“We didn’t want to use CG to just ‘simulate’ an illustration,” Carloni says of making the new 2026 animated movie. The aim was for audiences to feel the familiarity of Seuss’s painterly illustrations while experiencing the depth and immersion of modern 3D animation.

The creative partnership behind the film was just as collaborative. Asked how they divided the writing and directing duties, Rivinoja says they didn't split the work between them. “It was less ‘divide and conquer’, and more ‘unite and conquer’. To streamline the process, we were usually in meetings together.”

How to watch Made to Make

Working with Autodesk software such as Maya and Flow was key, as revealed in a new video series called Made to Make, which has now been expanded to include more behind-the-scenes details; watch it on the Made to Make YouTube channel.

Put simply-ish, it meant rethinking lighting, surfaces and even the edges of objects. The team paired simple, almost flat surfaces and key lighting with softer, more volumetric fill and bounce lighting. They also developed a stylised, painterly edge treatment to avoid the harsh sharpness of digital imagery. Then came realistic lens behaviour, including halation, aberration, and lens flare, which Carloni says helped ground the images in believability. The team developed the combination specifically for the film, creating its own visual style.

How Maya helped make Cat in the Hat

Maya sat at the pipeline's centre. Production designer Aidan Sugano’s hand-drawn designs were translated into 3D models there, and everything in the film, from characters and props to entire worlds, was built in the software.

For the animators, Maya was also the only way to touch the characters. Marek Kochout, for example, shaped the Cat’s performance through the Graph Editor, where a single expressive shot can involve hundreds of layered curves. The Pose Library let animators save and reuse expressions and attitudes, and over time it became a shared reference for how the Cat moves, with standout scenes added so every animator could draw on them.

Keeping a film like this on track across four countries, with teams in India, Montreal, London and Los Angeles, fell to Autodesk Flow Production Tracking, which followed every character, environment, prop and version from boards through to final compositing over roughly two years. Sugano, in New York, and VFX supervisor Matt Waters, in London, used RV within Flow Production Tracking to review the same footage in real time. Executives and partners screened the film through PIX, now part of Autodesk Flow Capture, whose watermarking and access controls helped keep it under wraps. As Carloni puts it, “This movie would not exist without the tools we had.”

For a fuller look at the workflow, visit Autodesk’s blog on the making of the film.

Keeping the Seuss look at cinema scale

For Rivinoja, preserving Seuss's visual language was essential. The team wanted fans to recognise his signature design motifs, from hatch marks and negative space to his colour palettes, arches and mechanical hands. “We wanted to make sure people who love the books saw something of the book in the film,” she says.

It wasn't going to be a straightforward page-to-screen adaptation, though. The filmmakers wanted to expand the world and make it a cinematic spectacle, exploring what happens after the original story ends, including where the Cat goes when he leaves the house. They came up with the idea that entertaining bored children is his job, which explains why he shows up at the house on a rainy day. He's also one of many specialists at the company, and his famous hat is actually his company uniform.

The film also needed several distinct environments: the real world, Seuss’s world and three further worlds connected to characters in the story. Rather than altering the characters to suit each setting, the team kept their designs and shape language consistent.

“We kept consistent shape language throughout, and we didn’t change the looks of the characters,” says Rivinoja.

The differences come from colour, surfacing, rendering style and lighting, Carloni explains. The characters stay recognisable while the emotional feel of each world changes as the story progresses.

The Cat has to be lovable

Carloni says the hardest problem was making sure audiences would want to spend time with the Cat, explaining: “To make sure the character of the Cat was truly lovable. The kind of character anyone would want to spend time with. If we loved him, we had a movie. If he's unlikable, then no matter how fun the story or how fantastic the adventure, the movie would never work.”

He describes animation's greatest advantage as the same thing that makes it daunting: ultimate freedom. “There are limitless possibilities. You can literally do anything at all in animation. As the saying goes, the only limit is your imagination, which makes it perfect to tell a Seuss story and create a Seuss world.”

The Cat in the Hat arrives in cinemas and IMAX in North America on 6 November 2026, with international releases beginning on 4 November.

Dior's latest holiday ad has been lambasted for allegedly using AI-generated content, disguised as the work of human craft. While the best Christmas adverts don't follow a formula, Dior's 'animated' ad appears to be stolen valour, proving that audiences are hungry for authenticity when it comes to advertising.

Directed by French animator Sylvain Chomet, “Christian Dior’s Night in Color,” is (on the surface) a charming short film inspired by the founder's friendship with film star Marlene Dietrich. With an all-star cast including Robert Pattinson, Rihanna, Josh O’Connor and LaKeith Stanfield, the ad captures a familiar festive warmth, supported by its seemingly hand-illustrated animation.

But soon eagle-eyed viewers spotted some subtle discrepancies. Strange warped lettering, a lazy eye here, a misplaced phalange there – all signs seemed to point to AI slop.

But it was not the alleged AI that irked critics so much; it was the deception. A 'behind-the-scenes' look at production shows only sketches, and as the end credits roll, a short list of animators are listed with no mention of AI, (despite evidence suggesting otherwise). Paired with Chomet's creative legacy, Dior's intentions become clear – it wants you to believe this is 100% human animation.

Comments were suitably heated, with one X user writing "Your budget couldn't fit in an actual animation studio? You had to use AI? Disappointing." Another added "After the Prada commercial, its so easy to see its AI. Its so sad to see many good artists put their names behind this," while another added, "Oh Dior can rot in a ditch for not disclosing they resorted to ai-slop. All these 'pretty' visuals mean nothing if no artist animated them."

During this year's Christmas ad season, human-made craft has become synonymous with nostalgia and luxury – praiseworthy traits that earn brand's the audience seal of approval. Dior's sly attempt to capitalise on this trend has only peeved critics further, proving that even the most subtle AI blemishes will be called out. While Dior's AI augmentation is merely speculation, the brand's lack of transparency only aids in audience mistrust and frustration.

For more advertising news, check out the reaction to John Lewis' new Christmas ad or take a look at the most beautiful Christmas films to inspire you this festive season.

So does DLSS 5 ride roughshod over Hogwarts Legacy's art direction and create entirely new characters like people expected when the leaked unfinished DLSS 5 iteration surfaced online back in August? Erm...

As demonstrated by Nvidia in the launch trailer above, the impact of DLSS 5 in Hogwarts Legacy looks surprisingly subtle. The chip giant maintains that the aim is to enhance lighting and material quality to "boost environmental uplift while preserving character identity".

"With the addition of DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering to Hogwarts Legacy, our complete suite of DLSS technologies will now be supported, enabling you to accelerate and enhance your experiences in the wizarding world," Nvidia says.

It seems it just can't please people. After the ridicule Nvidia faced for the initial tests of DLSS 5, some people are now saying that the actual implementation in Hogwarts Legacy is laughably subtle. Some are struggling to see a worthwhile difference even in side-by-side comparisons "Before vs Before", one person jokes in the comments on the trailer above.

What do you think of the comparisons below?

"People complained too much that they just completely nerfed it. Now we just have fps loss with basically little difference in image quality," one person complains in the comments on YouTube.

"I find it hilarious how the first presentation was so completely over the top strength wise, and now it's reduced to a point where you really can't even tell if it's even on anymore without a direct comparison," someone else writes.

