I've honestly got no idea if smart glasses – some of which can now project information, images and videos straight at your eyeballs – will end up taking off in future, and replacing the smartphone. But if they do, then it occurs to me that this will be big news for billboards.

You might assume that if more digital tech catches on, physical advertising would be one of the casualties. After all, why look at a poster when your glasses can show you something tailored? But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am the opposite will happen.

Consider this: nobody is going to wear smart glasses to look at their feet. The whole attraction is that you get the benefits of a phone while keeping your eyes on the world around you. And in most towns and cities – even in this smartphone era – that world is already plastered with outdoor advertising.

And if smart glasses can truly take advantage of augmented reality – tech that overlays digital content onto real-world, physical things – then those billboards will suddenly be a lot more exciting to look at.

Make billboards great again

For over a century, billboards have been essentially a one-way medium. QR codes promised to fix that, but how many of us have actually stopped in the street, taken out our phones and waggled them at a pixelated square? Once or twice, maybe. But on a regular basis? Hardly.

In future, I reckon, you'll be able to point smart glasses at a billboard and get it to do all sorts of useful things, probably by talking to an AI bot embedded in your specs.

With a movie billboard, for instance, you might want to play the trailer or find out which cinema it's playing at nearby, and when. You might even want turn-by-turn directions to the multiplex to appear in front of your very eyes.

This might sound like Black Mirror-style sci-fi, but it's worth remembering how many old Black Mirror episodes have essentially come true already. And it certainly seems to be the way the ad industry is thinking.

In fact, you can already see a version of this idea in east London. Electric Garden, on Shoreditch High Street, bills itself as “the billboard you can walk into”. It’s a 21,000 sq ft open-air site that sits behind a row of giant digital screens, so brands can run a campaign on the screens and then build a physical world behind them for people to explore.

Its launch campaign, for Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, turned the site into a neon-lit, Seoul-inspired alleyway, complete with convenience stores, plastic stools and code-breaking missions. As co-founder Alex Ezen puts it: “A screen can capture attention, but a physical experience gives people a reason to stop, take part and share it.”

Smart glasses could deliver something similar without anyone needing to build an alleyway. That will make the brief for designers all the harder, of course, but personally, that’s the kind of challenge I’d relish.

The world's third-largest hamburger fast-food chain has unveiled a turn-based, pixel-art adventure in which its red-haired mascot leads a party of fast-food heroes to save a kingdom in peril. It's called WendyQuest: Legend of the Four Corner Stones. No, this is not a South Park parody. This is a real, playable game.

The branded element isn't just about bigging up Wendy's either: it also takes potshots at rivals. In the game, for example, your enemies include Frydusa, a carton of snake-like French fries, and a gang called the Golden Archers. As a dig at McDonald’s, it's not subtle.

81monkeys, an indie studio in Port Moody, British Columbia, is making the game, and it’s heading to Steam. You might expect something so obviously corporate to either get trounced on social media or get ignored and sink without a trace. At the time of writing, though, gamers mostly seem to be asking… why it looks so good.

There's more. Last summer, Pepsi asked on social media whether it should make a video game. It was buried in replies pointing out that it already had. One came from Kotaro Uchikoshi, now a celebrated visual-novel director (yes, that's a thing now), who'd worked on 1999’s Pepsiman and was offering to reconnect the company with the original team.

Branded games are clearly back on the menu. The question is… why? Well, first it's worth noting that we've been here before.

Branded game have a long tradition

Domino’s Avoid the Noid in 1989 is widely cited as the first fast-food tie-in game. McDonald’s followed with Global Gladiators, which is considered one of the best platformers of its era. Then there was Cool Spot, starring the red dot from 7 Up’s American logo, which you could play on the SNES and Mega Drive in 1993 and, branding tie-in aside, is a genuinely brilliant 2D platform game.

The original Pepsiman, though, remains the king of the branded games. Released only in Japan (which always helps cult status), it showed a superhero sprinting through cities to deliver Pepsi cans. And it remains much-loved: these days, copies go for hundreds of dollars on sites like eBay.

Then came Burger King's 2006 experiment. The chain sold three branded Xbox games for $3.99, including the infamous stealth title Sneak King, as long as you bought a value meal (sold separately). BK ended up shifting more than 3.2 million copies in total.

KFC was late to the party, only joining the fun in 2019 with I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator. The parody dating sim got flayed by critics, but players loved it, giving it a 91% positive rating on Steam.

From a branding perspective, what's interesting is that these weren’t just adverts with gameplay bolted on. They were proper games that people actually liked, even if reviewers were somewhat sniffy. So why are they coming back now? It's difficult to say, but I think a few factors are in play.

Reasons for the return of ad-gaming

First, the original branded games' child audience is now an adult audience with money, and nostalgia is a powerful force. Second, it’s far easier to distribute games today. While Burger King once had to manufacture physical copies and distribute them to restaurants, now Wendy’s just needs a Steam page.

Thirdly, traditional advertising is struggling to break through ad blockers, ad-free subscriptions and a general lack of interest. In contrast, people actually like a branded game. They might even actively seek it out.

Finally, there's the backlash against AI. Wendy's Steam page proudly declares its game “100% fresh and 100% human-made” for a reason. As we all drown in AI slop, handcrafted, indie-style pixel art becomes a visual statement of brand values.

Will they succeed?

None of this, of course, guarantees that these games will succeed. For every Global Gladiators there’s a Sneak King, a game remembered more as a curio than for its gameplay. The brands that get this right treat players as players, not targets for ads.

So will WendyQuest join Pepsiman in the hall of fame, or end up in the bargain bin of history? I have no clue. But if a burger chain can get me excited about a turn-based RPG, its marketing team must be doing something right. And Pepsi, if you’re reading: Uchikoshi’s offer is still on the table.

