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I hold the key to the Ferrari in my hand. I press it, like a puzzle piece, into a notch by my right hip. Yellow fades from the key as the hue enters the shifter and the dashboard comes to life with a wave of yellow. Im enchanted. My foot cant wait to slam down on the pedal. The only thing Im missing is . . . the entire rest of the car. Even for a legendary automaker launching its first EV, it was a preposterous pitch: Ferraris big car reveal would not show the car. And it wouldnt show the cars interior, either. Instead, journalists were asked to flysome of them halfway across the worldto scope out a steering wheel, a few chunks of dashboard, a center console, and a seat. I can count the designers Id do that for, not on one hand, but on one finger. As it happens, that was the designer pointing the way. While the world will never get a ride in Jony Ives long-lost Apple Car, they will get a spiritual sequel with a 1,000+ horsepower upgrade, Jony Ives spin on Ferrari. [Photo: Ferrari] Ferrari meets Silicon Valley Designed over the last five years with the firm LoveFrom, the Ferrari Luce (translation: “light” or “illumination”) is a generationally important car for the Italian automaker as it transitions to an electric future. Everything from the cars form, to its layout, to its buttons, to an e-ink key that’s the size and shape of a Zippo lighter, to the vehicles interface and typeface, was designed through the gaze of the San Francisco firm. It’s nearly impossible to ignore the Venn diagram between Ferraris first electric vehicle and the golden era of Apple products. And you certainly dont need to squint to spot some of Ives favorite materials, like the prominent use of anodized aluminum and Gorilla Glass across the components. [Photo: Ferrari] But this outcome seems largely by Italy’s own design. Ferraris CEO, Benedetto Vigna, spent two decades on semiconductors before turning to Italian supercars in 2021. He wants to carve a future for Ferrari in a rapidly changing world, and also crack the code to court new customers, like Silicon Valley billionaires, to spend some of their fortune on cars. The projectto be fully revealed later this year before shipping in Octoberwas led by the aforementioned Ive and Marc Newson. Before co-founding LoveFrom, they were best friends for decades, and collaborators on projects ranging from a 1.5-ton desk auctioned for charity to the Apple Watch. Ive, of course, defined the modern era by designing products ranging from the iMac to the iPhone. While Newson, a lesser-known name in Apple history, is a star in his own rite. Hes also an almost archetypal designer to reimagine a luxury automaker. Long before he posted his own exploits racing vintage cars on his Instagram, he crafted just about every object imaginable (including a public bathroom for Japan, Nikes built for space, and the influential Ford 021C), with a particular penchant for high-end brands. His Lockheed Lounge is still the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold by a living designer. (Get a deep look into his career and design process here.) Backing the two of them, of course, are the industrial, UX, mechanical, and graphic design experts at LoveFrommany of whom worked with Ive during his days at Apple. Ive, as it turns out, had good reason for extending the hype cycle for LoveFroms first major client outside of Apple. If they showed the body of the Luce now, its all anyone would notice. Meanwhile, LoveFrom has been working for years on dozens of components inside the car, each of which they treated as beloved products all their own. Ferraris chief design officer, Flavio Manzoni, frames the Luce as something of a capsule project thats independent from Ferraris full lineup, which offered LoveFrom license to create a thesis that can live self-contained. This is very inspiring, and certainly will influence everything [we do], says Manzoni. But it also must be kept as something really singular and unique. Everything has been done interpreting the soul of a very special car. The Ferrari Luce seat. [Photo: Ferrari] Deconstructed and organized atop white tables during the preview, I could appreciate not only the Luces components like its wheel, but its subcomponents of knobs, switches, and paddlesperhaps a dozen different buttons each offering their own feeling. With nested, CNCd aluminum housings, you can almost see a watch, or a game controller, or just some irresistibly interesting thingamabob living harmoniously inside another. The vehicle is an ecosystem of mini gadgets. Pulse-rocketing supercars couldnt be more disparate from te ever-serene atmosphere inside LoveFroms San Francisco studio, where fresh cut flowers casually adorn each nook. As I sit with Ive and Newson at a long white table, upon soft blue, yellow, and