths for design, Im noticing there is a lot of confidence in deciding, Okay, Im going to do this my way. Everyone in the book does it. You can make an argument that any working creatie person has made the decision to do it their way, but its hard to communicate that to students or designers earlier in their journey. There is a lot of risk in choosing to do these things that are unconventional, or at least, not a one-to-one path you can follow. What about design education could help people make that leap?
I have a couple ways that maybe I would answer that. Graphic design educationwhether that’s communication design or graphic and experience, whatever the subterms are, this shared world that we’re both inthere is often, in many programs, by necessity, an immediate need to create focus areas. Are you going to focus on branding? Are you going to focus on interaction? When I was in school, literally, when you got to your junior year, it was, are you going to be a print designer or a web designer? Then you just took classes in one of those. I think we should encourage much more commingling of these and much more multidisciplinary thinking.Graphic design is medium-agnostic. It’s not actually about the medium that is the end result. It’s not about the book or the website or the logo or the painting or the film. It’s about all the ideas, and then how those ideas take a shape.What would design education look like that more about, how do you give ideas form? Those forms can take any form. More of that early, less about outputs and more about process, and that shift from idea to form, is one way to start doing that.
The second is toand I hesitate to say thisnot be so tied to industry. Not to look at what the jobs that companies are hiring for, but to actually lead that in some way and say, here are the types of skills that we think are important as educators. Let’s feed that into the students, and then let industry respond to that.
I think that will create more confidence. That will create more entrepreneurial-type students because you’re building things on your own while you’re in school.
The last piece is that design education could have much more space for self-reflection. There should be work that you are making in response to things, but there should be almost a metapractice. What are the things you’re interested in? What’s the type of practice you want to have? How do we create spaces for you to try that and test those things while you’re in school, while you’re in a safe space, while you have the time to think about the kind of work you want to make, so you can start building on that?
When you graduate, you have a body of work that is not just making you employable, but is also saying something about you and the type of practice that you want to have. How do we build that into curriculums, right from the beginning?I love that and agree. Those questions inherently build confidence, because you have to put something out into the world and stand behind it. To have it result in a form, you have to go through various decisions and side quests to finish it.
I think its a way to be a creative person in the age of AI also. If design is medium-agnostic and it’s not actually about the form of the thing or the medium of the thing, AI can do that. You can tell AI, make me a book with this kind of layout. Make me an app with this sort of thing. Make me a logo that looks like this. That’s the easy part now. The actual production of it is done.What designers have to do is have a point of view, a set of ideas, be able to have a thing that they want to say that only they can say. Thats the stuff AI cant do.
I was going to say that I like that your book doesn’t explicitly talk about AI, but it’s between the lines in a lot of things. What Nat Pyper was saying about being in grad school and figuring out how to make this work that they think should exist, and using design to get it outI think that’s it right there. That’s really what AI cannot do. For example, AI cannot make that series of letterforms inspired by queer counterculture.
Right. Somebody who read the book said the message of the book is, Make design weird again. I think that’s kind of true. All of the standard stuff is the stuff that AI is going to take first, so we need to lean into the weirdness, the humanness, the strange, the stuff that only we can communicate. That’s a great example of that, and that conversation is a great case study in that.
[Image: Courtesy Princeton Architectural Press]
I love Make graphic design weird again, I think Santa Cruz, California, has a similar slogan. Maybe we can borrow it.One of the other questions I had was about a sense of humor in design. Its related to our conversation about confidence, but knowing about visual forms and what they communicate and having control over it, allows you to make jokes in a way that people who arent as versed in that, cant. Nat brought up the idea of being a jester, for example, and Nicole Killians project was called, Come to my window, a pun inspired by the 90s song.Theres this sense of play, along with the stand-up comedy approach to sharing work. Theres all those examples of breaking the script in the book. Like, Silvio literally said not using a script for PowerPoints. The thing that connects a lot of these practitioners is the willingness to be seen and to be energetic and funny.