His work has seen him become a 2x ADG and Gold Cannes Lion award winner, shaped by his radically practical approach to production design amidst the rise of AI. As part of our 5 Questions series, I caught up with Christopher to discuss pet peeves, imposter syndrome and "learning by fire".

It's no secret that Apple and Samsung are among the brands that fight the most online, so the recent stab at Apple shouldn't exactly come as a surprise. While Apple purists may defend the Duo's screen-cracking debacle, Samsung fans are sitting smugly, knowing the Z Fold has nailed foldable design – but is it enough for Apple fans to convert?

We want to hear your opinion. Is the iPhone Duo here to take over, or has Samsung's legacy secured its place as the foldable phone king? Are you team Apple, team Samsung, or is there another rival brand that deserves the crown? Have your say in the comments below.

For more tech news, check out the iPhone Duo complaints that have emerged since its launch or take a look at Apple Music's splashy new logo.

Our reviewer, who’s tested many of the best 3D printers over the last decade, found it easy to use, beautifully built and capable of some of the smoothest results he’s had from an FDM machine.

Even at full price, it’s cheaper than the Creality K2 Pro. Now Amazon has dropped it from $424.97 to $401.28, a small yet significant saving.

Our favourite feature is the Canvas system, which lets you load up to four reels of filament. Our reviewer found it all very quick and easy to load. If your spool has an RFID chip, you just hold it up to the side of the unit and the printer sets everything automatically. When you open a multicolour file, a setup window lets you choose which spool goes where.

The Centauri Carbon 2 uses a CoreXY design for printing speeds of up to 500mm per second, with a respectable 256 x 256 x 256mm build volume. Our reviewer printed a one-piece fidget toy with moving parts, which came out silky smooth.

The main drawback is size: with the spools on the side and a waste chute at the back, you’ll need plenty of space around it. Otherwise, this a great value, especially at this discounted price. Read our full Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 review for more details.

To get going, you'll need one of the best iPads for drawing that has Procreate installed (don't worry- it's free), plus a reliable stylus, and that's pretty much it.

Start with an existing digital sketch of your chosen container, be it a potion bottle, can of soda, bubble bath, or even a coffee, and let your imagination fill in the rest as you plan out the path of motion following Phoebe's instructions.

Let us know if you have any questions, and check out our guide to Disney's 12 Principles of Animation if you need some inspiration.

For more on the basics of drawing, see our how-to-draw tutorial series. You might also like our guide on how to choose the best animation style.

One of Cricut's best ambassadors, Kate Smith, showed a group of us how to create a terrorsome tote bag using glow-in-the-dark HTV vinyl, as well as spooky bunting using just two materials, card and string. You'll need one of the best Cricut machines for both of these projects, and I used the Cricut Joy 2 for the bunting, and my larger Cricut Maker 4 for the tote bag project.

Take a look at my video tutorial below, and let me know in the comments if you have any questions. Keep an eye on Cricut's online store as we head into peak retail season for some top Black Friday deals on machines, tools, and materials.

You will need:

• A Cricut machine
• A device with access to Cricut Design Space (phone, tablet, or laptop)
• A light grip mat
• Cardstock (colour of your choice)
• Nice string for bunting
• A blank tote bag
• Glow-in-the-dark iron-on vinyl
• A heat press or iron

Once you've gathered your materials, switch on your Cricut machine, boot up Cricut Design Space on your phone, tablet, or laptop and then you're ready to get making.

VIDEO: Halloween crafting with Cricut

This was my first time using glow-in-the-dark iron-on vinyl, and I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I'll definitely be buying some more. Watching it glow underneath the heat press as it glided along felt magical.

The best rebrands have the power to breathe new life into a brand, and Purple Garden's serenely beautiful new identity is no different. Born of spontaneity and experimentation, this unique rebrand is proof that the unconventional can result in something truly divine.

With Mother Design’s Wild Card initiative in mind, the team worked with a Purple Garden holistic practitioner to encourage experimentation with unfamiliar disciplines. Creating instinctively with paper and charcoal, the designers sought to bypass conscious thought, with the resulting forms, textures and feelings becoming a creative foundation for the identity.

"Transferring something as intangible as psychic power into a brand identity was a chunky challenge that we wanted to get right," explains Jo Tulej, creative director at Mother Design. "It had to begin with the audience. Purple Garden is aimed at people who have had spiritual readings and practices, and the business objective was to cement the brand’s place as the leader in the category. Therefore, we had to create something visual and verbal that would feel familiar and resonate with these ‘seasoned seekers’, but in a fresh way, that would communicate Purple Garden’s elevated offering.

In order for us to tap into that, we knew we had to experience it ourselves to understand and make something that felt authentic. Some of the Mother Design team had experience with spirituality; others didn’t, so we enlisted the help of a holistic practitioner from the platform to guide us through a chakra reading and automatic drawing and writing workshop. A brand audit with a twist, you might say!"

"The word séance comes from the words sitting or session. We were inspired by Hilma af Klint and The Five, a group of women who would come together and enter trance states to bypass conscious thought and draw and write freely. They believed they were connecting with a higher consciousness and receiving messages which translated into the marks they were making. Af Klint is a pioneer of Western abstract art, and her work predates the likes of Kandinsky and Mondrian.

We wanted to immerse ourselves in spirituality and see if that could be baked into a design process in order to create great work. The chakra reading and automatic drawing/writing took place as a group workshop in which the whole team participated. We then came back a few days later and sat alongside the drawings and writing and discussed what we were seeing and noticing. To have had this experience with an advisor from Purple Garden was an invaluable way to gain insight as well as an invigorating creative process," Jo continues.

Life and vitality breathe throughout the design, manifesting in the wordmark's combination of elegant serifs and curved junctures that appear to grow outwards. Paired with a digital-first, crystal-like glyph, the design positions Purple Garden as a source for "grounded guidance", while Literatura Present and ABC Social typefaces balance feelings of whimsy with practical legibility.

