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With its new Let It Fly campaign, Saudia rewards travellers who purchase locally made cultural items.

For every SAR 50 (roughly USD 13) spent at participating stores, passengers receive a suitcase sticker. Each sticker is worth 500 grams of extra baggage allowance, and passengers can add up to 1.5 kg per bag. The stickers themselves feature visual interpretations of Saudi heritage, from regional motifs to traditional crafts, created in collaboration with both Saudi and international artists.

The initiative addresses a practical pain point: luggage constraints. By converting cultural purchases into a tangible travel benefit, Saudia creates a direct incentive for passengers to choose handcrafted goods over mass-produced alternatives. Meanwhile, the program also transforms luggage into mobile cultural storytelling, as those sticker-covered suitcases carry Saudi narratives through global airports.

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Baggage anxiety is one of travel's quiet stressors. By converting cultural spend into luggage allowance, Saudia reframes a pain point into permission: go deeper, buy better, don't worry. Global travelers aren't short on souvenir options. But picking up a mass-produced fridge magnet can't compare to buying locally made objects tied to real craftspeople and artists — those feel earned. Saudia's nudge? Skip the hollow consumption, support local makers, earn cultural credibility.

Design platform Canva has launched english (chronically online) as a new language option, translating its interface into the vernacular of internet natives.

The feature transforms Canva's standard interface text into social media slang, complete with emojis and the kind of phrasing that dominates group chats and TikTok comment sections. Users switching to this mode will encounter tools and features described in Gen Z parlance — think "serve but don't be extra about it" as a legitimate creative direction.

Canva's new language mode goes beyond surface-level translation. It reconfigures search results to highlight templates that "pass the vibe check," adjusts Canva's AI assistant to respond with what the company describes as "helpful, witty and maybe a little unhinged" commentary, and creates a dedicated section in search that curates content matching internet aesthetics. Available through account settings, the feature doesn't alter Canva's functionality — just how that functionality is described to users who've spent years developing fluency in online linguistic shortcuts.

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As workplace demographics shift toward employees who learned design skills through free student accounts rather than corporate training programs, professional software is adapting to communication styles forged in digital spaces. This move reflects a broader recognition that "professional" and "internet-fluent" are no longer mutually exclusive categories — they're increasingly the same people. For brands targeting younger professionals, the question isn't whether to acknowledge online culture, but how to integrate it without compromising utility.

Financial flexibility is moving past the checkout page. OnePay — a fintech majority-owned by Walmart — has partnered with Klarna to launch Swipe to Finance.

The feature lets eligible OnePay Cash customers convert recent debit purchases into payment plans after a transaction has been completed. The service, set to roll out in the coming months, operates entirely within the OnePay app.  The offering addresses a common consumer pain point: purchases that make sense until bank balances are checked, or a fixed cost is direct-debited.

Rather than requiring users to preemptively opt into installment payments during checkout, Swipe to Finance allows them to retroactively split costs into fixed-term plans. OnePay's Thomas Hoare framed the feature as a response to financial timing mismatches: "Not every purchase comes at the right time," he noted, emphasizing the company's focus on delivering flexibility through transparency and in-app simplicity.

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Post-purchase financing reflects a broader shift in how consumers expect to manage money — not as a series of isolated transactions, but as an ongoing negotiation with their cash flow. As financial stress persists and spending patterns remain unpredictable, tools that offer retroactive control are becoming table stakes. Brands that embed flexibility after the sale aren't necessarily accommodating buyer's remorse; they're acknowledging that financial certainty is increasingly elusive. How could your brand extend financial empathy beyond the checkout?

A new cassette tape café in Tokyo's Shibuya district positions the music format as more than a relic.

Sister brand to RECOCO — popular record-listening cafés in Shibuya and Shimokitazawa — CASSE offers individual headphones and portable cassette players at each seat, allowing visitors to browse shelves of tapes spanning genres and eras while sipping coffee in a converted warehouse space. The admission-plus-drink model borrows from RECOCO's blueprint, but narrows the focus to a medium experiencing an unexpected revival among younger consumers who never lived through its commercial heyday.

The timing aligns with cassette sales surging in Western markets; Japan's domestic cassette production turned upward in 2023 for the first time in 24 years. That growth reflects broader patterns: streaming-native generations gravitating toward analog formats that require deliberate interaction, and pop culture (including films and TV series) reframing cassettes as symbolic objects rather than outdated tech. CASSE's founders argue the appeal lies partly in the format's constraints, which force a different relationship with music than algorithm-driven playlists permit.

