Instagram is launching Features, its first major push into long-form horizontal video, letting creators post up to 90 minutes at a time, up from a 20-minute cap on vertical Reels. 'Creativity is so much more than just short-form video,' says Tessa Lyons. The app has discovered the television.
Read more at Fast Company →
Instagram has begun testing Features, a long-form horizontal format for videos up to 90 minutes, with select US creators after a test in Brazil. It is aimed at podcasters and lets creators link shorter Reels to full-length videos. IGTV tried this once and was eventually phased out.
Read more at 9to5Mac →
Apple's iOS 27.2 adds Apple Pencil support to the iPhone Duo, plus an Edge Light feature that illuminates your face on video calls. Apple had promised Pencil support 'later this year'. Netflix, Prime Video and Outlook already use the extra screen, while some major apps still need work.
Read more at The Verge →
Apple told Bloomberg and 9to5Mac it is aware of 'an issue impacting the inner display' on a 'small number of iPhone Duo units', after reports of cracked screens with a bright line. Affected owners should contact AppleCare. The statement opens by calling early user response 'incredibly positive'.
Read more at The Verge →
With iOS 27.2, iPhone Duo owners can use an Apple Pencil (USB-C), the only supported model, on both the outer and inner displays to annotate PDFs, sketch and save handwritten notes. It arrived days after the device reached buyers, sooner than most users expected.
Read more at 9to5Mac →A new demo shows the iPhone Duo's Shortcuts app triggering automations when the phone is opened, closed or either. YouTuber Stephen Robles used the open trigger to launch a productivity app, and the automation can also lock the phone when folded. One commenter wants the old AOL door sound.
Read more at 9to5Mac →After days of driving, an Autopian writer spent a lot of time staring at gas pump displays and calls their UX 'piping-hot garbage'. It is the same pump interface he complained about in 2019, and it has not changed one bit. The pump, at least, is consistent.
Read more at theautopian.com →Apple retired the iTunes Mac app in 2019, but the Financial Times reports the iTunes Store is seeing an unlikely revival as artists including Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande use it to sell music. Most listeners have moved to streaming. The download button lives on.
Read more at 9to5Mac →Jakob Nielsen's latest roundup covers flow state, carousels, pagination and proactive AI. It says 70% of creatives now use AI, the cost of AI drops 13 times a year and carousels are 'an experience lottery'. He also turned his 5,600-word flow article into a $12 video.
Read more at jakobnielsenphd.substack.com →A redesign of smart home interfaces using a framework called MAOV cut task completion times by 30.8% to 49.8% and error rates by more than half in a test with 40 app users. Usability scores rose from 61.45 to 78.10. The results come from scripted prototypes, not live homes.
Read more at Bioengineer.org →A new editorial collection in Frontiers in Computer Science gathers twelve contributions on healthcare, education and digital wellbeing. Its editors argue that technical function, bodily experience and meaning shape every human and media encounter, and that a perfectly usable platform can still distribute responsibility unfairly.
Read more at Bioengineer.org →Designer Luke Wroblewski recalls being told at Netflix that people would never watch shows on small screens, and at eBay that nobody would buy expensive items without a large display. His point is that people fixate on new technology's limits instead of its long-term potential. Both companies found out.
Read more at lukew.com →The RealReal is updating its bot defences to make it harder for AI agents to shop its site. The Verge had found Meta's Muse agent could keep re-adding items to a cart after the 20-minute hold expired, blocking other shoppers for hours. Checkout has a queue etiquette now.
Read more at The Verge →Swper, a digital design studio led by Matt Pollitt, has joined the Accessible Hospitality Alliance as a service partner. The pitch is that the first barrier to hospitality often appears on a screen, in websites and booking systems that are not designed for everyone.
Read more at hospitalityandcateringnews.com →
Visa has refreshed its visual identity with a standalone 'V' symbol and a custom typeface, Visa Sans, covering typography, imagery, motion and digital design. The name, wordmark and values stay. The V replaces the blue, white and yellow flag-like symbol as a standalone element. A letter has been promoted.