"Asking for another 100-200 watts of power for basically no difference is crazy work," a third person suggests.

Alas, the relatively subtle implementation is unlikely to end the DLSS 5 controversy. While some scenes arguably benefit from a subtle boost in contrast, the extra detail in some of the environments actually makes them feel less atmospheric in my opinion.

Official DLSS 5 support is currently limited to GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and RTX Spark systems. Activating DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, 6X Multi Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, NVIDIA Reflex, and ray tracing, allows Hogwarts Legacy to run at a max of 4K at up to 300 frames per second on RTX 5090 (see our guide the best GPUs).

"For an optimal experience, we also recommend enabling DLSS Super Resolution under 'Upscale Type', DLSS Multi Frame Generation under 'Frame Generation', NVIDIA Reflex under 'Low Latency Mode', and 'DLSS Ray Reconstruction' if you're also activating Hogwarts Legacy's immersive ray-traced effects," Nvidia adds.

DLSS 5 is also coming to the free-to-play military combat game War Thunder from mid-November and to the wuxia-inspired Where Winds Meet from 23 November. You can read the full blog post on the Nvidia website

Nvidia said back in March that its next-generation DLSS would bring "photorealism" to gaming through the use of a new generative AI model designed to enhance frames and add detail to lighting, textures and materials in real time. But the GPU maker's early demo immediately sparked controversy by giving Grace from Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem a glamour makeover.

Leaked through the nvngx_dlssnr.dll library via NBA 2K27, modders soon began testing DLSS 5 for themselves and sharing the videos and screenshots on social media. Faces were the main area of contention, with some modders complaining that Nvidia's new tech makes characters look uncanny and AI-generated or older than they're supposed to be by sharpening skin texture.

That sparked a big debate around artistic intent, with some people concerned that the technology would effectively change game artists' original vision.

And what's better, is that they are offer Creative Bloq an extra 2% off with the code CBHOSTINGERBF10. That's 87% off in total!

Just for context, we think Hostinger is the best web builders for small businesses working with Word Press. At its normal price, it balances performance with affordability, and recently Hostinger has seriously levelled up its website builder offerings. It strips away the overwhelming technical complexities of building a site, replacing them with a streamlined, grid-based drag-and-drop editor and a surprisingly robust suite of built-in AI tools.

While it might lack the infinite, blank-canvas customisation of some pricier competitors, it makes up for it with sheer speed and usability. Now, with Black Friday upon us, the platform is rolling out these mega discounts that are incredibly difficult to ignore.

The deal in detail

You are effectively locking in to four years of premium web hosting for roughly the cost of a couple of chocolate bars a month.

If you value a low-friction setup, it is genuinely an outstanding bargain. Hostinger’s builder shines because it offers an all-in-one approach. There is an initial $133.92 payment, and then a low fee and for that you aren't just getting server space; you get a free domain, automatic SSL certificates, full e-commerce functionality, and unmetered bandwidth. The drag-and-drop editor is zippy and intuitive, supported by AI generators for copy, logos, and layouts that give you a brilliant jumping-off point when you are staring at a blank page.

However, it’s not for absolutely everyone. If you are an expert web designer seeking pixel-perfect, unrestricted creative freedom, Hostinger’s structured grids might feel a bit restrictive. Furthermore, once you commit to a template, you can't simply switch to a new one without rebuilding.

So, who is this for? This deal is tailor-made for freelance creatives, small design studios, and independent business owners who need a sleek, professional portfolio or storefront launched by this weekend. You get impressive speed, top-tier uptime, and all the essential tools to grow your brand, all without the premium price tag.

For pure, long-term value, it’s a steal.

Apple's first-ever touchscreen MacBook is finally here! Find my hands-on impressions below, and scroll down for rolling coverage as reactions from critics and creators start to pour in across the web.

Reviews roundup

• We call the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display "Perhaps the ultimate device for creatives," with "the best laptop screen [we've] every seen." Scroll down for our hands-on impressions.
• TechRadar says, "The touchscreen is arguably not its most interesting feature; it works fine, but macOS is still an operating system built for traditional laptop inputs. Instead, it’s the gorgeous tandem OLED screen and industry-leading battery life that should get you excited here."
• The Verge calls it, "a lighter, thinner, and all-around better laptop," but adds, "Even if you love the touchscreen, you’ll use it a lot for a day or so and go back to using your laptop almost exactly the way you did before."
• Tom's Guide says the machine "impresses thanks to its astonishing touchscreen OLED display that’s the brightest we’ve ever seen on a laptop. On top of that, it has a thinner, lighter design, punchy speakers, and super-long battery life. Plus. Apple finally ditches the notch."
• T3 says: "The short version is that it feels pretty great, full of impressively designed touch interactions – but also with plenty of little hiccups that are probably keeping Apple grounded."

Our hands-on impressions

They said they wouldn't do it. A touchscreen MacBook has been rumoured since the dawn of time (well, the noughties), but, in a quote that's been infinitely dredged up across the internet over the last couple of weeks, Steve Jobs himself decried the concept as "ergonomically terrible". But Jobs also famously asked, "Who wants a stylus?" And the answer among millions of Apple Pencil users seems to be a resounding, "Us!"

And after a few days with the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, I'm happy to report that this is very much a device—perhaps even the ultimate device—for creatives. But rather than the ability to touch the screen, it's all about the quality of that 'PROLED' display itself. Turns out there's a reason Apple decided to lead with that, and not touch, in the name of the device.

• Get the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display for $2899 at Amazon

Simply put, it's the best laptop screen I've ever seen. With up to 2000 nits of peak brightness, 10,000,000:1 contrast, and P3 + Adobe RGB colour, this is a best-in-class display that puts every other OLED laptop screen I've used to shame. It gives creatives a portable reference-quality display, which means it recreates video, colour and contrast as faithfully as possible. Once you've used the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, everything else looks washed-out in comparison, and for that reason alone it's impossible not to recommend for creatives – so long as the small matter of the $2,899 starting price isn't a barrier.

When it comes to touch, as I've written before, in my testing I've found it to be a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. Now that we're all touchscreen natives (which wasn't so much the case when Jobs made those comments in 2010), certain navigational actions just feel right, even on a laptop. Scrolling through windows, pinching to zoom in on a photo or map, scrubbing through the timeline in Final Cut Pro; there are plenty of times when touching the screen feels more intuitive than reaching for the trackpad. And Apple's subtle UI tweaks, such as having navigational icons expand when touched, make the whole thing feel more natural.

But equally, there were plenty of times when I preferred to use the trackpad – particularly when a certain level of accuracy was required. And despite Apple claiming to have produced a newly designed hinge with greater stability, it still wobbles. There's just no getting around the fact that a touchscreen on a vertical display is less ergonomic than it is on a flat one.

From a design perspective, the new MacBook Pro isn't a game-changer – unless you really missed the illuminating Apple logo (another noughties mainstay). There are improvements here and there; the Dynamic Island takes up less space than the notch, and slightly smaller bezels result in slightly larger viewing areas. But perhaps the most meaningful design change is the reduction in weight. That OLED panel has allowed for a 14% weight loss – making the 14-inch model, somewhat ironically, lighter than the 15-inch M5 MacBook Air.

But everything pales next to the screen. The PROLED XDR looks incredible. If you're looking for the most impressive visual fidelity available on a laptop, here it is. You can touch it if you like.