That’s really smart. What that’s making me think of is, so much of our visual culture just looks the same. There’s so much copying. Every time there’s a rebrand, it looks like a thing that we’ve seen before. Every app on our phone basically looks exactly the same and has the same set of interaction patterns. You can go to any city and see similar-looking buildings. This is Kyle Chayka’s idea of airspace: All the coffee shops look the same.
It doesn’t have to be like that. The people in this book are maybe the extreme cases of that, but that doesn’t mean these ideas can’t actually make their way back into commercial design practices. That humor, that personality, that strangeness, that disorientation, that friction, that poeticswhy can’t that be part of a brand or part of an app or part of a space?
I sometimes feel like the people in this book I’m describing are very different, but I think all that is a way to signal where all of this could go. It’s not just that you have to leave traditional graphic design practice. You can take these ideas and embed them into the work that you’re already doing also.Then it goes back to that multidisciplinary model, and also being realistic, because it is an expensive world that we live in. Having diverse models of taking your skill set and applying it is useful.
Yeah, diverse models, and I would say diverse scales also. So often we think, in a globalized world, that everything has to reach everybody.
This idea that you can have a small practice and a small cohort, a small publicnot everything has to be globalis an interesting way to think about this moment also. What is the scale of the practice that you want? I don’t really talk about that in the book specifically, but there’s questions underlying a lot of these conversations.
Again, that feels very empowering to me. What it touches on is, essentially, how do you define success, whether within graphic design or personally? All of these people are chosen partially because of their professional track record. There’s something refreshing about seeing how everyone interpreted that for their own practice.Yeah, I think thats right.In terms of AI, did you intentionally not want to talk about it or was it just not a priority? Do you think the conversations were a reaction to AI without needing to spell it out?I didn’t want to write about it. I didn’t want this to be an AI book. Going back to your very first question, there’s always something that design is reacting to, and if it’s not AI, it will be something else.
In some ways, this book is reacting to a bunch of things. It’s reacting to AI. It’s probably reacting to the Trump presidency and the reordering of the world order. It’s probably reacting to the 2008 financial crisis, which a lot of these people graduated into. It’s reacting to Brexit for a lot of the people that I spoke to in Europe. There are a lot of things that are informing all of this.
My interest was not in what we were reacting to, but in what we were making next. This is really a book about people, and maybe that also is the subtle way that this is a reaction to AI: these are people who are doing things. The book is called *Graphic Designers After Graphic Design*. Who are these designers? Maybe that’s a subtle protest of AI too.
In the foreword, Ellen Lupton writes about mistaking the title of your book for Graphic Design After Graphic Designers, which is a very different reading and much more apocalyptic. She wrote about it better than I’m articulating, but it preserves your hopeful perspective, or why at least it felt optimistic to me.
Optimistic is right. It’s very much a celebration. I write this in the beginning: I feel like graphic designers are really insecure people. We, as an industry, as a discipline, don’t feel respected. We feel like there’s always people outside of design who think that they can do it. It’s hard to actually describe what it is that we do.
You’ve used this word a couple times, and I really like it: confidence. This is a book about saying we should actually own all of those things. We should own the fact that this is really hard to define. We should own the fact that no one quite understands what it is. We should own the fact that everyone else thinks that they can do it also. We should own the fact that it’s always changing.
Let’s call ourselves graphic designers again. We don’t have to run from that. If you want to make paintings, if you want to make films, if you want to write essays, if you want to do any of these things, why can’t that be graphic design too? At the end of the day, that’s all this book is trying to do. It’s trying to say all of these things can be graphic design.
When strolling the hallways of his first internship in investment banking, Alex R. kept noticing small trinkets crowding the desks of executives and junior analysts alike, as if each workstation grew its own skyline made up of knickknacks.
