In the world of aviation, the number of crashes involving a U.S. civilian aircraft is about 1,200 per year, and very few of those result in fatalities. 

Despite the 5,500 American planes that are in the air at any given moment during peak times, collisions are rare, because airspace is designed for safety. Planes are required to communicate with one another and with ground control. No one gets to “opt out.”

Our roads are another story. More than 280 million registered vehicles share U.S. streets with trucks, cyclists, and pedestrians—largely without any systemic communication. This isn’t a failure of drivers or technology, but a failure of system design.

The real problem is infrastructure, not vehicle safety 

Anyone who’s waited at a busy intersection understands how much uncertainty we accept as normal. Roadways are open systems with infinite variables—weather, pedestrians, distracted drivers, and aging infrastructure. Communication between vehicles is minimal, and infrastructure is largely silent—and in that gap lies the potential for deadly collisions.

When I was a child, I lost a close family member in a car crash. Sadly, that experience is not unique. Later in my career, that loss left me asking: why do we accept a level of loss on our streets that we would never tolerate in the skies?

The lesson from aerospace is clear: safety comes from mandatory communication and a shared system design, not from relying on each vehicle to figure it out on its own. 

A shared safety layer must live in the physical and digital infrastructure itself. AI sensors and models need to be able to see our intersections and highways, understand how vehicles, pedestrians, and other road users interact, and predict risk before collisions occur.

Why aerospace is easier 

In aerospace, safety is designed into the system from day one. During my research years at MIT, working on autonomous systems with NASA and the U.S. Navy, one thing was clear: no aircraft operates in isolation.

In both traditional air traffic control and newer systems designed to manage drones, safety isn’t something added later—it’s built on connectivity and constant information sharing. Aircraft continuously share their position and movement through standardized sensing and communication systems. Flight plans and operating rules allow ground systems to understand intent and predict where aircraft are headed next.

This creates a shared, real-time picture of the airspace. Humans and automated systems can spot conflicts early, coordinate decisions, and resolve risks long before paths intersect. That shared awareness is why near-misses in the air rarely turn into disasters.

Why infrastructure-first intelligence works 

If we can engineer safety for aircraft moving at hundreds of miles per hour, we can do the same for streets moving at 30. 

Most traffic systems today are built to react after something goes wrong. Predictive systems are designed to intervene before conflict turns into a crash. But for safety systems to work, intelligence must live in the environment itself—not just inside individual vehicles. 

Roughly one quarter of crashes occur in intersections (which is unsurprising: we’ve all stood at intersections where everything looked calm until a car ran a red light or a cyclist swerved). These are prime locations for infrastructure-first intelligence. 

An intelligent intersection works a lot like air traffic control on the ground. Sensors at signals and along the roadway detect what’s happening in real time, whether it’s a vehicle accelerating toward a red light, a pedestrian about to step off the curb, or a cyclist going the wrong way. Edge AI processes that information instantly, predicting potential conflicts. V2X communication, the digital equivalent of in-flight radios, then pushes alerts back out to road users, giving them time to react.

Essentially, it’s a loop: detection leads to prediction, which generates an alert and triggers an action, powered by continuously running AI models in the background.

The result isn’t perfect foresight, but a safety net that buys precious seconds. And on roads, seconds are what save lives.

We don’t need perfect tech to save lives today 

Cities aren’t ignoring safety, but they often haven’t been given systems designed to manage it effectively. Those that have, have seen incredible results in a short period of time. 

In Sarasota, Florida, a Smart City Initiative helped reduce crashes by 33 percent at targeted intersections in just one year by turning raw data into actionable insight. The technology gave city officials the clarity they needed to act quickly and deploy countermeasures where they mattered most.

The tools already exist. What’s missing is a willingness to treat intelligent intersections as infrastructure, not operational experiments. That means prioritizing high-crash corridors, requiring new signals to be V2X-ready, and investing in systems that deliver measurable outcomes.

The measure of success is straightforward: fewer crashes, fewer injuries, fewer deaths. The question is whether we continue to accept preventable harm on our streets or finally build roads as safe, reliable, and networked as the skies above us.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

As an Italian in American business, and as a designer working with businesspeople, you’ve always been a little bit of an outsider in some ways in the communities you’re in. Now, as you get to Seoul and you’re the first non-Korean president in Samsung’s history, how much of being an outsider is good or bad? And how do you impact the culture without alienating the people who built it?

This idea of being suspended between different worlds — I grew up in Italy, in the north of Italy, with parents from the south, at a moment in time in Italy when the south and the north were really divided. I would go around my neighborhood, and it was clear that I did not belong there. But then when I went to the south on vacation during the summer, I for sure did not belong there either. So already then, when I was a child, I lived in this gray area, suspended between different identities. If you talk to the design world, often they’re like, “Well, but you’re a businessperson.” But then if you talk to the business world, they are totally like, “You are not one of us.” So you don’t belong there either. Often people are uncomfortable when they don’t have a specific label, when they don’t belong.

The message I want to send, especially to the new generations of people who are trying to define their identity, is that often in those gray areas, you can design your own identity and be unique and original. Already, when I moved as an Italian to the United States, there were many things that I didn’t understand. They were alien to me. They were weird to me, honestly. But you need to really analyze yourself, analyze the culture you’re facing, and understand what unique strengths you bring to the table. Here, it’s a culture that is very organized. There is this vision coming from the top, and then an army of people that can execute. If used in the right ways, it’s very powerful, because they are able to move really quickly.

Obviously, I was called to bring in a vision that adds to the one the company already had in design. So I really spent the past year trying to understand the strengths of the company and how I can bring something different. I’m still in the middle of it. I think you need to be very transparent about the fact that you will have missteps and make mistakes. But again, you also need to show as much as possible what you bring to the table.

I’ve seen commentaries on LinkedIn from designers talking about your move to Samsung and kind of finding hope in it. I’m curious what that hope is referring to.

Look, I was surprised by those comments too. Design in corporations is somehow struggling. The design community made huge promises in the first decade of this new millennium about the power of design thinking, and then in many instances, design thinking didn’t deliver. Design thinking is important because you need a methodology, you need a process, you need tools, exactly like a painter needs a brush. But then you need the right painter. You need Picasso, because if you give that brush to Picasso, you get something. If you give that brush to my accountant or my kid, you’re going to get something different. Instead, our design community talked too much about the brush, the bristles, the material, and how to design the brush. We forgot that, at the end of the day, what really makes the difference is the thinking of the design thinkers. Do we have the right empathy? Do we read the right signals? Do we have the right intuition? To innovate, you need the tool, you need design thinking, but you also need the right people with the right mindset.

You’ve been at Samsung about a year, and you’re announcing this design manifesto for Samsung’s future this week as part of Milan Design Week. So can you give us a taste of that and how that came together?

The pillar of what we’re doing with design at Samsung is really making sure that designers are the voice of humanity in the organization. I identified four different territories, four categories we need to focus on. The first one is what I call live longer. Then there is live better, live loud, and live on. Longer means all those technologies, most of them wearable technologies, that we have to monitor your body and help you with your physical and mental well-being. Then there are all those technologies that are there for your safety — the safety of yourself, your loved ones, your pet, your home, your belongings. The second one, live better, is all about using technology to free up time to do what you love most. That dimension is literally about using robots and AI to increase the productivity of what you do, or ideally to do things on your behalf so that you can be free of technology and do whatever you want. With or without technology is up to you. It’s your choice.

The third dimension, live loud, is the world of creativity and self-expression. It’s about using technology to express yourself. It could go from creating content for social media all the way to, for instance, creating your startup from the comfort of your living room using those technologies. Then the fourth dimension is what we call live on. It’s about transcending yourself and preserving memories. We are saving pictures and videos of the people we love. I have thousands and thousands of pictures and videos of my family members, and I have almost nothing of, for instance, my grandparents, especially when they were kids. So already today, when people are not with us, either because they are on another side of the world or maybe because they’re not with us in this world anymore, we can preserve their memories, their emotions, their knowledge.

But more than ever now, with AI, we can literally build digital twins of people. It will happen organically, because the more we share everything we do with AI devices and AI platforms, the more these platforms will learn about us and will be able to replicate us in some form. My parents are in their 80s. I hope they’re going to live for the next 50 years, but when they’re not with me anymore, if I have a moment of difficulty, I would love to have the possibility to ask my dad, “What would you do if you were me?” In all of this, you see that the technology is just a tool. It is at the service of humanity.

When you come up with these four areas, to what extent do you start with, like, “Here are the products we have now, and we have to serve them,” versus, “Here are the questions, and how do I move the products into them?”

There are three horizons that we’re considering. One is the short horizon. You start from the products of today and try to advance them in an incremental way, even though, obviously, you always try to figure out if there is something breakthrough that you can implement quickly. Then there is a second horizon, where I need to figure out how I can do something that is more radical. But the area where the four categories apply the most is the long-term horizon. This is where you define the future portfolio of the company. There are products that maybe in the future won’t exist anymore, because robots will do a lot of things that other devices do today. So those devices will need to evolve, need to be redesigned. Let’s say in 10 years’ time, in a house where you have multiple kinds of robots — humanoids, utilitarian robots, and robots that are more about emotional companionship — our appliances will change. The robot will be the main interface between you and some of these appliances.

If AI is going to be in your house, how will your TV, your refrigerator, your speakers evolve? What will be their role? What will be the shape of these devices? Where will they be placed? Then you go back to today and start to influence the development of those products in that direction. This is influencing, by the way, eventually strategies of acquisitions, partnerships, or research that you can do.

The triangle Postcrossing stamp from the U.S. Postal Service commemorates an international pen pal project started in 2005 by Paulo Magalhães, a student in Portugal. The program connects people around the world in a simple but increasingly old-fashioned way: Send a postcard, get one back.

What started as a website Magalhães hosted on his personal computer has since spread around the world. Today, more than 805,000 people from more than 200 countries and territories have sent more than 80 million postcards through the program. Americans have sent more postcards through Postcrossing than the residents of any country except Germany, but maybe a new stamp could put the U.S. on top.

Postcrossing has gotten its own stamps before in countries including Germany and Finland. The U.S. Postcrossing stamps come following a letter-writing campaign by supporters to the USPS Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, which recommends future stamps. Their successful letter-writing campaign also marks the return of a rare postage stamp shape.

Most U.S. stamps are square- or rectangular-shaped, but in 1997, the USPS released its first triangle-shaped postage stamps, a pair of 32-cent stamps showing vintage-style illustrations of a clipper ship and stagecoach. Another, a 41-cent triangle stamp in 2007, marked the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, by English colonists, and it was shaped like a triangle because that was also the shape of the fort they built there.

The latest triangular stamps feature artwork by Arizona-based artist and designer Jackson Gibbs. Known for his editorial work in outlets like The New York Times and New York magazine, Gibbs says the creative brief for his first-ever stamps was to portray the activity of postcrossing (sending postcards), which he depicted in images in his playful, cartoon style. The four stamps he designed show people carrying mail on horseback through a Saguaro desert, underwater, in space, and by motorcycle.

“The ideas came from things I like to draw over many years of culminated experience,” Gibbs tells Fast Company. The stamps were designed by USPS art director Antonio Alcalá.

The U.S. Postal Service says the stamps recognize postcrossing for “promoting greater understanding across countries and cultures,” and it’s unveiling them at the Boston 2026 World Exposition from May 23 to 30 alongside stamps commemorating the American Revolution, the American bison, international peace, and North American soccer.

The stamps come in sets of four or eight that fit together in a square, and they’re classified as Global stamps, which, like Forever stamps, hold the postage value equivalent of First-Class Mail no matter the cost of postage, except they can be used for international correspondence. First-Class Mail International is available in more 180 countries, including Canada, Great Britain, and Australia, according to the USPS.