Spiritual energy emanates from the brand's diverse imagery, capturing images of "charged objects" to represent services like dream analysis and psychic readings. With "solarised glows and flame-like ripples", each image represents the energy exchange between practitioner and customer. Naturally, the colour scheme features a variety of rich purples associated with intuition and higher consciousness.

"This year we’ve been so lucky to rebrand not one but two psychic services platforms (Keen and Purple Garden)," Jo says. "What has surprised me is how different the two product/brands now feel, and how divergently we’ve been able to explore and push their identities. Again, this all comes down to getting under the skin of the audiences and aims of the business in order to sharpen the creative ideas and design expression.

For the Purple Garden process specifically, I was struck by how the initial séance experiment gave us a totally different way of starting a branding project. It was slow, unclear and required a lot of trust and to a certain extent, vulnerability, from our team. By protecting this time, and removing a traditional ‘KPI’ from the output, I believe it gave our client a much richer, robust output, sensitive to the category and its audience.

So often in the branding process we have less time that we’d like, and the more intangible ideas can get pushed to the side, but at Mother Design we always try to protect this ‘wild card’ time and encourage our brilliant team to experiment."

"One challenge we faced was how to create a world that feels of the spiritual category and familiar to its fans, but also fresh and exciting, avoiding the clichés whilst drawing on symbolism that would feel universal. So we did use the category (and namesake) purple, of course, but built out a much earthier, richer palette of 7 hues to stand out against the category’s usual flatter tone. We also used pictures of nature, but they appear transformed through these solarised glows, so they have a new, magical quality to them.

Similarly, in messaging we had to find the right balance of engaging customers to take action without falling into the category tropes of urgency and pressure, ie. Book fast. Get answers. Act now. Instead, we created a voice based around a duality: Active Contemplation, that can meet you where you are and either guide you forward or slow down for more reflective moments," Jo explains.

"There’s a ton of detail and craft that went into everything, for example, creating a wordmark with ligatures that feel as though they’re sprouting, and the organic, interconnecting letter placement. The team spent a long time experimenting with lots of different processes and tools till they found a visual style for the charged objects that felt right for depicting spiritual experiences. I’m really proud of all those details that emerge the more you engage with the identity and the impact it has.

I’m also proud of the way each part of the identity, from the charged objects, to the living type, to the guiding voice, all work together to express the Living Practice idea and sense of continual growth; so it really feels like a world as opposed to disparate elements," Jo concludes.

Discover more about Mother Design and Purple Garden.

With over 20 years in the filmmaking industry, Christopher has seen a huge evolution (check out our previous interview for more). As a production designer leveraging the power of practical effects, he argues that there's still space for tactile design in the film world – all it takes is a bit of courage and open-mindedness.

You'll need one of the best drawing tablets to get started, but more specifically, it has to be one of the best iPads for drawing, since Procreate is not available for Android tablets, Windows PCs, or standard desktop computers.

Take a look at Phoebe's tutorial below and let us know if you have any questions.

Brush number 3 that Phoebe creates is the coolest, in my opinion, and looks perfect for creating blood, dust or dirt splatters in the places you need it.

For more on the basics of drawing, see our how-to-draw tutorial series. You might also like to check out the best drawing books.

Starring in some of the best adverts of the 2000s, the Dolmio family carries quite the legacy for the brand. In a world of social-first branding and AI slop advertising, Dolmio's return to form is an ingenious response to audiences that are growing increasingly hungry for human-led design.

To understand more about the Dolmio family's grand return, I caught up with Kyle Whybrow, ECD at Elmwood London, to understand the value of nostalgia and the art of reviving brand heritage.

Every detail was considered and balanced: the subtle nuances in their features that feel familiar yet new, the clothing, the choice of material, the texture of their skin and hair, right down to the micro facial expressions and the wrinkles under the eyes. We took learnings from the great puppet and animation houses, because those tiny movements are what make a character feel alive and let people connect with them.

It was all about respecting where they came from while making them feel right for a modern audience. The red dot and the family make each other stronger: one gives instant recognition, the other gives people something to love. Fresh doesn’t have to mean new. Sometimes it just means sharper.

For the 40th, the family was rebuilt digitally, so we held every frame to the standard of the handmade originals. That’s why I don’t see it as analogue versus technology. Unreal Engine, motion capture, or the Puppetiser in Australia that lets families ‘puppetise’ themselves are brilliant when they serve the idea. Slop happens when the tool becomes the idea.

That makes sense, because typically in video games, the people who walk past you on the street are visual wallpaper. They give the impression that other humans are around, but they have no individuality.

This is exactly why the 2021 film Free Guy, in which Ryan Reynolds lives a repetitive, meaningless existence in a video game world, worked so well. We were all already in on the joke.

But now comes Grand Theft Auto 6, and its makers, Rockstar Games, are about to blow the concept of non-player characters right open.

Beyond the algorithm

In a cover feature for Edge, Creative Bloq's sister print magazine, the studio reveals it art-directed every one of the game’s NPCs, creating around 600,000 animations in the process.

Normally, procedural systems assemble background NPCs, making them largely interchangeable. Grand Theft Auto VI's non-player characters, however, will have their own personalities. Which means any Free Guy sequel (long mooted, but never confirmed) may have to rethink its premise entirely.

According to the Edge article, Rockstar set up a dedicated LA-based team of writers, directors and producers whose job was to make the pedestrians of Leonida, the game’s fictional take on Florida, feel individually realised.

In practice, this means NPCs have personality traits that shape how they react to you. These include their temperament and aggression, where they are, what they’ve seen and how you’ve treated them. Different districts even have their own demographic and professional mix.

Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, describes a process of constantly asking how people might behave. “Who’s going to be aggressive? How many people will go for a weapon? How many are going to test me?”

Why creatives should care

Not only is this making me even more excited to play the game – even more excited than this brilliant GTA/South Park tie-in or these saucy GTA ads – it also says a lot about where we are as a culture. At a time when much of the creative industry is looking for faster, cheaper ways to fill digital worlds, Rockstar has done the opposite. And the rewards, I feel, will be immense.