Read more at MediaNews4U →
The Royal Designers for Industry, founded in 1936 by the Royal Society of Arts, has a new identity by members Margaret Calvert and Ian Cartlidge. Calvert marked her own 90th birthday this year. The flexible framework is built on her existing typeface New Rail Alphabet.
Read more at creativereview.co.uk →
Conran Design Group has rebranded luxury accommodation provider Cheval Collection, moving it from product-focused to experience-led. The platform is called 'Generous by design', with the tagline 'Because space matters', and it highlights roomy apartments and freedom from rigid schedules as Cheval plans international expansion.
Read more at Design Week →
Letters from Sweden has released Exemplar, a multi-script family that type designer Göran Söderström began sketching on a Power Macintosh 7100 in 1994. It spans Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Arabic, with 1,018 glyphs supporting 370 languages. It was also carved into Carrara marble. Deadlines are a modern idea.
Read more at Abduzeedo →
Beer brand Amstel has unveiled an updated identity with a more aspirational logo and packaging rooted in its Amsterdam heritage. The golden circle gets more clarity and the crest is modernised with the Amstel bridge. The brand calls itself 'the quality beer for quality bonding'.
Read more at lbbonline.com →San Francisco studio Manual dug through the Eames Ranch archive in Petaluma to build a living identity for the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. At its centre is the 'curious e', a lowercase monogram that shifts its gaze and interacts with surrounding content. The letter is watching.
Read more at Abduzeedo →DutchScot's identity for Fjord, a sauna and cold plunge on San Francisco Bay, makes hot and cold its defining idea by swapping a letter for a degree symbol. The Creative Boom writer reviewing it really does not like saunas. The logo fared better.
Read more at Creative Boom →Blaze Type, which previously built letterforms for Borussia Dortmund, worked with GraphicHunters to extend the Dutch league's new Eredivisie identity into a custom display typeface for broadcast and stadium use. The circular emblem was already locked, so the job was translation, starting from a rounded lowercase 'e'.
Read more at Abduzeedo →Gothenburg studio Lundgren+Lindqvist built the identity and packaging for WA3RM, whose first site channels waste heat from a Billerud cartonboard mill into a 100,000-square-metre greenhouse growing 8,000 tonnes of tomatoes a year. The result is silk-screened tomato boxes. The tomatoes are on brand.
Read more at Abduzeedo →Melbourne's Studio Julius has built a brand identity for Rothfield, an Australian marketing execution partner that grew from print management into procurement, production and logistics. Working with Stake Reputation and motion designer Josh Le Good, it anchored the identity in calibration and drafting precision, with a custom 16-unit icon system.
Read more at Abduzeedo →Portuguese designer Paulo Graça, known as Senhor Paulinho, designed the 2026 identity for ARADO, a dance and performing arts festival by Madrasta Dance. Arado means plow. The system uses hand-drawn type, ink textures and ochre yellow posters, and treats layout like live choreography.
Read more at Abduzeedo →Spring Japan will renew its brand logo and aircraft livery, with the first Boeing 737-800 in new colours due by the end of the year. The fourth-generation logo keeps the '3S' mark for Safety, Sincerity and Smile, adds 'JAPAN' and a 'J', and brings back the cherry blossom motif.
Read more at en.traicy.com →Researchers at the National University of Singapore led by Assistant Professor Tural Khudiyev have integrated 54 electronic fibres into a sleeve that shows images and video, responds to finger presses and connects wirelessly. It survives machine washing and keeps the breathability of everyday fabric.
Read more at designboom →Jinwook Lee's Emotion Hanger, a 2021 houseware concept, uses a curved hook above a separate black dot to spell out a question mark while you decide what to wear. Turning it completes an exclamation point. Yanko Design calls it an unusually specific emotional brief for a hanger.
