Anne Quito

With plans being laid for manned missions to Mars and space exploration in general gaining momentum, Swedish graphic designer Oskar Pernefeldt saw the need for a universal pennant representing all of planet Earth. So as a graduating student at the Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, Pernefeldt created a flag comprised of seven white, overlapping circles on a blue field for his final project.

What does a house derived from the collective preferences of 2 million Swedes look like? The Hemnet Home, aka “The House of Clicks,” is an experiment in big data architecture, designed based on web traffic on a popular real estate portal. An analysis of 200 million clicks on 86,000 properties over a 10-month period surfaced the most desirable features and finishes on the quintessential Swedish dream home.

The prettiest coffee cups in Japan do not hold any coffee. Instead the serve as one-of-a-kind canvases for finely-observed panoramic scenes of Japanese street life by the Tokyo-based illustrator Adrian Hogan.

Trinidad and Tobago, the tiny twin-island nation off the coast of Venezuela, has struck gold. Its newly re-released $50 note (TT) earned top billing in this year’s competition convened by the International Bank Note Society (IBNS).

Starwood Hotels’ newest hotel brand is designed for the HENRYs—a cadre of “High Earning, Not Rich Yet” luxury-seeking millennials who tend to value a feeling of quality and authenticity over a loyalty to established brands.

In the nave of a 16th-century basilica in Venice, Italy, visitors saw a beautiful apparition this weekend. Conjured up by renowned Catalan artist Jaume Plensa for this year’s Venice Biennale, the installation, with a duo of colossal heads made of stainless steel mesh at the centerpiece, is now at the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore.

Soon your mundane emails can look like the scrawlings of a genius. A new font based on Albert Einstein’s handwriting is being developed in Germany, in time for the 100th year anniversary of the theory of relativity.

In 1969, a “museum” was established on the moon. A tiny wafer attached to the leg of a lunar landing module contained works by artists including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Claes Oldenburg. Forty-six years later, the moon is ready for a new exhibit, this time, featuring your artwork.

In a room with a direct view of the Statue of Liberty, a 17th century painting stolen by the Nazis was returned to its rightful owner today during a well-attended ceremony held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan. “Portrait of a Man,” attributed to the workshop of the Late Renaissance Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni, belonged to Dr. August Liebmann Mayer, a renowned art historian and curator who worked at the Bavarian State Paintings Collection and the University of Munich. The painting has been in storage at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1951.

After a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in 2011 rocked Washington, DC and damaged some of its most iconic landmarks, Colin Winterbottom tagged along with the National Park Service to document the restoration process of the US capital city’s bruised buildings. Balancing on shaking scaffolding and braving his own fear of heights, the self-taught photographer generated images that show a familiar city with new eyes.

Air travel in the 1950’s and ‘60s was expensive, dangerous, and uncomfortable—imagine smoke-filled cabins, bumpy rides, and no seat-back movies. But a new, lavishly produced book by Matthias C. Hühne shows that the so-called golden age of air travel actually was indeed a golden age of graphic design.

The fight turned out to be lackluster but the feasts did not disappoint. From Manila to Madrid to Manhattan, Filipinos took the highly anticipated boxing match between their unofficial national hero, Manny Pacquiao, and Floyd Mayweather as an excuse to orchestrate over-the-top buffets teeming with Filipino delicacies.

Among the many Manny Pacquiao tributes around, this might be the sweetest.

Not a single state has officially recognized the Free Republic of Liberland, the world’s newest self-declared country. But with a bright yellow flag in the ground, the Czech politician and former financial analyst Vít Jedlička staked his claim on a 7-square-kilometer (2.7-square-mile) patch of no-man’s land between Serbia and Croatia and founded the micro-nation on April 13. Over 250,000 people from around the world have applied for citizenship since.

Trust the French to make something as academic and stodgy as philosophy sexy again.

For 36 days, Barcelona-based designers Nina Sans and Rafa Goicoechea are challenging the readers of their website to a most delightful daily exercise regimen. They invite graphic designers, typographers, calligraphers, artists and dabblers from anywhere world to draw the ten numerals and 26 letters from the Latin alphabet.

How do you make a stranger feel welcome in your home? That’s the question Airbnb explored in its showcase at Milan’s annual design fair, Salone del Mobile.

April 19 was a dim day in Las Vegas, Nevada, as two of its legendary designers from the glory days of neon signs passed away within hours of each other.

Pentagram, the world’s largest design consultancy, has created a sharp new campaign called “I Give an X” to address the dismal youth voting turnout in the UK. Only 65% of citizens voted in the last UK general elections, with a majority of the non-voters being young people.

It has been over a month, and my heart is still throbbing.

Moleskine, maker of the iconic notebooks of van Gogh, Picasso and Hemingway, is having a redefining moment.

This post has been updated with details about the logo’s designer.

Two monuments to Edward Snowden appeared in New York this week. The first was a giant 100-lb, four-foot high bust glued to a column in a Brooklyn park overnight. Conceived by two anonymous street artists who worked with an also unnamed West coast sculptor, the feat was documented by arts and culture blog, Animal New York.

The month of April marks cherry blossom season, and tourists are rushing to the cherry blossom capitals of the world to catch a glimpse of the trees’ fleeting pink blossoms and revel in cherry blossom festivals.