Signal of the week

Packaging · 9 stories, +5 vs last week

Packaging: 9 stories in seven days, +5 on the week before.

Creative Packaging Design for Attar Saffron Packaging of the World

This award-winning yarn packaging looks good enough to lick (please don’t) Yanko Design

Latest

DesignWantedMazda is making diesel from algae: how it works and why it matters Most carmakers are responding to decarbonisation with batteries. Mazda has a different point of view: can microscopic algae grow diesel

11.02

Core77Core77 Weekly Roundup (10-26-26 to 10-30-26) Here's what we looked at this week: A good idea for a lamp for Ferrari fanatics-- based on a 1970s East German design . Improvised tools: A creative "juggad" leak detector.

11.02

Core77Unidome's Transparent Igloos Earlier we looked at the work of Dream Domes , a UK-based event structure company. They've worked out a way to erect large event tents with no central support.

11.02

Core77Industrial Design Student Work: A Hard Drive that Visually Indicates How Full It Is This morphing hard drive enclosure is by Antonin Odin , done as an Industrial Design student at France's ENSCI .

11.02

Dezeen InteriorsJaguar designs Knightsbridge flagship to be "physical expression" of Type 01 electric car British car brand Jaguar has redesigned its flagship store in Knightsbridge, London , which is the only place in the world where the public can see the recently unveiled Type 01 electric car .

11.02

Yanko DesignScyrox V12 gaming mouse gets its color from the inside out Gaming mice don’t have to look like tiny armored vehicles to take their jobs seriously. Scyrox’s newly announced V12 makes that point with a frosted translucent shell that lets its colorful internal…

11.02

BRUTUSJapan日用品図鑑：〈TAS WORKS〉デザイナー・古屋智英の愛用する〈レデッカー〉のミルクボトルブラシetc. 〈＋C：タスク〉のブラケット照明 HAMON お店〈NODE〉でさまざまな作り手と出会い、〈TAS WORKS〉として空間設計を手がける中で、自然と生まれたオリジナルブランド〈＋C：タスク〉のブラケット照明「HAMON」。写真はグレーガラスにトラバーチンのバックプレートを組み合わせたものです。手仕事ならではの揺らぎを持つガラスが、壁面に波紋のような陰影を映し出します。

11.02

SurfaceJosh Safdie joins Dan Nadel for an IFPDA Foundation Conversation at Christie’s Filmmaker and artist Josh Safdie, director of Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems, headlined the 2026 IFPDA Foundation benefit at Christie's New York.

11.02

SurfaceIzumi Kato Brings His Childhood Pastime to Perrotin New York After five years, Izumi Kato returns to New York City this fall with a solo exhibition at Perrotin. The Tokyo-based artist's latest works, made between 2025 and 2026, reflect a change in inspiration.

11.02

発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo

One letter a week, starting soon.

Signal of the week

Packaging: 9 stories in seven days, +5 on the week before.

Creative Packaging Design for Attar Saffron Packaging of the World

This award-winning yarn packaging looks good enough to lick (please don’t) Yanko Design

Latest

DesignWantedMazda is making diesel from algae: how it works and why it matters Most carmakers are responding to decarbonisation with batteries. Mazda has a different point of view: can microscopic algae grow diesel

TypewolfDaylight

TypewolfHeart & Soil

TypewolfDirty Vine

Core77Core77 Weekly Roundup (10-26-26 to 10-30-26) Here's what we looked at this week: A good idea for a lamp for Ferrari fanatics-- based on a 1970s East German design . Improvised tools: A creative "juggad" leak detector.

Core77Unidome's Transparent Igloos Earlier we looked at the work of Dream Domes , a UK-based event structure company. They've worked out a way to erect large event tents with no central support.

Core77Industrial Design Student Work: A Hard Drive that Visually Indicates How Full It Is This morphing hard drive enclosure is by Antonin Odin , done as an Industrial Design student at France's ENSCI .

Dezeen InteriorsJaguar designs Knightsbridge flagship to be "physical expression" of Type 01 electric car British car brand Jaguar has redesigned its flagship store in Knightsbridge, London , which is the only place in the world where the public can see the recently unveiled Type 01 electric car .

Yanko DesignScyrox V12 gaming mouse gets its color from the inside out Gaming mice don’t have to look like tiny armored vehicles to take their jobs seriously. Scyrox’s newly announced V12 makes that point with a frosted translucent shell that lets its colorful internal…

SurfaceJosh Safdie joins Dan Nadel for an IFPDA Foundation Conversation at Christie’s Filmmaker and artist Josh Safdie, director of Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems, headlined the 2026 IFPDA Foundation benefit at Christie's New York.

SurfaceIzumi Kato Brings His Childhood Pastime to Perrotin New York After five years, Izumi Kato returns to New York City this fall with a solo exhibition at Perrotin. The Tokyo-based artist's latest works, made between 2025 and 2026, reflect a change in inspiration.