Read more at yankodesign.com →
Google has unveiled On-Brand Visuals, a Gemini feature for small businesses that creates images while keeping a registered brand style based on the website, brand kit, typography and colours. It uses the Nano Banana 2.1 model and stores the styles so owners stop re-uploading the same guidelines.
Read more at designcompass.org →Shopify's Marvin Schwaibold told the Y Combinator podcast that AI coding tools let designers build working prototypes instead of Figma mockups. With tools able to generate almost anything, he says the scarce skill is deciding what looks good. Figma now serves as his scratchpad.
Read more at BigGo Finance →Unilever is embedding designers in brand teams and using AI-supported semiotics to identify visual cues for its Personal Care portfolio, says Jamie Bates, its head of design for the unit. The approach pairs cultural analysis with design-led premiumisation. The strategy is called SASSY.
Read more at marketingreport.one →A UX Collective guide argues for starting a design system in code and then building, checking and maintaining the Figma library from it using MCP. It is the first part of a three-part series called In-System Design. Part two covers AI prototyping inside the design system.
Read more at UX Collective →
Canva spent about six months building Craft, its first foundation model trained from scratch, and co-founder Cliff Obrecht put the Canva Research team at 160 people. Craft placed fourth on DesignArena. Pricing is still unconfirmed, as is the broader claim that it beats larger rivals.
Read more at tech-insider.org →An Android Police writer used Gemini to help design a 3D-printed part that cat-proofs an electronic door lock, to skip the CAD learning curve. The verdict in the headline is that it 'nearly nailed it'. The cat has not been interviewed.
Read more at androidpolice.com →Electric Plant Co.'s Bud is a low-cost handheld sensor that clips onto plants with two stainless steel probes and uses AI to read the electric signals they produce. The company says it can gather data on hydration and stress. Houseplants finally get a feedback form.
Read more at Fast Company →A Creative Bloq writer worried that AI would make animation slick and boring, then saw Laika's stop-motion Wildwood open and The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror XXXVII open with a stop-motion homage to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Homer plays the two-faced Mayor.
Read more at Creative Bloq →UC Berkeley's 367,000-square-foot Barbara and Gerson Bakar Gateway, by Weiss/Manfredi with Gensler, houses computing, robotics and AI under one roof. Dean Jennifer Chayes says the lines between fields are blurring and the building is 'porous' by design. The AI researchers will have to meet in person.
Read more at Fast Company →Gamma shipped Gamma 5 to every user on every plan in October, as Canva, Plus AI and Microsoft added features for turning prompts into decks. A Tech Insider comparison of six tools, priced from $9 to $40 a seat, admits it is a desk analysis, not a lab test.
Read more at tech-insider.org →
CSS-Tricks, founded by Chris Coyier in 2007 and bought by DigitalOcean in 2022, is independent again under its longtime editor, who has worked on the site for 12 years and says he has 'got the keys to the castle'. He plans changes he hopes will be very good.
Read more at css-tricks.com →
Adobe trades at $263.82, down 24.62% this year on fears of generative AI rivals, a CEO transition and an interim CFO. Meanwhile it posted a record Q3 revenue of $6.76 billion, up 12.9%, and beat EPS estimates for the fifth straight quarter. The market and the spreadsheet disagree.
Read more at 24/7 Wall St. →
A MakeUseOf writer rebuilt a trekking brochure in Canva's free Affinity app to compare it with Figma. Figma's drag-and-drop and Auto Layout made arranging elements feel more natural. The headline says Figma was unbeatable until the test, and the first finding is that Figma won a round.
Read more at makeuseof.com →
A 24/7 Wall St. analysis says Adobe's AI-first ending ARR topped $650 million, growing more than 150%, and monthly active users passed 1 billion. The loudest Reddit post on the stock is titled 'ADOBE is cooked'. The writer argues Adobe is the one getting paid for AI.
Read more at 24/7 Wall St. →
Ollama's Mac app now supports text-to-speech generation with open models running locally, with Windows and Linux coming soon. On macOS it uses Apple's MLX framework to use Apple Silicon's unified memory. The open-source project has nearly 185,000 stars on GitHub.