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There's more to CASSE than pure nostalgia — the concept taps into quite the stack of human needs and consumer trends:

1. A desire for slowness in an always-on world
In a world optimized for speed, frictionless streaming and infinite choice, cassette tapes reintroduce friction and license to slow down. You can't skip instantly; you commit to one album or side and listen linearly.

2. A yearning for tactile reality in a digital-only life
Gen Z and younger Millennials grew up with music as invisible streams. With their physical presence, mechanical interaction and imperfections, cassettes offer a sensory grounding — touching, flipping, rewinding, tape hiss. 

3. The need for curation over infinite choice
By definition, a stack of cassettes is anti-algorithm and pro-human curation. Streaming gives abundance but erodes meaning. Cassette cafés replace algorithmic discovery with editorial selection. Consumers increasingly want someone to say: "This is worth your time."

4. Nostalgia for a time never lived in
For younger audiences, cassettes aren't memories — they're borrowed nostalgia. Like digicams or Y2K fashion, they offer a past that feels simpler and a form of culture that feels more intentional. That imagined past provides psychological safety in uncertain times.

5. Community without social exhaustion
Unlike bars or clubs, the cassette café removes loudness and the pressure to talk. People get to share space, but in a low-stimulus kind of way. It offers ambient community: being around others without overstimulation or social awkwardness.

With its new label-maker, South Korea's Mangoslab is addressing a fundamental gap in accessibility infrastructure.

While Braille remains essential for people with vision impairment, it's often inconsistent or altogether absent in public spaces, consumer products and professional settings. So Mangoslab developed a portable Braille label printer paired with a mobile app that allows anyone — regardless of Braille knowledge — to create tactile labels on demand. Nemonic Dot uses a proprietary pressing mechanism to produce uniform, internationally compliant embossed dots at 0.6 mm height, and can print on metal surfaces, a first for portable labelers.

The system's mobile app converts voice or text into Braille across more than 100 languages, supporting both 6-dot and 8-dot formats. Users can generate labels without any prior understanding of Braille syntax. The battery-powered printer connects via Bluetooth and features an eyes-free design that enables visually impaired users to operate it independently. Through its API and SDK, Nemonic Dot integrates with existing systems such as pharmacy software, allowing organizations to implement Braille labeling as part of standard workflows rather than as an afterthought.

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The concept of an "accessibility tax" — the extra effort, knowledge and psychological burden placed on people with disabilities to navigate everyday environments — is finally being challenged by technology. Nemonic Dot demonstrates how accessibility features can be embedded into regular business operations rather than treated as specialized accommodations. Brands across retail, healthcare, hospitality and public services: find out where your blind and low-vision customers would appreciate information in Braille, and get labeling.

A "youth retirement home" in Malaysia's Gopeng district sparked widespread coverage over the past few weeks, promising burned-out young people a month-long escape for roughly USD 490.

The premise was simple: no obligations, just meals, cute dogs, gazing at the blue sky, and permission to opt out of ambition. News outlets and social media accounts around the world picked up the story (it was shared with this writer numerous times), generally in the context of Gen Z and mental health. The only problem? It seems the concept was little more than a notion of expanding the family's existing elder care business for a younger crowd. Earlier social media activity focused on stroke rehabilitation services and TCM treatments, and questions about the youth retirement home's specifics remained unanswered.

The concept went viral based on a TikTok with copy that did some sophisticated emotional work: "be a happily useless person for a month," "a place that allows you to lie flat," "disappear from your current life." The clinic wasn't necessarily selling accommodation — it was selling permission. Permission to be unproductive without guilt, to be cared for, to suspend identity and ambition temporarily. When interest surged, the venture's Instagram disappeared. A cryptic Facebook post announced the center was no longer taking reservations, but that "True relaxation isn't found in Gopeng. As long as you find peace of mind, anywhere can be a youth retirement home."

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The story's viral trajectory underscores how generative AI has made reproducing emotionally resonant stories entirely frictionless, regardless of their truth. Many outlets now function as content relays rather than investigators; they see a viral post, run it through an LLM to "rewrite as news article," and publish without verification. When multiple sources repeat the same AI-processed story, readers infer legitimacy through synthetic corroboration.

"Malaysia's first youth retirement home" was perfectly shaped for this: a clear novelty hook, moral resonance around burnout and lying flat, images of simple accommodation in a bucolic setting with ducks waddling by. What spread wasn't a business but a psychological product — a narrative about a generation that's anxious and exhausted.

Young people who aren't sick enough for medical leave, not wealthy enough for sabbaticals, not senior enough to take breaks. The fantasy tapped into a shared desire for respite: not failing, not quitting, just resting. Even as the business seems to have evaporated, the signal remains real: consumers yearn for structured rest without diagnosis, and for opt-out narratives that don't feel like failure.