orange stools mirrored by their Moncler collection at the far end of the room, the duo conjures a whole other thought space, riffing on their high-octane handiwork. We really wanted every part, every component, to be designed as an individual product. So it’s like dozens and dozens of cameras and watches. The idea [was] we could spend the time and invest the care on every part and have it work, says Ive. Even the forms are very self-contained and modular. The components, as it turned out, are worth talking about. As the auto industry inevitably transitions to electric, LoveFroms design team created a love letter to tactile interface, offering solutions to blending digital and physical experiences in the vehicle, and teasing the sort of auteur-driven work thats disappeared in an increasingly blanded and averaged automotive industry that sold its soul chasing Tesla. We’re very aware that we love the sounds of our big old Ferrari engines, says Ive. And so rather than trying to figure out some sort of surrogate or something inauthentic to [compensate], we worked so hard to try and create as visceral and direct connection with the object [as possible]. [Photo: Ferrari] Focusing the drivers experience A Ferrari is a drivers car, and without looking around at any other spectacle in the Luce, the driver experience has been designed for focus. It begins with the car’s seats, which seem plucked from somewhere between a race car and a living room. After sinking into them, drivers place their key into the console, and they take the wheel. [Image: Ferrari] Most wheels tilt up and down independently from the cars instrument panel, making it sometimes difficult to be comfortable while having a clear line of sight through the wheel to your gauges. But the Luce moves this entire rig as one unified gesture: The wheel, steering column, and instrument panel shift as one. (What I hear was a particular engineering challenge for both safety and mitigating vibration.) The wheel feels like a natural conclusion to Ferraris last few generations of fussing with its own icon. The manufacturer added controversial touch capabilities in 2019, before reversing course last year with a modernized, more mechanical option that can be retrofitted into older vehicles. LoveFrom designed the Ferrari Luce steering wheel with an aluminum core. [Photo: Ferrari] The LoveFrom wheel reads rounder all around, veering more toward vintage Ferrari than an oblong reference to F1. Its aluminum core is earnestly exposed rather than obfuscated in leathers and rubber. The controls gently reorganize Ferrari mainstays, like the bold red Manettino dial (to adjust your driving mode), into something you feel like your brain can process alongside new touches like left and right buttons (theyre turn signals). [Photo: Ferrari] The instrument panelor binnacleis not just a wide screen with widgety virtual controls: its a collection of four screens. Three round screens, making up the speedometer and other dials, live recessed inside a fourth screen. Lenses and parallax effects give the panels additional depth and physicality. But that physicality is more than an illusion of pixels and refraction: the speedometer needle is real. [Image: Ferrari] The combined effect will be something drivers haven’t exactly seen or felt before, punctuated by a pared back interface that tells most of the story through the three hues of the Tricolorewithout it feeling like a trip through our grocery stores international aisle. [Photo: Ferrari] Chris Wilson, who you know for his work on the Apple Watch UI, worked with Ferrari engineers to marry onscreen UX with its new torque shifting technology. While electric motors require no shifting, pulling the paddle on the left side of the wheel provides a virtual downshift (turning the dial green while motors slow the car to recoup energy). When its time for an extra jolt of power, the interface blinks red, and you pull the paddle on the right. LF Maranello, the Ferrari Luce’s custom typeface. [Image: courtesy LoveFrom] Meanwhile, the numbers you see on the instrument panel are part of a new typeface family called LF Maranello designed by LoveFroms Antonio Cavedoni, who worked alongside Wilson on Apples San Francisco typeface before making LoveFroms own. Bucking the wide stance letters Ferrari is known for, the clean sans serif is an amalgamation of midcentury Ferrari engine stamping, the numbers on old Ferrari dials (themselves often plucked from whatever watch manufactures were already using), and local signage from Ferraris hometown of Maranello. With the slightest expressive indulgencesa curvy flag on the 1, a short stem on the 4it manages to look vintage and contemporary at the same time. The hardware is geometrically perfect, says Cavedoni. But here, we can do anything. Fixing human factors at high speeds Over two days of previews, Ive doesnt mince words about the influential approach Tesla has taken, in which, through some desperate attempt to create sci-fi mystery, the vehicles mask the simplest functions. One such example is the way a Tesla handles its gaspers (thats the technical term for the fans built into the dash). Whereas Tesla literally hides them so well you can only control them via a screen, LoveFroms gaspers almost glow. The Ferrari Luce’s tablet is a departure from typical EV design.