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is released tomorrow, with preorders available now. Prices start at $2899 for the 14-inch model, and $3399 for the 16-inch model.

The design detail hiding inside the Gillette logo is completely true to the brand's core product – it's a razor blade, sitting inside the wordmark itself – and the Gillette social media team confirmed it on Instagram this week. Take a look below and see if you think it qualifies the design for our best logos ever list.

Designers and consumers are delighted in the comments, with praise for the design team. One designer goes even further by sharing "As a graphic designer, one could say the two “ll”’s is an actual stainless blade, thank me later".

But one designer thought the design could have included something extra: "Leads me to question why they didn't add the notches in the negative space to look like a razor blade". Someone else pointed out that "they had 3 blade design in the logo before this, integrated into the G."

There have been a host of other hidden logo design treats over the years, with notable examples being FedEx, NBC, Nintendo GameCube and more. You can explore others in the bumper infographic above.

And for something new, see this awesome example of negative space in a logo that's been electrifying the internet for years.

"We had the idea of fusion as a central mechanic, which Pokemon can't tap into because Pikachu is a mascot that you can't dilute by merging it with a thousand other beasts to get new beasts," he explains. "We also thought about focusing on the human characters, so maybe the beasts could be a reflection of the human characters, which led to the idea of transforming into them."

It also helped that Cassette Beasts aimed itself at a slightly older audience compared to every Pokemon game always having you start out as yet another schoolkid, though its British humour and sensibilities also stood out, which is something the Brighton-based studio is leaning even more directly on with its upcoming sequel.

Cassette Beasts 2002's very British setting

Cassette Beasts 2002 is set in London (as well as its alternate world of Nodnol), but it aims not to give the tourist version of the capital, but a quieter Zone 6 suburb version of it, with the town of Elmwich.

"We don't lean into a certain Paddington-esque twee Britishism about it," Bayliss explains. "Crucially, we're Northerners living down South in Brighton; we don't really play with that twee Britishness. We enjoy portraying quite a mundane, crappy version of suburban English life. We're so bored of the Harry Potter-esque upper middle-class boarding school fantasy take on it. I think this version's more fun."

As the title's palindrome suggests, Cassette Beasts 2002 is also set in 2002. That appeals to me personally, much like one of my favourite indie games released earlier this year, Perfect Tides: Station to Station, because it taps into my formative teen years. "The early 2000s also mark this crossing point between the analogue and digital age," Bayliss explains. "The internet exists, but you don't have smartphones. People do have mobile phones in the game, but we haven't got the Panopticon of social media. For artists younger than me, they reflect on this ethereal time they just missed out on, just before we had the baggage of the modern world overwhelming you."

Getting the Y2K art and design right

It was also important to reflect the era's aesthetic and fashion. "Skewing male, game developers often don't appreciate fashion, but if you go on TikTok and social media, people are very interested in noughties fashion," Bayliss explains. "There's a lot of interest in exploring that time that we don't discount, and that's reflected in the fashion sensibilities of the characters and the character designs themselves as well."

Perhaps a major visual shift with this sequel is a more 3D one. Well, it's a case of perspective, literally. The original Cassette Beasts, while presented in the traditional top-down perspective of classic Pokemon and other 8- and 16-bit RPGs, was actually made in a 3D engine, albeit with environments given pixelated textures to match its 2D character sprites. In Cassette Beasts 2002, the camera drops down so things are presented as a third-person 3D game, except its characters are still pixel-art sprites presented with a billboarding technique.

"We were like, what if we can design this game with higher resolution sprites, with eight directions so when you pan the camera around, it feels less awkward?" Bayliss explains. "From a technical point of view, you have to rethink how you're designing worlds, but suddenly the perspective and scale you have in these worlds is very different. If you took the first game and dropped the camera down, it would probably feel very small, so it changes how we sculpt and design the world."

Why use the Godot Engine?

Cassette Beasts 2002 is also developed with the open-source Godot engine, which more indies are turning to. Although Bayliss recalls the challenges of porting the game's predecessor, which was developed with Godot 3, the latest iteration, Godot 4, that the studio is using has greatly improved features, including porting and performance, that make it a more viable alternative to Unity.

"If you sign up to Unity, you're kind of on the hook for any changes that Unity makes, whereas with an open-source engine, if you don't like changes, you can change the engine," Bayliss explains. "I think the flexibility of Godot is what allows a team of two full-time developers to make a big 25-hour RPG. It's just a very uncomplicated engine - you make stuff, you put it in, it's in the game. If there's anything that you need to fix, you don't have to submit a bug report to the back-end team and hope they fix it in the next two years; you just go in and fix it yourself."

Cassette Beasts 2002 is releasing in March 2027 for PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2. You can wishlist it now on Steam.

The 2027 poster design was created by the French illustrator Malika Favre and the Sri Lankan sculptural artist and designer Kumkum Fernando. The former's distinctive geometric graphic style merges with the latter's colourful retrofuturism in a striking maximalist design that channels diverse influences into the form of a divine being that represents music as a joyful, spiritual journey.

Montreux has a long history of artist-designed posters. Other previous contributors have included David Bowie, Jean Tinguely, Yoann Lemoine (Woodkid), Lakwena, Kévin Germanier and Christian Marclay.

Keith Haring designed for the festival twice. For his second commission, in 1986, he worked with Andy Warhol as a collaborator. The festival invited Malika to adopt a similar approach for her second contribution, ten years after her first design for Montreux.

While her 2017 poster stood out for its minimalism, the new design goes in the opposite direction. A densely packed arrangement of colour and shapes creates a fantastical figure that looks like a cross between a robot, sacred altar and a jukebox. In fact, the design is also being turned into a sculptural vinyl cabinet (see further below).

“I fell in love with the festival on my very first visit in 2017. The poster I created for that edition remains one of my personal favourites to this day. I knew it would be hard to match, so I wanted to take the opposite approach: to create a work bursting with colour, as maximalist as the first one was minimalist. Kumkum was the ideal artist for this,” Favre says of the collaboration.

The design draws on diverse influences, including South Asian traditions, retro-futurism and '60s counterculture. The flowers evoke the lakeside quays of Montreux but also the flower power movement of the hippie era, a nod to the fact that Montreux Jazz Festival was founded during the 1967 Summer of Love. The floral patterns also subtly outline lips, kisses and female faces – symbols of love, pleasure and sexuality that recur throughout Malika's artistic universe.

“I had this vision of music blooming in Montreux, this feeling of the entire town coming alive during the festival,” Favre adds. “I wanted to convey that joy. The world is going through strange times, and a festival like Montreux is an opportunity to celebrate. For me, flowers also symbolise eroticism, an explosion of the senses and the pleasures found in music. I always like to tuck in something a little cheeky, and I thought I could bring that touch of a feminine sensuality. When I sent the first flowers to Kumkum he said, ‘Oh yes, that’s sexy!’”

From the outset, the idea was also to bring the poster’s divine entity into the world as a three-dimensional object, following Kumkum’s practice of creating futuristic, geometric sculptures. The result is a made-for-order vinyl cabinet with a dedicated turntable compartment and pull-out drawers for record storage.

