While the standard Pro X use Status Audio's default signature tuning alongside an open EQ that lets you customise your own sound profiles via the app, the new GoldenSound Edition featues a locked, specialised sound profile from renowned audio engineer Cameron "GoldenSound" Oatley.

There are plenty of great over-ear wireless headphones, but for inner-ear earphones, the Status Pro really stand out right now.

• Browse Status headphones at Amazon

At the heart of the Status Audio Pro X is a triple-driver configuration, combining a 12mm dynamic driver for deep sub-bass with dual Knowles-balanced armatures for highs and mids. The standard signature profile delivers impressive instrument separation and a weighty sub bass partnered with splashes of high end, but with a rich midrange presence for an engaging V-shape sound signature.

The GoldenSound Edition feature an additional locked profile developed using the specialised Brüel & Kjær 5128 head and torso simulator. This targets a natural, balanced timbre, smoother treble and improved mid-range cohesion for a more acoustic-friendly and realistic presentation. You to switch back to the standard Pro X tuning using the app.

They also have a sharp aesthetic with a matte black and matte gold finish on the earbuds, with a matte black charging case and a matte gold lid stamped with both the Status Audio and GoldenSound logos.

The iPhone Duo selling out until January suggested that people were buying into that idea with Apple's first foldable. Now the early reviews and feedback are starting to raise questions.

One of the most concerning issues coming from real-world feedback involves breaks concentrated around the hinge of the phone, including vertical cracks down the centre, dead pixels or lines across one side of the screen. And because of the scarcity of stock, some people have been told they'll have to wait until January for a replacement.

While clearly not ideal, the extent of the issue is unclear. There's no evidence yet of a widespread manufacturing or design defect.

A lot of iPhone Duo testing posted on social media has focused precisely on the hinge and crease given that it's a potential source of weakness (and that the invisibility of the crease has been touted as one of the features making the Duo superior to other foldables.

In the video by Tim Pan above, the crease does become visibly deeper after 500 manual folds and palpably deeper after 10,000, easily within the range of a few months of real use, but Tim generally finds the hinge to hold up well.

But another test, by HTX Studio (below), finds that the crease became deeper than that of two other foldables after just 3,000 folds and also notes that the screen around the crease is softer.

Some have been subjecting to the poor Duo to harsher treatment. Trung Peng decides to pass on the device after finding the crease to be a magnet for dust and dirty. He also finds that the screen gets marked if you hold a naked flame to it. So, yeah, maybe don't do that.

Speaking of heat, other early tests have raised concerns about the phone running warm without being intentionally singed. Joanna Stern was concerned enough to end a FaceTime call during her testing because it felt too hot.

Apple responded that this points to the cooling system working correctly. The Duo's vapor chamber is slimmer than the one in the iPhone 18 Pro, and there's a flexible graphite heat pipe around the hinge to compensate. This helps transfer heat between the two halves of the device, increasing the surface area to dissipate heat but potentially making the whole device warmer to the touch.

Another common gripe with the Duo involves the optimisation of some apps (or lack of). Some apps designed for iOS 26 or 27 present a smaller layout surrounded by black bars. Some behave the same as iPhone-only apps on an iPad: presenting a tiny version of the app in the middle of the display, which is blurry when resized.

But apps that have already been redesigned for the iPhone Duo appear to work very well. It's not ideal for the Duo to launch before a lot of apps are ready for it, but developers will catch up.

Others have cited buggy transition animations and apps that get the camera orientation wrong. Sometimes Apple's own software seems to get confused show the wrong orientation. Again, this is something that can probably be fixed.

For Stefan Van Der Merwe, the lack of Face ID is a deal breaker. I don't think this will be such a decisive factor for everyone, but I can see how it can be disappointing for a phone designed with multitasking in mind. That said, as a foldable, the Duo really needs two hands.

We haven't completed our own review of the Duo yet, and I've not yet seen anything that should massively change people's decision on whether to buy the Duo or not. It was already clear that it's not one of the best camera phones, and it's not presented as such.

You might want to wait a few months for some of the software problems to be ironed out for a smoother initial experience of the Duo – but then you might have no choice with preorders backed up until the end the year. And by that point, you might feel you have enough patience to wait another nine months for the Duo 2.

My studio is about 30 square metres, and it has a slightly odd history: it used to be two bedrooms – mine and my older brother’s – in my parents’ house just outside Paris, until we knocked the wall through. My brother’s bed is still in here, and I’ll come back to why that matters.

The space is split in two. On one side, everything digital: a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 hooked up to a MacBook Pro M2 Max, running Clip Studio Paint [see the best digital art software – ed]. For manga specifically, nothing else comes close – the pen stabilisation, the panel tools, the screentones, it’s all built for exactly what I do.

All three screens are running my own drawings. When I’m working on my new manga I want my previous pages permanently in front of me, so I’m always referencing myself rather than hunting through folders.

The desk itself is custom-built: two and a half metres of solid wood worktop weighing around 100kg, which is not something you move on a whim. It's rated for 300kg of load. I had it built to carry everything at once: Mac, PC, drawing setup and the full streaming rig, without a single wobble.

I built the computer myself, and I’d be lying if I said it was purely for work – I’m a lifelong geek and gamer. The water-cooling loop was a project in itself. When I need to reset my eye before going back to a page, this is where I go.

On the other side, everything traditional, and this is where things get out of hand. I own more than 3,000 markers. Not a typo. Plus dozens and dozens of nibs, pencils and screentone sheets. I’m an ambassador for a few art brands, including Clairefontaine and Graph’it, so material arrives constantly and I ran out of places to put it.

This is my second desk, dedicated entirely to traditional work, with the marker and liner wall standing right in front of it. Everything is arranged so I can reach any colour without standing up or breaking concentration – that’s the whole point. I sit down here and just sink into the drawing. After a morning of screens, the smell of alcohol markers is what tells my brain it’s time to make something with my hands

Everything now lives in labelled boxes, because otherwise I’d never find anything again. There’s a third layer to the room too: I’ve been shooting photo and video since 2011, and I still use that gear every day.

A Sony FX30, a Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun mic and big continuous softboxes – the proper studio kind – because I film courses and live critique sessions for my drawing school, and for the 550,000 people who follow the channel.

I sit on an HBADA X7, which has built-in massage, heating and ventilation – it sounds ridiculous until you’ve spent six straight hours inking a page.

