It seems students these days have loftier demands. Or at least the British department store chain John Lewis thinks so. Its suggested essential university packing checklist reminds me of Jony Ive's "every day" design tools.

The list includes, among other necessities, up to 40 “Standard” velvet clothes hangers, a £495 Marc Jacobs bag, a £399 desk, an £80 spice rack carousel and a £185 Ralph Lauren quarter-zip for freshers who want to look like they're working on Wall Street.

Other musts include a £50 Cole & Mason electronic pepper mill to save your hands for those late-night essay writing sessions, and, obviously, a Rose Quartz Stanley Quencher to take to the lecture theatre. Suffice it to say, the list is being roasted on TikTok.

Given that buying these "essentials" would blow most students' annual budgets, I've rounded up some thrifty dupes that will allow you to indulge the John Lewis student in you for less than half the money. They all have star ratings of at least 4.5 on Amazon, and together could save you hundreds of pounds.

That will hopefully leave you with some spare change to invest in something you actually need for uni, like one of the best student laptops or the best Android drawing tablets.

It seems we already have more evidence that this might be the case. It appears that AI was also used for concept art for Travis Knight's recent Masters of the Universe. Will fan disappointment make a difference, or are we already beyond the point of no return?

"Yes, we use AI as a tool when it speeds production up. The design work is ours," Chromatic Studio said of its costume exploration sketches for King Randor, ruler of Eternos, when asked on Instagram whether the images were made using AI.

A lot of people aren't buying that justification about speeding up the process. "AI slop + the guy who overpainted this clearly did not enjoy this, such a disappointment to see good outsourcing studios using such a disgusting method just to 'speed up their process'," one person comments.

I can see how studios justify the use of AI art for concept art, or at least I could if were were still in an era where the concept art wouldn't normally see the light of day.

By definition, concept art is exploratory, and it can be highly iterative. Using AI can allow concept artists to test out more ideas more quickly, saving time on work that isn't going to appear in the finished project anyway.

The problem is that today concept art almost always does see the light of day. It's shared in portfolios, making-of-videos and art books for fans eager to see more of the process and artistry behind the film.

In these kinds of pieces, people would previously admire the skills and craftmanship that went into the early development of a movie or game. But when AI was used heavily in the process, what are we supposed to be appreciating or admiring exactly? The idea itself, I guess, but perhaps studios will need to stop showing their working so proudly if they're going to insist on using AI.

Short history lesson: In the first part of the 1970s, new technology meant rock music had become highly produced, which meant it sounded beautifully clean and pure. Unfortunately, it also started to sound a little boring and formulaic, straying very far from its wild and controversial rock 'n' roll roots.

Well, every action has a reaction, as the saying goes. And in the late 1970s, that reaction arrived with a bang in the form of punk rock bands like The Sex Pistols, The Damned and The Clash. Yes, their outfits, lyrics, music and attitude might seem tame, almost cosy now. But back then people – especially my parents – were seriously shocked and offended. Which just made us kids love them more.

50 years on, I've long suspected a similar dynamic will play out with AI. In both cases, new technology has taken over the production of creative works (although with AI, it's not just music but a wide range of cultural products, from art to visual design and now even filmmaking.) So where will the reaction come from? Well, it's probably going to come from some unexpected places, and this Chinese movie looks like being one of them.

What's going on?

For the uninitiated, Niu Lai is an animated film made on an almost zero budget, almost entirely by a mother and son using second-hand computers. I'm not being mean, but the animation is... not high quality. Yet in their native China, it's been an absolute smash. In a world where a $300 million blockbuster like Supergirl struggles to get anyone interested, audiences are flocking to see jerky movements, crude 3D models, weird sound effects, and a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why? Because, the consensus seems to say, it was so obviously, painfully, made by human hands; something that's been long missing from the kind of geometrically-precise CG animation that dominates today.

The story of how it was made reads like the plot of a movie itself. Xin Yumeng is a former interior designer with no film training, based in Dalian, a coastal city in Liaoning province, north-east China. He spent five years building Niu Lai in his spare time, handling every job himself, from modelling and animation to lighting and editing.

His mum, Sun Lifang, taught herself screenwriting and voiced the female characters. The film launched with no trailer, no publicity and a single ink-wash poster. It premiered in 245 cinemas on 5 August and took just 7,169 yuan (around $1000 / £786) in its first nine days.

Then, social media noticed it. People started sharing clips online, initially to take the mickey out of the low-rent animation. But then, as sometimes happens, "so bad" turned to "so bad it's good". People started to become fascinated with this plucky, out-of-the-ordinary movie.

Its cumulative box office has since grossed over ¥25.67 million (about $160K / £120K), putting it among the top 10 highest-grossing animated films in China this year; a staggering return on its minimal investment. It was such a hit that cinemas without official posters got their staff to draw their own by hand.

Reporting on this story yesterday, fellow Creative Bloq writer Joe Foley took a negative view of this whole phenomenon. But I'm afraid I have to differ. To me, it all sounds like a lot of fun. And I'd rather watch something fun than something technically perfect, but soulless and empty.

More broadly, many of the naysayers here sound eerily like the old men who once dismissed my beloved punk bands as a lot of unlistenable noise. (Well, to be fair a lot of them were. A few of the doom metal bands I saw at Bloodstock last weekend were pretty unlistenable to my ears too. But a lot of people love them, and who am I to say they're wrong?)

More broadly, the love for Niu Lai in China chimes neatly with everything I'm hearing from everyday people in my own country: they're sick of AI visuals, AI music and AI videos, and they're desperately looking for authentic alternatives. It seems that in 2026 the less digital polish there is on things, the more people are likely to like it.

That's another cultural revolution I can get behind, and this time around, there's no need for spitting or swear words. Now, where did I put that Ramones album?

In many cases, such as the recent Spider-man controversy, these concerns turn out to be legitimate. But the latest social media furore surrounding Netflix's splash page for the movie Hamnet suggests some corners of the internet might be becoming a little to quick to cry 'AI'.

"The clearly AI-generated image for HAMNET on Netflix doing some crazy things," X user Erik Anderson complained this week, along with a screenshot of the splash page, which features a close-up of a prop flyer for the first ever performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The post has received hundreds of thousands of views.

Yes, it looks a little Photoshopped. The whole thing is overly sharp and saturated in a 'product shot' kind of way, and it all looks rather twee. But that's not what users are taking umbrage with. It's the supposedly mangled text, a bonafide hallmark of an AI-generated image.

Except, the text isn't mangled. It's meant to say 'firft appearance on stage'. That 'f' is an archaic long 'S', the kind of thing that was everywhere in Shakespeare's day. Just wait until these people discover the best Old English fonts.

This might be a minor episode in the grand scheme of AI controversies, but it points to a shift in the landscape. We seem to be reaching a point where anything that looks vaguely uncanny or unfamiliar is liable to be accused of being AI-generated. Rather than seeing the confusion as an opportunity to learn something new, people are becoming increasingly willing to reject the entire thing outright.

