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Unlike a lot of artists, Janice Chu didn’t necessarily grow up knowing she wanted to draw things for a living. In fact, she originally went to university to study computer science, but that only lasted a semester. “There was just too much math,” she says. Eventually she switched to studying animation, and three years in she decided that what she really wanted to do was create concept art for video games. “The school didn’t teach concept art,” says Chu, “so I had to learn on my own.”

Since then the Vancouver-based artist has gone on to work on a pretty wide range of projects. She spent time at game developer Digital Extremes, doing everything from concept art for Halo 4 maps to designing user interface icons and sci-fi weapons for…

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I thought I knew where I stood in the great battle of red versus blue, favoring CSKA Sofia over Levski, Trojans over Greeks, and the Chicago Bulls over everyone else. But Huawei has shaken my confidence with its two new hues for the P9. Both are identical to the original brushed aluminum Android handset, but one is now a deep dark burgundy and the other is a light and shimmery blue.

The blue P9 is subtle, as if it’s the regular gray aluminum with an icy blush of steely blue. The red P9, on the other hand, is fully saturated in a crimson shade that feels almost too dark. But then it catches the light and looks absolutely delightful. I guess it’s the mark of a good design tweak when you can’t conclusively decide which of the new options…

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Poll

Which new Huawei P9 colorway do you prefer?

• Red
• Blue
• Neither, I prefer the original
• Still waiting for an octarine phone

  291 votes | Results

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I know it’s true of every modern phone, but it’s especially true of Sony’s new pair of Xperia handsets: the camera will be the most important factor in deciding the fortunes of the Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact. Introduced at IFA 2016 in Berlin today, Sony’s Xperia XZ triples down on camera technology with a new laser autofocus, RGBC-IR white balance sensor, and its traditionally strong 23-megapixel imaging sensor. The Japanese company’s new flagship even has a dedicated shutter button. And the Xperia X Compact is a smaller, less powerful vessel for that same upgraded camera system.

One of the reasons the camera is going to be so pivotal is that the rest of the specs are not all that impressive: the Xperia XZ has the Snapdragon 820,…

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A Russian graphic designer named Mike Levchenko is doing his part to mend the icy relationship between his country and the West — or at least Western capitalism — by reimagining a half-dozen global brands as if they were from the Soviet Union.

Levchenko took the logos of McDonald’s, Nikon, Samsung, Dior, Apple, Chanel, and Mercedes-Benz, and gave them a Cyrillic spin. Apple’s is boxy, but with an unmistakable leaf growing from the first letter. Dior’s is cursive and feminine. Mercedes gets a couple spear points to suggest speed. Levchenko also paired each logo with an advertisement, most of which appear modeled on Soviet era ads from the 1950s and ‘60s.

First designed by monks in Bulgaria in the ninth century (shout-out to The Verge’s…

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Mozilla, the open web pioneer, is staying true to its collaborative and open roots by performing a brand redesign right out in public. The company has published its shortlist of new logo proposals, which it will now consider, refine, and whittle down to create its next brand identity. Among them is the above, seemingly abstract, structure that actually spells out Mozilla’s name in its multicolored isometric shapes.

There’s another quirky design that incorporates various colors and shapes to spell out “Mozilla”:

And then there are few more staid and predictable variants:

The unifying feature of all of the redesign concepts is that they’re carefully thought through. And even where you might say their…

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For those who still mourn the loss of Rdio, Devin Halladay has a solution. The 19-year-old designer has hand-crafted a Spotify skin for Mac, which brings Rdio’s best design principles to the streaming service that has survived the booms and busts of the modern music industry. You can download the skin over at Halladay’s website, and it requires you to switch your Mac security settings to permit apps downloaded from anywhere. Halladay says there’s some kinks he has to work out, but it should operate like a light mode replacement for Spotify’s desktop app.

Rdio’s shutdown was an emotional moment for a certain subset of forward-looking music lovers. The streaming service was a bastion of an era when Apple, Google, and Spotify didn’t yet…

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We really dug the Xbox One S, calling it “svelte and good-looking”. The latest update to Microsoft’s flagship gaming console is a very pretty box, and now we know why: Andrew Kim was part of the design team.

In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, Kim is a “visual and product” designer who came to work for Microsoft after making a splash when he put together his own design concepts for the company’s rebranding in 2012. After seeing his designs, the company hired him to work within their design department. His first assignment was to work on the Xbox One S, and he is currently working on the company’s HoloLens project.

On his website, Kim noted that the Xbox One S was his first big project, and the design team was tasked with creating “a…

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Sleep startup Casper has made a splash in the very unsexy mattress industry by selling high-end mattresses without the infamous mattress store markups. And now they’ve zeroed in on a new customer who deserves a good night’s sleep as much as you do: your pup!

Casper’s latest product is a dog bed that the company claims was brought to market after 460 hours of laboratory testing and 110 prototypes. Casper’s co-founder Neil Parikh told The Verge, “People kept sending us photos of their dogs on their beds, telling us how much their dogs loved their Casper’s. So that kicked us off on a year-long design process to make a better bed for dogs.” Your dog can try it out for 100 nights and still return it if they don’t like the way it smells. It’s…

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Galaxy Note 7 reviews have hit the internet this week and the consensus among them is that it might be the best designed smartphone ever. Today I got my hands on this precious new device, and my skepticism has quickly morphed into geeky reverence for the sheer brilliance, unfailing symmetry, and outrageous efficiency of the Note 7’s design. And what also strikes me is how far back you have to go to find the roots of its creation.

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Two years ago, artist Rafael Varona caught the world’s attention with a series of animated GIFs that depicted magical worlds trapped inside tiny glass bottles. The success of the “Impossible Bottles” series led to a number of new illustration gigs, and Varona eventually moved from Berlin to Amsterdam to focus on animation. But he never stopped thinking about those tiny glass bottles.

“It was clear that I always had to do a second part,” he says. “In between jobs I finally sat down and took some weeks off to concentrate on what I want to put into my bottles this time. Out came an insane robot and a naked giant golden goddess.”

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