The official Postcrossing FAQ recommends writing on postcards about what daily life is like where you live, or about things like your favorite quote, a recipe, a childhood memory, or your favorite book, movie, band, or hobby. Bringing back triangle stamps for a program built on sending postcards makes smart design sense since they take up half the space of a rectangular stamp for a piece of mail without much room to spare. Now not only will Americans have more space for writing, but they’ll have a fun, friendly stamp to share with new friends around the world.

The Universal Collection is a five-piece set of gear, including a sleeping bag, tent, backpack, slippers, and hat. It was designed in collaboration with ski mountaineer Vasu Sojitra and rock climber Maureen Beck, both of whom are athlete collaborators with The North Face and advocates for the disability community.

According to Luke Matthews, design manager of technical equipment for the North Face, the concept for the Universal Collection arose after his team noticed a common complaint from consumers. “Not many camping-focused recreational products exist that are crafted with the disabled community in mind,” he says.

Each of the collection’s five items were chosen to cover the essential needs of outdoor exploration, including shelter, warmth, comfort, protection, and storage. They’ve also been designed with a range of new strategies that makes them easier to use for people in wheelchairs, who have limited motor skills, visual impairments, and who live with other disabilities. For the North Face, it’s a project that’s demonstrated how designing with accessibility in mind can result in better products for everyone.

“As we dove deeper into understanding the universal design approach, it transformed into a project focused on lowering barriers for everyone, regardless of ability, with the intent to get more people outside,” Matthews says.

The North Face is “designing to solve problems”

Designing the Universal Collection started with examining each of its constituent items and determining which details could be pain points for customers with disabilities. During this phase, Matthews says, Sojitra and Beck “challenged the team to think more inclusively about the products we make and to take a broader approach to problem-solving, reexamining some of the industry standards and assumptions we have made.”

For the sleeping bag, that meant reevaluating one of the object’s most obvious features: the zipper. For some people with physical disabilities or limited motor skills, the double-handed grip required to use a zipper can be an obstacle. “We focused on solving this issue with magnetic closures and we also added key tactile details to make the user experience easier to interact with,” Matthews says.

Those tactile details include rubberized panels to make the bag’s components identifiable by touch, as well as oversized loops on draw cords to make adjustments easier. Rather than zippering together, the bag has two insulated side panels—one lighter and one heavier—that fold over on themselves like wings.

This method is not only easier for anyone to close, Matthews says, but also allows for better temperature control: On warmer nights, users can sleep with just the light wing down, and when it gets cold, they can stack the heavier wing on top.

A similar attention to detail was applied to the design of the Wawona 3 tent. One main challenge that the team identified was the typical complicated setup process, which often involves multiple different pole sizes and complicated attachment points. On the Wawona 3, all of the poles are of equal lengths, and each slides into an easy-catch sleeve rather than a small grommet. 

“The pole connection detail where the poles insert into the tent is an industry standard solution that we wanted to rethink,” Matthews says. “We updated it from the traditional webbing and grommet style to a pole catch pocket that lowers the effort and dexterity required to connect the pole. This small change makes a big difference in the set up process.”

The actual doorway of the tent is low to the ground to accommodate mobility devices, and an expanded entryway makes it easy to enter, exit, and store mobility devices alongside gear. The North Face added high-visibility and reflective fabrics to the front of the tent and the pole sleeves to make the entire set-up more accessible for people with visual impairments. 

The rest of the collection is smaller, but equally thoughtful: a backpack with magnetic closures and a range of carry methods; a pair of insulated, slip-on shoes that can fit on either foot, and a hat that can be easily adjusted with one hand. Going forward, Matthews says, the Universal Collection will set the tone for a new standard approach of “designing to solve problems” at the North Face. 

“By considering users with a broader lens and filtering design solutions accordingly, we’re able to design better products for all users, regardless of experience level or physical ability,” Matthews says. “At the end of the day, that’s just a smart business decision.”

But the aerodynamic analyses car designers rely on are excruciatingly slow.

“We’ll release a design surface, and then it can take days or weeks to get a full set of analysis back on the performance of that surface,” says Bryan Styles, director of design innovation and technology operations at General Motors. “By that time, the design surface has changed, and then we’re trying to understand, well, how do these results actually translate into the surface that we now have in design?”

Those delays could be coming to an end. Increasingly, major car companies are turning to artificial intelligence to accelerate aerodynamic work to a scale unimaginable in the early days of the wind tunnel and in the present day of modeling with computational fluid dynamics. GM and Jaguar Land Rover are just two of the companies using new AI tools to tackle one of the biggest bottlenecks in car design.

GM, for example, has developed what it calls a “virtual wind tunnel,” with an AI model trained on previous computer-based aerodynamic modeling. Applying previous analyses to new designs, GM’s designers and engineers are able to quickly see how a contour would perform if put to a physical wind tunnel test. This data is then fed back directly into the digital sculpting tools designers use to give cars shape.

“We are using it on our next products,” says Rene Strauss, GM’s director of virtual integration engineering. “So this isn’t a vision of the future. This is happening right now.”

And it’s happening across the industry. Like GM, Jaguar Land Rover is using AI tools to run robust aerodynamic performances on its car designs, often at the scale of hundreds or even thousands per day. Though the science of aerodynamics is established, each automaker is developing its own AI model using its existing cars to enable more accurate predictions of the drag or air pressure on, say, a boxy Land Rover SUV or a jet-like Chevrolet Corvette.

“The better the training data, the better the model performance,” says Scott Parrish, a technical fellow and lab group manager in research and development for GM. “We use a variety of vehicles and we actually alter their shape so we can gather more and more surfaces for robust prediction. If a designer brings in a vehicle and moves a surface up or down or in or out, the training data comprehends that.”

Jaguar Land Rover is working directly with an outside company to make this work possible. Neural Concept, a startup spun out of an AI research lab at the Swiss technical university EPFL, has created an AI platform for engineering in product design, and has several major clients in the automotive space, including Jaguar Land Rover. Cofounder Thomas von Tschammer says his company’s platform helps carmakers use their own proprietary data to build AI models that they can then use to guide their aerodynamic designs.

“Why those models are becoming extremely valuable in our space is because they allow designers and aerodynamicists to sit around the same table and make real-time design decisions and trade-offs,” von Tschammer says. “Not only can they reduce time to market because they can converge faster on a solution, but they can also innovate more, because they can explore more variations.”

Aside from cutting down the time it takes for a supercomputer to run a precise aerodynamic analysis of a car design, tools like these are also eliminating some of the back-and-forth delays that can come from separate departments relying on results from the other before moving ahead with a design.

“One person would work on it and then another person would work on it,” Strauss says. “Each of these iterations would take around five days. Imagine that now with this tool, you can sit together and work on it concurrently and make instant decisions.”

Those decisions move projects forward, but not to instant approval. GM is using the AI aerodynamics tool to streamline its car design discovery phase, but once a design looks promising it still gets the full computational fluid dynamics analysis. It might even move its way into a scale clay model. And if the design is still working, it will find its way into the actual physical wind tunnel.

“[AI] doesn’t actually change the process steps that we go through,” Styles says. “But it allows us to go through those process steps more quickly.”

Asset Amplify is among several prospective tools, called “Sneaks,” that Adobe will be demoing at its 2026 Adobe Summit conference this week. For Adobe, Sneaks are annual UX experiments, crowdsourced from across the company, that may or may not become actual products based on user interest. According to Eric Matisoff, principal evangelist of analytics and data science at Adobe and the mastermind behind the Sneaks program, about 30% of Sneaks typically make it into official Adobe platforms.

Like many other brands currently living in the nebulous overlap between being both an AI- and design-first company, Adobe has been pouring major investments into becoming a one-stop branding shop for the world’s biggest companies. In December, it announced the Adobe AI Foundry, a new consultancy arm for Fortune 2000 companies to develop custom AI models that can craft assets based on their own IP guidelines. And this month, it’s rolling out the public beta for its Firefly AI Assistant, a tool designed to act like an autonomous digital art director.

Asset Amplify builds on what Matisoff says has become a major focus for Adobe: audiences. Brands are moving beyond seeking AI tools that can help generate broad, generalized assets—they want tools that can understand, and build for, their specific audience niche.

How Asset Amplify works

To use Asset Amplify, brands start by uploading assets that represent their product and brand aesthetic directly into the tool. Matisoff says those inputs can range from showroom videos to commercials and existing social posts—the more information a brand is able to provide, the more tailored the tool’s results will be. 

Next, the user enters a written prompt describing what kind of asset they’d like and what audience segment they’d like to target. This segmentation can be generational (Gen Zers, Gen Xers, millennials, boomers) or regional (South, Midwest, West Coast, East Coast), depending on the company’s scope and needs.

In an exclusive demo shared with Fast Company, an Adobe developer tested the tool with a fictional luxury electric car brand called Vanto. Asset Amplify was asked to generate an “interactive and immersive website” for millennials and Gen Zers—and the results were strikingly different. 

The millennial concept focused on sleek, minimalist typography; family-friendly visuals; and copy signaling luxury and comfort, like “Crafted for those who’ve earned it.” The Gen Z version, on the other hand, was an explosion of neon blue hues and Tron-esque visuals, focusing on the electric vehicle’s performance stats with copy like “Unleash electric fury” and “Dominate every road.”

Matisoff says that Asset Amplify’s AI model primarily relies on a brand’s own audience segmentation data to curate these vastly different experiences. In Vanto’s case, for example, the brand’s findings that the millennial consumer is more likely to have kids might inform the LLM to focus on a family-friendly design, while the Gen Z consumer’s interest in EV performance might result in a more stats-heavy layout.

For specific attribute data, such as which colors resonate best with different generations, Asset Amplify can tap into Adobe’s Content Analytics platform, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze image attributes and then pairs that with conversion data to show what’s sticking across different audiences. 

In the demo, the final websites and social media campaigns that Asset Amplify was able to produce certainly didn’t look like finished products—each had a distinctly AI-generated look that most brands would likely be keen to avoid. Generally, though, Adobe is framing this prospective tool as more of a way to quickly map out marketing campaigns in the brainstorming phase, rather than the be-all, end-all for brand design. Once Asset Amplify’s assets are complete, they can easily be opened in Photoshop, Illustrator, or After Effects so that human editors can take the reins on editing.

Asset Amplify can’t produce fully realized brand assets (yet), but it can certainly speed up the process.

How AI is changing Adobe’s whole Sneaks pipeline

Asset Amplify is one of seven final Sneaks debuting at the Summit conference this year, and it’s indicative of a much broader trend at Adobe. 

While Sneaks have been around since the ’90s, the program’s tenor has noticeably shifted in recent years: Nowadays, almost every Sneak is an AI tool. According to Matisoff, the acceleration of AI technology has fundamentally changed not only the kinds of Sneaks on show, but how the actual Sneak development process works behind the scenes

“If we had chatted last year about Sneaks, I would have told you we had about 100 or 150 ideas that came from across the company,” Matisoff says. “This year, I think largely because of the access to vibe design, vibe brainstorm, vibe strategize, and vibe code, we had over 500 ideas come across my desk.” Those ideas, he adds, came from every single Adobe office around the globe.

“Genuinely, the pace of innovation at Adobe has been increasing because of our ability to say, ‘Hey, you know what? I have this great idea that I’ve never been able to execute on before, but now I do,’” Matisoff says.

The technology behind it is an aftermarket robotic brain built by Crewline—a four-person startup headed by CEO Frederik Filz-Reiterdank and CTO Mohamed Sadek—that can be installed on an existing steamroller in about an hour without cutting a single wire.

Filz-Reiterdank hopes this is the beginning of a new era for construction. Over the last 50 years, overall U.S. economic productivity has doubled, and manufacturing productivity has surged as industries embraced standardization and automation. Meanwhile, construction productivity has actually plummeted—falling by more than 30% since 1970.