Here, it was a simple historical tidbit that left people confused. But the idea that we're becoming increasingly conditioned to reject any visual artefact that leaves us confused or uncomfortable is an alarming one. After all, isn't some of the best art designed to make us uncomfortable?

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Yes, Nintendo's Game Boy ads from the '90s are, well, not the kind of thing we'd associate with Nintendo today. There are cuddly Pokemon or family-friendly moustachioed plumbers here. Instead, the brand seemed to be taking a leaf out of Sony's book, with a bunch of edgy ads that might as well be advertising a PlayStation.

Indeed, one of Nintendo's 1997 ads featured a lingerie-clad woman tied to a bed, alongside the tagline, "The new Game Boy pocket: seriously distracting". The implication being, of course, that her lover had become so distracted by, I don't know, Tetris, that they'd forgotten to untie her. Tsk, tsk!

That particular ad, created by Leo Burnett, was pulled after the Advertising Standards Authority received complaints. Even in 1997, it was deemed tasteless. Defending the ad's placement in the likes of FHM and Loaded, account director Crispin Reed told The Independent, "When you look at [our] ad in the context of the environment it appeared in, it's exactly in keeping with the editorial pages which, I would say, go further than we did."

But while that might have been the only Nintendo ad to get pulled, it's clear from the other examples that Nintendo was trying out a new vibe which, arguably, didn't suit it. Whereas PlayStation was explicitly targeting clubbers and rave culture with the likes of WipEout, what were the Game Boy's edgy, adult games? Kirby's Dream Land?

From starving dogs to ferrets down young men's trousers (I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting that led to that idea), Nintendo's 'lads mags' ads now look like relics of a less civilised age.

Key specifications

Design, build and display

• Big and heavy
• Beautifully made

Opening the box containing an 18in gaming laptop often feels like a kind of ceremony. The packaging for the Razer Blade 18 is festooned with logos for Intel, Thunderbolt, and THX Spatial Audio, but also manages to be slimmer than you’d imagine.

The same is true of the laptop itself – it’s not the thickest we’ve seen, though it disguises its bulk by utilising a stepped design that’s thinner at the edge for a few centimetres before becoming thicker toward the middle where you’ll also find the vents for the cooling system. There's no getting away from the laptop’s weight - it’s three times that of the Geekom X14 Pro – making this a desktop replacement rather than something truly portable.

Razer has always been consistent in its design language, pairing matte black with bright green accents, and the same look is found here, with the green flash visible inside the USB ports and on the logo on the back of the lid. Elsewhere, it’s plain black, such that the screen and keyboard blend into the chassis when it’s switched off. Hit the power switch, and you’re treated to the RGB keyboard, which can be customised per-key or just switched to plain white.

Design score: 4/5

Features

• Thunderbolt 5 (and 4)
• Surprising battery life

Thunderbolt 5 isn’t seen much in laptops outside of the MacBook Pro, but there's one on here as part of Razer’s policy of piling on the best tech available. Interestingly, if you’re using Thunderbolt to hook up to an external monitor, the TB5 port is connected to the Nvidia GPU, while the accompanying TB4 port goes to the CPU’s integrated graphics cores and you won’t like that if you’re trying to run a game. Good luck telling them apart, as while they’re on different sides of the laptop chassis, there are no symbols next to them to give a hint about which is which and it’s much easier to find the HDMI port, leaving the TB5 for something like the LaCie Rugged Pro 5 SSD.

The Blade 18 is well equipped for connectivity, with five USB ports in total including the two Thunderbolts. Charging is taken care of using a giant brick, connecting to a two-pin socket on the laptop using an L-shaped plug that you have to be careful to put in the right way around lest it partially block the Ethernet socket. Wi-Fi 7 should take care of your networking needs, and that THX logo on the box (and again on the front of the laptop) is justified by an array of six speakers that, while they do sound better than most laptop speakers, will still be overlooked in favour of a good headset.

And then there's the screen. It’s an absolute beauty, the extra size and 4K resolution afforded by the form factor making it more immersive to watch, and with over 600 nits of brightness on offer you’ll be fumbling for the Fn button (which, in a brilliant touch, dims the keyboard backlight so that only the symbols you’re controlling with it are lit when you press it) to turn it down anywhere other than in really bright environments. It’s colourful too, managing 98% of DCI-P3, 89% of Adobe RGB, and 100% of sRGB. It’s ever so slightly better here than that of the MSI Crosshair 16 HX, and also larger and with a higher resolution. Not bad for an IPS, and it’s a dual-mode one that will double the frame rate if you halve the resolution, a feature that will please a certain kind of gamer more than it will most video editors. Who needs 440Hz anyway? We’re sure there's someone.

Battery life, when playing a looping video at least, clocks in at over eight hours, which is unheard of for a gaming laptop with these kinds of processors onboard. It’s an easy assumption that during the test, which isn’t very stressful, it was only using its Efficient processor cores and probably its integrated GPU too, leaving the power-hungry Nvidia chip to bide its time. Put some pressure on the Blade 18 and you can expect that figure to drop, but until then it’s a fine example of how efficient Intel CPUs have become.

Feature score: 4/5

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing. Geekbench AI tests the CPU and GPU on a variety of AI-powered and AI-boosted tasks.
• Cinebench: Tests the CPU and GPU's ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions' Procyon software suite to test the system's ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life in a looping video test.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system's ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system's ability to run several key tasks in Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system's ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process. We take the total time taken to resize the images and divide by 5.

Performance

• Very fast at everything
• Gets pretty loud

As you might expect from something this highly specced, the Razer Blade 18’s performance is excellent. At the time of writing it’s the best laptop, and the second best computer overall, in Creative Bloq’s big list of Geekbench 6 GPU benchmark results, and doesn’t do too badly in the CPU results either, holding court with the likes of the Alienware 16 Area-51 and Dell Pro Max 18 Plus.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus is a new member of the Arrow Lake family, having been launched in early 2026 just before the third-gen chips became available. It has some enhancements over the standard second-gen lineup, including increased speed in the CPU/memory controller linkage, for lower system latency, and support for Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool, which attempts to optimise workloads for the processor even if they were written with another chip in mind. These are very gaming-focused optimisations, but the laptop is excellent at creative work, whether it’s rendering in Cinebench or producing slow-motion video in Topaz Video AI. It’s better in office apps than just about any other system we’ve tested, and supplied some of the highest Photoshop scores in Pugetbench we’ve ever seen.

A lot of this must be down to the GPU, which is Nvidia’s current best mobile GeForce chip with 24GB of its own VRAM. There are a load of cooling innovations inside the Blade 18 to cope with the heat output of these processors, including a vapour chamber over the CPU and some new thermal interface gel to give a good connection between chip and cooler. What it comes down to, though, are three fans, and they run loud. You can buy a Razer cooling pad, into which the laptop slots almost as if it had been designed to perfectly fit, but it’s quite capable of dealing with the heat on its own, as long as you don’t mind the noise.