P.S. If you're in Gopeng and have more on-the-ground info, let us know! 

Addressing a disconnect between Gen Z's values and its capabilities, the Levi's Wear Longer Project is a free educational initiative teaching young people how to repair, alter and customize their clothing. 

Developed in partnership with Discovery Education, the program offers a digital curriculum, in-classroom lessons and community workshops designed to fill what the brand's 2025 research identified as a significant skills deficit: 41% of Gen Z lack basic clothing repair abilities like hemming or patching, compared to less than 25% of older generations who typically learned these skills at home or in school. And 35% of Gen Z say they'd keep garments longer if they knew how to fix them. 

The program scales across multiple touchpoints, from self-directed online guides to employee-led workshops in Levi's stores, positioning the 150-year-old denim brand as an educator rather than just a retailer. By teaching skills that extend its clothing's lifespan, Levi's is betting that reducing waste and building customer capability can be part of its overall business strategy.

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The Wear Longer Project signals how legacy brands can leverage their heritage to address contemporary consumer tensions. Gen Z's simultaneous commitment to sustainability and lack of practical skills creates space for companies to become educators. As millions of wearable garments end up in landfills each year, repair knowledge becomes a competitive differentiator.

Levi's isn't simply selling vague promises of durability — it's teaching customers to actualize values they already hold but lack the skills to put into practice. For brands grappling with how to authentically engage younger consumers on sustainability, this approach offers a template: identify the gap between aspiration and ability, then fill it with practical tools that reinforce your product's core strengths.

This month, Lidl is taking over restaurants across four German cities to prove a point about plant-based eating.

In Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, the retailer has temporarily commandeered venues ranging from pizza delivery spots to fine-dining establishments, transforming each into a vegan showcase. The concept is straightforward: chefs using products from Lidl's own shelves to create meals that challenge preconceptions about what plant-based food can be. Each takeover lasts just one or two days, with free meals available to those who win spots through social media contests.

The initiative forms part of Lidl's broader Veganuary campaign, which includes a 10% price reduction on its Vemondo plant-based line for loyalty program members. But the restaurant takeovers represent something more calculated than seasonal promotion. By partnering with established gastronomy venues — from Double 00 Pizzeria's indulgent slices to Botanista Coffee Club's brunch bowls — Lidl is effectively outsourcing credibility. The format sidesteps the usual dynamic of a retailer lecturing consumers about sustainability or health, instead letting respected chefs demonstrate what's possible with vegan ingredients available at any Lidl store.

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Lidl's restaurant takeovers reveal a shift in how brands approach plant-based conversion: less manifesto, more menu. Rather than moralizing about environmental impact or animal welfare, the campaign positions plant-based eating as an expansion of culinary possibility — something worth trying for flavor, not virtue. This "show, don't tell" strategy acknowledges consumer fatigue with prescriptive messaging around food choices. By offering free meals in trusted venues, Lidl lowers the barrier to experimentation while borrowing the authority of established chefs and restaurants. The approach reflects a broader move toward experiential proof over ideological persuasion, recognizing that the path to dietary change runs through pleasure, not guilt.

Mattel's latest addition to its Barbie Fashionistas line addresses a glaring gap in toy aisles and popular culture: authentic representation of autistic children, particularly girls. 

Developed over 18 months with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Autistic Barbie features elements that reflect experiences common to many autistic individuals. These include articulated joints that enable stimming movements, an averted eye gaze and accessories like noise-canceling headphones and a communication tablet. The doll's loose-fitting purple dress minimizes sensory discomfort, while a functional fidget spinner offers a tactile outlet. 

Every detail emerged from consultations with the autistic community rather than outsider assumptions about their needs. Mattel also donated over 1,000 dolls to pediatric hospitals serving children on the autism spectrum. The initiative builds on research conducted with Cardiff University, showing that doll play activates brain regions involved in empathy and social processing — findings that apply to neurotypical and neurodivergent children alike. As expressed by autistic advocate Madison Marilla, who has collected Barbie dolls since age four, the representation resonates: "This autistic Barbie makes me feel truly seen and heard."

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Overwhelmed with options, parents and children seek products that feel intentionally designed for them rather than mass-produced for an imagined average. By partnering with the autistic community to create a doll that reflects specific sensory needs and communication styles, Mattel demonstrates that meaningful curation requires going beyond demographic checkboxes. The result is a product that empowers autistic children to see their experiences as valid and valued, turning a toy into a tool for building confidence and self-recognition.

When a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey in February 2023, killing over 50,000 people, banks struggled to maintain operations as road access collapsed. İşbank's answer in 2026? A ship that can navigate Istanbul's waterways when land routes fail.