[Photo: Ferrari] With spherical aluminum bodies, they could double as Macbook satellite speakers. You twist a ring, and a visible, central flap swings open or closes with a satisfying click. You dont need to dig through a UI, or even squint to look for an X symbol on some dial on the dash. The object explains itself. Clarity is so important. Not only in terms of physical interaction, but intellectual clarity, says Newson. Since Elon Musk stuck what Ive calls an iPad into the center of a Tesla, a disjointed center screen has increasingly taxed the experience of driving. Its why I was perhaps the most and least surprised by LoveFroms choice to have a tablet in the center of the vehicle. [Image: Ferrari] However, Luces tablet is foundationally different. Its entirely unnecessary for driving, and, perhaps ironically, a screen thats usable without looking at it. The tablet sits atop a large aluminum handle, which allows you to tilt the screen or blindedly rest your palm for a point of reference. That handle also adds impact protection from a series of aluminum toggle switches that live in the bottom of the display, managing tasks like climate control and seat warming. Yes, these switches appear straight out of midcentury Ferrari design language. And yes, LoveFrom produced four thick books charting the history of Ferrari gifted to the company at the start of their collaboration. But the team bristles when I characterize the choice for toggle switches as an homage. The Luce’s tablet includes physical controls. [Photo: Ferrari] Newson points out the toggle itself is a known typology, because its the best tool for the job. Thats why its in the Luce and all sorts of vintage control panels, he notesand thats also why we innately think toggles are so cool. If you look at helicopters from the 50s, 60s, they weren’t screwed up with design, says Ive. Their beauty was a function of them being so brilliantly utilitarian. And I think so often stuff just gets ugly when design gets in the way. Setting the stage for performance But thats not to say the Luce is some unflinching commitment to minimalism, or that a serious commitment to craft requires the driver to never crack a smile. In the upper right hand corner of that tablet is a multigraph. At a glance, it looks like a clock with physical minute and hour hands that could be straight out of a fine timepiece. But a split second later, it can turn into a compass or one of two stopwatches (in 60-second, and 5-secod launch variants). Unlike typical timepieces, the hands will spin independently from one another, animating in an unexpected way. [Photo: Ferrari] Is this touch purely about function? Ha! Of course nota virtual clock could appear on the screen in the same spot. Its LoveFrom stunting, taking its own metaphorical Ferrari out of the garage and bringing fans along for the ride. [Image: courtesy LoveFrom] We’re introducing an impedimentan engineering challenge, but it makes it way more engaging, says Ive, before holding his own iPhone into the air looking like an Uber driver scanning for their next ride. Or it could just be [that] mounted. We see a similar celebration of driver engagement with Luces launch control. This is a setting that preps the car, the battery, and the driver to coax the maximum straight-line power for acceleration. Instead of pressing a button on the wheel, this new launch control requires the driver to hold the brake while reaching above their head and pull on a cylindrical, pneumatic handle. After a few seconds, Im told, the cars entire cabin lights up orange, enlisting everyone into the vehicle to hold on with dramatic flare. [Photo: Ferrari] Back in LoveFrom’s studio, Ive and Newson deconstruct their code-orange approach. The Ferrari brand is extremely visceral. And in some ways there’s a theatricality you really need to embrace, says Newson. So things like the launch control, things like the key ceremonythere’s a nice, humor is the wrong word …It’s tough to figure out the word for the yellow of the key translating into the carI mean, it’s sort of funny, chuckles Ive. It’s funjoyful. It needs to be,” says Newson. “No one needs a Ferrari, sorry to say, but you own a Ferrari, because it will just be a much more fun way of [driving].” We love that there was such a focus on being fun and joyful to drive, and it’s like, no apology, says Ive.