Performance score: 5/5

Price

It’s a lot of money. It starts cheaper, but at £4,999.99 or $5,399.99 for the spec we've reviewed here you’re going to need a meeting with your company accountant or bank manager if you’re considering buying this. There are few similarly specced laptops, though it’s possible to spec a Dell 18 Pro Max up to £5,809.07 with an RTX Pro 3000 GPU, which means if you want this kind of power, you’re going to have to pay Razer’s prices for it.

Value score: 3/5

Who is it for?

• Money makers

It’s an investment, but a laptop like this can make you a lot of money by speeding up your workflow and allowing you to do more in the same amount of time. Either that, or it’s something to kick back with after making your money, playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with full path-tracing enabled.

Buy it if...

• You have the cash
• You need the fastest
• And the biggest

Don't buy it if...

• Anything else will do
• You need even more power from a desktop PC
• You’d rather save money

Also consider

At the time, it felt like my whole world had collapsed. Could I ever trust tech again? I started to see everything from memory cards to hard drives in a new light. Not a guarantee, not even a promise to protect my data. More of a shrug and "Well, hopefully it won't go wrong...".

Twenty years later, my psychic wounds have healed, and I've almost forgotten the incident. But a news story this week has brought it all rushing back.

Nine PBS in St Louis, Missouri – part of the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) network, which is roughly America's equivalent of the BBC – has spent months in a Denver courtroom trying to access 50TB of footage from its 70-year archive.

This includes historic material such as their coverage of the Great Flood of 1993 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Irreplaceable stuff, basically. And this data went missing not because a piece of technology failed, but because the company "looking after" it simply disappeared.

If a calamity like this can happen to a major national broadcaster with all their lawyers, contracts and institutional heft, how are the rest of us meant to cope in a similar situation? It's a scary thought. And the more you dig into the details of this case, the worse your nightmares will get.

Devil in the details

Nine PBS had used a storage provider called Open Source Storage for years without incident, and so it had continued renewing its contract every year. But at the start of 2026, the latter stopped responding to messages. When the contract lapsed in March, Nine PBS lost access to its data entirely. There was no warning, even though their contract stipulated that Open Source Storage needed to give the client 30 days to retrieve everything.

It later emerged that OSS had gone under as a company, and was listed as delinquent with the Colorado Secretary of State. The good news was that footage was still intact, on physical servers inside a data centre owned by Iron Mountain.

The bad news? Iron Mountain had no direct relationship to Nine PBS at all, so it refused to hand over the data. Months of legal wrangling followed, including a default judgment, a lawsuit, and eventually a court-ordered process allowing Nine PBS to retrieve its stuff.

Urgent wake-up call

Incidents like this are a wake-up call to everyone, but especially independent freelancers, who'll typically rely on a single cloud service (hands up, guilty as charged) to look after our stuff. We all go around assuming that "in the cloud" = "totally safe", when really it just means "on somebody else's computer, essentially being held hostage and subject to the whims of business, the competence of stuff, and anyone who might have a grudge against us".

The point is simple: only having one method of storage, whether that's physical (a hard drive that can fail) or cloud-based (a company that can screw you over) is kind of insane. A proper backup strategy, spreading copies across at least two different types of storage, is clearly the way to go.

No, it's not fun. Yes, it's tedious. But would you get in a car – however much you trust the driver – without putting on a seatbelt? Exactly.

Some brands have seen fit to update long-standing character designs for modern times. We've seen Kellogg's turn the Corn Flakes rooster into a kaiju and Kraft Heinz torture its Jet-Puffed marshmallows. But a classic British corn crisps brand has just proved that a great character design can stand the test of time with very little tinkering.

When I was a lad, pickled onion Monster Munch was the king of crisps, but this was in the days before we had such exotic flavours as black truffle and Thai sweet chilli on supermarket shelves.

It's an impressive sign of endurance to that Monster Munch not only still has a place in the market, but that it's using the same cast of monster characters as when Smiths launched the brand four decades ago.

Owned by PepsiCo since 1989, Monster Munch has undergone several refreshes over the years. It's always tried to avoid scaring away loyal fans, with the monsters remaining a constant, but other details had started to steal focus away from them.

The refresh turns back the clock in a sense, making the the monsters the stars again and their heritage value plain to see. The work of PepsiCo’s own European design team, it includes a tweaked logo, together with a new monogram, and updated illustrations, packaging design and photography.

Redrawn versions of the trio of monsters take things back to basics, tossing out the computer-generated 3D look and gradient backgrounds of recent years in favour of a simpler, bolder aesthetic that highlights the brand's nostalgic appeal, keeping things playful while refining well-recognised elements.

Writing on LinkedIn , Jon Bailey, senior design manager at PepsiCo, says the brand's long history required a cautious approach.

The light touch makes good sense. The monster characters have been around since the brand's launch in 1977, initially as The Prime Monster. They've endured because they're so distinct and recognisable. There's a little bit of The Muppets about them, but they're clearly their own monsters, and the unique colour and form of each one helps immediately identify each flavour of crisps, although the flavours they represent have varied over the years.

In an update back in 2019, Walkers rebranded Monster Munch at the same time as the likes of Quavers, Wotsits and Squares. A now dated-looking looking gradient was brought in, and a big Walkers logo was plonked in prime position on the front of the packaging.

That visually linked the range to a broader portfolio of brands, but, as some pointed out at the time, such a connection probably wasn't of paramount importance to customers given that these were established legacy brands in their own right. Sensibly, the latest update has reverted that move, making Monster Munch the star again, with no Walkers logo in sight on the front of the bags.

Just one question remains. Is the shape of the crisps themselves supposed to look like the monsters' paws, or the yellow pickled onion monster's single eye and lashes?

The company has also launched its new Artist Ultra 14 drawing display, an OLED tablet with impressive specs for just $699, down to $592.99 as part of the sale, running until September 15th. The standout deal seems to be on the popular Artist Pro 27 (Gen 2), which is $300 off and down to $1,599.99.

Other models are up to 50% off, like the Deco Pro S/M pen drawing tablet, and I've picked out some more sale highlights for you below. New to drawing tablets? Check out our breakdown of 11 drawing tablet specs explained.

We said in our review at the time that there was nothing to fault at the original price, so when it's reduced to just $132.53, we're talking truly exceptional value for what is the only perfect-scoring budget chair in our pick of the best office chairs for back pain.

Not in the US? See the pricing in your region below.

As we found in out in testing for our recent OoopusX Op.22 review, the profiles include a balanced neutral tuning that serves as an ideal introduction to the audiophile world for people who have only used standard mainstream headphones (you'll finally be able to hear the mid tones that have been missing all your life).

When you do want to make things more bass heavy, you just need to twist the handy dial on each earpiece for an extra sub-bass punch – great for drum 'n' bass, trip hop and EDM. Such generous versatility at this price point and makes these a shoo-in new entry to add to our guide to the best budget IEM.