The İş Vapur, inspired by a historic Bosphorus ferry from the bank's founding years, operates year-round from Galataport as a regular branch with cultural events and café space. But its modular design allows rapid transformation during emergencies. Rather than waiting for recovery, the floating branch is ready to deliver essential services to affected communities within hours.

The 50-meter vessel can expand from three banking terminals to thirteen, convert social spaces into sleeping quarters for 300 people, and deploy medical facilities, kitchens and hygiene stations. On-board ATMs enable self-service cash withdrawals while the vessel travels between neighborhoods cut off by infrastructure damage.

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Welcome to anticipation as action! İşbank designed its floating branch not as crisis response, but as crisis readiness — infrastructure that exists before disaster strikes, eliminating the gap between event and intervention. This represents a fundamental shift from resilience (bouncing back) to preparedness (being ready and positioned). 

As climate disruption accelerates, more organizations will embed disaster scenarios into their core operations instead of treating them as exceptional circumstances. The question isn't whether your business can recover from the next flood, earthquake or storm; it's whether your infrastructure is already mobile, modular and ready to deploy the moment trouble draws near.

Roughly a quarter of every broccoli plant consists of edible leaves that are typically left to rot in the field. So, this month,  IKEA Sweden is introducing broccoli leaf soup at its restaurants.

A broccoli plant is roughly 20% floret, 30% stalk and 50% leaves. Yet when harvested, the leaves remain unharvested, even though about half are perfectly edible. Harvesting the tenderest half of the leaves could theoretically double broccoli yield without requiring additional land, water, fertilizer and seeds, and without depleting soil nutrients. IKEA's soup emerged from a pilot project led by Axfoundation, which brought together the entire value chain to develop an efficient method for processing Swedish broccoli leaves.

By chopping, packaging and gently heat-treating the leaves, the team created a raw ingredient with appealing flavor, color, aroma and texture — suitable for various dishes. Vegetable wholesaler Grönsakshallen Sorunda then developed the soup recipe, combining broccoli leaves with leeks, potatoes and onions. Priced at SEK 25 (roughly USD 2.70/ EUR 2.30), the soup will be available in limited quantities across all Swedish IKEA stores starting late January, with hopes to scale up significantly during the 2026 harvest season.

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Food waste in agriculture often happens long before consumers enter the picture, with perfectly usable parts of crops abandoned at harvest. IKEA's broccoli leaf initiative demonstrates how retailers can work backward through the supply chain to capture value that's literally being left on the ground.

By developing processing methods and recipes for overlooked ingredients, brands can turn agricultural inefficiency into affordable menu items while making a tangible dent in food waste. And at SEK 25, IKEA is making the eco-positive choice the accessible choice — aligned with their "democratic design" philosophy. The environmental benefit becomes almost incidental to the consumer — they're just buying affordable soup that happens to be rescuing food waste.

As cars become screen-dense digital environments, Volvo is reframing typography as critical safety infrastructure. Volvo Centum is a custom font designed to improve glance-based comprehension while driving.

The Swedish automaker partnered with type studio Dalton Maag to engineer a font that minimizes cognitive load and maximizes clarity across digital interfaces. Every letterform was calibrated for split-second readability, with adjustments made for different lighting conditions, screen sizes and reading distances. The typeface supports over 800 languages, including complex scripts like Chinese and Arabic, ensuring consistent performance whether displayed on a dashboard in Stockholm or Shanghai. It debuts in the upcoming EX60 model before rolling out across Volvo's ecosystem.

The design process involved testing legibility at speed, evaluating how quickly drivers could process information while keeping their eyes on the road. Dalton Maag optimized character spacing, stroke weight and terminal shapes specifically for glance-based reading — the kind that happens when you're checking your speed or navigation prompts without losing focus on traffic. It's a shift from treating typography as decoration to using it as a functional safety tool, one that quietly reduces the mental effort required to interpret information while driving.

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Vehicles have become rolling interfaces packed with screens and data, which turns clarity into critical infrastructure. Volvo Centum demonstrates how brands can engineer design elements that most consumers never consciously notice yet fundamentally improve their experience. By treating typography as a safety mechanism rather than just aesthetic polish, Volvo addresses growing concerns about digital distraction without adding restrictions or warnings. 

Volvo Centum is a textbook example of technology working harder so humans don't have to. Could your brand identify overlooked design details that, when optimized, create measurable improvements in how people interact with your products?

Midway through singing at Taipei Dome late December, Jolin Tsai mounted a 30-meter mechanical serpent that carried her through the venue while she performed "Medusa" — a spectacle that left 40,000 attendees stunned and went viral online.