Next to me is a manga library of over a thousand volumes that I raid constantly for reference, plus copies of my own manga, Astral. My day is very rigid. Up at 5:30, sport at 6, at my desk by 7. If I start at 8 I feel like I’ve already lost the day – which is ridiculous, but there it is. I work until noon, then my energy collapses, so I sleep from 2pm to 3:30pm.

That’s what the bed is for. It’s the single most important piece of furniture in the room. Cutting the day in half is non negotiable. Back at it until 6 or 7pm, then in bed by 10. I’m obsessively organised. Clean desk, batteries charged, every pen where it should be, or I feel half-lost before I’ve started.

The biggest lesson? For years I called myself a mangaka online and quietly felt like a fraud, because I was teaching manga without having published one. Then Astral came out in 2025 and the impostor syndrome simply vanished. I’m on my second book now.

Astral is the story of Nejma, a young woman searching for meaning, and Elane, a druidess, who are bound by Merlin’s lost grimoire as ancient Celtic legends come to life.

I was 40 when it came out, and I’d spent years teaching manga online while quietly wondering whether I had the right to – this book is what settled that question, for good.

This is an illustration of Sana, a character from the Astral universe, drawn in Clip Studio Paint.

I'm a serious figure collector: 12 large-scale statues and a small army of smaller ones. Owning them is a childhood dream made literal – as a kid these were completely out of reach, and now I get to work inside the universe that made me want to draw in the first place. They’re also genuinely useful for lighting and anatomy reference.

Gohan is my favourite character in all of manga. He’s the kid who inherits enormous potential and has to decide what to do with it, and every single day he pushes me to go and build my own version of that.

Nami is on my desk because we share one very specific trait: an excellent sense of direction. Whenever I travel with friends, I’m always the one navigating – nobody else even tries anymore.

Apprendre à Dessiner des Mangas is a practical guide book designed for those who truly want to learn to draw – not just watch tutorials, but pick up a pencil and get started.

You can see more of Yé's work on his website.

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Just Eat has apologised and said it was removing the images. But what was it thinking?

As reported by the BBC, images spotted on the Just Eat app in the UK include a bacon and egg soda bread cocktail at a Northern Ireland cafe and a 'jacket potato' represented by an actual jacket with pictures of baked potatoes on it.

Other gems included a plain garlic bread shaped like a plane because of a typo, a bowl of tiger cubs (tiger prawns, apparently), a literal toad in the hole and a 'lighter' breakfast depicted as a cigarette lighter.

Just Eat is really late to this party. Its rival Uber Eats went through this embarrassment almost three years ago. The technology has advanced massively since then, but somehow Just Eat managed to roll out an even worse implementation. On social media, people have been asking how a $4bn company managed to mess up so badly and how it could roll out such a risky feature without properly testing it.

But there's also an even more obvious question: why? Even if the AI 'worked' as intended and generated an image of the perfect Platonic ideal of each dish, using fake product photography for food seems like a guaranteed way to cause disappointment and complaints from customers.

Users have already been sharing screenshots on social media, showing 'AI vs reality' comparisons, with some complaining that Just Eat has refused to issue refunds despite the actual product ordered not even remotely resembling the AI hallucination.

That's not the fault of the business making the food when the false impression was created by an AI image foisted on it by the app. They join the growing list of businesses suffering because of automatic AI-generated images pushed on their products on platforms as varied as Amazon and Reddit.

In 2026, my inbox has been full of PR emails about these kind of developments. How&How rebranding AI image generator Ideogram. Lazarev crafting the identity for AI video app Elva. Together giving AI audit firm Clusia a four-petal mark. Meta asking lettering artist Jessica Hische to draw the new logo for its new AI platform, Muse.

So why do the companies who seem most invested in machine-made creativity keep reaching for the human kind? And should creatives whose livelihoods AI threatens be helping them? The more I think about these conundrums, the more confused I seem to get.

What branding does

The first question is, if we accept that AI can make nice looking images, why wouldn't AI companies want to use them for their own branding? It's a simple question, and actually there's a simple answer too. Branding has never been about making things look nice. It’s about making people believe you.

As I noted in my recent article about attempts to rebrand AI slop, it's pretty clear that AI companies have a credibility problem right now. Not just with designers, but with the general public too.

I've lost track of how many times I've heard people without a creative bone in their body calling out AI images, whether they're on Facebook, a dodgy gig poster hanging up in the pub, or the cover of their nephew’s self-published fantasy novel.

So it might seem like a paradox, yet it makes perfect sense that AI companies are putting humans front and centre when it comes to their own branding. But it's no surprise, too, that the backlash from some creatives has been noisy.

Understandable anger

When Jessica announced her Muse work, for example, she was hammered on Threads, despite explaining that the $12,500 fee would help her keep two small shops and their staff afloat. Her critics argued, though, that we shouldn't be lending our craft and credibility to the thing that’s eroding demand for it.

I understand the logic and I understand the anger. But one has to wonder how much refusing such commissions would actually change anything.

Capitalists are investing literal billions of dollars in generative AI, and ultimately if Jessica had turned down the Muse job, it's not like they'd have turned on their heels and gone home. They'd just have found someone else. There are lot of capable designers out there, and even if they'd hired a bad one and the logo hadn't been any good, it hardly would have brought the AI juggernaut to halt.

On a more positive note, the very fact these companies are keen to hire humans is surely something we can hang on to. As Jessica said in an interview for Wired: “Isn’t this ultimately the future that we want? Large companies hiring independent artists to do things?”

In short, if AI companies want to pay humans to make them look human, surely it's best we take the money, do brilliant work and remind everyone why they asked in the first place?

That inevitably limits the lifespan of any earphone no matter how well it's designed. But the German audio specialist Sennheiser has now come along with the Momentum True Wireless 5, a premium inner-ear headphone with strong active noise cancellation, customisable sound and the ability to swap out the batteries in both the buds and the case using nothing more than a small screwdriver.

That could be a game changer when it comes to sustainability, allowing these to outlast rivals like the AirPods Pro 3, which retail at a similar price (for over-ear options, see our guide to the best wireless headphones).

• Browse Sennheiser headphones at Amazon

The perfect wireless inner-ears for everyday use?

Apple often gets called out for the lack of repairability of its products. The launch of an iPhone self-repair kit in 2022 did little to quell the accusations that it makes things intentionally difficult to fix, reducing tech sustainability. Three years ago in 2023, we reported on a hardware hacker who was determined to correct that by designing his own repairable homemade AirPods.