Our new favourite under-$50 IEM

Our resident audiophile has reviewed headphones ranging from budget gems to $5,000 over ears, and he rates the Op.22 as a seriously good value proposition for anyone looking to make the move towards more balanced sound than what you get with mainstream earphones.

Crucially, he found that the bass dial genuinely works. Instead of just adding muddiness to the mix, it provides the option to add adjustable deep sub-bass cleanly and effectively when you want it.

Not in the US? Check below for any deals in your area.

The animator Michel Gagné has posted the first trailer for a hand-drawn movie that he began making in 2012. The Saga of Rex tells the story of a little fox who gets abducted by aliens and forms a bond with a mysterious being called Aven. And it looks extraordinary (see our guides to the best laptops for animation and the best animation software if you're inspired).

Michel Gagné's past credits include work at Sullivan Bluth Studios on iconic movies like An American Tail and at Warner Bros on the likes of Quest for Camelot and The Iron Giant. He's also worked at Disney and Pixar and designed special effects for Star Wars: the Clone Wars, and the video game Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

His short film Prelude to Eden was nominated for an Annie Award in 1996 and Sensology was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2010. The Saga of Rex is a much more ambitious project: a 60-minute feature film made almost entirely alone.

The Canadian animator raised much of the financing for the film through his freelance work on Hollywood productions. He designed and animated it using Toon Boom Harmony along with Adobe's Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop. The only other contributor to the visual side was longtime friend Seung Beom Kim, who helped with inbetweening. This assistance is allowed Michel to stick to his objective of making the film entirely hand drawn without modern digital shortcuts

The character Rex first appeared in Michel's 1998 self-published book A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. The artist later expanded it across six volumes of Kazu Kibuishi’s Flight anthology. Image Comics later collected the chapters into a complete graphic novel.

A 2012 Kickstarter campaign helped fund a short proof-of-concept clip for an animated movie. After that, Belgium-based GRID Animation optioned the film at one point, but Michel ultimately decided the movie had to be independent.

“I wanted to make the film that was in my soul, and to do that, I needed to completely remove the commercial and transactional aspects of the process,” he said in a recent interview with Animation Magazine.

While that meant no deadline, the director kept up a strict work ethic, committing a minimum of eight hours a day to the film, while also doing freelance work to earn a living. When he temporarily lost the use of his right hand at one point, he continued animating with his left for two months.

“I went a bit insane while making this movie," he says. "I would disconnect from reality and enter the worlds I was creating. It was intoxicating at times.”

Such an ambitious independent animation project is a once-in-a-lifetime piece of work. Michel describes it as a "journey of discovery, experimentation and revelation.”

“Would I do anything differently? Probably a thousand things along the way. But I think the film needed to take the journey it took to become what it is”.

Michel hopes to take The Saga of Rex to film festivals in 2027,

You can learn more about The Saga of Rex at sagaofrex.com.

Gamescom will take place between 26 and 30 August with, as is customary, Wednesday 26 being reserved for trade admissions only, while the public will be admitted between Thursday 27 and Sunday 30 August. If you’re going to be in the vicinity of Cologne during that time, general admission tickets are still available.

But the show’s traditional curtain-raiser, Opening Night Live – hosted by the ubiquitous American Geoff Keighley, as has been the case for the past eight years – takes place on August 25. It will kick off at 7 pm BST, with a half-hour pre-show build-up starting at 6.30 pm, and you’ll be able to stream the show.

In a pre-briefing given by Keighley and various members of the show’s top brass, Keighley confirmed that, among other games, this year’s ONL will showcase the likes of Gears of War E-Day, Final Fantasy VII Revelation (whose director, Naoki Hamaguchi, will make a stage appearance), The Witcher 3’s new Songs of the Past expansion and Metro 2039. He added that ONL will include a live performance of the music from Mewgenics, and there will no doubt be a welter of other games making their first public appearances.

Sold out for the first time

Given its modern pre-eminence in a world in which countless video game shows have fallen by the wayside, Gamescom likes to hail every new iteration as record-breaking in some way, and the 2026 show, according to Gamescom Director Tim Endres, will see a record number of exhibitors, with over 1,600 games companies booking stands -- the first time the 1,600 mark has been surpassed. Endres added that it will also be the first time the show has been completely sold out to exhibitors: it would be literally impossible to accommodate any more.

Which is a tad daunting for those of us attending – Gamescom’s venue, the Koelnmesse, is so huge that we often have to cover huge distances between meetings. According to Endres, it will occupy “Over 233,000 square metres, about the size of 33 football fields.” The show has always taken a major toll on shoe-leather.

One of the joys of Gamescom is discovering unexpected gems of games, often on the back of word- of-mouth recommendations and found on the stands of obscure publishers and developers. But for the three (inevitably gruelling) days in which I’ll be in attendance, gaps in my schedule are already more or less non-existent.

However, I’m excited about many games I have booked to either play or see for the first time. Most notably Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third and most ambitious remade instalment of the nonpareil JRPG; Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, the second remake of Lara Croft’s original starring vehicle; Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, Turok: Origins and Stuntman: Hollywood from Saber Interactive; Microsoft’s Ontos; a new Rebellion title; and Ritual Tides, an as-yet-unannounced Wicker Man-influenced game from British developer Vertpaint.

Online presence and themes

Most of the games industry’s big guns will be at Gamescom, although one glaring absence is that of Rockstar Games, with GTA VI fast approaching. Nintendo, Microsoft, Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Namco and Electronic Arts will be there, while CD Projekt Red, of The Witcher fame, will return after a hiatus. Gamescom’s Endres said that 2026 will see 420 indie exhibitors, up 16 per cent on last year.

That plays into one of Gamescom’s two themes for this year, as described by Felix Falk, Managing Director of game, the German games industry’s official body: “Small teams having huge success.” The other theme, Falk says, is: “Saving the world through play.” A lofty ambition, but Gamescom will have a tangible strand reinforcing the idea: a series of events, watchable via the Gamescom website, in collaboration with Games Done Quick (GDQ), a charity that raises money through bonkers speedruns with all manner of handicaps, such as blindfolded participants.

Endres adds that a constant feed of news and updates (in four languages including English) will run on the website, along with the Awesome Indie show, which aims to take an in-depth look at many of the best indie games on show and the stories behind them, plus the video-based show Gamescom Studio.

And we will, of course, report back with our own personal observations and highlights after the show. Meanwhile, strap yourselves in and get ready for what is now the biggest event of the year as far as gamers – and the industry they love – are concerned.

The most surprising reveal at D23 was Disney's Clay. Slated for 2028, the animated movie will tell the story of a reluctant mentor who has to look after a newborn ball of clay called Musy. Although it will employ 3D CG animation, Disney's chief creative officer Jared Bush says the film will be designed to look as close as possible to real claymation.

For some, that makes the film's name sound like a working title as utilitarian and unimaginative as Snakes on a Plane. And there asking, again, why Disney insists on so many short, one-word titles.

