This year’s World Cup made breakout stars of Tim Howard’s grit and Neymar’s hair. It also introduced international audiences to 915 Fairplay spray, a shaving-cream-like…
SELLING THE FIZZLE
The mechanical leech, the anti-crime bowtie, and seven other preposterous Victorian inventions
A new book, Inventions That Didn’t Change the World, published next month by Thames & Hudson, looks at the forgotten side of the Victorian age…
An incongruous suburbia has taken root in Israel’s West Bank settlements
Pass through the heavily guarded gates of Ma’ale Adumim, a Jewish settlement of 40,000 that sits four miles east of Jerusalem, and the Judaean Desert…
BANH IN THE USA
Yum Brands is dropping its bánh mì chain’s communist-chic logo
This post has been updated. Last week, Yum Brands—the fast-food behemoth that owns KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell—opened a test location of Banh Shop…
The Apple Watch shows that Jony Ive is finally getting serious about type design
The jury is still out on the Apple Watch, but one small design element may offer a peek into Cupertino’s broader user-interface strategy: the custom…
The Financial Times reboots print even as readers flock to digital
Today, Financial Times readers woke to the newspaper’s first redesign in seven years. It’s a much less cluttered layout: The columns are wider, the stories…
Peering into the secret, spooky world of the Stasi
When the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago this November, the Soviet-backed regime that had ruled East Germany as a police state for 40 years…
ORDER ON THE TRACKS
The long-lost design bible of the New York subway is (briefly) back in print
The New York City subway of the mid-1960s was a chaotic mix of signage. With no overarching system to order them, decades of ill-matching signs…
BUT IS IT ART
This giant plastic rabbit is a bigger draw than the world’s most popular museum exhibition
Over the past seven years, the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman has alternately delighted tourists and frustrated critics with his kitschy, colossal hippos, pigs, and most…
ROGUE NATION GALLERY
Two Norwegian artists are opening an art academy in North Korea
In early July, two Norwegian artists traveled to Pyongyang on an unusual mission: to lay the groundwork for an international art academy in the world’s…
MELTING POINT
Global warming is about to turn Sweden’s highest mountain into its second highest
The snow-capped southern peak of Lapland’s Kebnekaise, in the Scandinavian Mountains, reaches 2,097.5 meters (6,881.6 feet) above sea level, making it the highest point in…
HIGHER POWER
A Texas megachurch is preaching the gospel of drones
Imagine that there’s a powerful, invisible force hovering above you in the sky. It sees everything, controls everything—you can keep no secrets from it. If…