In recent years, prefabrication—snapping together factory-built modules on site like giant Lego bricks—has become an interesting solution to building, but you cannot outsource the actual earthmoving to a warehouse. By turning analog excavators and steamrollers into intelligent robots, Filz-Reiterdank says his company wants to fundamentally rewire the most stubborn, manual bottleneck in the real estate pipeline. The goal: to lay the groundwork for a 24/7 robotic orchestra designed to prepare construction sites in record time.

Filz-Reiterdank says the technology is a safeguard against labor issues. “There is a dramatic shortage of operators,” he says. And, when you think you have someone to operate this equipment, many times “they don’t show up.”

According to U.S. labor data, the median age of a construction worker is 42, and roughly 45% of the workforce is over 45 years old. As this veteran workforce rapidly approaches retirement, younger generations are not stepping in quickly enough to fill the void, creating a severe labor shortage that is delaying projects and driving up costs nationwide. 

The National Home Builders Association says that “attracting young skilled labor remains a primary long-term goal for the construction industry.” The challenge of getting young, skilled labor is the reason why big companies are looking for more automation everywhere, Filz-Reiterdank says. When there are no humans available to sit in the cab, the machines must “learn” to drive themselves.

Solving the problem

Crewline is not the only company trying to teach yellow heavy metal vehicles how to think and work. China is pushing hard to do this. So are Japan and South Korea. In the U.S., Applied Intuition, a Silicon Valley heavyweight valued at $15 billion, is building an autonomous operating system intended to be “a single self-driving platform for everything that rolls, floats or flies,” ranging from passenger cars to 40-ton Komatsu mining trucks.

Crewline is laser-focused strictly on earthworks contractors. This radical specialization has already secured them a waitlist of 241 companies representing over $26 million in potential annual contracts following a $7.1 million seed round that they just announced today.

Can Crewline make it? After all, Elon Musk has spent over a decade and billions of dollars trying to solve the self-driving puzzle for passenger cars, and failed miserably. In China, things are getting closer thanks to companies like BYD that have true full autonomous driving and parking (but only in parking lots). This challenge makes sense. The open road is a nightmare of infinite, high-speed edge cases, with other uncontrolled vehicles, pedestrians, roadworks, potholes, animals, and a billion other variables that make it extraordinarily difficult to have real autonomy. 

Luckily for Crewline and construction companies, solving autonomy in a dirty, chaotic construction site is actually much easier because you do not need to solve 100% of the self-driving problem. During our conversation, Filz-Reiterdank paraphrased AI expert Andrej Karpathy’s observation that “the first 90% of autonomy takes as long as the 9% after that.”

Because a construction zone is a tightly controlled sandbox, Crewline can thrive in that initial 90% zone. Crewline utilizes zero-shot learning, meaning that you don’t need zillions of hours of videos and real world data to train a model—to navigate obstacles. Unlike a Tesla, if an autonomous roller gets confused, it can simply hit the brakes without fear of being rear-ended.

That, Filz-Reiterdank tells me, is supported by a “five-layer safety system” that keeps the behemoth from going rogue. It relies on front and rear stereo depth cameras running on-edge object detection, backed by large vision-language models operating in the cloud.

This allows the roller’s AI to instantly recognize a new, construction-specific hazard like a survey stake or a manhole cover just from a text description and a few reference images, stopping safely before causing any damage. Throw in an independent safety controller that defaults to safe mode, on-device and off-device emergency stops, and strict geofence enforcement, and the machine becomes acutely aware of its surroundings.

How it works

Filz-Reiterdank says that operating a roller at 3 mph is mind-numbingly dull work that requires little skill, which means veteran crews are relieved to hand over the keys. Furthermore, dozer and excavator operators act as the on-site managers who read grading plans and direct the flow of dirt. Replicating that high-level human orchestration requires billions of dollars in AI research, whereas a roller just needs to flatten soil within a designated boundary in predictable straight lines.

To operate it, a foreman simply uses an iPad to draw a digital geofence—a virtual sandbox—and hits a button to start the job. The true productivity leap is not about the physical speed of the machine, but its relentless consistency. Human operators require legally mandated lunch breaks, restroom pauses, or sometimes they simply ghost their shifts entirely, leaving expensive machines sitting idle. 

Lawler is the first piece in Crewline’s plan. They chose the humble drum roller as a beachhead to get into construction sites, rather than attempting to automate a highly complex, multi-tool excavator right out of the gate. Crewline plans to have 100 autonomous rollers humming in the dirt by the end of this year, with an autonomous bulldozer slated for release next year. 

Filz-Reiterdank claims that the magic of this system will truly unlock when all these machines begin communicating with each other without human intervention. In a not so-far-away future, less than a decade, every vehicle on the lot will carry 3D sensors that continuously update a digital twin—a real-time, virtual replica of the ever-changing job site.

Once a human-operated bulldozer grades a section of dirt to the correct height, the system will automatically ping the autonomous roller to start compacting that exact spot. He predicts that within five years, the industry will have robust autonomous systems for every single vehicle, acting as an invisible conductor for an orchestra of heavy machinery.

Warby Parker is looking to change that with the launch of Warby Parker Sport, a collection of performance sunglasses starting at $195.

“I’m really proud of where we ended up where these are glasses that have all of the great function of great sports glasses, but something where you’re not going to look back in 10 years and think, why was I wearing this crazy shield on my face?” Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal tells Fast Company.

The lightweight Italian-made frames were designed to hug the face, allowing them to stay on while active and protect the eyes from UV exposure. That presents a challenge, however, since a high base curve on glasses can distort the optics. To maximum the curve while keeping the optical quality high, Warby Parker cuts its own lenses itself at its in-house optical labs outside Las Vegas and Syracuse, New York.

“You often see style-driven sport eyewear that has function and optics as an afterthought, or you see super-functional products that are, I would say, a little less wearable, and both of these options are also overpriced,” Blumenthal says. “We wanted to combine what we do best, which is timeless design coupled with great optics and functionality at an accessible price point.”

The sunglasses come with an option of one of three types of lenses, each designed for different scenarios. That matters in the performance sunglasses category, where functionality such as reduced polarized light makes a difference when out on reflective water or snow.

Rosewood lenses are meant for trails and snow with enhanced contrast, while brown lenses are meant for field and fishing with enhanced contrast and depth. Gray lens show true color and reduce glare, and they’re designed for water and road. Performance lenses can also be added to other non-sport sunglasses frames.

The design process started from a place of form and functional needs, and the frames, which are all new styles, are made from hand-painted nylon with a soft-touch coating. There are spring hinges in the arms and no-slip nose pads under the nose bridge. The sunglasses come in jet black, marine trench, mahogany tortoise, or sapwood tortoise, and they’re available online and at the brand’s retail locations.

The Warby Parker Sport launch comes following “a fever pitch” of demand for the product category, Blumenthal says. It also comes following a big year for the company. Warby Parker reached its first full year of positive net income, bringing in $1.6 million in 2025. It announced partnerships last year with Google to develop smart glasses and with Target to open a handful of their first joint shop-in-shop locations.

While the eyewear brand is looking to add AI tech into its glasses and its glasses into a suburban shopping center near you, Warby Parker Sport is all about getting out and touching grass.

It’s a scenario that has played out in airports for decades—because for all the advances in materials and wheels and tracking technology, the fundamental architecture of the carry-on suitcase has barely changed. Open from the middle, split in half, dig around, repack, repeat.

July, the 7-year-old Australian travel brand that has built a following by rethinking luggage design, is betting there’s a better way. On April 23, the company launches the Capsule Carry-On, a $395 bag built around a top-down packing system, with a lid that opens at the top rather than splitting the bag in half. It’s a bet that goes beyond product design: As competitors fold and struggle, July believes that real engineering breakthroughs—not just new colorways—are what keep a luggage brand alive.

It’s a design shift that sounds simple, but it wasn’t. It required solving a complex engineering problem. Standard carry-ons are made from polycarbonate sheets vacuum-formed into shape. The sheets must have a certain thickness, otherwise the plastic weakens. That’s a problem when your design calls for a deep base and a slim lid. July’s solution was to engineer a single-piece formed shell that has a consistent thickness throughout—a manufacturing feat that required close collaboration with its factory partners to pull off.

July’s design team is constantly gathering feedback from travelers as it develops products. The insight that drove this design came from conversations with Quantas flight attendants, who regularly need to swap shoes mid-shift but have nowhere to lay a suitcase down in the galley of an aircraft. July’s answer was to create the “QuickGrab” feature—a pocket that’s accessible when you open the lid of the Capsule, allowing you to quickly access items inside your bag.

“If you want to switch from heels to flats or grab a . . . jumper, you can just quickly grab it while standing up,” says July cofounder Athan Didaskalou.

The format also transforms the experience at your destination. With a clamshell suitcase, you need enough space to unzip it so you can access both compartments. They don’t fit on most hotel luggage racks. If you’re in a tiny New York hotel, there may not be enough space anywhere but the bed. “You know you’ve been rolling your suitcase across dirty streets, but you have no choice but to place it on your clean new bedsheets,” Didaskalou says.

With the Capsule design, you can simply put the bag down and open the lid. It takes up roughly half the footprint. Didaskalou also says it changes the kinds of items you can pack. You can lay a hat or a basketball inside the suitcase and simply close the top. With a clamshell, these items would be crushed by the middle divider. “It’s a small reconfiguration of space, but it opens up a range of possibilities,” he says.

Two more features round out the redesign. Travelers complained about suitcases rolling away on train platforms and inclined airport walkways, so July engineered “SilentMove”: lockable wheels controlled by a small switch at the handle base. And the bag ships with CaseSafe, July’s Transportation Security Administration-compliant lock with integrated tracking via Apple Find My and Google Find My Device.

Didaskalou says innovation has been core to July’s business model, and nowhere is that more valued than in the Asia Pacific markets where the brand does significant business. July is opening stores in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur this year. “As an Australian brand, our domestic market is small, roughly 25 million people, so we need to have a global outlook,” he says. “We’ve found that in the Asian market, they love these little engineering details.”

That focus on product has also become a survival strategy. Paravel, a sustainability-focused luggage startup, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Away, once valued at $1.4 billion, has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs. Both companies grew fast on VC capital, then struggled to turn a profit. July took a different path.

“In Australia, we don’t have as much access to capital, so we focus on the old-school business tactics of growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction,” Didaskalou says. “We can’t just change the color of the suitcase and hope it gets people excited.”

Now, when I step inside the lobby, a large wooden door slides open in front of me. I enter a room with a ringing telephone. And when I pick it up, my journey begins . . .

With the help of the architecture firm Rockwell Group and the design firm Pentagram, the McCormick mansion has been transformed into The Hand & The Eye, the largest magic venue in the world at 35,000 square feet.

The overall vision—and $50 million investment behind it—comes from Glen Tullman, who is both a Chicago-based venture capitalist and a lifelong magic enthusiast. His bet is that locals and tourists will spend $225 for a three-hour, no-cameras-allowed experience (with $75 in credits for food and drink) as they bounce from intimate rooms to larger theaters—seeing more magic at every turn in a setting that’s as much of a spectacle as the illusions themselves.

“We built this to be a 100-year venture from every little aspect of what we’ve done,” says Tullman, as he excitedly gives me a tour through the space. “We built it to be for the performers and for the guests. We didn’t build it to say, ‘Let’s maximize profits.’ [Though] sometimes when you do that, you actually maximize profits, because people say, ‘This is so special.’” 

What is The Hand & The Eye?

The Hand & The Eye is a theater, club, school, and networking spot for the magic-inclined. But ultimately, it’s an ode to mid-century Chicago-style magic: point-blank, reality-shattering card tricks that filled the city’s taverns as magicians walked from table to table, casually blowing people’s minds with nothing more than 52 small pieces of waxed paper.

