Signal of the week

Illustration · 11 stories, +8 vs last week

Illustration: 11 stories in seven days, +8 on the week before.

Illustrator Mason London puts playful spin on Guinness archive Creative Review

These Works Won at the World Illustration Awards 2026 PAGE online

Latest

Core77Examples of Well-Worn Objects Patina is often romanticized, as it (arguably) improves the look of leather and some metals. But sometimes objects just get worn out. Which they should, right?…

September 17

Core77Industrial Designer Erina Caldeira's Steel Twist on Woven Baskets This KŌSA container references the directionality of

September 17

Core77Strutt's Awesome Powered Wheelchair is Not a Wheelchair (For Legal Reasons) Let's say you've assembled a team and designed an awesome powered wheelchair. One that works better than incumbent designs and is easy on the eyes.

September 17

Fast Company DesignI fell down the health-maxxing rabbit hole—and crawled my way out Piles of collection kits and instruction booklets surround my laptop in a manner that would make a lab technician weep.

September 17

Packaging of the WorldGez Mourvedre GEZ MOURVÈDRE is a wine made from the Mourvèdre grape, known as one of the most heat-loving varieties in the world.

September 17

ÉtapesPourquoi tout le monde pense pouvoir juger un logo Changez un logo et Internet se transforme en jury de design. Trop simple, trop cher, illisible, générique, « fait en cinq minutes » : les verdicts tombent parfois quelques heures après la révélation…

September 17

The NordroomA Well-Preserved 1840s Manor House in South Sweden with Grand Period Interiors It’s time for another unique home , and this time we’re heading to south Sweden’s countryside for a tour of an 19th-century manor house.

September 17

Packaging of the WorldVarancha Even established wines can lose their voice in a crowded market. The existing Varancha product line was experiencing a dip in shelf performance, prompting the winemaker to make a bold decision: a…

September 17

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, in your inbox.

Signal of the week

Illustration: 11 stories in seven days, +8 on the week before.

Illustrator Mason London puts playful spin on Guinness archive Creative Review

These Works Won at the World Illustration Awards 2026 PAGE online

Latest

TypewolfDaylight

TypewolfHeart & Soil

TypewolfDirty Vine

Core77Examples of Well-Worn Objects Patina is often romanticized, as it (arguably) improves the look of leather and some metals. But sometimes objects just get worn out. Which they should, right?…

Core77Industrial Designer Erina Caldeira's Steel Twist on Woven Baskets This KŌSA container references the directionality of

Core77Strutt's Awesome Powered Wheelchair is Not a Wheelchair (For Legal Reasons) Let's say you've assembled a team and designed an awesome powered wheelchair. One that works better than incumbent designs and is easy on the eyes.

BehanceBELOW

Fast Company DesignI fell down the health-maxxing rabbit hole—and crawled my way out Piles of collection kits and instruction booklets surround my laptop in a manner that would make a lab technician weep.

Packaging of the WorldGez Mourvedre GEZ MOURVÈDRE is a wine made from the Mourvèdre grape, known as one of the most heat-loving varieties in the world.

ÉtapesPourquoi tout le monde pense pouvoir juger un logo Changez un logo et Internet se transforme en jury de design. Trop simple, trop cher, illisible, générique, « fait en cinq minutes » : les verdicts tombent parfois quelques heures après la révélation…

The NordroomA Well-Preserved 1840s Manor House in South Sweden with Grand Period Interiors It’s time for another unique home , and this time we’re heading to south Sweden’s countryside for a tour of an 19th-century manor house.

Packaging of the WorldVarancha Even established wines can lose their voice in a crowded market. The existing Varancha product line was experiencing a dip in shelf performance, prompting the winemaker to make a bold decision: a…