In the last 16 years, Disney has given us Tangled, Frozen, Brave, Wish, Moana and Zootopia (plus sequels for three of them). Coming soon, we have Hexed. Pixar, meanwhile, has given us Cars, Coco, Soul, Onward, Elemental and Hoppers.

Not all of the studios' movies have had single-word titles, but there are a lot of them, and some fans seem to be getting tired of them.

"These simple, yet non-specific to the film, titles give me no insight or uniqueness to what the film is," one fan argues on X. “I can’t help but wonder how these films would be perceived if they received more attributable titles.”

Yet it's not really a new trend that began with Tangled. After 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney's early movies were, in order, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi, released between 1940 and 1942.

In the Disney Renaissance era, we had Aladdin, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan.

Many of these movies were named after characters, often ones that were already well known from fairy tales, myths or existing IPs. But Disney has gradually shifted from adapting classic European fairy tales to producing more original stories and drawing from broader global folklore. Using a character's name makes less sense when nobody knows the character yet – which might be part of the reason why Pixar's Elio failed to capture the world's attention.

That means using more abstract words as titles, but continuing the trend has quite a few advantages for studio. It's often easier to create a strong brand identity around a single, punchy word, and Disney titles are brands as much as movies.

A short word is easier to turn into a logo that's immediately recognisable and fits cleanly on merchandise, theme park attractions and thumbnails on streaming platforms. This is even more important when young kids form a large part of the audience. Single, short words are more easily understood and remembered.

They also create more universal comprehension. A single conceptual word like Soul or Brave carries similar emotional weight across different cultures and languages. Minimalist titles can be easier to translate an localise, or are often simply left untranslated, avoiding clunky titles.

They're also more gender-neutral. Changing Rapunzel to Tangled and The Snow Queen to Frozen was an attempt to avoid putting off young boys that might not want to see a 'princess movie.' They titles might also make the movie sound more appealing to adults, branding Disney's movies as four-quadrant cinematic experiences rather than merely kids' animations.

They also serve as high-concept summaries of the movie. Pixar in particular tends to like titles that play on words while conveying the thematic core of the movie, like Inside Out and Elemental. I'm sorry to break it to all those Disney fans that want another The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad or The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but I think Disney's short titles are going to be sticking around.

But the new Archery World Cup logo might be one of the few that can avoid such a fate. A sharp (last pun I promise) rebrand has completely overhauled the identity of World Archery's competition, with striking colours, dynamic motion design and a new customised typeface.

Devised by the design studio Arecibo, the Archery World Cup rebrand has been rolling out during this year's 20th anniversary competition ahead of the final in Saltillo, Mexico, taking place over 12 and 13 September.

The previous logo design with its target face-inspired tricolour rounded squares looked like a dated corporate identity beside contemporary sporting brands. The branding was also disconnected across its various expressions, and there were no system rules, leading to inconsistent application across each venue. Moreover, World Archery felt that the logo failed to communicate what was at stake in the tournament – namely, the prestige of trophy itself.

With that in mind, Arecibo set out to capture the drama of the competition. The strategy for the rebrand was synthesised in two words: “Can’t Miss”. The idea was to communicate that the archer can’t miss the shot, and the audience can’t miss the show.

"The drama and intrigue is not in the super-human skill of the archers but when a shot is missed," Arecibo's Graham Anderson writes. "So I shifted the organisation’s emphasis for the contest from pure sporting values to the spectator’s experience.

"The key move is introducing more opportunities for narrative and intrigue while still honouring the precision and skill of the sport. Narrative could be pulled from its global stages, characterful athletes, emotional intensity, and sporting excellence. Every stage, every shot, every story matters."

“Can’t Miss” isn’t just a slogan but a filter applied to every decision in the rebrand, Graham says. "Does this show what’s at stake, does it reinforce our values, does it connect this shot to the wider season and our audience to our archers?" These were questions asked of every asset designed.

The logo highlights the importance of the trophy itself – a little like the rationale for the Fifa World Cup 2026 logo, but without resorting to a literal photo of the prize. It's a stylised icon with a 45-degree angle and stepped shape at the end of the arm that are intended to create a dynamic visual device suitable for various applications.

The icon and wordmark separate when needed, and cropped icons turn the mark into a graphic device in its own right.

A customised variable typeface alteration, AWC Baikal, was commissioned from Lausanne based foundry, Newglyph, with weights running from condensed light to extended bold. An angle from the logo is integrated into the typeface for an expressive custom aesthetic that links to the brand's foundation.

As for brand colours, Arecibo went for a dual system. A core palette of blues was chosen for the main identity, while the stadium design system is broader. The brief was to create a system that would be more consistent and easier to use while still having personality.

Arecibo's solution was a modular kit that any host city can build with, including a squared grid template of scalable frames with defined brand and sponsor areas, simple rules of hierarchy, and specified sizes to ensure sponsor logos can be read on camera. Core brand elements can be recoloured but never have to be redrawn, so every stage of the competition can have its own identity while still feeling like part of a whole.

The same philosophy was applied to motion pieces. An After Effects template was built with fixed branding but editable content, making it easier to ensure pieces hit target without the need to have a designer in the room holding the bow.

Light bars clamp onto the top of your display and provide a light source that's designed to illuminate only your desk surface. This allows you to see your keyboard and other peripherals without casting glare on your monitor or into your eyes, and without taking up valuable workspace.

Many people find that this can reduce the eye fatigue that often accompanies late-night work sessions because of the harsh contrast of staring into a brightly lit screen with no ambient lighting. If you need a monitor too, see our comparisons of the best monitors for graphic artists).

• Shop monitor light bars on Amazon

Not the design you want for your setup? Check out more of the best monitor light bars below.

These games are hard. Really hard. What makes it stranger is they're hiding behind some of the most welcoming cartoon nostalgia imaginable.

The Disney Afternoon Collection brings together Capcom's six NES games based on DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin, games that were already notable when they released for having unusually high production values for licensed titles. They weren't throwaway cartoon cash-ins either; Capcom built proper platformers around these characters, with DuckTales letting you tackle its five worlds in different orders, Rescue Rangers offering same-screen co-op and Darkwing Duck borrowing heavily from the Mega Man school of platforming.

• Buy Disney Afternoon Collection on Amazon: £29.99 £24.97
• Buy Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition on Amazon: £29.99 £25.99

And, bloody hell, they don't half expect you to know what you're doing. Darkwing Duck is probably the clearest example of Capcom’s 8-bit mechanics, as it looks like a children's cartoon, but the level design is often vicious, your options for dealing with enemies are limited and some sections demand timing that feels absurd when you remember the game was being marketed alongside afternoon television.

Side-scrolling shooter TaleSpin is even more demanding, because Baloo's plane has a painfully slow rate of fire at the beginning, enemies can fill the screen with shots, and some of the narrow passages to navigate leave you with barely enough room to manoeuvre. It’s one of the nastiest games here for its devotion to making life hard, but like the others in the Disney Afternoon Collection, I keep picking at it, trying again (and again) and edging just a little further, getting that tiny bit better.