If you don't want to go to those lengths, the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 5 are an attractive alternative. They're one of very few mainstream inner-ear headphones with a replaceable battery – the component that most tends to limit the lifespan of wireless earphones.

The vast majority of earbuds are sealed with glue or solder, making the batteries difficult or impossible to change without destroying the device. Fairphone Fairbuds are one exception, packing fully modular, screw-based, user-replaceable coin-cell batteries.

The Momentum True Wireless 5 are a more premium option. They have high-fidelity TrueResponse transducers, 3D Dolby Atmos sound, adaptive active noise cancellation, AI-powered voice isolation, automatic wind reduction and a Lossless codec option for maximum fidelity. They also have a new ergonomic design.

Sennheiser cites up to 40 hours of playtime per charge with the case, while the Smart Control Plus app allows advanced sound personalisation, with customisable EQ.

It seems the team wasn't fazed by the controversy one iota. Two years on, it's doubled down with a remixed design that takes the Third Reich resemblance even further. The memes didn't take long to arrive.

On social media, the Atlanta Falcons' new profile picture has been dubbed the "gridiron cross" and the "Bird Reich". "I read that the NFL wanted to conquer the world but I didn’t think they meant it so literally," one person comments on X.

The logo shows the previously used angular black falcon forming an 'F' shape over red, beige, black and cream vertical stripes. It's presumably intended as a temporary design just for this weekend, as the Falcons will play against the 49ers on Sunday wearing retro 1966-inspired uniforms, comprising red helmets, black jerseys and white pants.

To be fair to the Falcons, Nazi Germany never had a monopoly on birds of prey insignia (nor even the swastika, which had a long history before it was adopted by the Third Reich). The bald eagle is also a familiar piece of US iconography.

But after all the comments and ridicule during the last revival of the 1960s design two years ago, there's no way that the team didn't know what was coming this time around. And the addition of the vertical stripes only makes the resemblance to Nazi iconography more apparent, which it must have realised.

I'd be interested to hear from long-term Falcon fans about whether the same comparison was made when the team originally used this logo back in the 1960s. I guess that in those pre-social media days, people didn't pick apart graphic design in the same way they do today.

Even the best sports logos can generate controversy, and the Falcons logos aren't the most disturbing we've seen. That accolade goes to the old Red Sox logo. Meanwhile, the main Atlanta Falcons logo retains its place in our pick of the best NFL logos.

And the brand's founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, have also participated directly in protests. In April 2016, both were arrested at the US Capitol during the Democracy Awakening demonstrations against the influence of money in politics and restrictions on voting rights. More recently, Cohen was arrested in May 2025 during a US Senate protest over military aid to Israel and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

At this year's Paradigms conference in Croatia, in a talk exploring the power of brands to drive social change, chief marketing officer Jay Curley argued that businesses should do more than pay lip service to good causes. For the Vermont ice cream maker, activism is baked into the business, alongside the Cookie Dough.

But what happens when a brand gets it wrong, faces a backlash or risks alienating customers? And how do you choose which causes deserve your voice? We caught up with Curley to discuss why brands should stop sitting on the fence, why perfection shouldn’t stand in the way of progress, and how a little creativity can help change the world.

I'm here to argue that variant designs and fan posters are where it's at if you're looking for elite horror movie poster design. Among the recent sludge of formulaic black-and-red horror flick designs, consider these stunning designs your official spooky season palette cleanser.

01. An American Werewolf in London

• Buy the poster at Vice Press

Created by graphic designer and illustrator Grzegorz Domaradzki (a.k.a. Gabz), this Japanese variant poster for 'An American Werewolf in London' puts a dramatic spin on the minimalist original. Created in 2021, the intricate design is based on a pencil drawing and remastered in Adobe Photoshop. With ferocious illustration in spine-chilling detail, it's a prime example of how straying from minimalist design can bring a film to life.

02. Dracula

• Buy the poster at Hammer Films

A contemporary take on Terence Fisher's 1958 Dracula, this limited edition poster is a wonderful homage to Hammer's most iconic release. Created by legendary Swedish illustrator Robert Sammelin, the design captures the terror of the horror classic with bold freehand linework and hazy visuals that blur the line between dreams and nightmares.

03. The Shining

• Buy the poster at Bamalama Posters

Created as part of a limited edition run of custom hand-pulled silkscreen prints, this minimalist take on The Shining's iconic poster demonstrates how Kubrick's iconic cinematography has stood the test of time. Created by Inkcandy, the poster series is inspired by the 'Italian shot', taking its name from Sergio Leone's Italian-Western films – a cinematic trope featuring extreme close-ups of the eyes.

04. Pearl

• Check out the poster at A24

Commissioned by Pearl's Japanese distributor, Happinet Phantom Studios, this stunning poster created by Japanese artist Yuko Higuchi puts a soft, folk art spin on the film. Known for her surreal paintings and dreamlike illustrations, this gentle take on Pearl is a beautiful contrast to the film's violent horror.

05. Talk to Me

• Buy the poster at A24

Created by award-winning and published Illustrator Matt Ryan Tobin, this stunning illustrated poster for A24's Talk to Me pairs claustrophobic visuals with a stripped-back palette to create a wonderfully stylised design. The design earned high praise, seeing Tobin awarded a 2024 SILVER Clio.

06. Alien

• Buy the poster on Dom Bittner's website

This alternative poster for Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien is a beautifully frightening take on the iconic original design. Created by movie poster artist Dom Bittner, the hand-painted poster brings a whimsical quality to the classic horror – a wonderful contrast to the minimalist design of the franchise's posters.

Several brands have held their nerve in the face of the onslaught. Mars refused to entertain Tucker Carlson's fetish for the green M&M, the Jaguar rebrand is starting to make sense, and Bob's Red Mill seems to be sticking to its decision to 'kill off' Bob.

Alas, it seems a library in North Carolina didn't have such guts. Farmville Public Library has reportedly ditched the logo design it had been using for the past 14 years because three people complained that it looked a little bit like a rainbow, which apparently reminded them of gay people.

According to Farmville mayor Alex Joyner, the town's library changed its logo after three complaints were made to a town commissioner. I won't comment on the choice of typeface, but the mark itself was perfectly serviceable for a public library: it was cheerful, it stood out, and it obviously depicted a book rather than a weapon of LGBT propaganda.

