Design Inspiration: Four Beards One Pencil. Vol. 8

Ben Young transforms sheets of glass into luminous sculptures that give a glimpse into a moment in time or space.

These incredible sculptures by Ben Young transport us to little crystalline islands you want to live on and oceans that you just want to dive into.

A Fluent Design System exploration from Microsoft, using the Hololens technology. This is the future of user interfaces!

3D Slices of beautiful landscapes are referenced again (could this be a trend?) in Microsoft’s exploration of dimensionality in UI. As part of their Fluent design system, they have created some examples of how interactions could become more captivating and immersive. We hope to see these floating around our screens and better, home and workspaces soon.

Celebrating our favourite series of misanthropic escapades, these animated posters by Francesco Hashitha Moorthy have got us all debating our favourite episodes and which poster represents them best.

Touches of motion progress the poster format toward a Brooker-esque future.

The article feels like the future of long-form storytelling. With bespoke interactions propelling you through the narrative and a gorgeous 8-bit aesthetic, learning about the inherent disadvantages millennials face becomes a truly engaging experience.

A Kandinsky inspired motif creates a dynamic new identity for Russia’s tourist board.

The distinct arrangement of basic shapes lends itself to endless customisation and motion treatments while at the same time retaining recognisability and harking back to the visual language associated with the motherland.

If you’ve ever sat in on a naming meeting, you know how hard it is to pluck out a name for a product out of thin air. It’s the absolute foundation for a brand, and the myriad connotations, the uniqueness of the word for searchability, word length and pronounceability present a minefield.

Enter Onym – your new naming toolkit. Encompasses dictionaries, subject-specific lists and glossaries of inspiration (the list of islands makes us want to launch something with the name Lofoten) as well as generators and even cautionary tales, Onym is a great one to pull out when you reach the bottom of the product-naming barrel.

Electric car racing championship Formula E has unveiled a new visual identity, as it looks to appeal to a younger audience.

Last year we featured the reboot of the racing game Wipeout on the beards – this year it looks like life is mirroring art as Formula E’s new futuristic rebrand is launched.

The electric car equivalent to Formula 1, just lacks the game’s plasma cannons as its slick new identity of blocky glyphs and neon chevrons, which draws on our visual vernacular for space-age sports that Wipeout helped define.

The collaboration of the youtube and podcast powerhouses continues with an awesome insight into how our symbols for radiation and biohazardous materials were invented and entered our visual vocabulary.

This episode discusses the design problem of communicating environmental hazards to a civilization that has forgotten our languages and presents some of the incredible and imaginative ways envisioned by designers.