We all talk endlessly about games being "immersive". But a city doesn’t feel real because of its landmarks. It feels real because of the passer-by who takes offence to something at precisely the wrong moment.

As D&AD’s AI & Creativity Report put it this year, AI has raised the floor, but not the ceiling. GTA 6 looks like an attempt to raise the ceiling the hard way, and I simply can't wait.

The catch is, it ain't cheap. So for Amazon to trim it down, with the $1,999 configuration down to $1,839, is a big deal.

That’s a saving of $160, which is not nothing. So if you’ve been nursing an older MacBook, this is a great opportunity to upgrade.

The star of the show here is the M5 chip, which makes everything super-fast. It topped Geekbench’s single-core results when we tested it, and the GPU has also taken a big leap over the M4. If you're running a lot of demanding creative software then, this is the model for you.

Storage is quicker too, with the SSD now running at over 6,000MB/s, almost twice as fast as the previous generation. Finally, the 120Hz display offers excellent colour reproduction, and in our tests it covered 93% of the P3 gamut.

It’s not perfect. It has Thunderbolt 4 rather than Thunderbolt 5, and video and 3D pros may get more from a Windows machine with a dedicated Nvidia card. But for graphic designers, illustrators and photographers, it’s hard to beat. Read our full MacBook Pro M5 review for more.

“In the dark there are secrets and things to be explored,” he says as he explains his approach to the art and creature design you'll find in FLASK. “I see my work as a dark room, with a door slightly ajar at the end, where a little light comes in.”

That ajar door has made Mortensen a go-to name for the macabre. Now he’s opening it onto video games with FLASK, a dark fantasy roguelike deckbuilder from Chop Chop Games.

Inspired by Jim Henson’s 1986 cult classic Labyrinth and the thrash metal of Slayer, FLASK mixes gruesome fantasy, medieval imagery and black humour. Nightmarish creatures roam, magic is best handled with caution, and even a wizard has to worry about the mortgage on his tower.

For Mortensen, the leap meant taking his pen-and-paper illustrations digital, working with a team of artists to turn his monochrome creations into a playable world. That’s a big shift for an artist who has spent most of his career working solo across books, comics, animation, TV and exhibitions.

I caught up with Mortensen to talk about finding his visual identity, the music behind his monsters, and what it’s like to step into game development for the first time. And, of course, you can download FLASK on Steam this Halloween weekend (and beyond), and follow Mortensen on Instagram for more eerily good art.

Read the full Q&A with Mortensen below, and he's even shared a couple of new creatures coming to FLASK very soon.

Game marketing usually runs on slick trailers and carefully managed hype. A dog poo weapon demo inside a crudely animated cartoon is the opposite of that, but it works. The latest episode of South Park (or is it South America now?), ‘Guinea Pig on a Stick’, aired on 28 October and included around 20 seconds of previously unseen gameplay from the forthcoming open-world game, GTA 6.

The clip follows protagonists Jason and Lucia along a busy Vice City beach before switching to Jason, who spots a dog doing its business on the sand. The owner dutifully bags the mess, but Jason has other ideas. He throws something at the hapless dog walker, grabs the bag of poo and smacks the NPC round the face with it. Charming.

GTA 6 gameplay debuts in South Park episode

The visual clash is half the fun. South Park’s flat, cut-out look has barely changed in decades, and dropping a few seconds of Rockstar’s richly detailed, near-photoreal world into it makes the game’s fidelity stand out more than another polished trailer would. The footage is the real thing, too, with Rockstar Games credited in the closing credits.

From a branding point of view, it’s a refreshing move. GTA 6 is the biggest entertainment release of the year, if not the decade, and Rockstar could simply keep releasing bigger trailers and let the internet amplify them (having begun with an equally unique Netflix reveal). Instead, it’s placing the game inside a piece of pop culture that already has an audience, and a voice, of its own.

It’s in keeping with a campaign that has been playful from the start, from a neon logo that reads as a love letter to Vice City and box art that leans hard into PS2-era nostalgia to cheeky parody ads that blur reality and fiction on the streets of Miami.

Rockstar's new GTA 6 gameplay in South Park follows a trend

It also doesn’t feel like an ad. South Park has been referencing GTA 6 all season, so the appearance lands as a punchline rather than a paid slot. Both brands trade on irreverence and a willingness to go further than their rivals, so the tone matches. Nothing feels forced. That’s more than can be said for the brands trying to borrow the Vice City look, from Burger King to Shrek. Rockstar keeps official tie-ups tightly controlled, and the Miami Heat’s Vice City merchandise is a rare example.

There’s a nice bit of brand history here, too. The narrator of the gameplay footage is voiced by Tish Hicks, who also provided the voiceover for GTA 5’s official gameplay video back in 2013. It’s a small touch, but it’s the kind of consistency that makes a brand feel coherent over time, and longtime fans will spot it.

What I like most is that Rockstar is letting a comedy show poke fun at one of its biggest selling points: the extraordinary detail of its worlds. That apparently includes weaponising dog mess.

With GTA 6 due on 19 November, there’s still time for more surprises. If this is the template, I’d take it over another dozen predictable cinematic trailers.

Pre-order GTA 6 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S:

But such an eccentric story needs immersive production design to match – that's where Christopher Glass comes in. To understand the meticulous practical effects process behind I Love Boosters and more, I sat down with Christopher to uncover the intricate artistry of production design and the evolution of the industry.

When there is work, it tends to be less creative and completely risk-averse. There is a focus on collecting libraries of “content” versus actually having an interest in making great films, TV shows or commercials. That’s why movies like “I Love Boosters” and what NEON and A24 are doing is much needed today.

In an ideal world, film companies would break away from these monstrous corporations and return to smaller autonomous studios, run by people who truly care about telling unique and compelling stories.