“The spark came when we noticed the resemblance between the shape of certain religious altars and that of a jukebox, both sharing the same sense of symmetry,” Fernando says. “We imagined a kind of gateway into a sacred realm of music, a timeless entity, part retro-futuristic robot, part mythological being, that embodies music as a joyful, universal experience.”

The 61st Montreux Jazz Festival will take place on the Lake Geneva shoreline from 2 July to 17 July 2027.

In the UK, the arrival of the John Lewis Christmas advert was long seen as the unofficial start of the season. The department store chain features twice in our pick of the best Christmas adverts of all time. But its 2026 offering has sparked a fierce backlash over what people see as confused messaging, with some people even calling for a boycott of the store.

Titled Gloria and Pickles, the 2026 John Lewis Christmas advert is an opulent affair. Set to a Sam Fender cover of The Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want, it sees National treasure Kristin Scott Thomas star as a wealthy grandma who can't find anything to entertain her spoiled grandchildren and stop them from messing up her huge, gloomy mansion.

The kids are, naturally, unimpressed by an ancient Fisher-Price Little Snoopy Toy. She's about to give them some cash when the wooden dog turns into canine Chat-GPT with the voice of Paul Whitehouse and admonishes her for the lack of imagination. "Do you want them to like you?" the toy asks her at one point.

Off they go shopping, passing through several sub-standard stores until arriving at John Lewis. There, Kristin spends a fortune on decorations to turn one of her many spare rooms into a festive party space, which convinces the kids to finally show her some affection.

The message is supposed to be that a personal gift is more in keeping with the spirit of Christmas than cold, hard cash. But what comes across is that, either way, spending money is the only way to get you grandkids to like you. Good luck if you can't afford to shop at John Lewis.

According to the creative effectiveness company System 1, the ad achieved 5.6 stars on its rating system, making it John Lewis's strongest-performing festive campaign since Excitable Edgar in 2019. Its testing found that 61% of viewers felt happy watching the advert, nearly twice the UK TV advertising average.

That's not the impression you get from the comments on social media. Writing on X Piers Morgan (what's the opposite of a national treasure?) described it as "possibly the worst advert I’ve ever seen for anything".

There's some hyperbole there. It least it's not Coca-Cola's AI slop. But he has a point, and a lot of people agree. The family is unlikeable, the children entitled and overindulged, and the materialistic tone feels out of touch amid the cost of living crisis, reminding younger viewers how skint they are (everything from the dog to Kristin's outfits is shoppable). Even the colour grading is depressing.

John Lewis switched from Adam&Eve to Saatchi & Saatchi as its creative agency back in 2023, and the change shows. Unlike the whimsical ads of the past that became such an annual event, this piece feels cold and clinical. It's more obviously geared towards conversion, attempting to shape behaviour by guilt tripping grandparents.

This is a Bean to Cup coffee machine, which means it grinds your beans as well as making the coffee. Fresh grounds are one of the keys to getting the perfect brew, and an all-in-one machine saves having to buy separate appliances and find the space and sockets for them.

See below for more details on this and other early Black Friday coffee machine deals available now.

The best early Black Friday coffee maker deals

• Browse coffee machine deals at Amazon

Not in the UK? Check out coffee machine deals in your region below.

That's a lot cheaper than most of the best office chairs for back pain, and the Doro C300 Pro has a wide seat, breathable mesh, lumbar support, lots of adjustability and fantastic armrests.

Today's best office chair deal

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We recognise that the C300 Pro is not the most beautiful office chair, and, like all Sihoo chairs, it takes some patience with assembly. But once you've got it set up, it is very comfortable.

The highlight is the lumbar support, which is one of the more comfy that we've tested, helping to support the back's natural 's' shape without making you feel like it wants to break you into submission.

Most of the chair's adjustability is as you'd expect from a higher-mid range ergonomic chair, but the armrests stand out. They go up/down, forward/back, and tilt and, most impressively, move laterally in and out from your chest. This is no minor detail: it provides more options for how you sit and allows you to freely move your arms as you want.

Not in the US? See the best budget office chair deals in your region below. Once you've made your choice, make sure you know how to sit properly in a chair.

The response has been pretty spectacular. The remake is sitting at 96 on Metacritic, with a hefty collection of perfect scores and very few critics finding much to complain about. That's quite an achievement for a game whose original version already has such a place in gaming history.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake launches on 5 November, and Nintendo has done rather more than give Link a fresh coat of paint. Hyrule has been rebuilt with a striking new visual style (while staying tonally true), the soundtrack has been re-orchestrated, and the original's occasionally clunky controls have been updated. Now it offers free jumping, a modern camera, and fully voiced cutscenes, alongside redesigned dungeons and expanded character interactions.

It's a substantial overhaul, even if the adventure itself remains reassuringly familiar to those who grew up on this classic Nintendo game. If you're a fan, take our Ultimate Zelda quiz and test your knowledge.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time review scores

GamesRadar+ awards the remake five stars, calling it "a remake for the ages". Reviewer Anna Koselke is particularly taken with how Nintendo has brought Hyrule to life without losing the original's charm, praising its "stunning visuals" and newly voiced dialogue.

TechRadar is equally impressed, awarding five stars and describing the remake as "a thoroughly well-thought-out retelling of one of the most loved video games of all time". Reviewer Josephine Watson highlights the redesigned locations, enemies and puzzles, as well as the refreshed soundtrack. There is a little caution, though, with TechRadar suggesting the remake could have been more ambitious and that some of the original's difficulty has been lost along the way.

A familiar adventure, with a few surprises

Game Informer awards the remake 9.25/10, describing it as "a straightforward recreation. But an admittedly very good one." Reviewer Kyle Hilliard likes the visual overhaul and improved camera but feels Nintendo has played it relatively safe with the changes. It looks new, he argues, without necessarily feeling like an entirely new adventure.

Shacknews is considerably more enthusiastic, awarding a perfect 10/10 and calling the remake "a tour de force that redefines what remakes can be". Its review highlights how Nintendo has made familiar mechanics feel fresh, from the reworked combat to the redesigned dungeons. It also singles out Navi, who has been given a much bigger role as a companion rather than simply popping up to shout "Hey! Listen!"

Destructoid also hands out a 10/10, calling it "one of the best examples of how to properly reimagine an enduring masterpiece". The review praises the improved visuals, 60fps performance, and updated controls, though it agrees the remake can feel a little too easy in places.

The Guardian's Keza MacDonald is similarly impressed, scoring the game five stars and describing the remake as "a dream come true". Her review makes an interesting observation about the new art direction, comparing Hyrule to detailed theatre scenery and Link to a handmade doll, with his equipment looking like exaggerated props. It's a more stylised approach than simply chasing photorealism, and one that suits the fairytale quality of the original.

Not everyone is entirely convinced with Ocarina of Time

Reviewers are highlighting the lack of Master Quest is a notable omission for returning players wanting a tougher adventure, while the more generous clues and quality-of-life improvements have softened some of the original's challenge.

GamesRadar+ also flags the absence of Master Quest and the single-save-file restriction as drawbacks. Game Informer, meanwhile, feels the remake could have been a little more adventurous in how it reinterprets the original.

These aren't deal-breakers, but they're worth considering if you've spent years exploring Hyrule and know the N64 version inside out.