The mayor himself has taken issue with the decision. He pointed out that the iconic television series Reading Rainbow had made said climatic phenomenon a “significant symbol of libraries across the entire US”. He also complained that the logo was changed “in the dead of night behind a curtain” with no opportunity for public comment.

“The library is a symbol of inclusion and is supposed to be welcome to all. For a handful of people to be able to decide who is welcomed and who is not here is unacceptable in my eyes,” he said, as reported by ABC.

I'd also point out that the logo's seven colours don't even reflect those of a rainbow or the Pride flag. It's clearly an open book, with each hue depicting a different page. It's a nice way to show that books can contain a wide array of knowledge on diverse subject matters, like how colours are used to depict different subjects in Trivial Pursuit. Although admittedly, Trivial Pursuit is very woke.

The culture war, it seems, has now become a war on colour. Next, we'll be banning box sets of the best coloured pencils. Apple's iconic rainbow logo would never be allowed today, and I'd be surprised if Google doesn't soon receive complaints too: it's workmark contains red, yellow, green and blue. At this rate, everyone is going to have to dress in black, and any splash of colour will become the ultimate act of rebellion.

There's a change.org petition calling for the library logo to be changed back. It currently has 331 signatures, over 100 times as many as the three complaints made against the original design.

A public meeting to discuss the controversy will be held at Farmville Town Hall on 2 November at 5:30pm.

From branding books to mindful practice guides, Radim's bestselling works have inspired creatives across the globe with his practical yet inspirational words. Yet another valuable curation of his industry knowledge, Daring Forever is a wonderfully human take on creative empowerment.

"‘Daring Forever’ begins at the edge of something – a blank page, a stage, a life we haven’t quite stepped fully into yet," the press release reads. "The rope feels unattached. The drop looks real. And still, something in us leans forward. The book is a love letter to that lean: to the body that carries us further than we believe it can, to the self we are still learning to accept, to the curiosity that refuses to sit still, and to the gratitude that brings us home to the present."

"After years of interviewing remarkable people, I noticed the same pattern. The ones doing the most daring work were often the most afraid. Nobody has it figured out, and that’s the point," Radim explains. “Your body is the vehicle, and you’re the driver. Most of us were never given the owner’s manual. This book is my attempt to write one.”

“Daring isn’t a personality trait reserved for the fearless. It’s a human capacity we all carry, and it’s never too late to use it,” he concludes.

Daring Forever is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and audiobook form.

It' could be a game changer – not least for those who insist on listening to their music on speakers when they're sitting alone on a bus – and we can't wait to get our hands on a pair to see whether they're worthy of a place in our guide to the best wireless headphones.

• Get the TDM Neo for $249 at the TDM website

What's so new about the TDM Neo?

The TDM Neo's headline innovation is their simple twist mechanism that turns them from premium on-ear headphones into a compact, portable speaker. Revealed at IFA 2026, this unique design means you can use the same device when you're listening to music alone or sharing it with others.

That's more than just a party trick. To allow it to work, the Neo have a groundbreaking audio system comprising four 40mm drivers: two inward-facing headphone drivers and two outward-facing speaker drivers.

Together, these are intended to deliver balanced clarity when worn and energetic output when twisted into a speaker. TDM tells us that the headphones have a clean, detailed sound profile and that the speaker mode has impressive volume for a device that fits into the palm of your hand.

The TDM Neo use dual-mode Bluetooth 6.0 for wireless connectivity. Four buttons on the device control power, volume, and change modes between headphones and speakers. You can also control the functions with the customisable twist feature, adjusting the settings to twist to pause, power off to switch audio.

As for construction and comfort, the Neo has dual layer memory foam ear cushions and a headband cover made with soft vegan leather, intended to provide long lasting comfort. The headband is adjustable, and TDM claims over 200 hours of battery life in headphone mode and 16 hours in speaker mode. USB-C fast charge can deliver a full charge in three hours and an eight hour headphone playback period in just five minutes

We're looking forward to testing them. You can find out more at the TDM website.

Today, GameMaker is free for non-commercial projects, but selling a game requires a Professional licence, which costs $99.99 as a one-off payment. The developer platform has been used to make games including Spelunky, Deltarune and UFO 50. Read our GameMaker 'everything you need to know' explainer for more on what has been and can be made.

A GMRT runtime is the software that takes your code and makes it run on a computer or game console; think of it as the cogs that make everything work. Making it free is another step toward helping more people get into game development, since its mix of visual, low-code tools and a coding environment is easy to grasp.

Time to try GameMaker?

The announcement builds on the GMRT source-code access GameMaker revealed earlier this year, and every tier will include it. GameMaker says developers can explore the technology, adapt it to their projects, and potentially contribute. Professional licence holders will also get source access to the existing GMS2 runtime, and can keep selling games made with it.

Console exports are unchanged. Whichever runtime you use, you will still need an Enterprise licence and approved-developer status, and GameMaker says existing tier pricing stays the same. Our 5 tips to get started in GameMaker guide offers more advice on what you need to know.

GMRT is still in beta and rolling out across platforms, so check what it supports before you commit a project to it. Visit the GameMaker Blog for more details and updates.

Useful game design books:

Before Steam Next Fest wraps up on 26 October, I thought I'd hunt down some demos for games with a bit of Silver Pines retro horror. One thing I loved about the 2.5D survival horror game Silver Pines when I reviewed it was how it looked: a mix of retro survival horror with comic book noir environment design and pixel art design that made it feel like a lost 16-bit game that was channelling aspects of Silent Hill and Metroid design made popular in indies like Hollow Knight and Mio: Memories in Orbit.

Silver Pines is one of the year's best games, and a reminder that you don't need another Unreal Engine 5 tech demo to make a game look good. With Steam Next Fest currently overflowing with upcoming indie games, I've been looking for demos with more personality and a bit of that Silver Pines blend of unique art, nostalgia, and fresh horror ideas, just in time for Halloween.

Below are some of the best upcoming indie games with demos worth trying before Steam Next Fest ends on 26 October.

1. The House Before: a body-horror game where you play the house

Many horror games put you in a haunted house, but The House Before takes things a step further by making you the house. It's a weird, significant shift in perspective, the kind you find in indie horror movies like Presence.

