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My day job is a design educator, so for me, this time of year is filled with writing syllabi, planning new classes, and thinking about what the next generation of designers might need to know as they enter an ever-changing field. To do this, I look for the designers, the writers, and the thinkers who challenge my understanding of design and force me to think about what we do in new ways. Thankfully, there’s been a handful of new books to come out over the last few months that do just that. As we head back to school, the books included here look back and look forward, asking big questions about how we use design today and how we might approach this moment in more thoughtful, considered ways. [Cover Image: Macmillan] Could Should Might Don’t by Nick Foster When you imagine the future, what does it look like? Chances are, when you picture the future, you picture radical architecture, flying cars, walking robotsa world aglow in blues and purples. When we imagine the future, we often imagine images made by other people and those images have become strangely homogenized. Nick Foster, a self-described “reluctant futurist” and the former design director of Google X, the tech giant’s “moonshot ideas factory,” thinks this is a problem. In his fascinating new book, he probes how we imagine the future and who has a stake in that future, making the case for a more rigorous, thoughtful, and provocative way to think about the future and how we get there. Both a guidebook for thinking about the future and a framework for interrogating the futures presented to us, Foster’s easy prose makes it simple for anyone to be a part of the conversation about the futures we want. [Cover Image: Inventory Press] A *Co-*Program for Graphic Design by David Reinfurt Built around three courses graphic designer David Reinfurt taught and developed at Princeton University over the last decade, this book blends theoretical ideas and practical knowledge about what it means to be a graphic designer today. Jumping back and forth through design history, moving across formats and mediums, and inviting a range of voices to participate in the conversation, Reinfurt shows that graphic design continues to be an expansive, ever-shifting space in which to think about ideas and how they move through the world. [Cover Image: MIT Press] Not Here, Not Now by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby In 2013, designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby released Speculative Everything, a now-canonical text on using design not to create things but ideas. The book has had an enduring impact on the fields of speculative design, design fiction, and critical design and continues to be a foundational text for design students. Dunne & Raby are back with a new book, Not Here, Not Now, that builds upon the ideas they introduced a decade ago. This new book proposes that we approach design not as a “solution” but as a “proposal” for new ways of thinking. Structured as a travelogue of ideas that journeys across science, philosophy, and literature, Dunne and Raby once again explore design’s role in a world where reality itself is called into question. [Cover Image: Hachette] The Invention of Design by Maggie Gram Reading Maggie Gram’s excellent new book, The Invention of Design, I couldn’t help but wonder how a book like this didn’t exist before. Over the last century design has moved from aesthetics to function, from the art department to the corporate boardroom. How did we get here? Gram, a designer and historian, charts this history, showing how our understanding of design has evolved over the last century, from design as decoration to the rise of design as problem solving, centering the figures who helped make design central to every area of our lives. But this is not a hagiography: as Gram chronicles design’s rise, she also interrogates its limits, noting where i’s fallen short of its goals and highlights the unintended consequences of design gone too far. [Cover Image: Verso] Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat by Hito Steyerl Over the last decade, I’m not sure anyone has written more provocatively and insightfully on how images (and how they circulate) shape our understanding of the world than German video artist and theorist Hito Steyerl. This new book is a collection of essays that explore the intersection and influence of artificial intelligence and climate change on the creation of images. From data-driven art to blockchain aesthetics, Steyerl mines our current moment to trace the overlap of politics, economics, and technology and how they structure what we see when we look out at the world.