A new generation gets to discover Hyrule

For anyone who grew up with the original Nintendo 64, this remake is clearly wrapped in an enormous amount of nostalgia. But Ocarina of Time is more than a fond memory for those of us who played it back in 1998. It helped establish the language of 3D adventure games, from lock-on combat to sprawling interconnected dungeons, and its influence still runs through modern game design.

Nintendo has had to do a lot of work to bring the adventure up to date, but it hasn't had to fix what made it special in the first place. The world design, the sense of discovery, and that slightly odd fairy-tale atmosphere are all still there, only now with the visual detail and fluidity the original hardware could never manage.

And Nintendo is very good at this too, with the recent Star Fox remake also proving popular on Switch 2, and the many Metroid and Mario updates and remasters proving a reason to buy Nintendo Online.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches on Nintendo Switch 2 on 5 November.

Canva's just revealed another side of the story: the tech companies driving the change aren't immune to its impact. The Australian design software giant has announced the biggest restructuring in its 12 years of history, with plans to eliminate or relocate more than 1,200 jobs. That's almost a quarter of its global workforce, and it will include staff who helped to build the platform.

Canva aims to “collapse layers” in its organisation and bring “more teams together in person”. It's handling the layoffs in the classiest way possible, promising six months of salary and 12 months of healthcare to those affected, alongside career support, a fund for those who want to start their own business – and it's letting people keep their MacBooks.

But the layoffs highlight an inescapable contradiction. Even those responsible for the ubiquity of AI image generation are suffering from its expansion. Rather than a push for growth and innovation, Adobe and Canva's rollout of AI tools feels more their own desperate fight for survival, and it's a fight they might not be able to win.

"Success in our first chapter doesn’t guarantee success in the next," Canva CEO Melanie Perkins writes in an update to staff. "This has been our hardest year yet, and as we shared earlier this year, our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade."

There's been talk of an “SaaS-pocalypse” as AI becomes advanced enough to make specialised software redundant. We've already seen the release of an open-source vibe-coded Adobe alternative, and it works to an extent. Generating your own software is only going to get easier, as is asking an AI bot to generate design assets directly.

Despite its heavy investment in AI, Adobe's stock price has fallen by around 25% in the past year and over 60% in the past five years. It's not clear that even AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic, the makers of ChatGPT and Claude, can become profitable as Chinese rivals emerge delivering similar technology at a cheaper price.

Some creatives opposed to AI might feel a twinge of satisfaction at seeing a prominent proponent floundering. But Canva has also been a positive force, even if you don't use it's AI tools. As well as its premium platform, it has one of the best free Adobe alternatives in its free Affinity app, providing much-needed competition.

Creatives using the app might have cause to worry about how long it will be offered as a loss leader. Canva's shown a strong commitment to it so far, recently adding new raw editing tools and an iPad app. But its recent decision to pull the previously free Remove.bg into its paid suite shows that the structure and availability of creative software is constantly in flux as developers try to work out how to respond to competition from AI.

WoW: Forever, the new version of the iconic MMORPG, released today, takes players back to the original Azeroth, with reworked environments, lighting and atmosphere. It won’t get a full visual overhaul or take on the look of the recent expansions. Blizzard wants it to feel like coming home to a place that’s more alive. That's a tricky task, given that World of Warcraft is one of the defining video game art styles many look to and love.

“We believe WoW Classic’s art style is timeless,” says Matt Heyman, lead environment artist at Blizzard Entertainment. “Which is why our focus was not on changing the game art but on small ways we could push specifically things like the environmental effects. Such as the way rivers now flow in Elwynn Forest, or the way the fog rolls in the Duskwood at night. Or the way the moonlight breaks through the leaves in the Ashenvale. It’s the same original Azeroth that players fell in love with all those years ago, with just a few small but powerful effects and updates to make it more immersive than ever.”

The fine balance of WoW: Forever

World of Warcraft: Forever is designed as a permanent home alongside modern and Classic WoW. It returns players to the original continents and the level 1-60 journey while adding new stories and experiences, and Blizzard says it will keep expanding this version of Azeroth over time.

For this unique release, the team needed to build something new without disturbing the memories players already hold. The work covers around 40 existing zones, new locations such as Zephras Isle, home of the new Skyborne race, and changes to familiar places including Dalaran.

“We asked ourselves, ‘What does it mean to evolve a timeless world?’” says Heyman. “We wanted to take that original ‘Vanilla’ version of Azeroth and combine it with the version that lives in our heads. Where our experiences, nostalgia and imagination all shape the ways we remember it.”

Each zone has its own colour palette, mood and atmosphere. “We often talk about the world as the main character of World of Warcraft, but I like to imagine it as a cast of characters,” he says.

Reanimating memories in World of Warcraft

Duskwood shows the problem well. Players remember a gloomy forest full of spiders, wolves, undead and skeletons, with the Night Watch patrolling Darkshire by torchlight. “However, while it’s an awesome and iconic zone, it’s probably not as dark and creepy as people remember,” says Heyman.

For WoW: Forever, the team is leaning into the remembered version, with moonlight cutting through the branches around Darkshire and fog drifting through the graveyards.

New tools can tempt artists to change things just because they can, so Blizzard has set a guiding rule. “Changing a world that players have cherished for such a long time has risks. We approach it carefully and responsibly,” Heyman explains. “We developed a central artistic principle that everything must be authentic. That’s both authentic to our world but, most importantly, authentic to the memories we have of Azeroth when the journey began in WoW.”

He points to Durotar, the arid, vibrant homeland of the Orcs. A cool blue atmosphere would look natural and realistic there, he says, but it wouldn’t be authentic. “The correct approach is to go in with purpose and to lean in and push the fantasy that the region already has.”

Giving Azeroth more atmosphere

Most of the changes sit in the rendering technology, according to lead software engineer Jason Scott, who describes work on fog, lighting and water. Fog has been part of WoW’s look since the beginning, creating depth and gloomy vistas. Blizzard has replaced the original distant fog with volumetric technology, which gives artists much more control.

“We can control fog like we never have before,” says Scott. “Now we can increase the sense of creepiness in Dustwallow Marsh, and we can see the effect of wind in a zone. The texture of dust as it sweeps across plains.” It also extends sightlines across the map, which adds to the sense of scale.

Lighting has changed too. Until now, the sun and moons didn’t cast light into the world, a gap that would have been obvious once volumetric fog went in. Light now shines through the fog in a process called scattering, with the size and shape of the rays set by whatever blocks it, whether trees, mountains or other terrain.

“Now in WoW: Forever, when the sun comes up at dawn, there are streams of light that now cascade down the mountains, and we created similar rays for the moons as well,” says Scott.

To make that work, the team had to be sure the world properly blocked light and that the sun and moons lined up with the illumination on the ground. “There are still creative and artistic choices that we make, but it altogether makes the world feel much more alive,” he adds.

How Blizzard is making water feel like water

Rivers used to move simply, without resembling a river. For Forever, Scott says, the team studied how water moves, how wind and waves affect its surface, and how light interacts with its colour, transparency, and reflections. Rivers now follow their course, bend around rocks and produce foam where they hit them. Artists have full control over the effects, so different kinds of water can be tuned to look the way the team wants.

The models and textures remain the foundation of Warcraft’s look, even though the style has shifted with each expansion. Heyman says Forever is deliberately holding on to the character of the original assets.