This surreal body-horror adventure turns the building into something that resembles a living organism, with pipes becoming bones, tunnels acting like veins, and rooms taking on the qualities of internal organs. It's a wonderfully strange premise that gives the developers plenty of room to experiment with the game's visual language.

The art direction shifts as you play, which is another unique twist. Rather than sticking to a single visual style, the game uses those changes to make its world feel increasingly unfamiliar, and even the interface becomes part of the experience. It's the sort of idea that could easily become a gimmick, but when the visuals are doing so much of the storytelling, it makes sense to push them further.

The idea of playing as a house is odd enough to catch my attention, especially when the walls, pipes, and rooms are all part of the horror. I'd like to see how far the developers take it.

Download The House Before demo from Steam.

2. Derelikt: PS1-style sci-fi horror on a research station

I have a soft spot for games like Derelikt (and the quirky Grease Trap '99) that feel like they escaped from the original PlayStation, back when 3D graphics were still a novelty, and developers were figuring out how to build a convincing world from a handful of polygons and that 'wobble' textures used to affect when it all moved.

Derelikt taps into that era with its retro sci-fi horror aesthetic, sending you to investigate a research station on a mysterious planetoid. Naturally, things don't go particularly well, and before long you're dealing with missing scientists, hostile environments and a growing understanding things are going to get bad before they get better.

There's also something refreshing about a game that understands how much you can do with lighting, composition and a few well-placed shadows, and this, along with Blighten, below on this list, offer that kind of unease simple but atmospheric design can deliver. You don't always need to see every little detail to be unsettled by what's lurking around the next corner.

If you grew up with PS1 horror games, or just enjoy the aesthetic of a lost 1990s sci-fi adventure, give this one a go.

Download the Derelikt demo on Steam.

3. The Road of Dust and Sorrow: anime-style pixel survival horror

I'm always interested in pixel art that gets the details right, like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, which nails that '90s shooter aesthetic, and The Road of Dust and Sorrow, which shows similar attention to detail and turns it into wonderfully grim places to explore. This upcoming survival-horror game follows Katherine and her daughter Ava through a post-apocalyptic world where a miracle crop has turned people into flesh-hungry creatures called Dusters.

The game's setting is filled with abandoned streets, ransacked buildings, and strange vegetation creeping back across the ruins. Katherine has bigger problems than the scenery, mind you, as she scavenges supplies, fights off Dusters, and tries to keep her daughter Ava safe.

That mother-and-daughter relationship is what sets the game apart from a straightforward 2.5D zombie adventure. Ava is more than someone to rescue at the end of a level; she's the reason Katherine keeps going, even when the world around them has become a pretty horrible place.

The game draws on '90s survival-horror classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, so it hits that Silver Pines DNA, but its detailed anime-like pixel art gives the ruined world its own character. The new Steam Next Fest demo is twice as long as the previous version and includes the entire first act, so there's plenty to get stuck into before the full game arrives on 3 December.

Download the The Road of Dust and Sorrow demo on Steam.

4. Anomalith: Showa-era liminal horror

Retro horror has become a crowded corner of the indie scene, but Anomalith caught my attention for its Japanese period influences and use of liminal spaces, that in a way reminds me of the excellent Motorslice.

Anomalith follows a girl searching for her missing friend in a world warped by strange anomalies, drawing on Showa-era Japanese aesthetics to create something that feels caught between a familiar place and an unpleasant dream. The idea behind horror like this, and it's a reason Backrooms works so well, is the walls don't need to be covered in blood to make you feel uneasy – the sense of dislocation is what gives it an eerie edge.

Games that use a recognisable visual language and then start messing with it have a particular appeal. A corridor, a building, or an everyday object can become unsettling simply because it doesn't behave as you'd expect, it's why I loved aspects of Control Resonant so much, and the retro presentation gives Anomalith a distinctive identity of its own.

It's also a good fit if you enjoy horror that leaves you to work things out rather than explaining every little detail. Sometimes the most effective thing a game can do is give you a familiar place, then make you question everything you see.

Download the Anomalith demo on Steam.

5. Blighten: PS1-inspired survival horror shooter

Another PS1-inspired 3D world, Blighten embraces the way those technical limitations often forced developers to think carefully about what the player could see, and what they couldn't and explores how to redo that for modern gamers.

If you like your horror games with a bit of old-school grit and the kind of item juggling found in the Resident Evil games, Blighten is worth a look. It's a retro-styled survival horror shooter, with the sort of throwback presentation that will appeal to anyone who misses the rougher edges of the genre's PS1-era heyday.

Retro inspired graphics can give a game an immediacy that gets lost when everything is rendered in perfect detail, and there's a certain charm to seeing developers embrace that design idea. A rough texture, a blocky character model or an awkwardly lit room can become part of the experience and a way to build an uneasy atmosphere, one designed around nostalgia as much as horror imagery.

I'm always interested in games that understand this, particularly when the visual style has a purpose beyond making screenshots look nostalgic. Blighten is worth investigating if you're after another upcoming horror game that takes its cues from an earlier generation.

Download the Blighten demo on Steam.

6. Hyperarousal: psychological horror in Italy’s Camonica Valley

Hyperarousal has a nasty trick up its sleeve. This upcoming psychological horror adventure lets you stab tattoos on your own arm to reveal things hidden from ordinary sight, which seems a risky move when you're already dealing with ancestral nightmares (and if, like me, you hate needles and sharp, pointy things).

Set in Italy's Camonica Valley, a real place famous for its prehistoric rock art, the game follows Garlo as he returns to his family home looking for peace and quiet. That doesn't last long, as he becomes caught up in his ancestors' memories, travelling between the present day and different periods in the valley's history.

Hypervision, that bit where you stab yourself to see clues, is the game's strangest idea. By stabbing three ritual tattoos, Garlo can reveal hidden messages, sounds and routes through the world, but using them makes it harder to tell reality from memory and hallucination.

The real-life Camonica Valley has an estimated 8,000 years of human history etched into its rocks, making this Alps location an unusual, inspired setting for a horror game, giving Hyperarousal something more tangible to draw on than the usual abandoned hospital or haunted mansion.

Download the Hyperarousal demo on Steam.

There’s a Nothing Headphone (1) Pro and a Bambu Lab A2L printer up for grabs for each category winner, but how do you make a design stand out from the crowd? Bambu Lab has shared five tips for getting your entry right, from coming up with an original idea to making sure other people can actually print and use it.