The mansion is designed to transport you out of any particular place and time, with a mishmash of motifs pulled from the 1870s to 1930s, the golden age of magic. Rich wallpapers, marble bars, careful carpentry, custom brass plaques, and copious amounts of fringe and velvet serve as a baseline across a space where no two rooms are alike. And since the mansion has few windows, it feels like a permanent 10:30 p.m. inside. I can see how the environment could make time disappear.

The careful ode to magic never feels like kitsch, largely due to the fact that, ironically, most of what you’re looking at is real. This isn’t an escape room or some Disneyland ride. A mix of antique and custom-built furniture fills the space, and a museum’s worth of art and ephemera are staged everywhere you look—ranging from one of Harry Houdini’s milk cans (he’d lock himself inside and escape from the roughly 36-by-26-inch steel churn) to Alexander Herrmann’s “Chinese rings” and decapitation cloth. Many are sourced right from Tullman’s own collection.

Both the space and service are architected to create an unpredictable night. When you arrive, you’re given a schedule for a three-hour experience (and one you don’t need to follow to the minute—color-coded pins ensure that staff know to signal you when it’s time to move on, should you lose track of time). You may be ushered from communal bars and two large dining rooms into cozy spaces that squeeze in maybe a dozen people for close-up work, and then into one of four auditoriums for larger stage shows. I was particularly taken by a safe room lined with shining safety deposit boxes that belong to VIP members, who can bring their keys to unlock the occasional surprise. A séance room features one large table . . . but I’m told that when the lights go low, you never know what spirits might show up.

The mansion contains too many rooms to fully enjoy in one night. So the club saves your journey, and it will never schedule you the same path through the space twice. I hear there are secret passages and rooms—none of which are revealed to me during my visit. In fact, even as a member of the media, I’m not allowed to photograph my tour. My phone’s camera, like everyone else’s who visits, is covered with a sticker upon arrival.

“Today you go to a concert, and if you’re not in the front row, you mostly see it through the back of someone’s phone,” Tullman says. “Here, you’re in the moment and people walk out, and they’re, like, ‘That’s just the best evening I’ve had.’ Some of them don’t even think about why it was so good. And it’s because you were totally focused on enjoying it with people next to you.” 

Building the brand 

So much of the vibe—from the name and the logo to the signage and the merch—was developed alongside a 12-person team from Pentagram with support from Paper Tiger. The club was originally named “Metamorphosis,” after one of Houdini’s most famous tricks. Finding that a little too on-the-nose, the team went through a vast branding process to rename it. What they landed on—The Hand & The Eye—is stately, mysterious, and descriptive. 

“We wanted a name that wasn’t just a pun or had the word ‘magic’ in it,” Pentagram partner Emily Oberman says. “The hand is about how all the magicians perform their magic, and then the eye is how the audience experiences it.”

Visually, the team wanted to avoid magical tropes—no rabbits or top hats, no wands, no lightning scars. For the logo, Pentagram went literal, drawing a slightly curled hand with a floating eyeball between the thumb and index finger. When the team first showed Tullman the idea for the logo over a Zoom call, he surprised the team by making a ball float between his fingers. 

Oberman calls the project “a love letter to Chicago.” It incorporates the city’s stars and brass signage found around town. The color system—a rich, rotating mix of seasonal colors—pulls in a soft blue that locals might not even realize is straight from the Chicago flag. Meanwhile, the filigree and patterns used across Pentagram’s brand design—and gosh, there is so much intricate work—were pulled from the facade of the mansion itself. 

I can’t help but feel that the brand is so rich and retro because it’s not overly scripted or matchy-matchy. “It’s kind of like a mix of styles; all the filigree is a little bit different, too, and unique to the piece that it’s on,” notes Mira Khandpur, associate partner at Pentagram and lead designer on the project.

You’ll find all of that branding across the typical touchpoints you’d expect, but also across magic tricks and card decks the team designed to be sold at the venue’s store (which, yes, is staffed by a magician who will gladly teach you a thing or two). I imagine it will be impossible to visit without at least buying a deck of cards to bring home.

For Chicago, the investment is a boon to revitalizing its Mag Mile, which has faced challenges with vacancy since COVID—and Tullman claims that since he bought the building, it’s attracted other business owners to the block. But for the wider world of magic, it’s something more: It’s a space where mind-bending tricks—honed over endless hours in solitary confinement—can be put on a pedestal and shared with the world.

We’re seeing this with Gap’s announcement today of a new Spring collection kicking off a multi-season partnership with Victoria Beckham, bringing clean lines and refined classics that harken from the designer’s British sensibilities to the eponymous American brand. The 38-piece line of wardrobe staples will be available online and in select global Gap stores beginning April 24 at 9am ET, with prices that range between $34 to $328.

This isn’t Gap’s first partnership of the year. It previously launched collaborations with Harlem’s Fashion Row and Awake, as well as a keystone campaign for the brand’s sweatpants with rapper Young Mikko. (And let’s not forget last year’s sell-out Sandy Liang collaboration.) The Victoria Beckham collaboration is its latest in an ongoing story of reinvention the brand wants to convey to the public.

“We always are looking for new, interesting, cool, unexpected-for-our-customer collabs, and Victoria Beckham is a real natural for us,” says Gap CEO Mark Breitbard of the pairing, noting that her design sensibilities bring an elevated level of polish and refinement to Gap’s casual everyday wear.

The partnership was the result of a conversation Breitbard had with celebrity stylist Alastair McKimm, who he considers to be part of the Gap creative team, about his other clients. “When he brought up Victoria, we both just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Wait, could this be interesting for us?’” Breitbard recalled. And Beckham, for her part, was game.

The design results apply subtle degrees of difference from Gap classics like its Arc denim and matching jacket, pull-over denim quarter zips with a tent-like shape, dark wash capris (having a moment this spring), pleated khaki shorts, white button-downs, jersey tank dresses, and a classic trench coat. The difference from Gap pieces may not be detectable to the non-fashion obsessive’s human eye, but the simplicity of lines and the appeal of the Victoria Beckham brand ID could subconsciously appeal to the same discerning shopper who gets neutral manicures and wears La Ligne.

“You’ll see really modern lines and elegance that still has Gap casual in it,” says Breitbard. “So it’s very versatile. Dress up, dress down. Look incredibly chic, but also don’t look like you tried too hard. It’s just a really great balance, but clean lines and a fine aesthetic.”

The cerulean blue pullover anorak adds a bright pop of color to staples like white, khaki, olive, and denim, which have enough wearability that could toss on a piece and head out the door. There is some overlap between the positioning of this line and Gap Studio as an elevated take to Gap classics, but Breitbard splices Gap Studio as more of a play for red carpet caché, with some looks they then commercialize.

The multi-season partnership also points to the brand’s broader partnerships strategy, which aims to reestablish relevancy through brand partners with caché. Gap is extending these partnerships through marketing that’s less sales-y and more shareable content (“brandtainment” is the linguistic ligature du jour). By doing so, it’s goal is to drive cultural conversation. In short: organically become part of the chatter in the elusive group chat.

At this point, the brand is building on the momentum of the previous year-and-a-half. (Its financial gains are still playing out: net sales were up 2% and store sales up 1% year over year, respectively.)

Where Gap gets luxury fashion bonafides from Beckham, Beckham gets to capitalize on her existing growth and expand her reach. Victoria Beckham posted $170 million in group sales resulting in 19% growth in 2025, which includes fashion and beauty, (Breitbard noted her success in beauty in particular). Beckham told WWD last fall that she plans to open more stores in the U.S., which is the brand’s biggest market—this collab could be a preview for a lot of new consumers.

Ultimately a collaboration is successful if it’s multidimensional. “[The Victoria Beckham collaboration] is going to hit new consumers who are paying attention to fashion and existing consumers, and consumers who have been with us for a while,” says Breitbard.

While I can’t say that the Victoria Beckham brand has been in my group chats lately (that’s been dominated by fashion brands like Khaite, the Row, Still Here, and quests for vintage Prada and Manolo Blahniks, and even Gap itself), it does have a major online fan base: 3 million TikTok followers compared to Gap’s one million, and 33.4 million Instagram followers compared to Gap’s 3.7 million.

“One of the things that I think we’re doing well when we do a remix, [is] there might be dimensions that the younger consumer really appreciates, and then there is also just artistry and creative that is very accessible and easy,” says Breitbard, which translates to online traction and cultural interest that are bigger than sales KPIs.

He points to the Katseye campaign as an example. “They’re young. They have a young demographic. They have a huge fan base, but tens of thousands of people reposted that dance. We had 600 million views, and it wasn’t just from young [people]. It was so accessible and so uplifting to a very broad audience. That’s what we’ve done well,“ he says. “Victoria has younger consumers, but also consumers who have known her and followed her throughout her career and I think that’ll be inspiring very broadly.”

He adds that Beckham’s cultural impact and personal relationship with her brand also fit with Gap’s story telling sensibilities. The story they plan together was too big for one drop. And a multi-season collaboration has to have a different business strategy.

“The strategy for us here is to bring in the right amount to have excitement and energy and have it be accessible, but not bought with such depth that it’s meant to live for months and months in the store,” says Breitbard. “These things are meant to be moments of high heat, to draw attention, to have fun, to drive business. And so we are intending to do that for this drop and then another drop later in the year, versus it’s going to launch and it’s going to be in the store.”

Beckham’s designer bonafides are another lens for potential Gap customers who haven’t thought of the brand yet to tap in. “Gap made new,” says Breitbard concisely of the brand’s strategy. “We want to continue to make Gap new and this is a great way to do that.”

Over the course of the season, Danielle continued to go to games with her husband and began experimenting with her own take on fanwear. She cut up a jersey, added a crochet collar, some crystal work—and wore it to games. Soon enough, players’ wives and girlfriends were sliding into her DMs. Strangers were stopping her in the arena bathrooms, all asking the same question: “Where did you get that?”

“It woke me up,” Danielle says. “Sport is huge. I used to think about sports like, slap a logo on a product and show off your team. But I thought, I’m going to make this chic. That was the aha moment. That was the unlock.” 

As Danielle began to cultivate her own grassroots following at the Warriors games, she and her sister, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida, got to work on a second business, DannijoPro, a fanwear brand that blends fashion and sports fandom. The effort has been an experiment in innovating across two mature industries that rarely intersect. 

Now, nearly two years in, the business has a full line of fan gear, from understated button downs with a tiny, offset team logo embroidered on the shirt to bespoke vintage gear with hand-sewn details, crocheted collars and rhinestone touches. They’ve even started a line they’re calling 1/Won, using vintage fan gear to make bespoke pieces at higher price points. Items at DannijoPro run anywhere from $85 to $495, and are sold on the company’s website, as well as at brand-hosted pop up shops and events. In May, the brand will launch on online fashion retailer Revolve. 

Right now, DannijoPro is growing 120% year over year, with 40% of their sales coming from DMs on social media. The brand has grown through word of mouth, with a boost from the likes of rapper E-40, basketball player Festus Ezeli, former NFL quarterback Alex Smith, and comedian Ali Wong wearing it. The brand has also brokered a licensing agreement with the NBA. 

Fashion reworked

The founders’ experience building DannijoPro has been entirely different from their first foray as fashion founders. “The lay of the land in sports licensing is complicated. There is no road map,” Danielle says. “Every league operates differently and every team is different. The distribution is complicated. It’s layered and nuanced. Relationships really matter. But, there’s a lot of opportunity to be entrepreneurial. We are creating our own path within the confines of this landscape.” 

And, that path, says Jodie, is focused on the female consumer in fandom—a buyer that’s been largely ignored in the sports fan apparel business, favoring an infamous “pink it and shrink it” model. “We’re trying to build something from the ground up,” says Jodie, noting that there’s no preexisting distribution channel for what DanniJo Pro offers.