Rayman returns to haunt my nightmares

It’s a similar story with Rayman, a game I remember as the beautifully animated, oddball platformer that sold a million copies and put Ubisoft on the map. I recall it being tough but fair, but I also remember the incredibly detailed pixel art, colourful atmosphere, and quirky visuals making up for it; the pull of playing an ‘actual cartoon’ had me coming back for just one more go.

The new Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition makes the whole thing even more interesting because Ubisoft has basically opened the archives: you get five versions of the original game, more than 120 additional levels, the long-lost SNES prototype and an interactive documentary with more than 50 minutes of interviews with the original developers. Basically, there’s a ton of content here to enjoy long after the game has punished you one too many times.

Although modern life is going a little easier on me here, as there are concessions to how we like games these days, including rewind, multiple save slots, infinite lives and instant level unlocks, just to make life a little easier and Rayman a bit more approachable, which tells you quite a lot about how Ubisoft expects modern players to cope with the original. And I used that rewind. A lot.

Because what I've realised playing these games again is that the difficulty isn't really about enemies having enormous health bars or bosses requiring some complicated modern combat system. It's baked into the levels and the design at a granular level. A platform is just far enough away to make you commit to the jump, an enemy is positioned where you're most likely to land, a hazard appears just as you're concentrating on something else, and suddenly you're back at the start wondering what the hell happened. In terms of how to design a solid platform game, you can’t really go wrong with either Disney Afternoon Collection or Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition.

While I fondly remember playing these games, I don’t recall them ending after two or three minutes and being sent back to restart; that’s how we played back then, and a game could last us a year and become a test of memory as much as reflexes. So while the modern rewind features feel like an admission that this old way of playing can be a bit much now, with Digital Eclipse adding rewind, save features and challenge modes to The Disney Afternoon Collection, the new Rayman goes even further with accessibility options, if you are going to buy these I’d urge you to hold off making life easy, just for a time, to play them as intended.

And perhaps that's why I'm enjoying them so much now. Under all those beautiful sprites, Disney characters and wonderfully strange Rayman animations are games that expected you to pay attention, remember things and get better through repetition. We didn't necessarily have easier games as children; we had fewer alternatives, more time and an astonishing tolerance for getting killed by colourful, kind of irritating characters that looked like they belonged on a Saturday morning cartoon.

Perusing the pages of the new book, many began to notice artwork that looked suspiciously AI-generated. With AI creating a divide among creatives, many fans shared their disappointment at the discovery, but to me, it feels like just another inevitability of the AI invasion.

The artwork in question is a piece titled "Big City, Little Spider" created by concept artist Scott McInnes. It all looks pretty innocuous at first glance, but take a closer look and strange details emerge. Taxi cabs merge into each other, fire escapes lead to nowhere, traffic lights warp, and windows appear in nonsensical places. The bottom line is, it stinks of AI.

"Selling an “art book” that has AI visuals in it should genuinely be illegal," one disgruntled X user wrote. "Can’t say I'm surprised that GenAI is in Spider-Man art book but I’m still disappointed and hurt all the same," another added.

With big superhero titles like Supergirl admitting to using AI, Spider-Man isn't even the first of its genre to be caught using AI, and I sense that the technology will only become more normalised in the industry. From The Brutalist's AI art controversy to the Fantastic Four AI poster drama, it's clear the technology is already being embraced in film production and promotion, regardless of audience backlash.

Do I believe there are some productive applications for AI technology? Yes. But when audiences are continuously identifying AI slop that manages to slip through the cracks, it makes me question how valuable AI is in the film industry.

Should AI be embraced in the film world? Have your say in the comments below.

Larger laptops can pack higher-performance internals and larger cooling systems to avoid severe thermal throttling, but at the same time you don't want a machine that's too hefty to lug around on site visits.

The solution for many is to choose a 16in laptop but one that's slim and relatively light. In this guide, we've picked out the best options based on our own reviews and testing with real-world CAD workflows. You might want to also see our general guide to the best laptops for CAD and our pick of the best laptops for 3D modelling.

The best portable CAD laptops for on-site work

Best portable CAD laptop overall

30-second review: Out top pick as a portable CAD laptop for on-site work has a big 16-inch display and fast performance but in a build that's about as sleek and slim as you can get for this amount of power. Our tests found it to be pretty much unbeatable as a Windows laptop for any creative work, as long as your budget isn't tight.

Design: As well as the slim footprint, the integrated ASUS Dial on the touchpad can be handy for CAD work, particularly for working on site when you might not want to take a mouse. It provides a precise degree of control and customisable functions.

Performance: With AMD Ryzen AI and NVIDIA RTX 5070 chips, the P16 offers AI-powered graphic processing that makes lighter work of complex CAD and AutoCAD tasks. Our testing found the cooling to cope well too – not faultless, and we did get significant noise and heat under heavy workloads, but not to the point that performance suffered.

You can kit the laptop out with up to 64GB of RAM, which will amply cover most heavy-duty CAD workflows. Storage-wise, if the 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD drive isn't enough, there's also the option to expand via the via additional M.2 slot.

Such heavy computing and graphical power tends to be rough on a battery, but the 2025 ProArt P16 manages to deliver reasonable battery life for its class, giving us around 6 hours of continuous video playback in our testing. This pales in comparison to the battery life of MacBooks and ultraportables and hybrid-working laptops, but it's not bad at all for a Windows laptop with this amount of power.

Price: The P16 is pricey, but given that it costs less than the £/$3,000 you'd have to pay for a desktop setup with a 5080/5090 graphics card, the ASUS ProArt P16 (2025), we consider it to be competitively priced for a studio laptop that will deliver many years of professional work.

Read more: ASUS ProArt P16 review

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Best robust portable CAD workstation

30-second review: "Portable" is subjective. The Dell Precision 7780 is not a travel laptop, but if you need a fully fledged transportable workstation for heavy CAD work on a site, this heavyweight 17-inch mobile workstation is built for the most demanding of jobs, and its modular design provides additional reassurance since you can easily replace components.

Design: The Dell Precision 7680 is rugged in physical construction, with the weight that comes with that. With its thick metal and alloy chassis, it makes the the slim ProArt P16 above look like a lifestyle laptop. The chassis is built for demanding industrial environments, although both devices share MIL-STD 810H military durability ratings.

The 17.3-inch display provides lots of space for designing in CAD software, and the 120Hz refresh rate means its well prepared for motion work too. It's also highly repairable. It has a modular design with replaceable parts like CAMM2/SODIMM memory, M.2 SSD slots. Battery packs swap out cleanly, and screen assemblies and keyboards can be replaced if damaged.

Performance:

There's no lack of power with the 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13850HX, vPro, and the the NVIDIA RTX 3500 Ada 12GB GDDR6 GPU is more than capable for almost all creative applications. There's also plenty of flexibility to make upgrades if you really need them.