It's a good brand tie-up too, especially since I discovered in my CMF Speaker S review that Nothing is embracing 3D printing to enable device customisation. Bambu Lab has become a leading brand that makes 3D printing easier and builds some of the best 3D printers. Read Bambu's tips below, gather ideas, and enter this year's Let's Make It challenge.

Download am STL file of the Nothing Headphone (1) for reference.

Bambu Lab printers to buy:

It's not a new phenomenon by any means, as games like Fallout have similarly revived classics like The Ink Spots' "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire". It goes to show how the best video games have the power to influence pop culture way beyond the confines of the screen.

Released in 1976, Devil Woman is considered one of Cliff's 'edgier' tunes, which is why the sudden virality of the song amuses me. I suspect many new fans will be surprised to discover his wider discography, featuring the Eurovision hit "Congratulations" and the festive ballad "Mistletoe and Wine".

Devil Woman's sudden surge in popularity highlights the wider ways we discover new music. Whether it's a viral TikTok sound or a gaming score, these hits get new context, and suddenly a song once confined to the discomfort of an awkward family gathering becomes a mysterious (dare I say sexy?) soundtrack.

GTA VI is already permeating the cultural zeitgeist, taking over social media with viral memes – hey, we got a Cliff Richard revival before GTA VI... The excited response to its latest ad takeover in Miami proves that the game is the most hyped release we've seen in decades, and with graphics that good, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

A lot of people new to Laika have expressed surprise at how incredibly clean the animation looks for stop motion. If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, I highly recommend watching the behind-the-scenes video below. It provides an insight into just how big an accomplishment it was to make the movie by hand.

If you're inspired, see our guides to the best laptops for animation and the best animation software.

Wildwood is an adaptation of the 2011 children's fantasy novel written by Colin Meloy of The Decemberists and illustrated by Carson Ellis. The first book in The Wildwood Chronicles trilogy follows two seventh-graders, Prue and Curtis, as they enter the magical Impassable Wilderness in Portland, Oregon, to rescue their kidnapped baby brother.

True to Laika's signature animation style, the film combines traditional stop‑motion with CGI enhancements (check out how Laika animates water). That creates a smooth, polished aesthetic while Laika's process of animating on ones creates very fluid motion.

Certain scenes have sparked debates on social media with some people believing that digital 3D models must have been used. Take the cages in the clip in the post below. The way they move while the characters also move has some people refusing to believe that they were physical models.

But here's the evidence.

3D printing is a key part of Laika's workflow, and this is what allows the studio to create such precise and detailed models. They used 142,000 3D-printed faces with voxel printing for subsurface scattering. Every distinct facial expression, emotion, and mouth shape is individually 3D-printed, and tiny magnets are rigged between the puppet's solid body and face plates that are swapped frame by frame while also manually moving elements like the eyeballs and eyelids.

The puppets have a rig called a jetpack attached to their back with knobs and turnbuckles for making minute tilt and rotation movements quickly. Some puppets have inflatables called breathers inside them, which could be adjusted with a key to make the puppets look like they're breathing.

To learn more about the making of the movie, check out the Art of Wildwood art book published by Rizzoli Universe.

The original Tomb Raider was released for the Sega Saturn in Europe and Japan on 25 October, 1996. The North American release came a month later alongside the version for the original PlayStation. To commemorate the birth of an icon, Crystal Dynamics has released a series of Tomb Raider 30 wallpapers showing the evolution of Lara Croft over the ages.

The main Tomb Raider anniversary artwork fits eight incarnations of the intrepid archaeologist Lara Croft, from her original dual-pistol-wielding low-poly appearance to the more grounded and vulnerable Lara of Survivor and the new Lara Croft from Legacy of Atlantis, which is being developed with Flying Wild Hog, and Tomb Raider: Catalyst, which is coming further ahead in 2028.

Some fans will be disappointed by the apparent snub of Underworld Lara, but the pieces artwork captures well how Lara has evolved over the years, and how she's remained unmistakably Lara despite the changes to her appearance and character as technology has permitted developers to hone their vision.

The 1996 Lara design continues to provide the basis for the character today despite the ability to make her look more realistic. PlayStation 2-era Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld introduced smoother geometry and more expressive animation, while the Survivor trilogy pushed the detail and realism, with each leap adding more polygons, texture, as well as nuance to Lara's character.

Crystal Dynamics has also released a new illustration commissioned from artist Inna Vjuzhanina as part of the Tomb Raider anniversary celebrations. Available in multiple formats. The piece brings together Toby Gard and Core Design's Lara Croft from the 1996 debut, originally made of just a few hundred polygons, alongside the character design from the upcoming games developed in Unreal Engine 5.

She's not THIS old, but there's some cool Lara Croft pixel art too..

One of the aspects of Lara's appearance that's evolved most dramatically is her hair. In the first two games, it was made from big polygons, not we have precise strands made from overlapping semi-transparent texture that mimic real clumps of hair. Her skin too. Subsurface scattering makes skin look more real, in changing light while blend shapes can form thousands of natural-looking facial expressions.

3D printing a real model of Lara's body allowed developers to get real-world clothes tailor made, which could then be scanned to bring into the games.

You can download the anniversary artwork and wallpapers from Crystal Dynamics via Flickr.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will be released on 12 February, 2027. Pre-orders are live now on the PlayStation Store and via Steam and Xbox.

Also check out the Tomb Raider gear store for anniversary merchandise, from glasses to swimwear.

Inspired? See our guide to the best laptops for game development.

It's frustrating, because although you should never pay attention to the comments on the internet (like, ever), the idea someone thinks you "cheated" is actually more upsetting than if they simply didn't like it.

The only silver lining is that at least you can reassure yourself it happens to everyone. Even, it seems, to some of the world's biggest pop stars.

Last Friday, Olivia Rodrigo released the video for her remix of ‘Expectations’ featuring Chappell Roan, in which the two singers send up retro TV game shows, with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne playing the host. Around the three-minute mark, there's a very brief animated sequence featuring cartoon versions of the two young women.

The internet got to work examining the footage, as the internet tends to do, and concluded that generative AI must have been involved. There was plenty of "evidence" in the eyes of these keyboard Miss Marples.

In the normal run of things, you'd have then expected a series of formal denials from the musicians and their representatives. All of which would have merely fuelled the rage and conspiracy theories, and the whole thing might have rumbled on for months.