“Our stuff doesn’t live on plastic hangers in an arena. We are taking a risk, trying to cultivate and create community organically. It’s not a short cut,” Danielle says. 

When you’re trying to take up space in a market you’re new to, you have to justify your presence, which, the sisters say, is more difficult than they ever expected. They’ve had to be creative to establish a toehold in fandom, brokering relationships with players, hosting events, and focusing on the bespoke aspect and craftsmanship in what they do.

Looking at DannijoPro with a wider lens, it’s clear the company is also capitalizing on a thread emerging at the intersection of business and culture wherein brands like Hathaway Hutton with its viral Boatkin, Kristin Juszczyk’s Off-Season (in partnership with Skims founder Emme Grede, Fanatics and the NFL), collegiate artwork at Axis Hats and the Clearly Collective with its college campus and city-map scarves are leveraging established, legacy IP as a sort of growth hack. Even on Etsy and Instagram, budding designers are peddling reworked Ralph Lauren button-downs and Nike sweatshirts for a refreshed, unique look. 

The very existence of these businesses raises a question around innovation and originality, and whether building a brand from established IP, or creating brand adjacency, is equally as wise as building one from scratch.

“Licensing is a win-win-win trifecta,” says strategist and licensing expert April Beach. “It is amazing for the creator of the IP—in this case the NBA—the licensee at DannijoPro and it’s amazing for the end users. It increases profit and it gives the licensee the opportunity to take someone’s incredible work and build their genius with it.” 

Nicole Dolgon, partner at New York City law firm Esca Legal, says that one of the best bits of a licensing agreement like the one DannijoPro has with the NBA is that there’s exponential growth in fanbase with very little lift for the NBA. The Synders do the heavy lifting, maintaining constant communication and product approvals with the league. And, so long as they can jump through the right hoops and maintain that relationship in all of the best ways, everyone does well. 

Perhaps the most validating interaction for the sisters came when Divya Mathur, chief merchandising officer and fashion director at online clothing retailer Revolve, called. “My focus is always where our customer is spending her time,” says Mathur, noting the brand will launch on Revolve at the end of April. “On my radar was an increase in attending sporting events. I was looking at brands in this space and I came across DannijoPro. I was really drawn to very specific things: their silhouettes, the sweatshirts. None of the product out there felt like it fit our customer.” 

But, she says, DannijoPro offered an opportunity to play in the sports space without leaving the fashion world: “It exists beyond game da. It crosses over into everyday life, with a lot of craftsmanship and detail. These are pieces you’ll feel proud to wear. That’s the white space in the market.” 

Jodie says filling the void has evolved into three buckets of the business: NBA-licensed pieces with Dannijo signatures (crochet collars, hand-stitching, crystal work), available for any NBA team; the Atelier (or what the sisters call blanks), where customers take Dannijo “blanks” and work with in-house artists to personalize their pieces; and then 1/Won vintage, which is sourced through longtime vintage dealers in California and Florida, reworked by hand (cut, stitched, painted). Organizing the business this way, especially with its vintage 1/Won line and its hand-added details, is a resistance to fast fashion and AI-generated sameness in our culture, says Danielle. 

Sports fandom is a generational loyalty that has nothing to do with trends. (You don’t send your Warriors jacket to the RealReal, says Jodie.) There’s a greater emotional attachment to these pieces, especially when they’ve been altered and created by humans. The community DannijoPro builds is as much the product the brand is selling as the clothing itself. The stadium bathroom becomes as much the trunk show as the athlete’s tunnel has become the runway.

Says Danielle: “The NBA is our window to the world. People are buying joy and community with DannijoPro. And having an eye and style matters in this space. We are going to be lending our fashion house aesthetic to other sports and leagues outside of the NBA.” 

But after trying to take the Barbie-size model he’d built and expand it into a full-scale piece of inflatable furniture, he had two major problems. First, he could never quite figure out how to make an inflatable cushion that didn’t feel like an exercise ball. Second, he couldn’t convince his bosses that inflatable furniture wouldn’t be the total failure it was when the company first tried it in the late 1990s.

 “It’s been standing on my shelf since then,” he says.

A little over two years ago, Axelsson pulled the model off the shelf at his desk in the design department at Ikea of Sweden, the global retailer’s headquarters in the small town of Älmhult, Sweden. Axelsson and the roughly 20 other designers on staff had been called to participate in an experimental design sprint in late 2023. They had two days to come up with boundary-pushing concepts for the newest edition of Ikea’s PS collection, a recurring furniture-centric product drop of Scandinavian designs that will launch this May. 

Axelsson saw the chance to revive his inflatable easy chair. This time, in the spirit of throwing everything at the wall, he got the go-ahead to at least explore the idea. He immediately started welding. He ended up building about 20 different versions of the chair, with varying tubular chrome frame configurations and bulbous hand-sealed inflation chambers. Several of these iterations were on display when I walked into Ikea’s headquarters in early April. 

I was there to visit Ikea’s secretive prototype lab—the place where conceptual designs get mocked up, refined, refined again, and eventually optimized for the large-scale production that will flatpack and distribute them to Ikea’s estimated 915 million annual in-store customers. Ikea invited me as the first journalist to see the space, the creative heart of the company, which pumps out 1,500 to 2,000 new products every year for markets all over the planet.

To see how the space works, and to understand why it’s so important to Ikea’s $52 billion in retail sales in fiscal 2025, Fast Company has been given an exclusive look inside the prototype shop. Products being prototyped there are often two to three years away from making it to the shelves of one of Ikea’s 500-plus stores, and some experimental design ideas being tested there may never materialize.

“You are basically in the future here,” says Johan Ejdemo, Ikea’s global design manager.

The prototype shop is where that future gets gut checked. From top-level feasibility to aesthetic refinement to the minutiae of assembly fittings and stitch choices, products get built and rebuilt in the prototype shop to continually test whether they’re meeting the Ikea standards for functionality and affordability.

Axelsson’s design went through that exact distillation process, with the added benefit of the concept kicking around in his brain for more than a decade. Settling into the green cushion of a near-final version of the inflatable easy chair that will finally hit stores in May, priced at $199.99, Axelsson cradles that first tiny model he made back in 2014. The two chairs look remarkably similar. Scattered around him are the rough mockups and failed tests that it took to make that leap, a leap that happens for thousands of items on sale in Ikea stores and sitting in homes around the world.

“It would be really hard without this space to make good products, if not impossible,” Axelsson says.

A culture of testing

Prototyping has been part of Ikea’s DNA since it first started making its own furniture, but today the act of prototyping products is as much a design approach as a business strategy. Ikea is considered the largest furniture company in the world, with an estimated 5.7% market share in home furnishings. It’s continuing a long trend of expansion—66 new Ikea stores opened in fiscal 2025, and its largest retail franchisee, Ingka Group, expects to open 20 by the end of fiscal 2026. 

The nearly 2,000 products the company releases every year are produced at such a vast scale and with such tight profit margins that Ikea has cemented itself as a low-cost leader across a wide range of product types. Offering new and better products every year, with the aspiration of making them at as high a quality as costs will bear, has become the core business model. And the prototyping lab is key to its success.

The secured doors of Ikea’s prototyping shop open up to reveal a calm (but clearly mad) scientist’s laboratory. There are five main rooms separated by a central corridor, and each is stuffed with racks of materials and enormous tools that represent the wide range of products Ikea has on offer.

It’s high school shop class in hyperspeed: One area prints large panels of images for a textile, another is coated in sawdust, another blasts a CNC water jet cutter through a piece of sheet metal, and yet another fumes with the scent of freshly sprayed paint. Hospital white walls and smooth concrete floors contrast with the chaotic sounds of a screaming table saw, a zapping arc welder, and classic rock pouring out of a boombox.

The prototype shop opened in fall 2025 as part of an expansion of Ikea’s headquarters, which is situated in the quaint southern Swedish town where founder Ingvar Kamprad launched Ikea as a mail order business in the 1940s. The new building adds 183,000 square feet to the complex, and the prototype shop sits centrally between the design department and the cafeteria, with separate spaces for the textile and comfort department, the metal shop, the wood shop, painting and surface treatment, and 3D printing. The shop finishes more than 3,400 prototype projects per year.

Henrik Holmberg is the prototype shop’s manager, running a team of 14 specialists who work directly with Ikea’s designers and product developers. He started out in the prototype shop 25 years ago and notes with pride that the shop has existed since Ikea first ventured away from its roots as a mail order catalog and started producing its own furniture, back in 1955.

Over the decades, the role of the prototyping shop has evolved from proving out new furniture designs to actively engaging in the design process itself. Designers, product developers, engineers, and marketers are regularly streaming into the shop to check on products in the works or tap into the expertise of the craftspeople there to help bring an idea to physical form. The opening of this new prototyping facility has made this interdisciplinary approach into the status quo. 

“Now we are integrated,” Holmberg says. “We are actually in the center of the house.”

On any given day there are upwards of 60 different products being prototyped or refined. Project-specific rolling carts are scattered throughout the shop, filled with the raw elements of shelves, lamps, and bathroom accessories.

The breadth of activity and the sheer amount of stuff is overwhelming. This is a short list of happenings in the prototype shop on the day I visited:

—Textile experts compare two stitching treatments on the edges of a low price sofa’s cushions.

—A piece of pipe is run through a CNC-controlled bending machine to become a curlicue.

—A lumpy floor chair has its organic shape modeled in 3D software typically used by the fashion industry to print out the patterns a seamstress uses for upholstery.

—A test label is wrapped around what looks to be a chocolate bar.

“But don’t bite it because it’s just a piece of wood,” Holmberg says, holding the bar. “Here you can’t trust anything because we are faking so much.”

Quick mock-ups like this are the blood of the prototype shop, fueling the creative process and accelerating the sometimes brutal evaluations that determine whether an idea should move forward or die young. “We do many iterations sometimes to ensure that we don’t spend too much time on the wrong thing too early,” Holmberg says.

In addition to new products, the prototype shop is also regularly reevaluating old products. Sometimes this is for safety reasons, as regulations evolve and the company tries to eliminate tip-over risks in products like chairs and dressers. “That is apparently not safe anymore,” Edjemo says, pointing to a plastic children’s chair that’s one of the company’s best sellers. The revision underway angles the legs a bit farther out, making it more stable.

“It takes a lot of energy, but you have to do it and it’s not always beneficial for the design,” he adds. “The regulations are changing all the time.”

Sometimes a product comes back to see whether a more sustainable material could be used in its construction, or to improve its recyclability. “Circularity is influencing everything in design today,” Ejdemo says.

All this means there’s very little downtime in the prototype shop. But the process isn’t rushed. In fact, Holmberg stresses the importance of carefully searching for the best solution to whatever product is being designed or refined, drawing on his team’s decades of experience in blacksmithing or carpentry or sewing. “Everything about prototyping is to have the access to explore. We try one track, then another track, and if that doesn’t work we need a third track,” he says. “The main thing is to be flexible.”

Full circle prototyping

One of the most striking pieces in the new PS collection launching in May almost didn’t make it through the prototype phase. Back during the collection’s design sprint in late 2023, designer Marta Krupińska submitted a drawing showing a simple but odd wooden bench for three people. Instead of sitting flat on the ground, the bench’s design called for it to have arched runners under its front and back legs, making it wobble from side to side. Prototype engineer Fredrik Larsen rushed over to the bench drawings before any of his colleagues could. “I took the opportunity to grab it first,” Larsen says.

Krupińska says the idea for the rocking bench came from her inner child. “I like to do things against the rules, you know?” she says. After Larsen selected the bench to build, she couldn’t help but head straight into the prototyping shop with him. They immediately began to build the design together, at full scale. Rather than making a quick mockup, they decided to go straight to the pine that would be used for a commercial product. “We were reprimanded,” Krupińska says. “It didn’t land that well with my colleagues because they were doing very rough mockups in particle board and stuff like that.”