The weight and size can restrict mobile working, and battery life isn't very good at all. The 6 Cell, 93 Wh, Lithium Ion Polymer battery only managed around 3 hours of creative work in our tests, so you'll need a plug socket or to take a spare battery or charger with out on site.

Price: Starting at around $1,800, the Precision 7680 is another expensive laptop that quickly escalates when you look at higher configurations, The flip side is that this a laptop that really is built to last, with plenty of components that can be replaced easily,

Read more: Dell Precision 7780 review

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Best portable CAD for value

30-second review: The Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 11 delivers compute power close to that of a $2,500 workstation but at a fraction of the cost, and with thermal management is superior to most thin-and-light CAD laptops, which should reduce the risk of throttling during long rendes. For engineering students and budget-conscious professionals who need CAD capability without the eye-watering price tag, this is a smart buy.

Design: The Legion Slim 5 really does live up to the 'Slim' part of its name, with the tapered chassis running from 19.9 mm to 25.2 mm. It's restrained for a gaming laptop: the RGB lighting can be muted or switched off entirely so you don't have to turn up on site looking like you're packing Christmas decorations.At around 2kg, it's portable enough for site visits too, and the 16-inch QHD+ IPS display provides a sharp, colour-accurate canvas for technical drawings.

Performance: We found the Ryzen 7 9800H to provide strong multi-core performance for complex assemblies, while the NVIDIA RTX 5060 graphics handles GPU-accelerated rendering in applications like Twinmotion and V-Ray competently if not quite as seamlessly as the two devices above. Lenovo's thermal management was able to sustain performance across long rendering sessions without throttling; a significant advantage over thinner rivals at this price point.

We recorded 5 to 7 hours of battery life for general use and, falling to 3–4 hours under heavy CAD workloads. Having easy access to mains power is recommendable for extended rendering sessions, but the battery holds up well for general use during the day.

Price: Starting at $1,349, the Legion Slim 5 Gen 11 is the most affordable route we can recommend to RTX-powered CAD portability at the moment. The price-to-performance ratio offers excellent value.

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Most portable CAD laptop

30-second review: This take on the ultra-lightweight format is a sliver of a laptop that's a challenger for MacBooks in the slim and light 16in space. Despite the ample screen, it weighs just 1.2kg, while Qualcomm's 18-core Snapdragon X2 Extreme chip gives it the power for heavy CAD processing.

Design: Asus has built the Zenbook A16 from "Ceraluminum", an alloy of ceramic and aluminium that makes use of the tech in your grannie's teacup to create a frame that's simultaneously light and rigid, and it makes retro return to the beige shades of the 1990s. Whether you appreciate that will be subjective, but there's no denying the quality of the bright 16-inch 3K OLED screen with deep blacks and precise colour accuracy. There's plenty of connectivity too, including 2x USB4, 1x USB-A, HDMI 2.1, and a MicroSD card slot.

Performance: Snapdragon processors have come of age, and our benchmark testing found the Zenbook A16 to come close to MacBooks in terms of performance, with an extraordinary single-core Geekbench score of 3,673. While RAM will handle dense datasets, the only slight letdown is the integrated GPU that can't take on much more than light 3D.

Asus has taken another leaf out of Apple's book in battery performance. We got a massive 17 hours of video playback, more than enough for a day-long site visit. A high-wattage charger can keep it topped up.

Price: Priced around £2,100 / $2,000–$2,200, this portable CAD laptop is fairly competitive for a premium ultraportable. It packs 48 GB of RAM as standard, so it's ready to handle large vectors while you're on the move.

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How we test

We evaluate CAD laptops by checking that core components—CPU, GPU, and RAM—are properly balanced. (A powerful processor paired with inadequate memory, for example, won't perform well.) We run benchmarks to verify each component delivers full performance. Laptops are more susceptible to thermal and power issues than desktops, so the same chip can perform differently across systems.

We test storage performance since manufacturers rarely specify SSD details. For displays, we look for 95% DCI-P3 colour coverage minimum. (High pixel density helps with sharp text and fine design details.) We also assess build quality, keyboard feel, trackpad responsiveness, and overall usability.

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How to choose

Choosing the best portable CAD laptop for on-site work means balancing performance, screen size and weight (and, budget of course). While 2D drafting is often not hugely power-hungry, working with 3D models, large assemblies, or complex point clouds will be significantly more demanding and requires a more capable machine. Generally, the more complex and larger your projects, the more powerful your machine needs to be.

This means focusing on processors (CPU). A clock speed of 3+ GHz is recommended as software like AutoCAD relies heavily on a single fast core. Look for high-performance mobile chips like the latest Intel Core Ultra 7/9, AMD Ryzen 7/9, or Apple Silicon mobile processors. Complement this with ample RAM (32 GB is the professional standard) for handling large files and multitasking.

While a large screen goes against portability, it can help reduce eye strain and maximise workspace, making it more comfortable to work in CAD software and visibilise details in designs. Larger devices also have number pads, which many CAD designers find useful.

Rugged builds, strong cooling, and enterprise‑grade components will be beneficial for field engineers and architects working in tougher, dusty environments or difficult conditions. If you’re frequently moving between job sites, weight will be another factor. the Asus Zenbook A16 offers a light footprint, while the Dell Precision 7680 offers power and easy repair with its modular design but only moderate portability.

Some of the more powerful portable CAD laptops also have quite low battery life, so bear that in mind if you're not able to guarantee having a power source (note that some laptops like the Dell Precision 7680 allow you to switch the battery).

Also look for ISV-certified stability. ISV is a guarantee that specific computer hardware and professional software will run together without crashing. Software providers like Autodesk or Adobe test and approve computer systems to certify that the hardware handles heavy workloads reliably. Always check software requirements before making your purchase.

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FAQs

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There have been huge successes like the Pokémon X Natural History Museum collab, which made sense with a focus on fossil Pokémon. The luxury Pokémon X Secretlab collab also seemed on-brand (the franchise has roots in gaming, of course).

And I really, really want to love the latest Pokémon X Polaroid instant camera collab, truly – I'm a photographer after all – but I can't forgive some of these lazy designs and missed opportunities.

If you want the quick version, take a look at my video below discussing the Pokémon X Polaroid collab. But for the full extent of my ranting on this topic (and the long list of irks I have with it), then stick with me.

* If you can't see the TikTok video above, please refresh the page.

Has the company completely forgotten that one of its most iconic games is called Pokémon Snap? The retro cartridge is my favourite thing to play on my Nintendo 64, as well as the newer title on my Switch 2, and the collab could have taken a Leaf-eon (sorry) out of Instax's book and allowed you to transfer images from the camera to the console, and vice versa, to print your Pokémon snaps.

• See my guide on How to print Instax photos from your Nintendo Switch.

Not to mention, a gaming creator called Cadea also called out probably the biggest missed opportunity with this collab, in highlighting why there isn't a Rotom-themed camera. For those who don't know, Rotom is an orange Pokémon that can transform itself into various forms of technology and household appliances. C'mon Pokémon... it was right there!

