How is Larry Miller turning his expertise into new hope for the formerly incarcerated? Ellen McGirt is planning to find out at the Great Place To Work Summit on April 23 in Las Vegas. Curious? Subscribe to the Observatory and stay tuned on our socials platforms. designobserver.com/newsletters/
His latest project is JUMP, the Justice & Upward Mobility Project, which aims to build a bridge for the formerly incarcerated through education, employment, policy reform, narrative change, and cross-sector coalitions.
Now, he’s ready to apply his extraordinary leadership and brand management expertise to an issue with far less crowd appeal than Jordan Brand: the more than 80 million people with arrest records in the US.
Throughout Larry Miller's career at Nike as president of Jordan Brand, he kept his past hidden.
When he was sixteen, he shot and killed a boy whom he wrongly believed to be a rival gang member and was sent to juvenile detention.
Now, he’s ready to apply his extraordinary leadership and brand management expertise to an issue with far less crowd appeal than Jordan Brand: the more than 80 million people with arrest records in the US.
@jasonfarman.bsky.social thinks usability in tech design is a problem, but not the way you think. “The problem isn’t usability itself; it’s what it has become—a design approach that replaced any need whatsoever to understand complex systems with the ability to thoughtlessly interact with them.”
Milan Design Week is set to open April 20, and promises an exciting mix of design, architecture and innovation. @designboom.bsky.social has a visitor guide; @dezeen.com offers 21 must-see exhibits; and @voguescandinavia.bsky.social takes us inside Ikea’s immersive ‘Food for Thought’ exhibition.
The New York chapter of the AIGA has made its poster collection public for the first time, documenting some 50 years of events, talks, and exhibitions. “The poster archive connects to our current craving for something more tactile and human,” says AIGA director Stacey Panousopoulos.
The METROPOLIS Interface U.S. Sustainable Design Report 2026 highlights new research nudging climate action toward coordinated strategies linking materials, ecosystems, data, and policy.
Meet the Big Chiefs of the many tribes of the Mardi Gras Indians, also known as the Black Masking Indians. Since the 1800s, they've celebrated Mardi Gras day by making music on the streets of New Orleans. It’s a cultural gumbo at its finest, with design, community, and liberation at its heart.
Cultural gumbo. A call for climate action. Milan Design Week. Here's what we're observing this week:
Now, he’s ready to apply his extraordinary leadership and brand management expertise to an issue with far less crowd appeal than Jordan Brand: the more than 80 million people with arrest records in the US.
Throughout Larry Miller's career at Nike as president of Jordan Brand, he kept his past hidden.
When he was sixteen, he shot and killed a boy whom he wrongly believed to be a rival gang member and was sent to juvenile detention.
What resources are you observing right now to track this? We're genuinely curious what's cutting through. Drop your links below ⬇️
Al Jazeera Interactive / AJ Labs is Al Jazeera’s dedicated data/visual team. Their Day-by-Day Attack Map widens the scope from the Strait of Hormuz using on-the-ground reporting and data from The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an independent global conflict monitor.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides resources, training, and networking for investigative journalists in newsrooms of all sizes, everywhere. Read the weekly Top 10 roundup that includes reliable reporting on urgent global news:
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) appears to still be working. Not a live tracker; it offers a regularly updated baseline view of oil transit flows. Their chokepoint analysis follows 7 important passages + daily transit volumes. Non-partisan, methodology, and inputs are fully cited.
Even in peaceful times, Hormuz is a challenging part of the world for tankers. The Strauss Center at UT Austin, a security policy center, explains the region’s geography to provide a detailed understanding of bathymetry (look it up), shipping lane depth, and visibility conditions.
Thanks to the war in Iran, online chatter is now dominated by amateur oil flow and tanker experts, typically repeating partisan talking points. Here's where independent, responsible data journalism is actually doing the work to cut through the noise -->
Those three colors became a full merchandising strategy, helping local suffragettes raise money for the cause. One of the first movements to understand that visual identity is organizational infrastructure.
Resistance observed: the Suffragette Color System. One of the earliest cases of brand strategy for a social campaign — organizers used green, white, and purple on ribbons, sashes, and storefronts to signal solidarity. -->
This is what The Observatory is thinking about this week. Design, systems, and the humans who hold it all together — every week in your inbox. Subscribe → designobserver.com/newsletters/
If the No Kings crown is more mark-making than logo, then it belongs to the same continuum as the very successful Solidaryca typeface and the pink triangle.
“[A]rt-based activism receives higher press recognition and, oftentimes, more financial support,” followed by “craft-based activism… because of the perception of grassroots authenticity,” says designer, anthropologist, and educator Dori Tunstall. In this regard, amateur design wins the day.
And in 1980 Poland, graphic artist Jerzy Janiszewski's Solidarność logo transformed an indepedent trade union's resistance to communism into a broader symbol of freedom and democracy.
In 1968, more than a million students and workers in France used posters to nearly topple the De Gaulle government, producing "an important visual language for protest that still resonates half a century later."
In 1975, gay activists in West Berlin reclaimed the pink triangle — once used to identify gay men in Nazi concentration camps — as a symbol of liberation and LGBTQ pride.
After a weekend of "No Kings" protests, the crown joins a long history of resistance symbols. Why do these actually matter? →
ICE agents are being deployed to busy airports to help fill staffing gaps amid the ongoing partial government shutdown. So, untrained people with a clear history of violence and an unclear mandate now have unfettered access to legions of trapped people and their data? What could go wrong?