Category:
E-Commerce
My Non-Negotiable Mindset started with exercise, or more accurately, with not wanting to. That moment of resistance became a turning point in how I show up and follow through. I wasnt lazy or undisciplined. I was human. And thats when it clicked: if I only exercised when I felt like it, Id never do it often enough to matter. So I made exercise non-negotiable, like brushing my teeth or showing up to teach a class. This commitment was to myself. No mood checks. No internal bargaining. No excuses. Four times a week, minimum. That was the contract. What changed wasnt just my behavior; it was my identity. My thinking shifted from I need to exercise to Im the kind of person who exercises. Commitment replaced motivation. Routine replaced inspiration. Once that clicked, I started applying the same logic everywhere I noticed myself negotiating. Why was I waiting for the perfect moment to write? Why did a project I already knew mattered require inspiration before action? What began as a personal experiment became something I couldnt help but share. Years later, when I introduced this mindset to faculty I mentor through a national design-writing fellowship, it clicked for them, too. One day, I casually mentioned that I sometimes write on my laptop while on the elliptical or stationary bike. The room went quiet. Their expressions hovered somewhere between disbelief, admiration, and curiosity. We’ve been conditioned to believe meaningful work requires perfect conditions. It doesnt. It just needs to happen. Not long after, I started hearing the same question on repeat: How do you get so much writing done while working full-time and parenting? The answer wasnt superhuman discipline. It was decision designdeciding once, then removing the debate. High performers dont rely on motivation; they make decisions their Future Self wont regret. They design hesitation out of their day by asking one simple question before important choices: Will tomorrows me thank me for thisor have to clean up after it? The hidden cost of hesitation Most productivity systems treat hesitation as harmless. It isnt. Every small internal debateShould I start now or later? Email first or focus?drains cognitive energy before meaningful work even begins. You dont just lose minutes. You lose momentum, follow-through, and the ability to act decisively when it matters most. In organizations, this shows up as delayed launches, deferred decisions, and teams waiting for clarity that never quite arrives. This is why capable, motivated professionals struggle to execute: not because they lack discipline, but because they burn cognitive bandwidth negotiating instead of doing. The Non-Negotiable Mindset The solution isnt more motivation. Its fewer decisions. The Non-Negotiable Mindset eliminates hesitation by turning essential actions into pre-commitments: decisions made once and executed automatically. When something is non-negotiable, theres no internal debate. You just do it. Most habit advice says to start small and repeat until the behavior becomes automatic. The Non-Negotiable Mindset reverses that logic. Automaticity comes first, not last. You block time on your calendar, show up, and act. An author writes because thats what the writer version of herself does. An entrepreneur schedules investor outreach every Tuesday morning because their Future Self needs those relationships built. These people arent more disciplined than everyone else. Theyve stopped asking permission from their present-moment selves. Weve been trying to solve a systems problem with motivational tools. This mindset flips that equation. Why Future-Self thinking beats willpower What makes this approach stick isnt grit or self-control. Its perspective. Your Future Self isnt a distant stranger. Its you, living with the consequences of todays choices. Research by psychologist Hal Hershfield shows that the more connected people feel to their future selves, the more likely they are to make wise, long-term decisions. But the real shift happens when you dont just think about your Future Selfyou decide as your Future Self. Non-negotiables arent arbitrary rules. They are actions anchored to identity, not momentary comfort. When you ask What would my Future Self do? follow-through stops feeling optional. The decision is already locked in. A four-step execution framework You can implement the Non-Negotiable Mindset immediately: Identify what matters to your Future Self. Choose actions that compound over time. Not everything deserves non-negotiable status. Focus on the critical few. Systematize only what truly moves the needle. Automating everything creates rigidity. Act consistently, not reactively. Systems run whether you feel inspired or not. Consistency beats intensity. Make it non-negotiable. Remove the option to delay or debate. Flex the method if needed, but honor the commitment. When action becomes automatic, you free mental energy for creativity, judgment, and strategic thinkingthe work humans still do better than machines. Why this matters now In 2026, competitive advantage will belong less to those with the best ideas and more to those who act on them consistently while others hesitate. As AI absorbs routine cognitive labor, human value increasingly depends on what machines cant yet replicate: discernment, prioritization, and action under uncertainty. Your Future Self is building a company, leading a team, or creating meaningful work. That person needs you to act on what matters, now. This mindset isnt about hustle. Its about protecting what moves the needle from the daily erosion of indecision. Its productivity designed for the attention economy, where the scarcest resource isnt time, but the clarity to use it well. What to do today Think like your Future Self right now. Pick one action youve been negotiating with yourself about, something important youve been meaning to get to. Ask yourself: Six months from now, will I wish I had started today? Then decide once. Make it non-negotiable. Set a time. Remove the debate. The only question is whether you’ll decide as the person you are today or the person you’re becoming. Stop negotiating. Start doing.