Some were simple: glass prisms the size of a coffee mug with a companys name and the banks logo etched on the surface. But others were much flashier. Some were adorned with 3D-printed elements, floating features, and specialized lighting. The awards silhouettes sometimes took the form of the Bitcoin logo, a game console, or even a Japanese temple.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
Alex, who is now a full-time investment banker in New York City, wondered what these eccentric objects were. He sheepishly broached the topic with an analyst on the team, not wanting to look uninitiated. I asked them, What are these things? he tells Fast Company. (Alexs last name as well as those of other bankers mentioned have been redacted due to fear of professional repercussions.)
For an industry whose public image is one of intensity (see the ego-driven, viciously competitive characters in Industry or the Wolf of Wall Street), the idea of the grown men behind million-dollar deals swooning over tiny desktop trinkets seems absurd. Especially when flashier perks like steak dinners at Casa Cipriani, bottles of Dom Perignon, and sometimes even the occasional Rolex are considered normal industry rewards.
But for many, it is the $100-a-piece deal toy that they covet the most. Taking many shapes and sizes, the figurines serve as a sort of participation trophy for the closure of a transactiona memento for those involved in a deal and the banks clients.
To anyone outside the finance universe, the concept of deal toys is foreign, but within the industry the toys often become one of the highest signifiers of success for young analysts. So much so, when two investment bankers in their mid-twenties overheard a conversation about deal toys, they lit up with joymixed with confusion over why normies knew, or cared about, their tradition at all. How did you hear about this in the first place? one asked. The other chimed in, I forget people dont know these exist.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
The art of the deal toy
Before deal toys existed, bankers had newspaper clippings to commemorate their work.
The deals appeared in the form of newspaper tombstone ads to adhere to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s requirement to publicly disclose big deals like initial public offerings. The brief ads, which ran in publications like The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, were basic in style, listing the underwriters for a deal and brief details on the transaction.
Eventually, though no one can say exactly when, the tombstone came off the page and moved to the desk. (The name tombstone has evolved to become a synonym for a deal toy.) At some point in the 1970s, bankers looked for a more permanent recognition outside of a tiny newspaper ad that could get thrown out.
They started simply taking a digital print, a card cut out with all the deal information on it, and they would embed it into . . . lucitethat way, it would stay embedded and last forever, and they would gift that to everyone that was involved in the deal, says Erik Steudler, founder and president/CEO of Milestone Awards, a deal toy manufacturer with offices from New York and Nashville to Hong Kong and London.
Eventually, a cottage industry of toy manufacturers emerged. Entrepreneurs figured that, regardless of location, financiers want a physical form of recognition. They were right.
A handful of companies focusing solely on corporate awardslike deal toysgained momentum, employing dozens of designers and sales people. The current landscape is made up mostly of alumni of those original businesses who have branched out on their own.
Over the decades the practice grew into a global tradition, with in-house design teams working alongside financial institutions to develop their own trinkets, which are now made mostly in China.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
There was a brief decline in deal toys after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which triggered more stringent regulation on bank spending. The industry has since rebounded with an even larger demand as financial institutions lead more lucrative transactions than ever. As the size of deals goes up, so does the deal toy market. The tech boom and consolidation trend is also helping. Think big name mergers like the Paramount-Warner Brothers deal or forthcoming billion-dollar IPOs from AI companies like OpenAI. Deal toys are now a $60 million industry.
Designs have become more ambitious, too, with manufacturers using emerging technologies like 3D printing o create bespoke toys. I find with every year that passes, there’s more and more that becomes feasible and durable, says Gregory Thomas, sales director at HV Recognition, one of the leading firms in the industry with offices in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. If you’d have asked me 10 years ago the stuff that I was doing today, I’d wouldve said you’ve lost your mind.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
Thomas, who has spent decades in the deal toy business, has personal highlights including a basketball enclosed in an acrylic box and a Nike Air Jordan sneaker the size of a loaf of bread, both made using custom molds and printing methods.
Thomas launched his former company’s Asia operations, has worked in various markets, and has noticed how design preferences change across markets. While European clients might prefer subdued, minimalist designs, American analysts often opt for a bigger the better approach.