The gambit paid off. “When I saw this, I was just like, this is perfect,” says Maria O’Brian, the creative leader behind the PS collection. “You understand it’s a bench, but you also see the playfulness immediately.”

But the prototype had a problem. “The runners were deflecting like a flat tire,” Krupińska says. “We just sat on it and it was like ‘boom.’” She and Larsen went back to the prototyping shop.

The bench, revised down to be a two-seater that could fit more easily into a smaller home, went through a few alterations to try to keep the arched runners from falling flat. They tried different woods, added an extra support bar, and they even reverted back to making a fast mockup out of particle board. Eventually they landed on a solution that involved cutting a channel on the bottom of the runners and lining them with a strip of metal. The runners held and the bench rocked.

“Then we got in trouble with Johan [Ejdemo]. Because Johan is an old carpenter,” Larsen says.

“Adding material is never the first strategy,” says Ejdemo, a former cabinet maker who’s been with Ikea for nearly 30 years. Conceding that the bench “was not my favorite,” he urged Larsen and Krupińska to find another solution that didn’t require adding metal or the bench was out of the collection.

In the months following the PS collection’s design sprint, Larsen and Krupińska had left their full-size prototypes sitting around the office. People kept stopping by to give them a try. “Every week I got a new video from Marta of people playing on it, and she was like, ‘See, they also like it,’” O’Brian says.

Having the prototypes out on display ended up leading to the solution Larsen and Krupińska needed. Another designer, thinking back on a recent project, suggested that they could gain more strength from the runners by slicing the wood lengthwise, reversing the grain and gluing them back together. “This was the breakthrough,” Larsen says. After four months of prototyping and problem solving, Larsen and Krupińska had a workable product. It will retail for $159.99 beginning in May.

The last prototype they made is sitting in the prototype shop on the day I visit. O’Brian, its early champion, and Ejdemo, its biggest critic, take a seat on it together and begin rocking. Neither can help but laugh.

“This is a product that we think is something you’ll remember for a long time,” O’Brian says. “We’re really happy we made it, because it was a bumpy ride. You never know. In these projects you have a lot of darlings that fall away.”

“Building will give you the answers”

Through a set of secured doors, Edjemo and I walk out of the prototype shop down a short hallway to the design department. It’s an equally secretive part of the compound—no photos allowed—but also one that’s integrally connected with the rest of the vast business. It’s another short walk to various other departments that run the company, including marketing, finance, and the executives laser focused on shaving pennies off production costs and adding pennies to the bottom line. None is separate from the other.

“We’re based on the vision of creating better everyday life. It’s not just making a good-looking home. It goes a little bit deeper than that. We have a business idea connected to making that vision fly,” Ejdemo says. “Selling more products, we will be able to reinvest in how we make the products to offer them at prices so low that many can afford them.”

This wide range of products “allows Ikea to cater to a lot of different customer segments and taste levels,” says analyst Neil Saunders, managing director for retail at GlobalData. “The new launches keep the range fresh and interesting, and it allows Ikea to adapt to new trends in home design and styling.”

That’s why it’s in the company’s interest to put so much into its product development. Walking through Ikea’s design department, Ejdemo pauses to chat with a few team members about what they’re working on. One has a rolling bag filled with paints and brushes near her desk and a fresh water color for a new textile treatment. An intern has just gotten off the phone with a supplier exploring a new approach to ceramics. A market forecaster can’t say anything more than the fact that he’s currently figuring out what consumers will want from Ikea in 2030. 

Ejdemo is also testing the waters for what’s to come. He’s placed a few prototype pieces out in the design department just to see if they get any attention. “They’re not part of anything right now,” he says. “But they might be.”

It’s not just experimentation, though. The output of the design department is heavily influenced by other parts of the company and a broader business strategy. “It’s very defined by the business, what they need, and what they’re going to do next, and they might have a gap in their offer,” Ejdemo says. “The priority of the job is the 1,500 to 2,000 products a year. They all start with design, and they all start with an understanding of the context around that product. Then you get guidance that it should sit in this style and be at this price level.”

Sometimes that means the designers are taking assignments and pumping out products because that’s what the company needs. Other times, the stars align and it suddenly makes sense to pitch a weird rocking bench or a mothballed inflatable chair. Having the ability to take those ideas and quickly turn them into physical prototypes creates a proof point, or at least a spark of interest that suggests what might sell. For Ejdemo and the designers at Ikea, designing a product means making it.

“I have learned throughout the years that sometimes it’s good to start with a quite crazy idea, because that gives you something. And then you understand to go in this direction or the other. But if you haven’t started to do these kinds of crazy versions, you will never find the next step,” says Ejdemo, still a carpenter at heart. “Starting building will give you the answers.”

“The guests are here,” whispers a voice. Moments later, we hear an orchestra begin to play. Project Luna and the Galaxy become the conductors of a wide array of Samsung products and concepts, all of which share the same, pulsating orb graphic animation that lands somewhere between a face, mouth, eye, and the light ring of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL.

This is how Samsung is saying hello to its visitors at Milan Design Week for its exhibition Design Is an Act of Love. It’s also a glimpse of what’s to come from Samsung’s design. The installation marks the largest design statement from Samsung since it hired its first foreign chief design officer, Mauro Porcini, last year. 

“The idea is to give a vibe, a feeling of the kind of [design] language we want to use,” says Porcini, who cautions that Project Luna and many other products in the show are concepts—albeit believable ones. “These are all things that could really happen in the near future.”

The show demonstrates Samsung’s thesis on the coming UX of AI: that while phones will represent personal AI, we’ll increasingly see communal AI spread across our homes. For Samsung, that can mean an AI will be ready to pop onto your TV or your refrigerator, almost jumping frame to frame like Harry Potter wizards can dash between old oil paintings. 

Well, I should say it demonstrates one piece of Samsung’s thesis on AI. Because over a 90-minute conversation from Seoul, as Porcini describes his first year on the job, he keeps unpacking more about his dreams for both the Korean giant and for the technology industry at large.

“The key message to everybody—to all the brand people, business people, creators, and designers of the world—is we need humanity more than ever to direct AI in the right direction, both creatively and then ethically,” he says. “[This technology] will happen no matter what. What we need to talk about is the moral compass.”

Samsung’s every-room AI

For the installation in Milan, Porcini arranged existing Samsung products—like Music Studio speakers and Frame TVs—alongside several concepts for more AI-native products. They appear in the home, in the bedroom and kitchen, in seamless coexistence. 

The star of the show is the aforementioned Project Luna—which looks strikingly similar to a robot called Jibo that was developed out of MIT in the 2010s. The role of Project Luna is to be a dedicated AI companion for your home that can fill the gaps when there are no other AI devices around. Samsung also teased other devices that share its AI sensibility. One product is a simple square speaker. An exposed vinyl record spins right out its side. It’s a neat analog product, but when needed, the quiet device can come to life with a glowing UI—complete with AI and a dynamic EQ.

Samsung has been thoroughly roasted for launching refrigerators with screens (and ads) on them. I gather that Porcini is trying to walk a more careful line in screen-i-fying everything, even as AI teases new utility. This Milan space features a refrigerator with a traditional front that only gets a display from a projector. The same is true to a projector that shines onto the kitchen table. Whenever there’s no light, you have a completely typical, less garish object. 

The sheer abundance of AI across the Samsung ecosystem supports Porcini’s thesis that AI “is going to be a commodity.” We’ll all be drowning in it. So it’s the design of the experience around AI that matters, and that design has to offer someone measurable value to stand out in a sea of opportunistic sameness. 

Porcini believes the differentiator for Samsung is that its AI needs to serve humanity by specifically amplifying our emotional intelligence and human imagination. From there, he says Samsung itself can use AI to specifically help us “live longer” (improving health and wellness), “live better” (offer more free time), “live loud” (increase expression through a variety of digital interfaces), and “live on” (preserving our knowledge and memories).

“Our goal is to tame technology at the service of humanity,” says Porcini. “It’s not about the advancement of technology. Who cares? Technology exists exclusively to be at the service of helping people.”

Why Samsung won’t embrace one design language to rule them all

One of Porcini’s other big anchors  for Samsung design is that form and function follow meaning. He notes we already see this in how each of us arranges the apps and photos on our phones—we reshape these interfaces to be more relevant to ourselves.

Now, he wants Samsung to support these behaviors more. And he believes if the company is to be human-centered, it paradoxically needs to protect or regiment its brand a little less.

“If I talk about human centricity, should I force my aesthetic upon people because they need to recognize my brand or my product, or should I create something that makes sense for them?” Porcini muses.

Freedom of expression is part of being human, he argues. And so rather than embrace one Samsung design language to rule them all, he’s okay with a diversity of styles. In fact, he wants to see the company tune down the minimalism a bit, and get back to bold product designs like the freestanding Serif TV—a product he argues shouldn’t be a premium lifestyle product, but available for anyone who wants a TV.

Without respecting one singular design language, Porcini wants to see an “explosion” of expressive new products arrive out of Samsung each year that challenge traditional forms in technology. Over time, we might get more and more unique Samsung things that mix and match in a bohemian way—and ultimately, it can be that AI layer that ties them together, as opposed to another coordinating bezel.

“We want to be surprised by the design of the next TV, and we want to feel that kind of emotion,” he says. “We want to put it in the physical environment, [then] align it to this idea of AI that needs to be tamed by humanity.”

While the philosophy may seem heady, the opportunity for Samsung in AI is very real given that the company that commands so much of both the personal and home electronic market. Samsung owns roughly a fifth of global smartphone shipments, a quarter of home appliances, and a third of televisions.

We’ve already let Samsung into our lives. If it really can articulate a more supportive, ethical approach to AI, we have a lot more reason to keep it there. But as Samsung has already faced a lawsuit and backlash about how it collects user data on TVs, it’s certain that if it doesn’t nail everything from its policy to its interface, that Harry Potter wizard popping between portraits could feel less like a magical friend than like an unwanted, surveillant house guest.

The ad marks the return of one of the most notorious brand partnerships in recent memory, as American Eagle launches a new campaign to hype its denim shorts called “Syd for Short.” It’s a perfectly pleasant, perfectly innocuous piece of brand work meant to conjure the free-spiritedness of summertime (and, you know, maybe make you forget about—or at least move on from—the last time Sweeney hawked jeans for the retailer).

When I saw the new work, I knew I needed to talk to American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers about it. Brommers steered the brand through last year’s drama, when the internet turned Sweeney’s “Great Jeans” spot into a cultural lightning rod. He tells me the new campaign has two primary goals: First, and unsurprisingly, it wants to start a new chapter in the brand’s Sweeney partnership. Second, it wants to offer the Gen Z audience a break from all the noise that’s aimed its way. 

“The world is pretty noisy right now. Social media creates noise, geopolitical issues create noise, and Gen Z talks about their mental health challenges and how that’s creating noise for them,” Brommers says. Conversely, he says, the ad is about “turning down the external noise, embracing who you really are, and then being able to live your life, especially in this season—summer—that Gen Z looks forward to the most all year.”

The mellow vibe provides an intentional contrast to last year’s campaign. Where “Great Jeans” saw Sweeney tapping into a more straight-faced, sultry version of herself, here Syd is all easy smiles and playful laughs. American Eagle knows as well as anyone that ads can create noise, too, and it’s using this moment to take a quieter approach.

As far as I know, there’s no marketing manual for how to follow up an advertising campaign that much of the internet interpreted as eugenics propaganda dressed up like a pervy old Calvin Klein commercial. Do you lean into provocation? Do you play it safe? Do you ditch your tainted celeb spokesperson altogether?

With “Syd for Short,” American Eagle is betting on something it believes will pay off in the long run: brand consistency. 