“There’s an edge and grittiness to the way those assets look, and it just feels like Warcraft,” he says. “It’s a little bit of old, and a little bit of new. It’s maintaining that timeless iconic look matched with new rendering updates that breathe life into the world.”

World of Warcraft: Forever is available from today on Mac and PC (Pacific Time).

I mean working from home in a home office that is actually a spare room. And a spare room with crap light to boot. But there's a bit of tech for that, and over the last month or so I've been working with a SAD lamp right next to me. And it's had a massive positive impact on my day.

So I looked around and found the best SAD lamps from the best manufacturers in the US, all of which are on Amazon. As I explain below, you really can't go wrong with any of these, and as long as they're emitting 10,000 lux of brightness, you're only really paying more for the design and features of the lamp. For me, I really like the idea of having a magic pyramid on my desk!

How Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) lamps work

In a nutshell, SAD lamps mimic morning sunlight to balance internal body clocks. As their light enters our eyes it stimulates retinal cells. These cells then send signals to the brain to decrease melatonin (the sleepy hormone) and increase serotonin (the neurotransmitter that regulates happiness and energy). And this isn't all just vibes-based. Clinical trials confirm light therapy treats winter depression. I've had one for the last month, and I have absolutely felt the benefits.

For SAD lamps to be effective, they need to be able to pump out 10,000 lux of brightness from a normal sitting distances. All the lamps on this list achieve that. What's most interesting is that the more expensive lamps offer zero additional mood benefit. Budget boxes with certified output match luxury models, so you're just paying for design aesthetics and features (which admittedly are important).

A note on the light temperature – therapeutic lamps emit cool white light, so you won't be getting lovely honey-warm light with these. Blue wavelengths stimulate circadian photoreceptors in the retina. Warm white bulbs lack that blue spectrum and fail to trigger the internal wakefulness response, so keep that in mind before you click 'buy'.

Made with McCann London, the beast comes from John Nolan Studio, the creature effects team behind animatronics for Jurassic World and Harry Potter. That pedigree shows. Rather than a console wedged into a novelty shell, this is a properly crafted creature, sculpted in clay, built up in fibreglass and finished by hand, with detailed scales and textured skin.

The Series X-Bite stunt is the latest in a series of events to publicise GTA 6, following Rockstar's takeover of Miami, including real-world billboards for in-game brands and the recent filthy South Park episode in which new footage was shown inside the cartoon show.

Scroll past the photos of the collectable Series X-Bite box to learn how to win one.

Photos of the Xbox Series X-Bite

The idea riffs on Florida’s chaotic reputation, which is what inspired GTA 6’s Leonida in the first place. Between the alligator run-ins and the real-world headlines that read like Rockstar mission briefs, it’s an easy fit.

Sadly, there’s no word on a new console design for the rest of us. But you can win this one-of-a-kind creation through Xbox’s social channels, such as Xbox Facebook and Xbox Twitter, with the giveaway running until 19 November.

It’s daft, sure, but it’s a smart way to tap into the GTA 6 hype without just slapping a logo on a box. Just keep it away from the pool, or your fingers.

Watch the Xbox Series X-Bite reveal video:

Pre-order GTA 6 and buy an Xbox Series X:

It’s the perfect call to action for anyone stuck in colder climates, timed to coincide with the yearly spike in searches for holidays in sunnier places. See the gallery of images below, then head to our best print ads roundup.

I'm obsessed with the dark, moody photography that encapsulated that feeling of being damp and drizzly in the midst of a British autumn-winter. I also love how the images need a second glance to make sense of, with the figure in the foreground in such close focus they make an impact with shape alone before you notice all the details.

Photographed by Daniel Benson at Making Pictures in an unscripted reportage shoot, the outdoor work is live now across Rail D6s in London, placed by MG OMD.

This isn't a big-screen game console; it's a mix of board gaming and retro tabletop bar video games. The flat-lying 24-inch touchscreen tracks the physical pieces you slide, spin and pick up. Includes the co-op cooking game Chop Chop and the six-game Retro Arcade Collection.

Those seven games and pieces are essentially modern takes on Asteroids, plus Chop Chop is a co-op culinary party game in the vein of Overcooked. You can expand your library with additional packs, but there's no subscription, and you can buy extras one at a time.

Why is Board worth a look?

The 24-inch anti-glare screen suits families and groups, with solo, co-op and competitive modes. There’s Wi-Fi 6 and 64GB of storage under the woodgrain-effect frame. It ticks my need for a new way to play games, feels retro and modern all at once, and I can see the family loving this like they do Nex Playground, particularly as some of the games feature party play and Tamagotchi ideas – Mushka is a little dog that lives inside Board and can be played with.

The pieces are the smart idea here. Board’s PieceSense tech identifies each piece, where it is, and how it’s moving, so kids who’d fumble a standard controller can pick up a plastic spaceship and fly it straight away. That active interaction gives Board an old-fashioned Nintendo appeal.

Get the extra Board games:

This is just one of the many logos subject to the Mandela effect, a psychological and social phenomenon that convinces us of visual elements that simply don't exist. A few years ago, we reported that scholars at the University of Chicago studied the effect and found that people share the same false memories of a range of logos and icons. The very best logos are memorable, but some of them have false additions in the minds of many people.

We decided to revisit this study after a chat in the office brought up the design details that actually don't exist in real life – and we want to know, have you been subject to the Mandela effect in these cases? If so, let us know in the comments. And if you have any other logos you've misremembered, can you draw your version and upload them in the comments?

Neuroscientist Wilma Bainbridge and lab manager Deepasri Prasad at the University of Chicago's Brain Bridge Lab found that people have confident and consistent false memories of famous icons. The team trawled internet discussions for logos and characters people commonly misremember, then added their own picks and made small tweaks to see if people could spot the real thing. In total there were 40 images, including the logos for Apple, Bic, Disney, Fruits of the Loom, Ralph Lauren and Volkswagen, plus the Bluetooth symbol, Pikachu, C-3PO, Wally and Curious George.

Participants had to pick the correct version from three options. Apple and Ralph Lauren did well, with around 80 per cent getting them right. Monopoly, Volkswagen and Fruits of the Loom did not: only 20 to 30 per cent chose the real logo. Most people also insisted Pikachu’s tail has a black tip. It doesn’t.

It wasn’t just a multiple-choice problem either. When asked to draw the images from memory, people made the same mistakes unprompted. Bainbridge says it’s a strong effect: people hold a false memory of an image they’ve never actually seen.

Why does it happen?

Nobody knows yet. The study doesn’t identify a cause. One suggestion is schema theory, where our brains add details that fit the theme. A monocle says ‘wealthy Victorian gent’, so in it goes.

That doesn’t explain everything, though. A cornucopia isn’t an obvious addition to a plate of fruit, which is the problem with using schema theory to explain the Fruits of the Loom logo. (The scene does exist in art, but that’s a stretch.)

Why should designers take note?

The researchers say the findings could matter for logo design and for choosing images in education and advertising, where accurate memory is the whole point. Bainbridge also linked it to wider questions about the images used in the media.

It’s a useful reminder that ‘memorable’ and ‘remembered correctly’ aren’t the same thing.

But how well do you know the history and lore of Hyrule? Are you the hero of time or the weakest Link? Put yourself to the test with our Zelda quiz below.