Read more at 9to5Mac →Productivity app Craft, which combines notes, tasks and documents, was ready for the iPhone Duo from day one with an interface built for its larger display and multitasking. 9to5Mac uses it as an example of how apps, as much as hardware, decide what a new form factor is good for.
Read more at 9to5Mac →Apple's iPadOS 27.2 adds Siri AI improvements, suggested actions in Messages and Apple TV user profiles. Apple Music gets a new app icon and design updates, and Apple Books gets new menus and easier bookmarking. Group FaceTime now supports Dual Capture.
Read more at 9to5Mac →Jason Donenfeld, known for WireGuard, has released kwin-type, a tool for auto-typing text from standard input under KDE's KWin Wayland compositor. He wrote it after moving to Wayland broke his password store workflow. It needs KWin 6.8, which loosened fake-input restrictions. One annoyance, one new program.
Read more at phoronix.com →Webflow's blog says even small sites should take security seriously, citing Verizon's finding that 31% of breaches start with software vulnerabilities and IBM's figure of a record $4.99 million average breach cost. It argues AI has sped up production and raised the volume of attacks.
Read more at Webflow Blog →A writer who woodworked before 3D printing says the crafts are closer than they look. Wood is weak across the short grain, and prints break at the seam between layers, so hooks and brackets snap when the load runs across that seam. Orient the part like the grain.
Read more at howtogeek.com →
Mayank Bhavsar, a product design student at the National Institute of Design, developed Sahaj, a multisensory system of tactile, physical and acoustic interactions that helps children with visual impairments find and use a swing more independently. A sound-based mechanism communicates the swing's movement.
Read more at The Times of India →Shabari Naturals, a Maharashtra government initiative, received the G-Mark Global Design Award for packaging inspired by traditional tribal art. The Japan Institute of Design Promotion will present it in Tokyo on 4 November. It already holds the India Design Mark and can now put the G-Mark logo on packs.
Read more at gktoday.in →
Students at Anant National University will develop design proposals for a pedestrian bridge the National Highways Authority of India has proposed at Narol Crossroad in Ahmedabad. The three-stage competition is open across disciplines and asks for usability, safety and visual design.
Read more at The Hans India →BITS Design School in Mumbai is accepting applications for its four-year Bachelor of Design (Honours) for 2027, with 210 seats and a deadline of 31 January 2027. Everyone must take BITSDAT between 29 March and 5 April, and UCEED or NID DAT scores can be uploaded too.
Read more at Careers360 →Terracotta brand Nuvocotto held the fourth Terracotta Design Award at K Hills in Kozhikode, bringing together architects, designers and researchers from India and abroad for panels, finalist presentations and winners in three categories. The award celebrates terracotta as a design material.
Read more at m.thewire.in →F+S Designs built a Telangana home for a couple of Air Force veterans on a 4,158-square-foot plot limited to ground plus one. A sliding-folding partition turns the daughter's bedroom into part of a balcony lounge when she is away. The arithmetic, the magazine says, was tight.
Read more at AD India →Alumil India, the Indian subsidiary of Alumil Group, delivered fenestration for NICMAR University's precast campus in Pune. The project needed about three hundred windows on a tight timeline, using top-hung window systems with sleek mullions and glazing to handle large openings and heavy daily use.
Read more at alcircle.com →Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone hosted its first Dental Hackathon on 24 and 25 October in Visakhapatnam, with 15 startup teams building dental technology. Teams got help with product design, prototyping, manufacturing, regulatory guidance and clinical validation to turn concepts into usable products.
Read more at The Machine Maker →
QBlack AI, a computer vision design and data platform, has raised undisclosed seed funding from Partners Lounge and Korea Investment Accelerator. Its physics simulation engine lets developers test combinations of shooting environment, camera and algorithm without a physical camera. Prototyping, minus the prototype.