Category:
E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. I recently celebrated my 56th birthday, and Im feeling my age. Not because Im slowing down (which I am), but because I feel increasingly removed from the passions, peeves, and predilections of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. This matters, as young people shape popular and workplace cultures, and their tastes drive big swaths of consumer and tech spendingall things Inc. and Fast Company cover. To help me figure out how to stay tuned into their wants and needs, I asked six executives to share their strategies for staying ahead of the youth culture curve. They shared some interesting initiatives and resources in the edited insights that follow. Craig Brommers, chief marketing officer, American Eagle At AE, we have a Gen Z panel, a group of our key consumers between the ages of 15 to 25 that help us test everything we do. They are excellent sounding boards for key marketing initiatives, product decisions, partnerships, and more. They help to drive insight into the consumer and also allow us to figure out what matters most to the people shopping our brand. We also have a very large network of creators we work with at any given time. They are not just making content for us; they are teaching us. From the biggest macro influencer down to the most micro, the more creators we are working with the more patterns and trends we have seen emerge, even before they hit the mainstream feed. Jackie Jantos, CEO, Hinge I try to be very intentional about surrounding myself with folks whose lived experiences are different from my own, so Im always learning. Humility, curiosity, and listening go a long way. I love newsletters, Substacks, and fictionWilla Bennett, Casey Lewis, Shit You Should Care About, The Audacity, and Sylvains Progress Report are a few people and places I regularly return to for inspiration. Im [based] in New York City, so I get to walk the streets and ride the subwayyou can learn a ton just from being out in the world and paying attention. But best of all, is this incredible Hinge team. The shortcut to staying current is to surround yourself with people different from you. The education and inspiration unfolds on its own. Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer, E.l.f. Beauty My intention word is Shoshin [a Buddhist term] meaningfully chosen to remind me to wake up each day with a beginners mindset. Staying current is about showing up curious, staying grounded, and engaging with total presence. At E.l.f., 78% of our employee base is Gen Z or millennial, so culture is in the room with me every day. I am also an active member of our community. Its me responding to every comment on LinkedIn, engaging in director dialog equally on TikTok lives, in social comment pools, and alongside the shoppers at shelf. Tuning E.l.f. into what gives people energy is my rocket fuel. Every conversation, every story, every connection is a new star in my constellation. Its zero distance between me and the community we serve. Maureen Polo, CEO, Hello Sunshine Our Sunnie Gen Z Advisory Board functions as both a cultural council and a co-creation engine. Theyre not a focus group; theyre collaborators who act as cultural translators between lived youth behavior and brand and creative strategy. We engage this group through regular working sessions, collaborative projects, and early-stage creative reviews. They help surface emerging trends, challenge assumptions, and shape concepts before theyre finalized. With our brand partners, we collaborate on insight, not just activation, using shared learnings to co-create platforms that feel culturally meaningful and deliver unforgettable consumer experiences. This is how weve approached building Sunnie and Sunnie Reads alongside partners like E.l.f. Beauty, If/Then, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, Purdue University, Victorias Secret Pink, Invisalign, and Coach: grounding creativity in real youth insight, inviting the audience into the process and building ecosystems rather than campaigns. Josh Rosenberg, CEO and cofounder, Day One Agency Nearly 40% of the Day One team is Gen Z, and I learn so much from each of themwhat they read, watch, and listen to, where they hang out and travel, how theyre embracing adulthood (or not!). We also host a youth insights focus group called Group Chat. Its a Slack community made up of 75 Gen Zers from across the country who share their perspective on trends, headlines, or specific client askstheir thoughtful answers are an invaluable part of how we know what young people are actually thinking about, focused on. And then my other youth culture go-to is our good friend Casey Lewis, who tirelessly reports upon both Gen Z and Alpha in her daily After School Substack. We recently published a report on Gen Alpha in collaboration with Lewis. Jane Wakely, chief consumer and marketing officer, chief growth officer, international foods, PepsiCo For me, scrolling TikTok or Insta remains the fastest way to understand whats resonating, whats becoming a trend, whats already passé, and what people are quietly rolling their eyes at. Looking for the weak signals and using data and tech to help create real foresight is key. I also have college-aged kids, which is maybe the most authentic insight you can have. They have no tolerance for anything that feels try-hard or inauthentic, and just listening to how they talk, what they buy, what they share, what they laugh at, and what they ignore is incredibly insightful. Seeing through their eyes is so powerful. At PepsiCo, we pair our instinctive read with constant cultural listening and rapid signal-sharing. Our teams are always tracking whats bubbling up across social, sports, entertainment, and creator ecosystems, looking for momentum: whats accelerating, whats losing energy, and where sentiment is shifting. Those signals move quickly across our organization so our brands can make real-time decisions in how we show up in cultural moments, which creators we partner with, and how we adjust creative, media, and experiences. Keeping up with Gen Z and Gen Alpha culture How do you keep current on youth culture? And what trends are you watching in 2026? I asked Brommers, Jantos, Marchisotto, Polo, Rosenberg, and Wakely to share their top trends, and Ill publish themalong with reader insightsin an upcoming newsletter. Read and watch more: understanding the next generation Managing Gen Z: Fast Companys 143-point guide for leaders What Gen Z really wants at work Gen Alpha may find the workplace even tougher than Gen Z does
Category:
E-Commerce
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