Pentagram partner Paula Scher, with associate partner Bruno Bergallo and project manager Olivia Ray, created a hand-drawn logo for Women+ on the Edge of Democracy, an upcoming revue featuring 10-minute plays and monologues by 36 women playwrights addressing the current state of democracy. The design deliberately compresses the title's text into a tight frame, a visual metaphor for how women are pushed to the margins of democratic life.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-16
Illustrator and researcher Avery Robinson published an essay examining how heavy metal's iconic distressed visual style—torn flyers, gritty band logos, smudged toner—originated from the limitations of cheap photocopiers and low-quality paper used by DIY scenes decades ago. The piece argues these analog printing flaws became a deliberate aesthetic choice that metal culture has preserved even as design tools moved to digital.
truegrittexturesupply.com
· 2026-09-14
A developer explored the world of stylized QR codes, noting how logos and photos are often crammed into codes at the cost of scannability due to Reed-Solomon error correction limits. Inspired by AI-generated and hand-crafted QR art examples, they built their own design tool called QRFrame, which changes how the black-and-white modules are rendered while keeping codes functional.
kylezhe.ng
· 2026-08-24