Today, the toys take many shapes. When she was a sophomore intern, Kirsten W., a young investment banker in NYC, caught a couple of analysts swinging what looked like a baseball bat. It was actually a deal toy. One of my VPs just got a new one and its a giant wizard on a marble plaque, and Ive also seen a bowling ball, she says.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
Making the deal toys
The life of a deal toy begins in the hands of junior analysts, who, upon closing a deal, are tasked with reaching out to manufacturers to develop a concept. While some view the process as just another checklist to complete, many use the opportunity as a creative outlet in an otherwise logistical job.
The whole process is pretty exciting the first time you get to do it, says Michael D., another young New York banker. When you finally get it, its fun to see it in person, and people in the office are interested in seeing it as well.
Sometimes analysts come in with a clear idea, referencing icons relevant to the deal. A transaction with a Japanese company might incorporate the country’s architecture, while other times a clients special interest makes it onto the designlike the time a figure of Slash, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist, ended up on a deal toy.
Some manufacturers will take the initiative and seek out notable deals, as did Thomas, who reached out to industry contacts to propose a design for SpaceX’s $86 billion IPO.
Their proposal featured an alien dressed as a cowboy riding a vertical SpaceX rocket with LED lighting throughout; Elon Musk’s face was emblazoned in a crystal panel beside the deals details.
The timeline from brainstorming to unboxing the toys may run upwards of two or three months, depending on the complexity of the design. A more affordable toy might borrow from the original deal toys, set as clear prisms or glass cubes with the deals details printed on the object. But some toys can go as wild as physics will allow, with custom molds made for the objects, 3D printed elements, and even magnets used to create a floating illusion.
The budget for deal toys varies, with some deals having a budget of thousands of dollars. The budget determines who gets a toy. Larger budgets allow for dozens of team members to get one, sometimes even including the lawyers on the deal, while other times only a handful of analysts might make the cut.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
Bragging rights
While it may seem like frivolous spending, the toys have intangible value for both the bank and the bankers.
We refer to it as desktop advertisement, says Steudler at Milestone Awards. The clients keep them on their desk . . . and will always remember the job that their investment bank did because their logos are on the deal toy and so they’ll go back to them.
For the bankers, the toys are both a rite of passage and a token of appreciation for the hours of work that go into a transaction.
[Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition]
You put so much time and effort into something and its a nice symbol of your work, Kirsten says. I think for more senior bankers its more of a sign of prestigea who has more contestbut early on in your career I think it just more of a satisfying close, and nice to be recognized for your hard work.
But the toys undoubtedly also feed into a caracter trait many associate with the finance industry.
“It’s a huge ego thing for bankers, says Thomas at HV Recognition. It’s almost like a portable CV.
And while many acknowledge that the toys dont really matter in the grand scope of thingsthey also agree, they kind of do.
My personal opinion is that they dont matter, Michael says. But, he adds, when my coworker makes fun of me for my football team losing, I remind him I have more deal toys.
For much of the last year, security cameras sold by the tech firm Flock Safety have been blacked out, painted over, even wrapped in trash bags. Roundly criticized for ushering in high-tech surveillance, the companys automated license plate readers (ALPRs) have not only been broken, but banned by cities across the nation.
However, at the same time the ALPR backlash has been brewing, a contributor to financial challenges for the company, Flock has seen a different part of its business literally take flight.
The companys line of drones has become a key part of its current revenue and sales pitch. Flock founder and CEO Garrett Langley told the All-In Podcast in September that drone tech is the companys fastest-growing business unit right now.
Founded in 2017, Flock is valued at $8.4 billion. Langley said drone tech is set to account for nearly half of its future revenue. At one point, the company was in negotiations to supply drones to police in Chula Vista, California, the San Diego suburb that has been on the forefront of drone policing.
While local law enforcement often praise the technologythe San Francisco police hold up the tech as a key aspect in a recent drop in the crime ratethe increasing deployments of drones are worrying civil rights advocates about the balance of privacy versus security.