Brand noise

The waves of headlines labeling last year’s American Eagle ad racist dog whistling, combined with the counter waves declaring that reaction “woke” nonsense, caught the brand itself in the middle of that noise. Noise, mind you, that boosted the company’s customer base by 700,000, helped its 2025 Q3 revenue jump by 1% after two previously slumping quarters, and has since attracted 56 billion impressions, according to Brommers. 

But in the midst of that storm around the brand, there were decisions to be made. Just a month after the Sweeney jeans/genes spot dropped, Cracker Barrel unveiled a new logo that was quickly and enthusiastically panned by many of its customers before eventually being scrapped.

Marketers are largely known to have the rigidity of a used car lot tube man when it comes to swaying to public opinion. But Brommers was confronted with a major divide between the negative hot-take hype and the positive signs he was seeing in the brand’s actual data. And the latter informed the decision to stick with the work.

“The data that we looked at during the initial campaign—across genders, geography, ethnicities, generations—for the vast majority of every subset of every demographic, it wasn’t even close,” Brommers says. “When you have, at least from my perspective, such a clear-cut case, and you’re seeing really positive response from the business, that’s a case for consistency. It is a case for moving forward.”

Perhaps counterintuitively, people appear to respect a brand for sticking with a stance, regardless of whether they agree with it. Recent Ipsos Consumer Tracker data shows that 57% of American consumers believe if a brand takes a political stance, it should stick by that decision, regardless of consumer backlash. Brommers believes the same can be said for controversial partnerships.

Sydney vs. Syd

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has said that the show is ultimately about our complicated relationship with advertising, and that advertising doesn’t create want; it merely reflects the want we already have. I’d argue you could say the same for culture, in that advertising doesn’t create it, but reflects where it’s at in any given moment.

And for all the attention the original Sweeney campaign got from people at either end of the political spectrum, it appears the most significant impact was felt from everyone in between—those who scrolled these takes and became the “FFS, it’s just jeans” demographic.

Still, by its very tone, the new Syd campaign is a move by the brand to dial down the volume, not only to give Gen Z’s ears a break but also its own brand image. 

“The best brand campaigns do identify an emotional truth, and there is an emotional truth through line to what Sydney and American Eagle experienced together last fall, and what Gen Z tells us they’re experiencing right now,” Brommers says. “It’s a new chapter in the most successful brand campaign in the history of American Eagle, but there is a constant demand to keep it fresh and keep the story moving forward. That’s why neither Sydney or American Eagle necessarily wanted to just rehash what we had done. It was important for us to be together, and it was very important to our customer that Sydney remained in the storyline.” 

The shift in the work is also reflected in the differences between Sydney and Syd. Sure, there’s the wink-wink “Syd for Short” to sell actual shorts, but it’s also a step away from the celebrity of the previous campaign to something simpler. 

“When you think about Sydney Sweeney, the public thinks about the person they see on the red carpet, in box-office hits, in Emmy-winning shows. But there’s also Syd,” Brommers says. “Syd is real, she’s casual, she’s confident. And Syd is someone our customer really relates to.”

American Eagle stock closed out the week up nearly 9% since the new work launched on April 15. It’s a fine line to walk for the brand to maintain its consistency here, fully owning the last campaign while very clearly trying to move on without coming up short.

The company is billing the tool as a way for non-designers to mock up visuals, and a way for designers to quickly test out a range of initial prototypes. It’s powered by Claude’s most recent new model, Opus 4.7, which is trained to handle difficult coding prompts and complex, long-running tasks. Claude Design is available starting today to Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise Subscribers. 

Anthropic joins a growing number of companies developing their own AI-based design tools, including Figma, Canva, Adobe Express, and Google’s Stitch. As each of these companies expands its AI capabilities, the segmentation between their capabilities is becoming less and less pronounced: Canva is an AI company with design tools, Figma is a UX company running on AI, and, now, Claude is a powerful chatbot with a design and UX assistant. 

How Claude Design works

Claude Design functions like an ultra-intelligent middle man between designers and product engineers. 

To use the tool, users start with a text prompt, as well as supplementary materials they want to use for reference, like a codebase, images, or documents. For example, a user might type, “Prototype a serene mobile meditation app. It should have calming typography, subtle nature-inspired colors, and a clean layout.”

From there, Claude Design will produce a first draft. The tool’s UX is designed to make editing intuitive: an inline comment box facilitates specific tweaks, like, in this case, adding a dark mode toggle; custom sliders automatically spawn for small adjustments, such as color and type size; and users can also make direct edits on the draft themselves. It’s clearly designed to feel iterative and collaborative; like bouncing ideas off of a very fast colleague. This same workflow applies whether a user is making an app, a webpage, a powerpoint, or a social media post.

Bigger teams can bring Claude Design into the loop on their company’s needs by uploading a codebase and design files. Claude will then digest that information and create a design system that uses the appropriate colors, typography, and components automatically. Once a design is complete, it can be shared as an internal URL within an organization, saved as a folder, or exported to Canva, PDF, PPTX, or standalone HTML files. 

Claude Design offers a one-stop shop for design consultation on app prototypes, web UX, and marketing assets, and it feels like an encapsulation of where the industry is headed. In the AI design space, the biggest players aren’t specializing—they’re becoming jacks of all trades.

As press looked on and cameras rolled, Sharon Simmons, sporting a “DoorDash Grandma” T-shirt and handing a couple of McDonald’s bags to Trump, praised the policy for saving her thousands of dollars on taxes, which she says she’s using to help pay for her husband’s Stage 3 cancer treatment. “It has helped my family out immensely,” she said.

But it wasn’t a slam dunk. In fact, Simmon’s appearance turned into an absolute disaster, as the PR stunt devolved into an argument over whether Simmons, the 58-year-old grandmother (of 10) in question, was actually a MAGA shill. That debate, as neatly chronicled by Fast Company’s Joe Berkowitz, drew attention to the forced nature of the stunt, and helped thoroughly undermine the episode’s effectiveness for the policy or the brand.

But the squabble over whether Simmons is fully legit or some kind of ringer has obscured a deeper point: Either way, she’s a dreadful symbol for the DoorDash brand and for the state of the economy in general.

At an age when a worker should command comfortable earning power and be counting down to retirement, Simmons is grinding for tips at a no-benefits gig job to cover healthcare costs. Frankly, she’s lucky the rise of driverless vehicles—long a goal of the rideshare and delivery sectors—hasn’t yet taken even this not-so-reassuring option away. (Yet.) This sounds more like a cautionary tale than a heartwarming policy success. When you think about your golden years, does your vision involve hustling to cover your spouse’s vital medical care?

Admittedly, the cozy and carefree retirement dream of security and dignity after decades of work has never been universally realized. Yet it remains culturally potent—even as many workers today (including many comfortably in the middle class) expect they’ll need to keep finding ways to earn money well past traditional retirement age. 

If DoorDash Grandma was intended to function as an anecdote polished up for political optics, the real message seems different. What’s authentic is that there are countless older Americans in similar positions, navigating a patchwork of Social Security, savings, and supplemental income streams that increasingly include gig work. (In Simmons’s case, there’s reportedly a GoFundMe as well.)

Businesses that rely on tip-dependent labor are naturally in favor of no tax on tips, because it benefits their workforce without the business sacrificing a dime or making any particular effort. And there’s nothing unusual about that; it’s just capitalism. Gig-economy companies have spent years positioning themselves as a source of opportunity: flexible work, entrepreneurial autonomy, a platform that empowers individuals to earn on their own terms. DoorDash Grandma seems like a variation on this standard gig-economy pitch: the scrappy side-hustler, the student paying tuition, the creative professional bridging income gaps.

But in reality, a 58-year-old grandmother delivering food to a rich guy (Trump apparently tipped her $100) to offset healthcare costs is not exactly an aspirational image. To the contrary, it’s vaguely alarming. The dominant implication isn’t flexibility—it’s necessity. 

That’s why the episode highlights a brand-narrative problem for the entire gig economy, and, by extension, for policymakers eager to highlight its positive impacts. The gig economy has always occupied an ambiguous space between innovation and erosion, expanding access to income in innovative ways while redefining (and often reducing) the protections and stability associated with traditional employment.

And on a policy level, no tax on tips is hardly a replacement for, say, comprehensive healthcare benefits. Trump’s healthcare policies and proposals are projected to reduce enrollment in the marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act by 750,000 to 2 million people in 2026. And some experts believe broader Medicaid/ACA cuts will strip coverage from millions more over time. The administration has promised to fix all this, but any specific plan, or concepts thereof, has yet to materialize (and lately seems to be deprioritized in favor of spending on defense and deportation efforts).

Which is part of what makes DoorDash Grandma, genuine or not, so complicated. Her story is compelling and memorable—but it’s also just kind of a bummer. Here is an older American, engaged, contributing, not sidelined. But beneath that is a nagging question: Why does she need to? As a symbol, she’s basically a question mark. And neither business nor institutions seem entirely equipped to provide a comforting answer.

Perhaps, in the end, this is a simple case of brand-narrative tension. A (true) story of flexibility, empowerment, and opportunity is contradicted or at least complicated by another (true) story of difficult lived experience. Most of the time, those tensions remain abstract. Occasionally, they crystallize in a single image or anecdote that’s too vivid to ignore. Maybe this is one of those times. And maybe actually contending with those tensions would not be such a bad thing.

The 1.2-kilometer-long bridge, about three quarters of a mile, connects an island called Laajasalo to the city center. It opens to cyclists and pedestrians on April 18 and will soon also include trams. No cars can cross it; drivers have to take a longer route over an older bridge. On one edge of the island, a former industrial site is now filled with apartment buildings, and the population is quickly expanding across the whole island.

“We’re looking at quite large new numbers of residents that will be in this part of town,” says Hanna Harris, the city’s chief design officer. “And the decision was made that we need to connect those parts of town across the water to downtown, but that we need to do it in a way that won’t increase congestion.”

Called the Kruunuvuorensilta, or crown bridge, it’s part of the city’s broader work to decrease car use, including large investments in new rail lines and bike infrastructure. On the bridge, designers focused on the experience for people on foot or bike rather than those on the tram, who will only spend a couple of minutes crossing. “If people feel it’s too difficult or long a walk or cycle ride, then they won’t use it,” says Tom Osborne, director of UK-based Knight Architects, which partnered on the design with WSP Finland.

The bridge curves slightly, which helps it seem less long to someone walking across. “A lot of times if you’re in a very long crossing and a very straight alignment, you get this vanishing point which can be quite intimidating and it feels like you’re never getting towards the end,” Osborne says. “But if you have a gentle curve, you can see your destination, which tends to make you feel safer and that you’re making better progress towards it.”

The bike path connects to the bigger bike network at each end of the bridge, and it’s separated so cyclists can ride quickly without the risk of crashing into pedestrians. Halfway across, the bridge widens and there are benches where people can rest and take in the view. In the winter, a snowplow will clear the paths so people can keep riding and walking. (Two tram lines will also begin running either late this year or in 2027.) Because Helsinki is built on an archipelago, the path connects to a few other small islands before reaching the main train station.

In the new development, residents are opting not to buy cars. “The density of that development is much greater because there’s no parking or fewer parking spaces required for each flat,” says Osborne. “And everyone’s buying bicycles, rather than buying cars, because that’s the mode that the bridge facilitates.” While the bridge was under construction, the city ran a ferry so that people weren’t tempted to start driving.

The new bridge “makes biking and public transport a lot more attractive options on trips between Laajasalo and the inner city of Helsinki,” says Niko Setälä, the city’s team manager for the project. Transportation is now the city’s largest source of emissions. Though leadership is encouraging the switch to electric cars, it’s critical to make biking, walking, and transit as appealing as possible, he says.

Right now, if someone wants to drive from the island to an office downtown, it’s a longer route. “You can still drive, but [the design is] trying to make people act in their own self interest,” Osborne says. “So if it’s cheaper and faster to cycle, then people will.”