How did you do? Let us know below.

Coca-Cola's AI Christmas ad was one of the most controversial, while McDonald's pulled its festive effort due to the backlash. This year, it seems we're seeing a strong counter movement, with big brands making a point of their commitment to handcrafted art.

First, there was the glorious Prada Christmas ad, directed by former Disney animator John Pomeroy. Now Levi's has pulled out the stops for a very different animated gem, showing that it's not just luxury brands that see the value of human craftsmanship in advertising.

Levi's Let’s Get Fuzzy stop-motion holiday campaign was produced by the London-based production studio Blinkink . The animation begins as a play on horror movies, making it a fun segue from Halloween. A monster interrupts a group of friends' cosy festive retreat in a snow-covered cabin. But Fuzzyeti's discovery of festive jumpers makes him quickly succumb to the holiday spirit.

The medium of painstaking stop-motion animation was chosen to highlight Levi's heritage of craftsmanship. As shown in the making of video below, a six-person team spent more than 2,000 hours over six and a half weeks building and painting the sets, including three cabins at different scales, along with 400 miniature trees, and four faces for each character.

The clothes are miniature replicas of real Levi's products – a stylist was on hand to ensure accuracy. They were moved for every frame of the animation to make them feel life like, but requiring four hours of work of every second of animation.

A reference edit was made with actors and the directors themselves acting out the roles (including a specialist monster actor for Fuzzyyeti). This was then used as the guide for the animators.

Levi's has form in animation, from the psychedelic 2D short The Stranger in 1971 to Clayman with Shaggy’s Boombastic in claymation in 1995. Today, the decision to use such a laborious handcrafted process makes a bigger statement, creating added distinction and value amid so much AI-generated content.

Your local food truck might not worry about their ugly AI flyers if they can do the job for cheap. But for big brands, proof of work like the behind-the-scenes video above has become as important as the finished advert. Avoiding the embarrassment of an 'AI content' label isn't enough, they're taking steps to proactively signal that an advert was human made.

Hermès and Ralph Lauren are just two fashion brands that have been doing this by mentioning the people behind their ads in the captions on social media. Naming the creative team behind a campaign has become a signal of craftsmanship, and the implication is clear: human-made art is seen as a sign of a premium brand.

Apple's also been on the trend with its embroidered logo and the stop-motion ad for Apple Games, which was also made by Blinklink. The resurgence of interest in stop motion is likely to continue to grow with Laika's Wildwood doing well at the box office.

The pricing and timeframe is not yet fully defined, but, according to the Financial times, Spotify aims to launch AI remixing by around February 2027 for a $4-$5 monthly surcharge on top of the price of a standard Premium plan. So far the reaction among both users and musicians has been tepid, but visual artists should also be watching what happens.

Spotify's proposal might seem reasonable. AI remixing will be an optional feature for users who want it, and artists can choose whether to opt in to license their work for it. For those who do, their fans get new ways to engage with their music, and they receive a new stream of royalties.

That sounds reassuring until you consider how platforms like Spotify work. If enough artists join, participation could quickly turn into an economic necessity. If remixable songs receive more engagement, appear in more playlists and generate more activity, non-remixable work could become harder to discover. There's also a concern that AI-generated remixes themselves could crowd out original music.

Beyond Spotify, It's also a test case for a question facing every creative sector. Should technology help audiences discover artistic work, or treat art as raw material for endless algorithmic recombination?

In Spotify's vision, a listener might turn a ballad into a dance track or make one artist appear to perform another artist's song. The value shifts from the original work to how much it’s ‘reimagined’.

On social media, TikTok and Instagram already allow users’ visual content to be ‘remixed’. Applying the same concept to art transforms it from something we experience into something we personalise. Think the artist chose the wrong pitch? Change it. Don’t like the ending of a movie? Generate a different one

On Spotify’s own community forum, one person describes this as like spitting in the face of artists. It trivialises their intent and judgment.

Art's power often comes from the fact that someone else made the decisions. The point of encountering another person's creativity is not that it reflects our own preferences, but that it shows us a perspective we didn't have before. When every creative decision becomes are our own choice, artistic intent becomes insignificant . That's bad not just for the artists, it also for the consumer's ability to critique art.

Some of the worst design fails are so blindingly obvious that it's a wonder they made it past the first design meeting, let alone into the real world. But what looks like an unforgivable oversight to the rest of us can be surprisingly easy to miss when you're knee-deep in the design process.

Below we revisit 14 ginormous design fails, covering packaging, UI, logo design and UX, all of which offer us all something to learn from. If you'd like to see more on what you should do, see our guide to logo design.

01. Instituto de Estudos Orientais

Kicking things off is a hilarious example of ambiguous imagery, from Instituto de Estudos Orientais. Despite being quickly dropped by the university almost a decade ago, it's gone down in history as one of the worst logos of all time. Why? Well, just look at it.

This one's so infamous that one designer, Emanuele Abrate, decided to fix it as part of his 'Worst Logos Ever Redesigned' project in 2020 (above).

02. Anal Malaysia

The first example in our selection of design fails hit a real bum note, rolling together two huge blunders with unintentionally comical results. The Chinese streaming service iQIY was forced to apologise for this embarrassing Malaysia Day poster.

The design is supposed to read 'Anak Malaysia' (which translates as 'Child of Malaysia') to promote shows available to stream during Malaysia Day 2020. But perhaps in a case of a designer thinking they were too clever to make a mistake, the phrase was stylised to incorporate the crescent and star of the Malaysian flag, resulting in legibility issues that still have us on our bottoms laughing.

Not only does the design make it look like the phrase says 'Anal Malaysia', it also looks like there's a figure squatting down between the two words. Quite how this made it through rounds of approval we're not sure. It leaves us asking whether anyone gave it a look over other than the original designer.

03. The OGC logo

But the potential pitfalls of typography go further than the example above. It's sometimes not enough to only check that your design reads well on a horizontal plane. It's best to check how it looks when turned in other directions too.

The UK Office of Government Commerce existed from 2000 to 2011 with the objective of improving efficiency in public spending. In 2007 it commissioned FHD to design a new logo that would show the body's bold commitment to driving up standards. The problem was that the logo was printed on pens, mouse mats, and all manner of other stationery items that would be viewed from different orientations.

It took the government department's employees mere seconds to notice something that the logo's designers hadn't. Rotated 90 degrees the logo looks rather rude. Incredibly, the OGC decided to stick with the new logo. A spokesperson even quipped: "It is not inappropriate to an organisation that's looking to have a firm grip on Government spend."

04. Flickering Lights

Choosing the right font is only the start when it comes to ensuring the typography is right for a design, and that applies to packaging as well as anything else. A little kerning to add space between the 'L' and the 'I' would have been a good idea to prevent misreadings of the product name in the case above.

Always run your design by several people and ask them what they see. Chances are they might have a very different interpretation from those who know what the message is intended to be. And tread very carefully when the word you're designing has any similarity at all to a word you want to avoid.

05. Lisa Jackson Deserves to Die

"As he watches, her body drifts below the water's surface, forever altered. Before he disposes of each victim, he takes a trophy. It's a sign of his power, and a warning…" We're not sure that this novel sounds like the best read out there, but we would never go so far as to demand this fate for the author.