The public conversation hasn’t caught up to how much of a problem drones are at this point, says Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. There are very high-resolution cameras that can see thousands of feet away and are designed to not be seen by the people on the street.
The Rapid Rise of Police Drones
Flocks growing push to sell aerial surveillance systems comes just as law enforcement vastly expands the use of whats called drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs.
Today, roughly 2,000 police departments and public safety agencies use this technology, which sends drones out to answer 911 calls and either clear the call (determine no additional police presence is necessary), help scout out the scene before other personnel arrive, or provide real-time insight during emergencies and standoffs.
The ease of use of the technology, combined with the larger workforce shortages in policing and an effort to avoid high-speed car chases, have been cited as reasons to invest in these eyes in the sky.
Flock has roughly 175 DFR customers across the country, but the growth opportunities are huge. According to retired Chief Charles L. Werner, founder of the Droneresponders industry group, there are about 125 new Federal Aviation Administration approvals for DFR programs every month.
The increasing technological capacity for cops to utilize cameras and drones flips the typical police process, says Bryan Cox, head of police accountability at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. As he explains, instead of probable cause setting off police oversightyoure free from government oversight absent some extraordinary reasonthe increasing ability of police to surveil first, to collect all the data and figure out what the problem is, raises important constitutional questions about privacy.
Flock believes drones are an important tool for law enforcement, says Paris Lewbel, Flock public safety manager. Flock began expanding its drone offerings in 2024 when it acquired Aerodome.
The company has also prioritized the production of its new Alpha drone in the U.S., with plans to open a factory in Georgia by 2027. Building domestically allows the company to gain market share after the sale of Chinese drones such as DJI were banned by President Donald Trump in December 2025. Flock is also selling drone security to private companies and even prisons.
The firms technologyAlpha drones can travel at an industry-leading 60 mph and go 45 minutes between chargesgives Flock users more expansive abilities to track drivers and suspects, and to incorporate drone footage into its AI-powered analysis tools.
Like many other police tech companies, such as Axon, Flock wants to create an ecosystem of technology, becoming the go-to-vendor for law enforcement (and locking them into their proprietary systems, says Lipton).
The technology really speaks for itself, Lewbel tells Fast Company. If you speak to law enforcement agencies that have started to deploy drones as a first responder, they’re seeing significant positive impact.
A car with a license plate that appears on an ALPR hot list can activate rapid drone deployment. First, an ALPR camera clocks a license plate on a watch list and sends an alert; once the alert is triggered, a police officer needs to press a button to launch a drone, a safeguard designed to keep humans in the loop. Once airborne, the drone can track the vehicle.
Proponents point to safeguards that they argue limit the surveillance applications of this tech and focus it on active investigations or incidents. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins claims the citys fleet of nearly 100 drones gets used responsibly: only in the course of active investigations, and not as a blanket surveillance.
Lewbel says Flock drones cant do ALPR scans automatically (though he does concede that an office looking at a drone camera could simply call in the license plate number). But others argue that not only can it do that, but its also trivial fo an office to enter a plate number seen through a drone camera into an ALPR system.
San Francisco as a battleground
One of the main battlegrounds of public opinion around drones and policing is San Francisco, where the wider push to incorporate an array of high-tech policing tools has become a much bigger political issue, as evidence of improper data sharing with other agencies became public.
Drones, including Flock models, in addition to hundreds of stationary license plate cameras, came to the SFPD after the city passed Proposition E in 2024, which allowed the city to use technology and centralized command stations called real-time crime centers.
Before, the city was still playing old-school cops and robbers, says Jenkins, the San Francisco DA. Now, she says, these tools have helped dramatically improve response times, are able to chase suspects, and are being used as evidence in courtrooms.
The city is in the midst of rewriting its drone policies, with leaders finding themselves fiercely debating the efficacy and impact of this kind of policing. In early September, the San Francisco Police Commission was set to vote on the proposed drone policy, but the meeting was delayed until October 14.
Jenkins says a good part of the proposed reforms she supports would deal with reforming the way the system is used to prevent outside agency access, and to function as a deterrent to those who might think of abusing it, and really build trust with the public that it’ll be used the right way.