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E-Commerce
The Eurovision Song Contest, the European musical showdown known for its glittery outfits, unusual performances, and over-the-top fanfare, is returning in 2026 for its 70th year. To usher in the anniversary, the competition just unveiled a rebrand, and fans arent thrilled. Next May, Eurovision (which moves to a new city every year) will be held in Vienna, according to a recent Instagram announcement. There, it will officially roll out its new logo, custom font, and brand symbol, all of which were revealed on August 18 and have since begun to appear on the contests social media accounts. [Image: Eurovision] The new look, which apparently was designed to bring more cohesion to Eurovisions look and make the brand more versatile on digital platforms, has attracted droves of negative feedback from fans. Commenters across social media say the branding has veered into cartoonish territory, with some even implying that the new wordmark and logo were generated by AI rather than human artists. Martin Green, director of Eurovision, says he was not at all surprised by the negative fan reaction, given that Eurovision has such a massive fanbase and any form of creativity is ultimately subjective. While he says that none of the rebrand was generated by AI, hes actually encouraged to see fans advocating for artists over AI. It’s really good to see the fans on this, actually, because from a personal and professional point of view, I agree with a lot of them, Green says. Inside Eurovision’s new branding The new Eurovision branding was designed through a collaboration between the European Broadcasting Unions in-house design team and the British branding studio Pals. Green says there were a few reasons for Eurovision to rebrand in 2026, starting with the fact that the competitions branding has remained largely unchanged for close to 15 years. We deal in pop music, and that pop music keeps us young and tells us what’s going on in the world, he says. As a brand, we want to keep refreshed as well. Pals took the main Eurovision logoa hand-drawn script that launched in 2004 and was later refined in 2014and plumped it up with chunkier, curvier letters. Its a typographic choice thats been popular among companies across categories in recent months, from Burger King to Goodreads and Glossier. The former capital E in Eurovision has been swapped for a lowercase version, and the words song contest are now a more prominent part of the logo rendered in the same custom script. In addition, a bespoke typeface called Singing Sans will serve as the Eurovision brands main font. Its a sans serif that can be used for day-to-day needs like press releases, but its also available in an iteration with exaggerated curls for out-of-home messaging and social media. Adapting the brand for digital uses was another of Greens main goals with the new look. I think the last time we refreshed was about 14 years ago, Green says. Even back then, digital was still relatively early. Now we are enormously digital: We reach billions through our social media and our digital activity. To make Eurovisions identity more versatile online, Pals broke out the main logos heart symbol into its own asset called the Chameleon Heart, which can adapt to reflect the host nations identity, a performers individuality, or a particular theme, a press release reads. It can also stand alone in places like the competitions app icons. The key thing was that it really was a refresh and an evolutionwe didn’t want to rip up the page, Green says. The brand obviously has great connectivity. It’s got great recognition, but it felt a little too informal and laid-back. We wanted to boost it forward. Eurovision’s director addresses AI accusations So far, the fan reception to the new branding on social media has been overwhelmingly negative. On Instagram and TikTok combined, the reveal has received nearly 5,000 comments, ranging from fans accusing the designers of using AI to generate the new assets to comparing it to the Pampers logo and Picsarts color gradient. [H]ey chat gpt, can you generate a new logo for eurovision, make it look childish, close to the old one but [Junior Eurovision Song Contest] coded, one Instagram commenter said. [I]ts like comic sans ms lol, another on TikTok added. This font came straight out of ChatGPT, a third said. Green has a long career history of working in major events, including serving as head of ceremonies for the 2012 London Olympics, which received massive criticism at the time for its abstract logo. He says the fan backlash did not come as a shock. It’s like the songs in the show: People love them, they hate them, they comment on them, he says. You always have to accept when you’re refreshing anything that the fans are going to have an opinion. All we ever ask is, Be kind, but you can be criticalit’s absolutely fine. As fans begin to see more of the new branding, Green adds, hes confident tha it will ultimately become more familiar and less controversial. To those speculating that the team used AI to generate Eurovisions branding, Green says that AI may have been used in the very early stages to brainstorm initial concepts, but none of the final branding was generated by AI in any way. A lot of this was hand-drawn by great artists, Green says. We haven’t used AI to create this. The fact that people feel it might be reminiscent of it, I think, is more about how AI is influencing design subconsciously, if you like. That’s the same thing as looking at the way that digital has influenced design, in terms of how legible and clear it is. The influence might be there, but it wasn’t used to create it.
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E-Commerce
Theres a growing paradox at the heart of the modern workplace. Artificial intelligence is advancing at an unprecedented rate, capable of generating pitch decks, summarizing meetings, writing RFPs, analyzing spreadsheets, and even sending our avatars to video call meetings. Yet, for all the noise around productivity gains and disruption, most organizations are still stuck in neutral, disappointed by the underwhelming results of their various AI pilots. The recent MIT report noted that while AI pilots with tools like ChatGPT and Copilot were improving individual productivity, vanishingly few were contributing to P&L improvement. If these tools are making individuals more productive, but thats translating into company performance, we have to askwhats the point of that work? The dirty secret? AI is is revealing just how much work doesnt need to exist in the first place. Welcome to the BS economy. Defining the BS Economy The term “BS jobs” was coined by anthropologist David Graeber to describe roles that are, even in the eyes of those performing them, fundamentally pointless. These are the jobs where if someone stopped showing up, no one would notice; or worse, everyone would be relieved. Entire categories of white-collar work, from middle managers pushing PowerPoints to consultants writing reports no one reads, fall under this umbrella. The BS economy is what happens when these roles are scaled, celebrated, and institutionalized, perhaps to the point of becoming hyper-normalized, the paradoxical