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At long last, Instagram’s old-school icon is going away in favor of something more modern — a lot more modern. Instagram announced today that it’s introducing a colorful new icon for its main app, as well as matching icons for apps like Layout and Hyperlapse.

Instagram’s app is also receiving a redesign. It’s adopting the simplified black-and-white look that we got an early showing of the other week. The new look is supposed to put “more focus on your photos and videos,” though it doesn’t really appear all that different. It’s very lightly stripped down; really, it’s just making it so that the only part of that app that pops with color is your photos. The update already appears to be rolling out on iOS and is seemingly coming to Android…

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Google has teamed up with artist Jeff Koons to make a series of Nexus phone cases featuring his recent sculptures. There are three cases in total — all considered to be a “limited edition” — with each featuring one piece from Koons’ “Gazing Ball” series.

These are all part of Google’s Live Case line, which means they also include a custom wallpaper that’s activated after snapping on the case. Here, it’s an exclusive video piece made by Koons — a take on Swan Lake that adds in his Gazing Ball. It’s said to be Koons’ first work in video.

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Let’s just get this out of the way quickly because you’re probably not going to understand it the first time I say it: Budweiser is renaming its beer “America.” The beer Budweiser will henceforth be known as America. When you gingerly lift a tall boy of Budweiser out of your bodega’s fridge, what you’ll really be lifting is a tall boy of America. Got it? Budweiser, the King of Beers, will now respond only to its new chosen name, America.

America, as you may be aware, is also the name of a country. Budweiser doesn’t seem to mind this conflation, and instead seems to view its name choice as something of a patriotic duty. The rebranding is a nod to the 2016 presidential race, Fast Co Design reports, and the cans will reportedly go back to…

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The formatting and structure of the Google search results page may be one of the most user-tested websites in the history of the internet. So it comes as a bit of surprise that Google would tinker with its prized jewel in one small but noticeable fashion: turning the color of links black. When typing a word or phrase into Google, a majority of users see 10 links with the name listed in blue and the URL in green. Some users, however, are seeing links in black, as noted today by The Telegraph and a number of Twitter users who report seeing the experiment in action.

It’s unclear if this is one giant A / B test to determine if users click black-colored search results more than blue-colored ones. The company has famously tested various…

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After two decades of working for big studios on blockbuster games and movies, Colin Price needed a change. The Liverpool-based artist felt that it was now or never, and in December 2014 he decided to leave the comfort of a studio gig for the life of a freelancer. “I was at a point in my life when I thought, if I don’t do this now and prove to myself I can do this then I’ll never do it,” he says.

Price started his career in games in 1996, and soon after he landed a job at Psygnosis, later renamed Studio Liverpool, the now-defunct studio behind the iconic futuristic racing series Wipeout. From there he went on to work as an art director on some of the biggest racing games around, including MotorStorm, Formula 1, and most recently D…

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In less than two weeks there will be a new Doom game in the world. On May 13th the iconic shooter series is getting a much-needed reboot, one that’s been a long time coming. While Doom helped set the stage for what first-person shooters could be, it has largely given way to other franchises. The last game in the series was 2004’s Doom 3, which didn’t exactly have the same impact as its predecessors.

It’s still not clear whether the new Doom will be a return to form in terms of how it plays, but it definitely looks the part, with that distinct Doom look, blending a heavy metal vision of hell with classic sci-fi. While you wait for the game’s imminent launch, check out some of the concept art that helped define its look, complete with…

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Apple and Vogue’s Costume Institute exhibit has finally arrived, and with it comes the clearest expression of two companies’ combined vision. Titled Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology, the theme for this year’s exhibit — as well as last night’s extravagant Met Gala — celebrates the marriage between human handiwork and machine in fashion and design. But more than that, the exhibit represents a desire to fuse the two brands’ power and influence to make for something greater than what each could accomplish alone.

Evidently, that means building a church to high fashion right inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beyond the Medieval art and Antonio Canova’s “Perseus with the Head of Medusa,” architectural firm OMA has erected…

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Switzerland-based photographer Fabian Oefner has built his reputation around unique, high-concept imagery that has earned him a TED Talk in the past, and for good reason: his 2013 series of disintegrating model cars with engine parts flying in every direction were surreal, beautiful, and meticulous. Now, he’s got a second set of five — and there’s a brief video where we can get a glimpse into how the images are made.

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Thomas Mayer, a carpenter and designer based in Germany, has created a ping pong table concept that’s more exciting than the entirety of Balls of Fury. As Designboom notes, Mayer’s project uses two Playstation eye cameras and an HD projector to track the ball and collect data, which can then be used to map a player’s stats onto the table.

When Mayer decided to build the ping pong table (which was his thesis project at the University of Design Schwäbisch Gmünd) his goal was to create data visualization in real time for players. As you can see in the video, a dashboard for each individual player is projected onto the table. The dashboard keeps track of a player’s wins and loses, as well as technical stats like speed, saves, and stability….

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To the world at large, Vogue is fashion and Apple is tech. Each represents the premium in their space: Vogue with over a century in print and access to A-list everyone, Apple with the slickest must-have gadgets on the planet. Whether we subscribe to the magazine or own an Apple device personally is moot — they’re mega-brands with mega-influence.

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