Others find the citys latest drone policy proposal lacking. Detractors argue the proposals broad language would justify increased drone surveillance deployment. Lipton calls it a really atrociously inadequate drone policy.
San Francisco law enforcement holds itself up as a case study for the use of technology. Jenkins says drones and other high-tech tools have helped lead to a decrease in crime, though research shows the recent improvement may have more varied and complicated contributors.
(There isnt currently an independent, peer-reviewed study on the impact of this tech in San Francisco, though a preliminary study of more than 200 police departments that wasnt peer reviewed suggested the tech does have an impact on crime rates.)
According to SFPD stats, from March 2024 to August 4, 2026, DFR responded to 4,000 incidents, and assisted in more than 1,550 cases and more than 655 arrests of suspects, meaning drone footage was utilized during the investigation.
So far in 2026, DFR has been used with 40 search warrants and has been involved in 70-plus chases. The use of the technology for policing varied: A drone unit helped track suspect cars, which led to an arrest and conviction for pickpockets operating in Chinatown.
Drone footage has already been utilized in a number of court cases and prosecutions in San Francisco, though it can be tricky to fully track its use. In a case still in preliminary hearing, for example, drone evidence that helped track a defendant fleeing a scene did lead to a felony stop and arrest, but wont be used in court, according to the DAs office.
Do Drones Challenge the Definition of Privacy?
Drone policing raises other significant questions, including legal issues, that opponents say remain unanswered.
The recent San Francisco policy proposal would reduce evidence retention from 12 months to 30 days. Flock has set its default policy at retention for seven days. As Jenkins argues, We don’t have the time, the staffing, nor the interest to collect data on law-abiding people. We just don’t, and so every ounce of access to this data is preserved for investigations of criminal activity. Period.
But that preservation can be an issue, Cox and others note. Is the analysis drawn from that videowhere cars went, what suspects met with other suspects, where people gatheredstored as data elsewhere, rendering the elimination of video a formality?
Flocks Lewbel says after a video is destroyed, theres still flight information, due to the audit log of flights that gets added to online public transparency portals operated by public safety agencies. And these drone videos often get classified as evidence, which agencies upload to their own digital evidence management systems, which get retained for much longer periods of time.
Others raise the issue of warrantless surveillance. Police departments often utilize the argument that drone surveillance happens in public, where a cop could be observing someones behavior, and theres no expectation of privacy. Tapping a phone, which requires observing what happens in someones home and carries the expectation of privacy, requires a judges discretion and decision.
Jenkins makes the same argument in favor of police being able to utilize drones without a judges warrant. You have a constitutional expectation of privacy when you talk on the phone, she says. Therefore, that is the reason that police and law enforcement have to go get a warrant before being allowed to violate that expectation of privacy. When you are in public, you do not. You don’t have the same entitlement, nor should you have the same expectation. The drone can only surveil what’s in public.
She also argues you can see and hear the drones, making their presence obvious.
But theres no way existing constitutional understanding would permit the constant possibility of video surveillance, Cox argues, both as it pertains to the right to privacy and the freedom of association. Could you ever meet someone without fear, knowing that interaction could be logged and tracked?
He considers these issues open questions that need to be decided in a court of law; federal courts have already begun to grapple with the way the technologys retrospective and search features may come in conflict with the Fourth Amendments guarantees around unlawful search and seizure.
Jenkins argues that the introduction of drones for policing has been a new positive for the city, and has lived up to what the voters expected when they passed Proposition E. Technology, she says, has helped the department succeed, and taking it away or restricting it would be a mistake.
We can’t go back to that place out of fear, she says. You do what it takes to put guardrails in. You don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater because it’s dirty, right? Thats not how it works, and that’s not in the best interests of our communities.
Detractors argue it just entrenches more tech that will always be ripe for potential abuses. This is the exact sort of mission creep that I think we kind of anticipated was going to happen, says Lipton.