Read more at en.wowtale.net →Bastion has rebranded its digital services as Bastion CX and folded in the award-winning agency Catch Design. Catch's leadership stays and reports to Tim Den Braber, group managing director CX. The unit covers product design and customer experience across New Zealand, Australia and the US.
Read more at mi-3.com.au →
Bedrock Robotics, two years old, has raised a $600 million Series C co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital at a $4.1 billion valuation. Its retrofit kit makes construction vehicles autonomous, and excavators now work on active sites in Nevada and Texas. It has raised nearly $1 billion since 2024.
Read more at TechCrunch →
India-based Matiks, a math, logic and brain-game app, raised $10 million in pre-Series A funding led by General Catalyst. Daily users grew from 22,000 earlier this year to over 300,000 by September. It wants to steer people away from 'AI-riddled timelines'. With puzzles.
Read more at TechCrunch →
Consumer investment firm L Catterton has made an undisclosed strategic investment in InMobi-backed Glance, which uses agentic AI to recommend products across phones and connected TVs. Through partnerships with Samsung, Motorola and DIRECTV, it is already on millions of US devices.
Read more at Inc42 →
A graphic designer two years into a well-paid job at a non-design company asks It's Nice That's advice column whether to stay or go. Panelist Katie Cadwell answers, and the headline gives away the gist: 'You deserve a chance to try and find a role that challenges you'.
Read more at It's Nice That →Titi Ogufere, founder of Design Week Lagos, says Nigeria risks losing emerging designers abroad without stronger manufacturing, specialised education and commercial outlets for local products. She cited limited training, a shortage of qualified designers and weak links between manufacturers and creatives.
Read more at nigeriahousingmarket.com →
Brisbane-born costume designer and buyer Bridgette Hungerford took the scenic route into film and TV, through Sydney, Melbourne and Berlin to Paris sets. 'Costume design is hugely anthropological,' she says, and she calls her time in Paris her true formal education.
Read more at fashionjournal.com.au →In new research, Elettra Bietti compares antitrust and product liability as ways to restrain social media's grip on attention. Looking at two recent Meta cases, she finds product liability has proven more capable of adding the frictions needed to reduce addictive design.
Read more at promarket.org →
Junfeng Zhang of 6JUNFENG LAB studied at Technological University Dublin and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He says living across cultures pushed him to think about how images, typography, materials and narratives communicate ideas about everyday life.
Read more at voyagela.com →In the book Mesoamerican Modern, curator Su Wu and photographer Luis Garvan document contemporary Mexican homes and propose reading them as continuations of ancient traditions. Fast Company notes how Mexico City sets Aztec ruins, colonial stone and Art Deco apartments side by side.
Read more at Fast Company →Malta-based animator Michelle Gruppetta's debut short, Misophonia, combines risograph printing with an uncomfortable soundscape to show what living with the condition is like. She describes it as an intolerance of specific sounds, such as other people chewing, breathing or sniffling.
Read more at Creative Boom →Portland-based artist Rebecca Zwanzig, behind High West Wild, makes digital illustrations drawing on Victorian textile patterns and antique dishware. Her earliest visual memories come from auctions and estate sales in rural Kentucky with her grandmother, studying patterns on old plates.
Read more at thisiscolossal.com →IE University architect Wesam Al Asali designed Tašbik for Amman Design Week 2026, reintroducing the Mediterranean thin-tile vaulting technique to the region with local Jordanian limestone. The 256-square-metre installation of stone vaults serves as seating, a stage and enclosures in an open-air courtyard.
Read more at Archinect →Hotel design is moving beyond aesthetics to the habits and motivations of guests, according to Marriott's Cristiano Rinaldi, who leads lodging product for Asia Pacific excluding China. He says access to local culture, community and wellbeing now shape hotels from architecture to the smallest details.
Read more at outlooktraveller.com →UX and product design roles checked today, research included. Every listing links to the original posting. The portfolio review is still ahead of you.
Design conferences and meetups coming up, each checked against its own page this morning. Someone else is bringing the sticky notes.
It sits on your phone like an app and has never once asked for an update.
iPhone