There are many ways to establish text hierarchy – through font, weight, colour, location of text – and sometimes tweaking more than one of these is necessary. In this case, switching from all caps to title case was not enough to prevent an unintended reading of this design, with title placed directly under the author's name. Remember that as a designer, you're not only responsible for how things look but also for their context and how they'll be read.

06. Tesco buttermilk

Perhaps one of the most notorious packaging blunders in history came from this own-brand buttermilk sold by Tesco in Ireland. This shot with crease in the right place went viral and was even picked up by several newspapers after it was taken at a supermarket in Dublin.

Shopper Andy Burdens wrote on Reddit at the time: "They really made a cock and balls of this branding." Tesco changed the design after the media coverage of the blunder. The lesson here? No design is too small or routine to merit making a mockup – designer Oisín Hurst told Creative Bloq he designed the piece on a flat keyline and didn't mock it up, thinking, "it was buttermilk – what could go wrong?"

07. Mama's Baking

Logos often combine ideas taken from a brand's name or function. It makes sense then that this bakery in Greece would consider combining a representation of the eponymous 'mama' and the oven in which she presumably bakes her exquisite cakes and breads. The problem is that the position of the flame in the oven makes it look like something else.

It's hard to imagine the designers weren't aware of how it looked and the design may have paid off, the bakery and cafe still proudly using the logo that has taken it to international internet fame.

In general, designers need to be careful with employing the human figure in logos as so many decisions can be misinterpreted, as is demonstrated very well by this 1970s logo for the Catholic Church Archdiocesan Youth Commission. We can perhaps ascribe it to more naive times. And after all, designers can't be expected to predict all future associations that will emerge related to their clients.

08. The Coca-Cola bottle creator

The design of marketing campaigns has grown now to encompass a lot more than graphic design. Campaigns often now also include elements of UI and the whole user experience involved in what more interactive initiatives aimed at promoting customer engagement. This kind of marketing has to be well thought through though.

Coca-Cola's custom bottle creator campaign for Pride Month resulted in embarrassment for the company when it turned out the programme would reject certain words from inclusion in the bottles, as well as swear words, the list of banned words seemed to include LGBT, transgender, black lives matter (but not white lives matter) and Palestine.

09. Thomson Reuters' values

This one was a bit of a clanger for the media conglomerate Thomson Reuters. The idea was presumably to suggest that the concepts on the left are the group's core values, but the image looks like a Venn diagram, a type of diagram used to show logical relations between different sets through overlapping curves. Read this way, the graphic appears to show that there is very little overlap between the values on the left and the comparably minute values of Thomson Reuters.

The Washington Post even picked up on the slip and praised the company for its honesty in the ironic headline, "In refreshing change of pace, company admits it's not innovative." The lesson here is to always step back and consider whether design elements you have chosen for purely aesthetic purposes may resemble any other visual language in common use.

10. Where Milan

Well-heeled travellers will have been a little taken aback when they saw this edition of Where Milan, which is published by Proedi and distributed at many of the city's most exclusive hotels. Placement of the photo cutout layered over the title makes it seem that the publishers are calling into question the reputation of their own cover model.

It's an Italian publication, so the designers could perhaps be forgiven for overlooking an error when working in a foreign language, but if you're aiming at a foreign language market, you need to be able to spot a howler like this.

11. CVS chewable hair, skin and nails

Another packaging delight, this nutritional supplement from CVS appears to be marketed for Hannibal Lecter. The problem here stems from making assumptions about what the customer knows and following the format of other items in a range of products rather than adapting the design.

For other supplements in this range at US pharmacy chain there's no confusion. The text can read Chewable Vitamin C and no unintentionally comic meaning arises, but with this product it may have been better to clarify in an appropriately sized type that the products inside are tablets avoid skin-crawling misinterpretations.

12. Graduate photography

This is apparently an advert for a graduation day photography service. Getting on the career track maybe? The light at the end of the tract representing a new dawn? Whatever the original intention, there's no getting over the fact that this graduate does not come across as overjoyed about her prospects on the modern job market. In fact, it looks like she's about to end it all by walking straight into an oncoming train.

The colour tones and even the choice of font seem to only back up the impression that the intended message is more about bereavement than celebrating graduation, with the light of the oncoming train perhaps also representing some hope that there may be some better world in the next life. Always consider the mood you want to convey and ensure colours, imagery and type are on message.

It's vital to remember that design is ultimately about clear communication. Just as a writer or speaker needs to choose the perfect words to deliver their message, designers must communicate theirs by selecting the correct visual elements, which convey exactly what they want to say.

13. The magic selfie stick

Graphic designers producing promotional material and visuals for technical instructions can benefit from having a clear understanding themselves of how the product they're depicting actually works.

When it comes to technology, if the visual material produced for the product doesn't get it right, what chance do the digital immigrants among the customer base have? Just as an aside, we love how retro this design for selfie stick packaging already looks.

14. Outon breathable shorts

These cycling shorts let you fart while riding a bike. It's a neat feature, right? But really who decided it was a good idea to communicate the breathability of these padded shorts by overlaying some gas emerging from the padded rear end?

Sometimes designers have to accept that no designing is needed at all and that conveying a message can be better accomplished by the accompanying text, with no need for added visual clarification.

15. Date formats

A little UI blooper to finish with. We're not sure why different parts of the world adopted different standard formats for expressing something as straightforward as the date and it is a phenomenon that causes problems for designers everywhere working on UI forms, but this is something that the designer should have foreseen. When you're working with dates or with any other variable content think through all of the possible scenarios that could arise.

Our top pick is the Bambu Lab P2S for $649, down from $749. For that, you'll get a fully enclosed printer with a 256 x 256 x 256mm build volume, along with an AMS 2 Pro unit that handles multicolour printing and dries your filament too.

Want something even more advanced? The X2D and H2C have both dropped in price too, and I’ve compare all three below. Meanwhile, if you want to see what discounts other brands are offering right now, check the constantly updating price widgets in our best 3D printers guide.

Bambu Lab Black Friday Sale top picks

How to choose

All three of these bundles include an AMS 2 Pro and an enclosed printer with AI error detection, so the real question is how much multicolour work you do, and how demanding your materials are.

For most people, the P2S will be the best buy. It prints in multiple colours out of the box and handles materials such as ABS and ASA, and it’s $140 cheaper than the X2D. However, bear in mind it only has a single nozzle and lacks active chamber heating.

The X2D includes both, with essentially the same build volume, making it a smart choice if you often print with separate support material, while the 65°C chamber helps with tougher filaments. Just be aware that the auxiliary nozzle supports fewer filaments than the main one.

At the top end of the scale, in terms of both price and sophistication, is the H2C. It costs nearly three times as much as the P2S and weighs over twice as much at 32.5kg. But its hotend-swapping system slashes purge waste, and in our testing, models that’d take three days or more on an H2S took just over 24 hours on the H2C. If multicolour printing is your business, this is the one to get.

If you still need some wicker in your own life, there's always the option to 3D print your own wicker husband (actually the technology they used in the film), but there are plenty of ready-to-go budget gems around. Ikea has dusted off its Tolkning bench, reinventing it as the season's must-have racy accessory, and it has plenty of other options to help you get your wicker fix. Just don't blame me for any chafing.

Get the Wickercore look

You might also want to see how they made Alexander Skarsgård's wicker suit.