Show your workings

Instead, something different happened: the work was simply shown. Rodrigo’s official fan account, LiviesHQ, shared a behind-the-scenes clip with the caption: “BTS of the hand-drawn characters, 2D & 3D animation, and analog TV screens used to create the retro graphics of the ‘Expectations’ music video.”

This is not a lengthy, step-by-step documentary, more of a quick sizzle reel. But nonetheless, you can clearly see rough character sketches, 3D animation in progress and how an analogue approach provided the lo-fi feel.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, graphic designer Jack Harrison led the analogue treatment. The art team created the animations in 2D and 3D software, loaded the files onto a Windows Vista PC (ask your dad), then filmed the screen with a high-res camera. In other words, they put a lot of work into making the sequence look clunky and old-fashioned.

This fits neatly with what Olivia told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “I would never use AI in any of my music,” she said. “Absolutely no. Hard line on that. The closest I’d ever got is that once, me and [producer] Dan [Nigro] were like, ‘God, I wonder what ideas ChatGPT would have for an Olivia Rodrigo title,’ and they’re all f**king awful.”

What the backlash to the 'Expectations' video proved, though, is that it doesn't matter how many times you deny using AI, some people won't believe you.

Keep the receipts

So here's my key takeaway. Whether you're a team working for a global superstar or a freelance designer in your bedroom, the most important thing is to record your process.

Keep all your sketches and working files for a project, even the stuff that didn't work and that you later discarded. Make screen recordings of work you do on your computer, and take photos of anything physical you make. Then if anyone kicks off online, just provide the evidence.

Olivia didn’t get drawn into a slanging match. She just shared a short clip that let the work speak for itself, and moved on. It’s a sad state of affairs when creatives have to prove they’re human. But if we have to do it, at least we can do it in style.

George Lucas, the filmmaker behind Star Wars and the recent opener of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, offers a useful way to look at this: it’s less about chasing success than about learning to live with the possibility of getting it wrong.

“Failure is another word for experience” is how Lucas put it in a 2013 interview with the US National Endowment for the Arts. He went further, explaining that creating something new means doing things with a high potential for failure, particularly when nobody has done them before. You try something, it doesn’t work, and you use what you’ve learned to try again.

The Star Wars creator says failure can teach you important lessons

It sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget when you’re making art, designing something or trying to find your own style. We see the finished work, the polished portfolio, the film that made it to the screen, but not the weeks, months or years of experiments and failed ideas that got there. LAIKA’s Wildwood production designer, Nelson Lowry, knows that, as he explained in our piece on why making mistakes is part of the creative process.

Lucas also made an important distinction between experimenting for yourself and working for someone else. In the same interview, he talked about making small films he could afford to fail at, without worrying about the financial consequences. When others invest money in your work, he said, it becomes harder to be truly creative if you know you have to please someone.

That pressure will sound familiar to anyone making work for clients, social media or an audience with expectations. It’s tempting to stick with what you know will work, especially on a deadline or when you're trying to satisfy a brief. But if every experiment has to succeed, how do you ever find out what you’re capable of? Stage designer and artist Es Devlin has a similar approach, deliberately pushing into unfamiliar territory because, as she explains in her thoughts on making work without knowing the rules, that’s often where the interesting ideas begin.

George Lucas identifies why wrong ideas can be right

Lucas’s advice isn’t that failure feels good, or that every bad idea is secretly brilliant. It’s that getting something wrong gives you information you didn’t have before. And if you’re stuck trying to make every detail perfect, Salvador Dalí’s rather useful reminder about the impossibility of perfection makes a good companion read.

So the next time a drawing, design or creative project goes sideways, don't bin the whole thing just yet. Have a look at what went wrong. There might be something useful in there.

Explore the Lucas Museum art book

Ever since my son became a soccer fan and started playing video games, there’s been an annual fall ritual that he and his friends celebrate. Whenever the new “FIFA” comes out – it’s been called EA FC since 2023 – they lock themselves away for an entire weekend and game, for 48 hours nonstop.

This year, the whole thing turned into a real extravaganza – something was different, better, faster, more thrilling: it was the new EAFC27. Indeed it’s more than just a game. And it comes with a brand design that breaks boundaries. Karun Agimal — Creative Director at DixonBaxi, the agency behind the new look – puts it this way: EAFC is a brand that isn’t simply played. It’s lived.

The London- and LA-based studio DixonBaxi have become famous as the masterminds behind the brand identities of Formula 1 (F1), Roblox and, more recently, Everton FC (among other great projects). In their brand design for EAFC27, they have now combined their precise understanding of gaming and sports culture in a single project (conmpare it here to the other great rebrands of the decade so far).

But first things first

Until 2023, the world-famous soccer game with 1 billion (!) active users was still called FIFA. When EA Sports’ partnership with the FIFA organization ended after 30 years, a comprehensive rebranding and renaming to EAFC took place, supported by London‘s Uncommon Creative Studios. The triangular logo used since then is reminiscent of the floating cursor that has appeared above the controlled players in gameplay for decades.

Building on this strong branding concept, DixonBaxi has now created a holistic and customisable brand universe that leaves traditional TV sports conventions far behind – a look straight outta TikTok & Twitch. As part of the redesign, the triangle was transformed into a free-form shape capable of taking on a wide variety of context-specific visual interpretations. The new visual identity combines an iconic symbol with a graphic treatment that creates an immersive experience and becomes part of users’ cultural interpretation. And that interpretation is as diverse as the world EAFC plays in.

From campaign to culture

Agimal points out: »FC couldn’t just belong to the players already inside it. We needed an identity that reflected the different playstyles, ages and backgrounds that make up the game today. One that could lead the conversation around the most loved sport on the planet. The world’s game. We built a brand system that could move from campaign to culture. Not a fixed identity, but a system designed to move. Giving us the licence to pull harder on culture, respond to it and become part of it.

A brand people can make their own

The new EAFC identity is a prime example of how branding should be conceived and implemented in 2026 — because it answers one of the most important questions brand managers must ask themselves today: How can I enable my users to make my brand their own and view their very own personal version of my brand as part of their culture? As far as the gaming and sports communities are concerned, this has truly been achieved. My son approves.

Inspired by traditional Asian apothecaries and their tools, I wanted to create something with a striking contrast between the dark, monochromatic setting of an old, serious apothecary and the vibrant team within it.

