Since July, Monotype has had a new face in its London studio – creative type director Tom Foley. With seven years at foundry Dalton Maag under his belt, Tom now leads Monotype’s Studio team in London at a crucial time for type, as VR and AV technology push it to its limits.

It’s the first year that Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign has focused solely on female activists – badass women who are risking their lives to speak up for justice. Throughout December you can show your support by writing them letters, and calling on the authorities to end their struggles.

Artist Susie Freeman makes phenomenal textile pieces that incorporate everyday objects – from ibuprofen tablets to condoms to cigarette butts – into complex weaves. For the past 20 years she has worked with Dr Liz Lee, to collide scientific research with fine art, asking their audience to question society’s dependence on pharmaceuticals.

After five years of masterminding campaigns for the biggest names in the visual arts, Emma pivoted into design and landed ready for action at a desk in Zetteler HQ. How? Why? Time we found out…

Opening this month in Mauritius, SALT of Palmar is a one of a kind hotel in terms of both philosophy and design. Having found inspiration (and her spiritual home) in the colour-loving island, Camille Walala shares the low-down on her biggest design project to date…

Designer Robin Grasby transforms scraps of discarded marble into durable, waterproof and damn gorgeous terrazzo which can be used to make worktops, tiles and even furniture. We follow the process from Robin’s treasure hunt for the choicest slithers around the capital’s marble yards through to casting in his Leyton studio.

Far more than a compendium of contemporary makers, Katie Treggiden’s new book Weaving explores the practice through the lens of topics like gender, migration and the environment, and how weaving holds up a mirror (albeit it a fibrous one) to wider social and economic issues.

This year’s window is one of the most complex and ambitious in Conran history. Betsy and her team have transformed the space into a cavern of moving light, collaborating with an award-winning West End lighting designer to create a rhythmic, visually enchanting spectacle of light and shade at play. We asked Betsy to share her process and shine some light on how The Conran Shop’s displays come about…

Running between 12-18 November across venues in Manchester, the International Arts and Homelessness Summit & Festival is a packed seven days of inspiring events that show how the arts can empower homeless people and help tackle adjacent issues like mental health and isolation.

The Middle East’s first graphic design biennial opened in Sharjah last week, bringing together practitioners that test the discipline’s limits, scope and purpose in the rapidly changing world of the 21st century. For a jam-packed 21 days, the festival’s Department of Mapping Margins is a space where talks, events and interactions reflect on the state of graphic design’s power to address cross-cultural questions, overlapping working methods, conditions and models.

We talk to the creative lead behind Intoart and John Smedley’s jaw-dropping collaboration – fashion legend Holly Fulton.

The UAE's visionary, ground-breaking and entirely fictitious government department – the Ministry of Graphic Design – opened its doors today in Sharjah, marking the beginning of an extraordinary and multifaceted three-week examination of contemporary graphic design and what it means for the world today.

Dubai Design Week is just around the corner, so for all those with eyes on the Gulf this month, we’re championing some inspiring creative projects from the UAE that can be enjoyed wherever you are in the world.

‘We have much to gain from conversations with one another across our differences’ – we chat to Nina Paim and Corinne Gisel of Swiss studio common-interest, who are investigating the importance of in-between spaces, non-fixed identities and how to use ambiguity to bridge divisive politics, as part of their installations at Fikra Graphic Design Biennial this month.

We first met Kenyan entrepreneur Leroy Mwasaru at mind-blowing Cape Town festival Design Indaba in January, where he spoke as part of its Global Graduates programme. Even among this plethora of ridiculously clever youngsters, Leroy stood out. Whereas most of the speakers had BAs and MAs under their belts, Leroy – aged just 19 – had already grown several incredibly successful businesses, focusing on renewable energy, human-centred design education, poverty alleviation and socio-economic empowerment. Oh, and this was all while still at school.

As a PR company that prides itself on not following the rulebook, we set-up the Z List in 2016 with three goals; champion gifted designers, support makers by widening their audience and selling their designs, and raising funds for charitable causes. Now it’s time for a new chapter...

Brunnel University London graduate Joshua King scooped up the Joseph Stannah Award at New Designers 2018 for Ally, a wearable device and accompanying app that supports sexual assault survivors. It’s a technologically clever and deeply thoughtful project, but if you think you’ll find the subject matter distressing, be kind to yourself and read some of our other super posts instead.

10 design studios + 10 leading scientists = one project we couldn’t wait to shoot. To coincide with the launch of Zetteler’s film documenting the project, here we chat to some of the inspiring scientist-designer pairs that teamed up for What Matter_s, a six month collaboration that aimed to shed light on some of the ideas bubbling away at science’s bold frontiers.

If, six years ago, you’d told Zetteler director Sabine that she’d soon be running a PR company with 13 employees, she’d have laughed, said you’re mad and then probably tried to rope you and your powers of divination into her new freelance venture. But here we are, half a dozen years down the line with a creative, thriving and rapidly growing team on our hands. The road hasn’t always been smooth – but boy, have we learnt a lot. So to celebrate Zetteler’s sixth birthday, here’s Sabine with her take on how to survive running a business.

We sit down with The Conran Shop’s creative director Stephen Briars to find out more about how he’s making the 45-year-old institution relevant to millennial shopping habits, and what young makers should do if they want some prime real estate on the store’s esteemed shelves.

This year’s DDW theme, If not you, then who?, tasks designers with the responsibility of changing our world for the better. From robotic tools that help animals adapt to climate to 3D printers that help bones to grow, we bring you some of the must-see shows to catch between 20 and 28 October.

Want a feeling like that expanding brain meme? Then we have the film for you. We travelled to Sweden to get the inside scoop on What Matter_s, a six-month project that invited ten pioneering materials scientists to collaborate with ten provocative design studios, to stretch each others’ minds and practices.

Can biology help us do things better? Will biodesign help us change ourselves and our world for the better? Who gets to design life, and in what context? These are the stimulating questions that Faber Futures founder Natsai Audrey Chieza and Dr Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg are posing through their takeover of the Journal of Design and Science’s fourth issue this month.