We used miniatures on “I Love Boosters” in a different way. Almost the entire third act is a combination of full-scale and 1/6th and 1/12th scale miniatures. We have stop-motion characters running across moving vehicles, down streets and alleys. It was an intentional choice for the handmade look.

In fact, when we were shooting, our Director Boots Riley thought some of the miniature shots started looking too real and told the folks at Blind Beagle FX (the miniature company run by Christopher Warren) to make them look more “miniature.”

One time Spike asked me to move the coffee table about 4 inches in one direction. I had to explain to him that the metal table, with a spring-loaded stretching magazine was attached to the stretching rug, and both were bolted into moving tracks underneath the floor connected to levers hidden just out of view of the perpendicularly moving walls at the end of the room… So it wouldn’t be easy.

Everything in that set depended on precise placement, choreography and movement. Every pattern and texture of fabric had to be precisely made and printed to achieve the “pixel” stretching effect throughout. The umbrella on a stand, a bike and a lamp had to be meticulously sculpted to be extruded by movement.

The large moving wall actually hovered on air bearings and was timed to the music. The hallway was made of ribbons stretched with so much tension, it bent the original steel frame and had to be rebuilt before shooting. The list goes on and on. Nothing was easy about that project. I thought it was the end of my career, and it was all going to go down in flames. But to my pleasant surprise, we won a Gold Cannes Lion for Film Craft.

Coming in close second for most difficult was “I Love Boosters!”

Discover more about Christopher Glass.

From its trend-defying product design to its slick campaigns, Nothing oozes style in an effortless way that many brands will spend an eternity trying to capture. Sometimes it's not about competing for the best adverts or the swankiest product launches, but building something authentic.

Nothing has been on my radar for a while, particularly after it employed 365 party girl Charli XCX to promote its Headphone model. Nothing came out swinging, announcing Charli as its first Global Brand Ambassador, marking a distinct finger on the pulse of pop culture. With a Midas touch for all things cool, getting the BRAT composer to be the face of its brand was an instant boost in social clout.

But Nothing doesn't just embrace this party lifestyle as a fleeting trend. The return of its Club Nothing (R) initiative sees the brand support grassroots music scenes, underground parties, and alternative sound experiences with a $40,000 grant. This year's winners, Black Bass Collective, Oroko Radio, Whorechata and Signal, represent a diverse array of independent music culture, providing a much-needed boost for the struggling and uncertain status of the live music scene.

In short, Nothing's 'cool' image isn't just performative; it's productive. Often, brand philanthropy can come across as virtue signalling, but Nothing knows its place in culture and is actively helping to improve the industry that supports it. Being cool is much more than getting the latest trending celeb to rep your tech – it's about living and breathing community.

For more Nothing news, check out why Nothing designs its phones “like logos” or take a look at why the Nothing Phone (4b) makes no sense, but we still love it.

One moment early in his career led to one of Patrick Stewart's most inspirational quotes. Near the end of his time at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, his director Duncan Ross hauled him in for a dressing-down: Stewart was holding back, and it showed on stage. Ross’s advice stuck with him for years, when he was told: "You will never achieve success by insuring against failure".

As reported by Broadway World, Patrick Stewart repeated that advice over the years, and it’s easy to see yourself in it. We all have a go-to subject, a favourite brush, a style we know will land. And when a sketch starts heading somewhere odd, it’s tempting to bin it and start again. Play it safe long enough, though, and you end up making the same piece on repeat.

So next time you’re facing a blank canvas, try the thing you’re not sure about. It might flop. It might also give you something you’d never have found by sticking to what works.

The Star Trek and Marvel Cinematic Universe art books you need:

Apple and Samsung have been at war for what seems like an eternity, resulting in some of the best adverts of all time. While brand beef can, at times, be a little overplayed, Samsung's latest ad demonstrates how it can be used to create a welcome bit of buzz for both brands.

The ad stars a shiny green apple with a "NEW" sticker pasted on it (no points for guessing what this represents). In swoops the Galaxy Z Fold 8, slicing the competition with ease. From its thinner profile to its many generations, Samsung boasts it's been "years ahead in foldables", while the fresh apple slice struggles to fold itself.

Created by Samsung partner FOREAL, the design studio boasts, "Every frame [was] made by actual humans," joking, "We know, very 2019 of us." Fans praised the human-made design, with one writing, "Wow, beautiful effects!" while another called it a "10/10 Apple diss."

For more brand beef, take a look at how Etsy shaded Bezos in its anti-Prime Day campaign or check out why Apple iPhone Duo screens are cracking in exactly the same place.

The DaVinci was one of the early high-profile IEMs associated with the JM-1 target and the “New Meta” tuning trend. In terms a normal human can understand, that means a broadly balanced sound, with a generous dollop of extra bass and a relatively relaxed treble. In practice, many people loved its warm, full-bodied sound, but others found the bass overdone and the treble a little too subdued. Still, some of the best representatives of this sound are featured on my list of the best IEMs under $500 for a reason. You'll also find them on my list of the best budget IEMs too.

On paper, the Vitruvian looks like Dunu’s answer to those critics, and suggests the brand is moving in the same direction as much of the industry: towards a more natural, neutral sound. Let's dig into what we can expect...

What's changed?

Interestingly, Vitruvian started life as the DaVinci 2, and the first prototype essentially turned everything up: the same big bass, extra treble drivers and even a bone-conduction driver.

But then, in response to feedback at the Shenzhen International Audio Show, the brand changed tack. Consequently, it reduced the bass, boosted vocal clarity and dropped the bone-conduction driver.

The new name – inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man; a naked male figure in two overlapping poses – reflects that shift towards balance. The design pairs two dynamic drivers, one for deep sub-bass and one for bass, with five balanced armatures handling mids and treble.

That’s one more than the DaVinci, and Dunu says the extra treble driver brings smooth, open highs with more air and no harshness. It also promises the bass hits harder and faster than before, even though there’s less of it.