To strengthen the storytelling, I enjoy adding comedic moments, like this nervous child being held back by the monkey during a doctor’s visit (if you need to build your own art setup, see our guides to the best drawing tablets or the best laptops for drawing).

This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.

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With dedicated Nvidia graphics cards, both of these laptops cater to creators as much as gamers. The 5a has you covered for photo editing, 2D design work and content creation, while the Legion Pro i7 has the internals for heavier video editing and 3D rendering workflows as well as AAA gaming with RTX 5080 graphics and 32GB RAM.

There are another couple of deals I'd recommend considering if you don't need quite as much power or if you're looking for a lighter device for travel. See below for the details. For more options, see our guides to the best laptops for video editing based on our own reviews. For cheaper laptops, see our guide to the best budget laptops for graphic design students.

Today's best laptop deals for creatives

It’s one half of a free update for Dispatch Deluxe Edition owners, out now on PC (Steam), PS5, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, and Xbox Series X/S, and the other half is Commentary Mode, with more than 16 hours of cast and crew talking you through the episodes.

What’s in the Dispatch anniversary update?

The commentaries include two tracks, one for the cast and one for the crew, with different choices unlocking different commentary, and you can switch it on over the top of Storyboard Mode.

So you can sit and watch a scene in its scrappiest form while somebody who worked on it explains why it ended up looking the way it did. Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad, BoJack Horseman), Laura Bailey (The Last of Us Part II, Critical Role) and Erin Yvette (Hades II, The Wolf Among Us) are among the cast voices, and they’re talking about bringing the characters to life, which is a nice thing to hear while you’re looking at the version of those characters that hadn’t been animated yet.

What Storyboard Mode shows about how Dispatch was made

I’d be wary of expecting a full production breakdown, because the idea is the animatics themselves and playing them. But for anyone who draws, animates, or storyboards for a living, seeing where a gag gets its timing or a reaction shot gets an extra beat before anyone’s spent a fortune finishing it is a more dynamic way to see a game's scaffolding than doomscrolling ArtStation. We previously went behind the scenes of Dispatch, exploring how AdHoc used Unreal Engine, previsualisation and cinematic tools to bring its superhero workplace comedy to life.

Nick Herman, Co-Creative Director on Dispatch and COO of AdHoc Studio, put it this way: "Dispatch was only possible because of folks who believed in it enough to show up and do their best work. In our industry, it's often really hard to showcase those people and how the development process actually works, but fortunately our game is very weird and specific and affords us some unique opportunities."

Dispatch Deluxe Edition price and who gets the update

Standard Edition owners aren’t left out and can access these neat extras, though the Deluxe upgrade costs $10.99 and includes a digital art book and four digital comics. I think that's good value. Herman says the idea was to give people more ways into a game that’s become part of their lives, "whether that’s playing alongside the cast and crew, experiencing the entire game in its original storyboards, or hanging out together IRL at the wildest version of a Dispatch concert our finance team would sign off on".

The rest of the celebration releases are for people who’d like something to take home. Those four digital comics are now getting a physical release as a complete set, with covers that join up into one big battle scene, and the first 1,000 orders on the AdHoc store get a numbered collector’s card. T-shirts and hoodies feature artwork by art director Derek Stratton, originally made for the three-record soundtrack vinyl set exclusive to Lost In Cult, and they also include 100 signed Stratton album-art posters.

Lost In Cult is also behind Dispatch: Design Works, a hardcover making-of book and collectable box with interviews from the cast and developers, though there’s no date yet, only an alert sign-up on the Lost In Cult site. For another look at the thought that goes into building a game's visual identity, read how the team behind Dustborn created its comic-book-inspired art style, turning a deliberately stylised look into part of the storytelling.

Dispatch mobile release date and price

If you haven't played Dispatch, there’s a new phone version releasing on iOS and Android on 9 December, rebuilt for touch and vertical play, with PC support via Google Play Games. The first four episodes are free, and the full game is $19.99, with Google Play pre-registration and App Store pre-orders coming soon. If you're still looking for something new to play, our pick of the best hidden-gem indie games of 2025 also features Dispatch, alongside other games worth seeking out.

And the music is going live too: on Thursday, 3 December, AdHoc and Banter Events are putting on a one-night soundtrack show at AVALON Hollywood in Los Angeles, featuring composer Andrew Arcadi and the SDN Company Band, joined by THOT SQUAD, Bershy, Primer, Caroline Kingsbury, and Fartbarf. Tickets go to AdHoc email subscribers first, and Herman describes it as “the wildest version of a Dispatch concert our finance team would sign off on”, which tells you most of what you need to know about the tone.

Fred Again and NEST Acoustics created a short musical composition, which was played through an underwater transducer, resulting in physical vibrations and ripples. These were in turn used to animate a delightful new identity that looks like the ultimate expression of Apple's Liquid Glass aesthetic.

The months-long project involved building a custom rig and software to control the transducer which played Fred Again's mnemonic sound (which also serves as a new sonic logo for Apple Music).

Apple's video case study (above) is a treat, revealing just how hand-made the identity really was. The company set out to create "music, made visible", and the liquid-based process was clearly as mesmerising as it was intricate. The result is a visual identity that feels both playful and visceral, much like the bold new Apple Music wordmark we first encountered earlier this month.

The only question is how the overall identity will translate to the most important part of Apple Music: the app itself. Sure, the liquified animation will look fantastic in music videos and ads, and the mnemonic will sound great in the same context. But from what we've seen of the actual new Apple Music icon, very little of that creative expression has made its way to the nuts and bolts of the daily Apple Music experience.

Indeed, the new black-and-white Apple Music icon, first glimpsed in iOS 27.2, has been described as 'boring' and even 'miserable' – and now that we've seen how gorgeous Apple Music can look as a brand, users are wondering where that magic is in the app. "This is a genuinely exciting rebrand that has translated HORRIBLY to the elements most of us interact with - the Home Screen icon, the navigation bar and other in-app elements," one Redditor comments, while another adds, "So they have all these gorgeous colours for changing an Icon to black and white?"

As for the app itself, Apple seems to have simply stripped out the previous red accents, with text accents now blue, and the 'Favourite' star now yellow.

We can but hope that the dull black-and-white logo is a placeholder, and a splashier design for the app and icon are on the way. But for now, we're looking at a beautiful brand with a not-so-beautiful app.