state in which everyone knows the official version of reality is false, but because no one can imagine an alternative, society collectively accepts and reproduces the lie as if it were true. Importantly, this state is not limited to a few unlucky job titles, but endemic to modern corporate life. It rewards process over purpose, optics over outcomes, and bureaucracy over impact. For decades, this system sustained itself with rituals: long and useless meetings, excessive documentation, convoluted chains of approval, and performative busyness that drive up headcount and slow down progress without any delivering any appreciable improvement in outcomes. But AI is stripping away the theater, automating the symbolic and intangible aspects of work, precisely the tasks that were never truly value-generating to begin with. AI Isnt (Yet) Disrupting Work. Its Exposing It Lets be clear: AI hasnt fundamentally changed most jobs yet. Its not that large swaths of the workforce have been replaced or redeployed. What AI is doingfaster than most companies can reactis mimicking the performative layer of knowledge work. Drafting emails. Creating status updates. Rewording proposals. Polishing presentations. Transcribing and summarizing meetings that arguably didnt need to happen in the first place. As Yuval Harari recently noted, AI is already a better storyteller than humans. It is also challenging humans when it comes to not just work, but also pretending to work, in the sense of replicating a range of job-related activities that more clearly result in being busy than actually productive (in the sense of adding value). If an AI can instantly generate a companys glossy annual report (complete with letters from the CEO and strategic road maps), it exposes how formulaic these documents really are. They read less like authentic reflections of vision or performance and more like templated PR exercises, optimized for investors expectations. The ease with which they can be faked shows just how little originality or substance was there in the first place. Were witnessing a productivity revolution without a purpose revolution. Tools are improving, but the work remains hollow. Instead of using AI to invent better ways of working, many companies are simply using it to churn out more of the same, only faster. But running faster in the wrong direction just means getting lost fasterand if everyone is doing it, we risk just getting lost in a forest of sameness Theres a risk here. Without deliberate redesign, AI wont just expose the BS economy, it could entrench it. If leaders dont challenge the status quo, we may end up amplifying the noise, not reducing it. Well layer new systems on top of bad processes and wonder why things havent gotten better. If automation means that machines are mass-producing work products that then only get reviewed, summarized, and acted upon by other machines, what have we really gained? Value Comes From Humans, Not Bots The crucial insight is this: AI can optimize how work is done, but it cannot tell us what work should be done, or why it matters. Thats still a human responsibility. And its where the opportunity lies. The value of AI will not be measured by how much it automates nonsense, but by how much it liberates human potential. If AI saves a manager 10 hours a week by eliminating report writing, the real question is: what will they do with that time? The answer depends on leadership and HR. Not on the tech or AI. To unlock real value from AI, organizations must help people reimagine their roles beyond routine output. This means identifying opportunities for human contribution that are creative, relational, strategic, and judgment-driven, the domains where AI is still weak. It also means empowering people to use freed-up time to think, learn, explore, connect, and innovate. Fixing Work: Four Imperatives for Leaders Redesign Work AI wont fix broken workflows. Leaders must rethink work processes and roles from the ground up and focus on the ones that are truly driving business value. Start by asking: What outcomes matter? What activities actually contribute to those outcomes? What capabilities are required to complete the work and are those best suited to people or machines? And what can we stop doing altogether? Aim to eliminate tasks that exist only to justify someones presence or to feed internal reporting machinery. Design roles that are lean, outcome-focused, and infused with a clear sense of purpose. Re-skill Managers to Lead in the AI Era Managers are the keystone species in any organization. Yet many are unequipped for an AI-enhanced world. Re-skilling managrs should focus less on technical mastery and more on human leadership. They need to understand how to coach teams, set meaningful goals, recognize contribution, and create psychologically safe environments that foster experimentation. They should become amplifiers of human potential, not compliance officers for productivity software. Rethink Performance Management Most current performance systems still reward confidence over competence, style over substance, and politics over performance. That must change. AI gives us better data and more granular insights, but we need to ask better questions. What value is someone actually creating? Are they helping others succeed? Are they solving meaningful problems? Moving forward, performance should be measured by contribution, not presence. Output, not optics. Impact, not volume. Experiment, Iterate, and Learn The AI transformation is not a plug-and-play exercise. Every organization will need to experiment with new models of work, test ideas, and learn from failures. The organizations that thrive will be those that adopt a learning mindset: try, measure, adjust, repeat. Dont expect one grand solution. Instead, cultivate a portfolio of small experiments across teams and functions, and scale what works. The goal is not just to do more with less, but to do better with less noise. AI Can Help Us Fix WorkBut Only If We Let It Taken together, these imperatives represent a set of cultural and operational changesand thats where the hard work is. Real change wont come from turning on an LLM; it will come from those with the courage to tackle deep-rooted practices and beliefs. At its best, AI can serve as a mirror: reflecting the absurdity of modern work back at us with eerie precision. But the mirror itself doesnt solve anything. What we choose to do with that reflection is what matters. We can continue pretending that busywork equals value, or we can use this moment to make work more meaningful. That means getting serious about human contribution. About designing roles that tap into curiosity, creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking. About automating the things that are formulaic and joyless, and creating space for people to do the things machines cant. In short, the rise of AI is not just a tech story, its a leadership challenge and an organizational challenge. The biggest risk isnt that AI will replace humans. Its that well fail to replace the nonsense that AI is finally making visible. Lets not waste the opportunity.
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E-Commerce
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