Design highlights

Disegno is looking for contributions to our 42nd issue, released during London Design Week in September 2026, which will be themed around ideas of “Transformation” in design.

Joseph Yang’s bricolage timber furniture, displayed at Seoul’s INSA Gallery, play with the construction logic of a traditional nong cabinet.

A new film shot at El Salón, Disegno’s installation for Clerkenwell Design Week in conjunction with Interiors from Spain, reveals the design process of its creator, Tomás Alonso.

London-based designer Tessa Silva joins the Crit to discuss understanding the possibilities and limitations of new materials.

What role can modularity play in combatting the fetishisation of newness within interior architecture? A new podcast, featuring String’s Bo Hellberg, Ab Rogers, Tola Ojuolape and Lisl du Toit from Universal Design Studio tackles the issue.

Yoshino Takayama’s kinetic machines, exhibited at Designtide Tokyo, reframe technological control through the vagaries of natural forces.

In Disegno #39, Marianna Janowicz investigates the link between comfort and survival in design for childbirth.

In Disegno #39, Studiomama create iron castings that advantage of the brain’s tendency to ascribe human-like qualities to the world around us.

Continuity, Edward Robinson’s exhibition with Jousse entreprise, explores an industrial designer’s approach towards furniture design.

Disegno is proud to announce El Salón, a Clerkenwell Design Week installation for Interiors from Spain, designed by Tomás Alonso.

In Disegno #39, Tiiu Meiner plays Multiform, a non-hierarchical sport designed by Gabriel Fontana that encourages collaboration.

Pigment Collective’s new imprint, Argent Comics, is bringing luxury bookmaking techniques to the world of comics.

Tetsuo Mukai, cofounder of London-based studio Study O Portable, joins The Crit to talk about making objects that interrogate our relationship with design.

Isac Lindberg designs an architectural dessert bowl for Palace, a storied restaurant in central Helsinki.

In Disegno #38, Fowota Mortoo and Alfred Quartey visit ANO’s new educational space in Ghana, which is inspired by indigenous knowledge systems that combine art, education and ecology.

Simone Brewster, a London-based designer, artist and educator, joins The Crit to talk about finding the wider purpose behind her design work.

In Disegno #39, Studio Brynjar & Veronika made pâte de verre windows using a glass technique that has been celebrated for its capacity to mimic natural stones.

Duncan Riches discusses Unit.d, a new gallery for affordable industrial design, whose debut show includes works by Michael Marriott and Jasper Morrison.

In Disegno #39, Rachel Lee and Sarita Sundar trace a shapeshifting chair from its colonial origins to modern deconstructions.

Phil Garnham, executive creative director at Monotype Studio, joins The Crit to talk about the changing landscape of type design.

Designer and researcher Vera van der Burg trained an AI model to generate ceramic forms that she later hand-built in clay, challenging anthropomorphic ideas about the technology by treating it like a material.

Johanna Gibbons, landscape architect and current keeper of the Faculty of Royal Designers, joins the Crit to discuss the entanglements between communities and ecology.

James Melia of Blond visits the studio for a discussion about reductionism in design, the challenges of designing refillable packaging, and his dream of designing a catheter.

Conceived by the charity Scottish Action for Mental Health, Glasgow’s The Nook is the first of a new series of mental health hubs which borrow from the design language of community spaces.

In Disegno #38, design studio Folkform shared an ode to Sweden’s last Masonite factory.

Stephen Burks Man Made collaborated with wood veneer company ALPI to create The Lost Cloth Object, a speculative ceremonial site designed to resemble Kuba textiles from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Liliana Ovalle visits the studio for a discussion about collaborating respectfully with artisans, balancing commercial design work with research, and her dream of making altars for the home.

Tessa Silva’s Smock collection pays homage to historically gendered labour practices by using hand-pleated fabric and techniques and materials typically found in kitchens.

Brown Office’s Ward 2045 CO2e Monitor is a speculative device installation that monitors and visualises carbon emissions from hospital wards. 

Our first guest of 2026 is Pentagram’s Jon Marshall, who discusses the pleasures of seemingly intractable design problems.