The pop star's "PLEASURE" world tour, which cost around USD 280 million to produce, opened with a three-story-tall ceremonial bull procession before Tsai appeared unexpectedly on an elevated platform wearing a dual-faced mask expressing both pleasure and pain. The massive snake, which she rode as she circled the entire dome, was just one element of what ETtoday reports was the most expensive concert production in the Taipei Dome's history. The show's five narrative chapters also featured nearly 30 large-scale art installations and 20 hybrid fantasy creatures.

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As generative AI makes digital spectacle infinitely reproducible, physical experiences are moving into the realm of the impossible to fake. Tsai's serpent — too massive, too mechanical, too viscerally present to be dismissed as a deepfake — exemplifies how live entertainment is weaponizing scale and IRL overwhelm against the flattening effect of screens.

The strategy extends beyond concert stages: Louis Vuitton's ship-shaped Seoul flagship and Gentle Monster's theatrical retail spaces demonstrate that when algorithms can conjure anything, brands compete by building what AI cannot: three-dimensional absurdity that demands physical presence to fully comprehend. The question facing industries from hospitality to automotive isn't whether to embrace maximalism, but whether they can engineer moments so deliberately excessive that "you had to be there" becomes the ultimate social currency.

OpenAI just introduced ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space within its chatbot designed to help people make sense of fragmented health information.

The feature allows users to securely connect medical records and wellness apps such as Apple Health and  MyFitnessPal, centralizing data that's typically scattered across patient portals, PDFs and wearable devices. Over 230 million people already ask ChatGPT health-related questions weekly, and the company is betting that grounding those conversations in actual medical data will make responses more useful (and its service a whole lot stickier).

ChatGPT Health operates as a separate environment with enhanced privacy protections, including purpose-built encryption. Conversations within Health aren't used to train OpenAI's models, and the data stays compartmentalized from regular ChatGPT chats. The feature was developed over two years with input from more than 260 physicians across 60 countries. OpenAI emphasizes that the tool is designed to support, not replace, medical care — helping people prepare for appointments, understand lab results and spot patterns over time rather than providing diagnosis or treatment.

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ChatGPT Health legitimizes something already happening at scale. With 230 million people turning to AI for health questions weekly, the launch recognizes a fundamental shift in how people approach their wellbeing: from episodic care centered on symptoms and appointments to continuous self-understanding built on patterns and preparation. By creating a psychologically separate space with enhanced privacy and physician collaboration, OpenAI is addressing what keeps most health AI from gaining traction: people need permission to be vulnerable with their data. 

If OpenAI can demonstrate rock-solid privacy protection and data integrity, ChatGPT Health could allow healthcare to (re)organize around individuals rather than medical institutions — enabling consumers to get a better grip on their health as a holistic entity, which by its very essence is unique to them. It's a way to help them understand themselves, not just their symptoms. For brands across wellness, insurance and healthcare, the bar just moved! And standalone apps that don't integrate with ChatGPT Health (or similar ecosystems by Anthropic or Google) will struggle to justify their place in people's lives.

ASOS just updated its return policy, targeting customers whose shopping style makes free returns unsustainable.

The UK-based online fashion retailer has revamped its previously implemented Fair Use Policy, now deducting GBP 3.95 per returned parcel from refunds for shoppers with a return rate of 70% or higher who've placed at least three orders in the past year. For the most prolific returners — those with an 80% return rate across five or more orders — ASOS charges an additional GBP 3.95 handling fee on top of standard delivery costs.

The policy includes a 30-day processing window and continuously monitors customer behavior over rolling 12-month periods, allowing shoppers to track their return rate through their account dashboard. ASOS is framing the policy as protecting free returns for the majority while addressing a minority of customers whose shopping patterns strain the business model. Customers can avoid the fees by keeping items worth more than GBP 40 per order, and ASOS still offers full free returns for faulty or incorrect items.

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ASOS's Fair Use Policy uses economic friction to reshape customer behavior without outright bans. Rather than penalizing all returns or eliminating the service entirely, the retailer creates a transparent, tiered system that preserves benefits for most while discouraging excessive returns through modest fees. The approach balances business sustainability with customer retention, banking on the reality that most shoppers will adjust their habits rather than absorb recurring costs.

It's also a tacit acknowledgment that the environmental cost of returns — the carbon emissions from transport, packaging waste and products that end up in landfill — has become too significant to ignore. As e-commerce matures and margins compress, expect more brands to deploy similar behavioral economics: not punishing customers, but making unsustainable habits just inconvenient enough to discourage them, for both financial and environmental reasons.