In the box, you get a modular cable with swappable 3.5mm and 4.4mm plugs and 13 pairs of ear tips. The earpieces themselves sport vintage-inspired faceplates with precision gear details.

Industry shift

For years, the Harman target, with its boosted bass and bright upper mids, has shaped how most headphones and IEMs sound. Lately, though, brands seem to be going for something more natural.

Sennheiser’s HD 480 Pro is a great example. In our review, we called them the best closed-back headphones we’ve heard due to their neutral, balanced sound, with just a touch of bass warmth. As for IEMs, the CrinEar Reference tops our guide to the best IEMs under $500 thanks to its balanced tuning.

The Vitruvian probably won't go that far: Dunu talks up its “enveloping warmth” and “deep bass presence”, making it sound more like a nudge towards neutral than a leap. That said, for anyone who found the DaVinci’s low end overwhelming, that nudge could make all the difference.

That’s what Steve Jobs said about the idea of a touchscreen MacBook in 2010. Those comments have been dredged up far and wide across the internet this week, as Apple yesterday launched, yes, the first ever touchscreen MacBook Pro. Clearly Apple thought the moment had finally come to give the concept a chance. And after testing it at the launch event in LA, I think the company might just be right.

But even before touching the device, I was intrigued by Apple’s marketing of it. The name, MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, makes no mention of touch (although ‘PROLED’ is up there with ‘Apple Intelligence’ as an example of the company’s hilarious penchant for ‘brandifying’ existing words and phrases). Right from the bat, it seems Apple isn’t trying to pitch touch as the laptop’s headline feature. Indeed, judging by the cheer in the room, you’d think the return of the illuminated Apple logo was the biggest update.

When viewed as a bonus, an additional input option to sit alongside the traditional trackpad and keyboard, touch starts to make sense on the Mac. It’s useful for certain tasks, such as scrubbing through the timeline in Final Cut Pro, playing a virtual keyboard in Logic Pro, or pinching to zoom in on photos or maps. But it’s clear that, unlike the iPad, the Mac simply isn’t a touch-first device. But for creatives, a brand new input option can only be a good thing.

It helps that Apple has got the hardware and software just right. The PROLED display is absolutely stunning, and the touch super responsive (I experienced no latency when testing the aforementioned Logic Pro keyboard). And small software touches, such as the way the close/minimise window buttons enlarge when touched, make the experience much less fiddly than you might expect.

But it isn’t perfect. Apple claims that it has strengthened the hinge to reduce wobble when touching the upright screen, but I still noticed a fair amount of rebound. And while testing Final Cut, there were times when I found the trackpad more accurate.

Simply put, it’s a nice-to-have. And it’s a nicer-to-have than I expected. Had Apple gone ahead and called this the ’MacBook Ultra’, my eyebrows may have raised considerably more. Because on a notebook-style laptop, a touch screen is never going to feel like an ‘Ultra’ feature. In this case, though, it’s a delightfully well-executed bonus feature.

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is available to pre-order now, starting at $2899.

The independent studio has opened Early Access, by request, to the Atelico AI Engine, a toolkit for adding language models, image generation, speech systems and AI-driven character behaviour to games. It works with Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot, and runs on players’ own hardware rather than cloud servers.

Atelico says developers can give NPCs personalities, motivations, relationships, and memories that shape their later actions, so a character could react to something you did hours earlier instead of following a fixed dialogue tree. In a video released today, it shows some rough ideas of how this works, with the player character offering an amount for a sword and the shopkeeper 'remembering' the day before the same player offered more coins, and so he ups the price. The release doesn’t name a game that uses this system yet.

Games have remembered player decisions for decades, though. Branching dialogue and reputation systems are hardly new, so the question is whether generative AI makes them more convincing, less memory-intensive, or just less predictable. An NPC that remembers you betrayed them sounds good, but if the game only gives them a different line of dialogue, that’s not much of a leap.

What matters is whether developers use those memories to change how a character behaves, so your choices feel like they count without driving the game down dead ends; after all, that shopkeeper could keep raising prices or even decide you don't have good credit, and any kingdom-saving shenanigans are over because one guy wouldn't sell you a sword.

Gameplay AI versus asset AI

Atelico's AI Engine idea differs from simply prompting an algorithm to vibe a game or asset. Most of the backlash against AI in creative industries has centred on how it produces work. Artists have objected to models trained on their work without permission, and developers worry studios will use generative tools to cut costs and jobs. In the 2026 Game Developers Conference survey, 52% of industry professionals said generative AI was bad for the industry, up from 30% the year before.

Generating a background texture or creating a 3D model from a sketch or text, as Maxon's AI announcement is teasing, and managing an NPC’s memories are different propositions. The first can replace an asset an artist might have been paid to make. The second is a gameplay system, and could give designers new ways to build interactive stories.

The two do overlap. The AI Engine also generates images, and Atelico’s debut game, Bobium Brawlers, lets players describe a creature in plain language and get a portrait and playable deck on their phone.

Several questions remain open. Atelico says the engine supports open-source language models and uses its own image-generation technology, but it doesn't say how any of those models were trained. It's also unclear how much control developers have over output, or what happens when an NPC says something that undermines the story. The studio says the engine has safeguards to keep output aligned with a game’s creative direction, including a safety pipeline that rewrites problematic outputs instead of blocking them. Those claims will need testing in real games.

Running on-device means, in Atelico’s account, no recurring server costs, no network latency and player data staying on the player’s hardware. It doesn’t answer the training question, and local inference still strains players’ devices, though Atelico has the ethical agreement ARC, the Artist Rights Contract, a creator-agreement framework that proposes upfront compensation and consent for how its AI is implemented.

I'm interested in developments like the AI Engine and Nvidia's similar ACE platform for gen-AI NPCs, because they could lead to new gameplay ideas and ways to interact with game worlds where choice matters. An NPC that remembers what you’ve done could make a game feel personal, or at least offer choices that matter, not the illusion of choice.

