AI Observer
Baxstar Jonmarie Ferguson|Analysis
Dancing with AI: how next-gen game designers are taking the lead
Step into Jonah King’s queer sci-fi virtual reality game Honey Fungus, and you’re immediately transported to a world that could only exist through the marriage of human imagination and machine learning. Floating through a viscous digital landscape, you encounter creatures that defy biological classification: lush beings that are part human torso, part exotic mushroom, with … Continued
AI Observer
Sigourney Schultz|Cinema
Dispirited Away: In the wrong hands, ‘Ghiblified’ genAI images erode ethos, empathy, and our very humanity
An art historian who grew up inside Pixar Studios reflects on what we lose when art once rendered through deliberate labor and deep care can be reproduced in seconds — and weaponized just as quickly.
Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries
15: Flight Plan
Auden calls Icarusa boy falling out of the sky. I think about that sky and, and what else it might offer. Obstacles. Miracles. Birds.
Dave Snyder
The compound interest of design: what not to build
Editor’s note: This is Dave Snyder’s first opinion piece for Design Observer. Be sure to read to the end. I’ve been designing digital products for 25 years. I remember when the big decision was going from 800×600 to 1024 pixels. I’ve lived through multiple cycles of VR hype, watched the web go from static pages … Continued
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Ellen McGirt|Interviews
The face, reconsidered
Civic Life
Bert de Muynck|Essays
Walkie talkie: An architect-turned-tour guide on designing presence in Lisbon
Design Juice
Delaney Rebernik|Books
‘Designed Forests’ author Dan Handel says design is behind our experiences in nature
Architecture
Delaney Rebernik|Fresh Ink