DesignBytes

Perhaps a lot of the present-day ill-will towards Helvetica stems from the bandwagon or me-too mentality.

Last week creatives gathered at Cannes Lions, the world’s biggest annual awards and festival for professionals in the creative communications industry. Here are five lessons learned.

This under-appreciated transformation is probably the most distinct design change to come to cars over the past half-century, and for most US cars, it happened within just a few years, starting in 1986. You can even pinpoint the exact year curves arrived for some models.

A Forbes report shows product strategy often is led from the very top—59% of CEOs own their company’s smart product strategy. "This is about how product data will dramatically change the way products are designed, manufactured, sold and serviced."

Time/Life reminds us When JFK Airport Was a Shining Beacon of Industrial Design. "Today’s outmoded dinosaurs are often yesterday’s architectural triumphs." See why.

As companies and organizations around the world look for ways to solve a seemingly endless number of problems, we’re seeing unprecedented attention to design, and to designers, to provide solutions. Creative techniques in design thinking are being adopted by people in fields that never previously considered design or creative thinking.

Urkanian industrial designer Ivan Zhurba developed a lamp that reuses Apple iPhones like the ‘4’ and ‘4s’ or ‘5’ and ‘5c’ versions to convert them into light sources and audio speakers.

LEGO is investing $150 million in a sustainable materials research center to find green alternatives to the plastic used in its products and packaging.

With newly-promoted Jony Ive in charge of design and more at Apple, a new report says the tech giant will kick off a "premium feel" for its retail stores and product packaging in July 2015.

Yes, innovation is extremely difficult. You are not the only one who thinks it's a real challenge.

Fairphone's new ethically sourced smartphone is built to be repairable, not disposable.

What do objects tell us about our lives—and about themselves? “Design Oracles,” a new exhibition running through August 16 in Paris, attempts to answer those questions.

Many people believe that you can’t teach those skills, and define themselves and others as “not creative.”

The State Department has confirmed its intention to act as gatekeeper for when Americans can legally publish online data that could allow someone to digitally fabricate a gun.

A new wearable device called Brightly aims to turn the $17 billion Incontinence industry on its head.

Check out three, medical device design industry trends embracing and contributing to the dynamic change that is taking place both in design and manufacturing.

Frog's Head of Venture Design, Ethan Imboden tells us how being an entrepreneur made him (and could make you) a better designer.

For a long time, Apple could get away with these occasional lapses in software, because in most ways, it was just light years beyond the competition when it came to industrial design and painting beautiful pixels. No more, says John Brownlee in Fast Company.

Fast Company takes a closer at the head of airbnb's experience design, who says design is "all about problem solving and making things."

Because winning courtroom battles can often hinge on one side or the other having the slightest edge when it comes to presenting evidence, legal experts are now looking to 3D printing.

Fast Company takes you along for the ride in an Ecocapsule: "It was designed as a self-contained system which is able to sustain long periods of time without external resources."

Mock-ups for Connected Cyclists envision possible futures for creating a "soft infrastructure" for cyclists that can help make city roads safer to navigate and help riders choose more intelligent routes.

How has design, which many still associate largely with style and consumerism, come to be something one might look to for solutions to the most complex and challenging problems facing humanity today; problems requiring not just local fixes using clever design objects, but solutions that reimagine systems themselves? Are we, at this point, even still talking about the same discipline?

When you judge the value of design in today's business environment, you can't just think Silicon Valley or such. You need to understand that Africa, the continent presently with highest growth rates, also grows because of design.