Sign up to Atelico's Wishlist for Early Access to AI Engine and see if there's anything to it.

For full details on why I think this is the best closed-back headphone, head over to my detailed HD 480 Pro review. It's my top overall pick in my list of the best-sounding wired headphones of any price.

Usually retailing at $439, the HD 480 Pro Plus package is down to $399, matching the list price of the base model while bundling Sennheiser’s dedicated protective travel case and premium accessories at no extra cost. In short: you get the best closed-back headphone out there, and a free hard travel case!

The new benchmark

For me, the Sennheiser HD 480 Pro is simply the finest closed-back pair I've tested, setting a fresh benchmark in a slightly compromised category.

Any manufacturer can tune cans to sound exciting, with booming mid-bass and ear-piercing treble spikes. Sennheiser took the far more difficult route of making everything sound fundamentally correct. It's basically the most exciting 'boring' set I've ever heard.

Instead of the boomy, loose bass that plagues most closed-back sets, the HD 480 delivers low frequencies with speed, detail, and grip. It avoids encroaching on the lower midrange (for the most part), ensuring vocal clarity remains intact. Those vocals and acoustic instruments sound lifelike, avoiding the scooped or honky timbre common in studio tracking headphones.

Lower highs are smooth and relaxed without sacrificing detail or a sense of space, giving high-frequency elements actual body rather than harsh sizzle. I can totally understand if someone wants more treble than the 480 Pro gives, but sibilant treble is fatiguing. You don't get that issue here.

At just 272 grams, the chassis avoids the heavy clamping force associated with traditional tracking cans. The modular architecture with washable, replaceable components also means you'll be able to hang on to yours for decades of daily listening.

At Creative Bloq, we also felt for the artists who'll never get to build these games or see their Mass Effect 5 work seen widely. Now one of those artists has just added his voice to the chorus in quite an unexpected way.

On X, Sparth revealed that from April until last week, he'd quietly been working as art director of the Mass Effect franchise. In other words, he was responsible for what the next Mass Effect would look like. Yet now, nobody will ever see it.

It's a story every creative will recognise: a talented team doing some of the best work of their careers, only for it to vanish into nothing because of decisions made by people way above their pay grade.

So what just happened?

In case you haven't been paying attention, here's a quick recap. Founded in Canada in 1995, BioWare made role-playing games where you play a character whose choices shape the story. Its Mass Effect trilogy (2007-12) became one of gaming’s most celebrated series, but recent releases disappointed, and its umbrella company EA, now carrying around $20bn of debt after a Saudi-led buyout, has cut 400 jobs and closed the studio.

Now, here's the skinny on Sparth. Real name Nicolas Bouvier, he's worked as a concept artist in video games since 1996, with credits including Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the original Assassin's Creed, Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, and Halo Infinite.

Outside gaming, he's painted more than 100 sci-fi and fantasy book covers and authored the Structura series of art books. He's been a regular presence on Creative Bloq and our sister title ImagineFX over the years, sharing everything from his custom Photoshop brushes to VR sculpting experiments.

In his X thread, he says it was "a privilege to work alongside such a talented team, with the shared ambition of exploring new creative territories while staying true to the legacy and spirit of the Mass Effect trilogy."

Next comes the sucker punch. "Knowing that this work will never see the light of day is truly heartbreaking. We were good at this. We really were. I'm thinking about the team, the talent, what we could have achieved."

And then, perhaps the most telling line of all: "In nearly 30 years in this industry, I've rarely seen a group so tightly knit, so experienced, and so good at working together. And I feel extremely honored to have been part of it."

As for his own future, Sparth is candid in saying: "I simply don't know. For now, I'll take some time before figuring out next steps. In the meantime, I wish everyone affected all the very best for what lies ahead."

Big shoes to fill

So why is this such a big deal? Well, it's largely because of who Sparth was replacing. Derek Watts was Mass Effect's long-time art director, and the man most responsible for the trilogy's distinctive look. He retired before work on the new game was complete, and replacing him would never be easy.

Mike Gamble, BioWare's project director on Mass Effect, makes that clear in a reply to Sparth's thread. "Nic, you were incredible," he writes. "There are few people on the planet I would have chosen to replace Mr Watts after he retired, and I'm glad we got to work together." Sparth's response is characteristically modest. "Derek's legacy was everything. I was humbly an extremely dedicated participant to an amazing human adventure, thanks to you, him, and the team."

On paper, this appointment was inspired and looked set for great things. In practice, we may never see Sparth's work on the project, which EA owns.

What might have been

Agonisingly, though, we've learned a fair bit about what the team was building. An internal trailer has leaked online, reportedly revealing the title "Mass Effect: Universe", and YouTuber Dantics, who sat on a panel of fans BioWare consulted during development, has shared details that IGN says it has verified.

According to Dantics, the game is set more than 600 years after the original trilogy, in a galaxy split into three rival power blocs, more like an interstellar cold war than another apocalyptic invasion. One of those, the Geth (a race of sentient machines from the original games), had become a superpower that built huge megastructures.

Players would have taken the role of a customisable secret agent, a James Bond type with experimental implants that let you see through walls and hack your surroundings. Missions would have been handcrafted, but with lots of freedom in how you tackled them, and fan-favourite character Liara was set to return.

Dantics says it "looked incredible", and the responses to Sparth's thread suggest that many fans agree. "I have to say the artistic vision was/is phenomenal," writes one. "I can only imagine what else there could have been."

It'd be great if EA released some of the Mass Effect concept art one day. It would be a small but meaningful way to honour the BioWare staff who've lost their jobs. In the meantime, whatever Sparth does next, I'm sure we'll be featuring his work on Creative Bloq again soon.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Croc. I remember playing a demo in a Virgin Megastore in Canterbury and falling in love with the little green crocodile, the daft characters, and the bright worlds, but then I played the full game, and it tested my patience. You’d line up a jump, the camera would disappear, you'd misjudge the distance, and you'd end up back at the start of the level. Charming? Yes. Infuriating? Also yes.

Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos arrived in 1999 as an ambitious sequel for the time, with larger levels, hub worlds to explore, more secrets, and fuller controls. It was also a time when 3D platformers were still figuring out how to work in three dimensions. Super Mario 64 had set the standard for camera-relative movement, while Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon found their own ways to make 3D spaces feel natural. Croc, like Gex and Bubsy 3D, stuck closer to tank-style controls, which could feel stiff and unresponsive.

Twenty-seven years on, that background and context matter because Croc 2 remains a curious bit of gaming history, but Argonaut has done something sensible and simple with this remaster: it’s made Croc less annoying.

Croc learns some new tricks

The big change is the controls, and the difference is immediate. Croc now moves with the freedom you’d expect from a modern 3D platformer. Running, turning and jumping feel natural, transitions are smoother, and the new triple jump gives you the height to reach platforms that once demanded a fiddly mix of positioning and luck.

The improved camera helps too, especially when you’re judging a leap and trying to work out where a platform sits; those spiked pits, rope swings, and elevator platforms no longer have me tearing my hair out, thankfully, because nearly 30 years on, I have less of it to tug out in frustration. None of this sounds revolutionary, but it’s exactly what the game needed to be playable in 2026.

If you grew up with the original and prefer the old tank controls and all the pain that comes with them, you can switch back. You can even mix things up, using the shoulder buttons to sidestep and line Croc up for a jump, while still using modern controls. The original experience remains: longer levels, tricky jumps, weird little characters, and collectables; you just don’t have to put up with its flaws.

The graphics get the same light touch. The old worlds are brighter and more colourful, with updated textures that freshen things up without losing the charm of those chunky, low-poly characters. Croc still looks like Croc, with boggle eyes and a little squat run, but it's sharper, cleaner, and brighter. You can flip back to the original visuals, complete with CRT scanlines, at any point from the Pause menu, and the old textures have their own scruffy charm that will take you right back to playing on the first PlayStation.

A bigger adventure, with some very odd characters

The adventure spans more than 40 levels across four villages: Sailor, Cossack, Caveman and Inca. It offers more variety than the first game, with different environments, missions, and vehicles. Croc can ride minecarts, race cars and speedboats, glide through the air and even fly a wooden aeroplane. But some of these mini-game-like additions are fairly basic; for example, calling them ‘speedboat’ races wouldn’t pass the Trade Description Act, maybe ‘trundle-boat racing’. Essentially, don’t expect Mario Kart.

Putting aside the remaster’s updates, Croc 2 remains a fairly straightforward platformer, and some levels feel like a string of small rooms with obstacles rather than carefully built playgrounds. You can collect crystals, rescue Gobbos and hunt for secrets, but don’t expect the intricate design of a modern indie platformer or even the sandbox of Toy Story 3 Complete Edition.

Even with the better controls, the levels often lack depth. Some are short and sweet, others drag, and the challenge can still come down to nailing a jump rather than solving an interesting bit of level design.

Argonaut has made some useful behind-the-scenes changes. Footprint Gongs have been refined so respawns put you closer to where you fell, meaning less ground to cover. Anyone who remembers the original will appreciate that. You can still lose all your lives and get booted out of a level for a hard restart. There are no rewinds or quick saves to bail you out. I don’t mind, though there are moments when you wish the game were a little kinder, such as when you get close to the end of a level with one Heart remaining and a series of platforms you know will slide the little fella into a lava pool, because the game still has some historic design choices like slightly drifting momentum.

But for those of us who liked the character but struggled with the originals, this Croc 2 remaster is a much more enjoyable way back into a semi-classic game.

The Croc2pedia is a little treasure

I could happily have played the remaster just to see how much better it feels, but the Croc2pedia is what makes this release interesting.

This in-game museum is packed with original development material: design documents, marketing assets, 3D models, animation tests, and cut content. Poking around these old files and seeing how the game came together is a real treat. I especially liked the design files that detail how the game was pitched and what the developers wanted to achieve at the time – 360-degree movement, yay! – and the character and level models, which show the thinking behind the finished game and the ideas that were dropped along the way. Stuff like this usually vanishes into a studio archive or ends up scattered across fan sites.

The 90-minute Croc2mentary is another highlight. It pulls together interviews with members of the original and remaster teams, split into five- and ten-minute chunks, so you can dip in, watch a few and get back to the game without committing to a full documentary.

And for a series with a complex history, Croc began life as a 3D Yoshi platformer before becoming its own thing; it’s a reminder of how projects change direction and how characters and mechanics evolve as a team wrestles with creative and technical problems.

I ended up spending more time in the Croc2pedia than I did playing the game itself. Even if you’re not a Croc 2 fan, it’s well worth a look if you’re into game art, character design or world-building. As I said in my recent Joe & Mac Retro Collection review, the more remasters that offer historical extras, the better, and Croc 2 does it better than most.

Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos is a fun time capsule

Is Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos a great game? Not really, and it never was (don’t hate me, Croc fans). It’s cute, colourful and fun in short bursts, but the level design is simple, and it still carries the limitations of its era. It does play better than I remember, though. The new controls, triple jump, and improved camera remove much of the original's frustration.

And if you really hate yourself, you can set everything back to the original settings and remind yourself just how awkward ‘90s platformers could be. The option to switch back to tank controls and old-school visuals means you lose nothing. You can play Croc 2 as it was, or give the little mascot the freedom it probably should have had all along.

For me, the Croc2pedia is what makes this worth buying. The interviews, design documents, artwork, curated insights and cut content give an otherwise solid remaster a reason to exist beyond nostalgia. As a platformer, Croc 2 is an enjoyable little curio, but as a window into how games were made, it has teeth.