I also think the Polaroid Go Gen 3 series was the wrong model choice. If you want to celebrate nostalgia in both a gaming franchise AND photography, they should have gone for a Polaroid Supercolour 635 (I own one of these, and they're gorgeous).

The Go series looks a little compact and juvenile to me, and the new Polaroid Go Generation 3—Pikachu Edition camera, while very cute, could have been so much better if they went for a bigger camera model. Even the Polaroid Now series would offer more room to play with creatively.

I like the Pikachu tail strap and the fact that the shutter button is a Pokeball, but there aren't a lot of other design elements that make it unique. The Pikachu Edition is something that would most likely stay on my collector shelf forever, and I'd feel silly using it in public.

Moving on to the Sylveon Polaroid Go Gen 3 camera, and this design just feels lazy to me (sorry Pokémon). The only real nod it gives to Sylveon is the coloured ribbon strap, not unlike the Pikachu edition with the tail strap, and I think the company could have really camped up this camera with Sylveon ears, and maybe a bead charm.

My fave Pokémon Polaroid camera out of the newly announced trio is the Pokéball edition, which does opt for the Polaroid Now Gen 3 model and looks so much better than its siblings in the collection, at least in my opinion. The strap complements the camera beautifully, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb, and it totally leans into the Pokéball theme without trying to retain subtlety like the other two models.

On a brighter note, I have nothing negative to say about the Pokémon X Polaroid accessories that were announced. I think they have really nailed the film designs, with collectable Pokémon silhouette darkslides included too. The Poké Ball-themed accessories are a hit, and match the whole set perfectly.

Wanna buy one? The collection will be available for preorder over at Polaroid's website, as well as the Pokémon Center from August 25, with shipping commencing on September 29. As for prices, the Pokéball Edition will set you back $139.99 / £129.99, whereas the Pikachu and Sylveon Polaroid Go Gen 3 Editions will be $99.99 / £89.99.

Let's hope scalpers don't ruin this for us.

Vibe coding has taken off big time in the past year. While the open-source game engine Godot banned AI coding in an attempt to protect the sanity of its maintainers, Pocket aims to tap into the trend and allow anyone to quickly generate a basic game using a text prompt.

Meta briefly tested Pocket in Brazil last month and has now launched the app via the iOS App Store and Android Play Store in the US. Its users aren't going to be creating GTA VI, but they can generate small quizzes, puzzles and mini challenges without having to know code or learn the best game development software.

The name 'gizmo' gives a good idea of the level of sophistication the games have. They can make use of gestures like taps, swipes and phone movement as well as camera and audio input.

After a user generates a game, they can save it and share it via the app. That's where the Instagram-like social mechanic kicks in. Users can scroll through a feed of other people's generations. They can play them but also repost them and remix them.

The word 'gizmo' was inherited from a previous AI mini-game app of the same name developed by Atma Sciences. Meta licensed the technology and hired the company's team. Pocket's generative AI is powered by Meta’s Muse Spark model.

Meta's taken a leaf out of Google's playbook in releasing a wave of experimental projects in recent months. It also has Forum, an app built around Facebook Groups designed as a Reddit-style discussion platform, the Snapchat-inspired Instants, which works both as part of Instagram and as a standalone app, Seller for Meta marketplace sellers and Vibe for AI video generation.

Like these, Pocket is experimental for now as the company susses out interest, apparently now opting for lower-stakes projects after some questionable investments in the past. This is the company that renamed itself after a product that never really materialised and now think that people will want to wear its 'pervert glasses'. OpenAI also had a go at launching a generative AI social media app in the form of Sora for video. It lasted six months.

On social media, people complain of nonsensical children's literature in shops and libraries, while parents have received AI storybooks featuring their own children as unwanted gifts. In most cases, the books are shoddily made with little thought or respect given to the product or its audience.

Most people have probably come across websites with unreadable AI-written text or AI-generated books offered for sale online, but some people have been shocked to discover bad AI-generated books appearing in print in physical retail outlets.

An illustration student recently shared an image on X of a book she said "ripped her heart out" when she found it in a shop. The text and illustrations appear to have been generated by AI, while truly awful text placement leaves the book's title barely legible on the cover 'design'. And yet a real shop had the book on its shelves.

The post quickly went viral, receiving over 60,000 likes and hundreds of comments, almost all from people who were equally disheartened or had comes across similar AI catastrophes.

"It shows complete disrespect to children's books as a medium. Picture books are not just Notes app poems with random images attached. The artwork in children’s books is integral to how educational and engaging the book is to children," one person wrote.

"This looks horrible," an early childhood educator wrote. "Besides the AI, this book would be horrible for the text alone".

Along with plans for AI-generated children's programming such as Amazon's KPop Demon Hunters mockbuster, these kinds of books suggest that children are seen as an easy market for AI slop, less likely to care or complain about the quality.

But I think even young kids might have an issue with books where the imagery makes no sense, characters change their appearance from one page to the nex,t or where puzzles or drawing tasks are impossible to complete.

Google released a tool for creating AI storybooks last year, and several companies are now marketing AI tools that allow users to upload photos and details about real people to generate a story that can then be ordered in print.

Wired this week reported on cases of family tension flaring due to well-meaning grandparents giving AI-generated books as presents to their grandchildren. It seems the boomer grandparents like the novelty. Parents are often less enthused to learn that their children's names, experiences and photos have been fed into AI tools with murky data transparency policies.

“I have reiterated countless times that I do not support AI-generated art, and drew a hard line that she is absolutely not to feed any of our photos into AI or use our identifying information in any way,” one person wrote on Reddit. “However, she is creating these storylines based on experiences with my kid and modeling her characters to have similar attributes as my kid."

The children apparently aren't impressed either. One dad told Wired his children were “bored” by the books.

Daozhi Xu, a researcher at Macquarie University who published a study into the explosion of such books notes that “children do not love a storybook simply because their name or image appears in the story; they love the book because the story itself is interesting.” AI-generated books often “lack humor, memorable characters, and dramatic tension,” Xu adds.

Generative AI can help us do some things faster and easier. it's natural that some people will take advantage of that to churn out rubbish in the hope that someone might buy it. It's a shame that children are seen as an easy target despite the rich history of beautiful and inspiring children's literature and art.

Hopefully more awareness will mean that parents take the time to check what they're choosing for their kids, while book shops and libraries could also step up quality control.

If children grow up surrounded by poorly written, low‑quality AI‑generated books, it could damage their long‑term relationship with art and literature more than many people appreciate. Children learn about symbolism, nuance, creativity and logic from well‑crafted prose and art. Exposure to clumsy phrasing, incoherent storytelling and generic imagery could stunt linguistic growth and the development of interpretive skills, which could have implications far beyond the book and illustration industries.

Whether you want to display artwork, figurines or trinkets from your travels, adding shelves to your working-from-home setup can add a much-needed dose of personality to your workspace. From rustic reclaimed wood to sleek oak, these Etsy finds will add a beautiful bespoke feel to your home office.