Like millions of others around the country, if you’ve ever considered taking one of these drugs, you probably went online to learn more about where you can get them and how much they cost.

Online searches for GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy have risen dramatically since 2022. Advertisements like Williams’s Super Bowl commercial both reflect and help drive that growing demand.

More and more advertisements for weight-loss medications are appearing in people’s daily lives. These ads can be appealing, intrusive, confusing, or even misleading, and have sparked widespread concerns about inappropriate use and adverse events. But the high cost of GLP-1 medications, combined with the lack of adequate coverage by insurance plans, has helped fuel a booming online market for cheaper alternatives.

As health services researchers studying prescription medication safety, we are highly concerned about the risks of online advertisements selling alternative versions of GLP-1 weight-loss medications.

Serena Williams’s Super Bowl ad promoted GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.

Not all GLP-1 medications are the same

As of April 2026, the most popular GLP-1 medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration include semaglutide, sold under the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic, and Rybelsus; tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro or Zepbound; and orforglipron, sold as Foundayo.

These brand-name medications have undergone rigorous clinical trials and extensive FDA evaluation, including review of clinical data, manufacturing processes, and facility inspections, to ensure safety, quality and effectiveness.

Many of the GLP-1 drugs advertised on the internet are not the FDA-approved medications but rather “compounded” GLP-1 products made in compounding pharmacies. They contain the same active ingredient—semaglutide, tirzepatide or orforglipron—but add minor but clinically important modifications such as using a different salt form, adding different inactive ingredients and varying drug concentrations or dosages. In addition, they may be produced and stored under inconsistent quality standards.

Compounding pharmacies are intended to create personalized versions of FDA-approved medications to meet unique patient needs that cannot be met through the mass-produced brand-name medications. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the modifications being made to GLP-1 medications sold by compounding pharmacies meet those criteria. Instead, companies are using compounding pharmacies to bypass the FDA-approved manufacturers and generate profit.

In February 2026, the FDA released a report alerting patients and providers about the risks of compounded GLP-1 medications.

The report notes the presence of counterfeit Ozempic, the use of non-FDA-approved ingredients such as retatrutide or cagrilintide, and products bypassing regulations by being labeled as “not for human consumption.”

As of July 2024—the most recently issued report—the FDA had received more than 1,000 reports of adverse events related to compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide. These include gastrointestinal effects like nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, as well as fainting, headache, migraine, dehydration, acute pancreatitis, and gallstones. These effects occur because drug concentrations in compounded medications can vary significantly, leading to serious dosing errors.

The Better Business Bureau is seeing a rash of “subscription traps” for GLP-1 drugs.

Steps to safely obtain GLP-1 medications online

First, if you or someone you know is considering GLP-1 medications for weight management, it’s important to know that leading medical organizations have specific recommendations for the use of these drugs. For instance, the American Diabetes Association only recommends the use of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss for those with a body mass index, or BMI, of at least 30, or among those with a BMI of 27 or greater if they have at least one other condition such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or high cholesterol. People with a BMI below 27 need further clinical evaluation to determine if a GLP-1 medication is appropriate for them.

If you and your doctor determine that it is appropriate to seek GLP-1 medications for weight management, it’s important to avoid compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs unless your healthcare provider specifically recommends them.

But identifying which GLP-1 medications are compounded can be challenging. It’s important to carefully examine how the medication is labeled on the website.

Websites selling compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs are not allowed to use the FDA-approved brand names of products like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound.

If a product description includes spelling errors or terms such as “compounded,” “generic version,” or “same active ingredient as [brand name],” it often indicates that the product is a compounded formulation. When in doubt, try contacting the online retailer and ask if the product is a compounded drug.

If you decide to obtain GLP-1 medications online, it’s important to choose reliable and transparent sources. The manufacturers of several FDA-approved GLP-1 medications provide official online platforms such as Novocare and LillyDirect.

These allow people to get medication information and transparent pricing and to get the drugs delivered to them at home or to pick them up at a pharmacy. When possible, using these official sources can reduce the risk of encountering misleading advertisements or unverified products.

Red flags

Online retailers that offer GLP-1 drugs without requiring a prescription or medical evaluation are illegal and unsafe. Advertising the ease of getting a prescription or only requiring an online form to obtain a prescription is a red flag. As a rule of thumb, patients should always begin their treatment by consulting with their local primary care provider who can evaluate their complete medical history.

It is also important to verify whether the pharmacy associated with the website is properly licensed and compliant with regulatory standards, since many online sellers rely on compounding pharmacies that are based outside the U.S. or are not appropriately licensed. Therefore, patients should check whether the pharmacy that will ship their medication has a physical address and a telephone number based in the U.S.

Patients should verify whether the pharmacy is registered on the official FDA database of approved compounded pharmacies and licensed as per the board of pharmacy of the state where the pharmacy is physically located.

Using pharmacies that are not registered or licensed is highly unsafe and can result in serious adverse effects. If the online retailer does not clearly disclose which pharmacy they are using, you should contact the retailer to confirm this information.

Finally, even after you receive your medications, you will need to carefully review the product and its label. This can help determine whether the medication being offered corresponds to an FDA-approved product or a compounded formulation. Products that arrive without proper packaging, labeling, or an expiration date, or have a foreign language on the packaging, may be unsafe or unverified products.

Sujith Ramachandran is an associate professor of pharmacy administration at the University of Mississippi.

Liang-Yuan (Claire) Lin is a PhD Candidate in Pharmacy Administration at the University of Mississippi.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At many refugee camps around the world, play can, understandably, become an afterthought as humanitarian organizations focus on delivering essentials like housing and food. But studies show that play is critical for helping kids develop executive motor function and relational skills. It’s also a key therapeutic tool for children who have experienced trauma. These insights inspired Playrise, a U.K.-based charity designing play structures for children living in disaster-relief sites around the world.

Alexander Meininger, the founder and director of Playrise, says the concept for the nonprofit came about in early 2024. As he watched his own two young kids learning through play, he was simultaneously keeping up with an influx of news about conflict and war in various global locations, including Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Eritrea. During this time, he became increasingly concerned about how children displaced by violence would be impacted by the lack of access to play structures. 

“Play is important generally for every child to develop, but especially for kids who are in these really extreme circumstances, it helps them to regain some sense of normality, overcome some trauma, escape the horrors that they’ve been through,” Meininger says. “It is really beyond the physical and mental development for every child: For them, play has a really big role in terms of healing.”

Alongside the London architecture firm OMMX, which specializes in what it calls “socially responsible architecture,” Meininger has spent the past two years working on a prototype for a flat-packed play structure that can be easily shipped and built on-site. The first Playrise structure—set to be shipped to the Aysaita camp at the end of April—is endlessly reconfigurable, safe for climbing, and designed to be adaptable to any environment.

The goal is to eventually make play universally accessible to the nearly 50 million kids who are currently displaced from their homes due to violence and conflict.

Play as a tool for healing

Before the Playrise team began the design process in earnest, they consulted with several different refugee communities around the world in order to understand their unique challenges, natural environments, and how the kids themselves actually wanted to play.

To gather those insights, OMMX cofounder and director Hikaru Nissanke, Meininger, and a team of project members spent June and July of 2025 conducting workshops. They traveled to Cairo, where many Palestinian children have fled from the Israel-Hamas war; six different villages in south Egypt, which is home to a group of refugees from Sudan; and the Aysaita Refugee Camp. 

Nissanke brought along a kit of fabric pieces, fashioned by a tailor near his London office, to set up makeshift playgrounds at each site. In the U.K., he explains, his team typically engages kids through structured activities, like coloring, playing with tools, or working with stickers. In the workshops, they focused instead on movements like dancing, jumping, and singing—intuititive staples of play that the kids could guide themselves, rather than requiring excessive explanation or instruction through a translator.

“We wanted something very direct, authentic, and in the moment,” Nissanke says. “We didn’t want to just assume one way of thinking, like, This is how we do it in the U.K., therefore this is the way we’ll do it in Ethiopia. We wanted to learn from them as much as possible rather than teaching.”

With free rein, the children’s creativity flourished. They transformed fabric into parachutes, slides, monkey bars, and hammocks—features that informed Playrise’s design. “A big takeaway is that they did love everything,” Nissanke says. “That was a really huge challenge.” 

At each of the three sites, it was clear that the kids didn’t want just one unchanging structure; they wanted to be able to climb, create forts, build stages, and play based on their imaginations. At the same time, the workshops highlighted how different the architectural conditions of refugee camps are: In Aysaita, the available space was a vast, arid desert made of sandy terrain and exposed to the sun, whereas in Cairo, the available area was a cramped courtyard within a walled enclosure. 

Playrise would need to create a system that could be mass-produced, flat-packed, built on-site, and constantly reconfigured based on both the kids’ ideas and the constraints of the natural terrain.

The best solution “was to give them a tool kit so that they could then build their own forms of play for whatever they need at that moment in time,” Nissanke says. Flexibility also helped the kit become more culturally responsive, a takeaway the design team learned from workshops in Ethiopia.

“The parents said that they really would see benefit to their children building and maintaining a play structure because it is a directly transferable skill to looking after their homes, which are incredibly fragile and precarious,” Nissanke adds.

A modular playground designed like Lego

In the early phases of the design process, Meininger and Nissanke thought of Playrise’s modular system like a set of giant Legos: Each part had to be flexible enough to be used in an infinite number of ways, but strong enough to hold up to years of play.

First, they selected wood to serve as the main building block of the system. While in Ethiopia and Egypt, the team noticed multiple metal playgrounds that had been abandoned because a single break in the structure would make it unsafe, and because the material would reach scorching temperatures in the desert heat. Wood, in contrast, could offer durability and stay relatively cool under direct sunlight. 

The next phase of the design process, and the most challenging, was finding a way to secure wood joinery. “It’s a bit of a compromise, because if you want it to go together as easily as possible, the easiest thing is stuff that just clicks together like Lego—but that wouldn’t be sturdy enough,” Meininger says. Instead, he and Nissanke designed a custom bolt that could be screwed and unscrewed with simple, easy-to-use tools.

Through a collaboration with a U.K. organization called the Play Inspector, which consults on play structures to make sure that they reach a high safety standard, Meininger and Nissanke learned that any small hole on a playground could trap fingers. So along each beam of wood they drilled a series of 26-millimeter-wide holes (about 1 inch, which is large enough to be safe for kids’ hands) and created a fitting consisting of a pipe, bolts, and washers that allow these beams to be joined together in almost any configuration. 

Once the beams were complete, the final step was developing a series of supplemental parts—the Lego accessories of Playrise. To shield kids from the blazing sun, Nissanke designed colorful fabric “sails” that can be tied down between the beams to create pockets of shade. They also double as a canvas kids can paint. Additional parts in the kit include climbable handholds, swings, and rope nets. 

“I worked on this for the whole year, and I’ve seen a thousand pictures and drawings, but when you see it in reality it really looks like a giant toy,” Meininger says. “You look at it, and it looks a bit like Lego, and you think, Wow, this is really joyful.”

Playrise’s next steps

Right now, Playrise is preparing to ship its first modular playground to Aysaita by the end of April; playgrounds in Cairo and the south of Egypt will follow.

Meininger and Nissanke plan to use learnings from these locations to inform future updates to the design. They’re already expanding the accessories to include more accessible options at ground level for kids who may be unable to climb, like drums and sensory toys. They want to eventually stock a complete kit on their website that can bring the benefits of play to the sites where it’s needed the most. 

“Everything kids do is play,” Meininger says. “That’s how they experience the world. That’s how they learn. That’s how they grow and develop. Sophia Apdi, a child psychologist who sat with us on a roundtable recently, expressed it really nicely. She said, ‘Play is the language of children.’”