Nestled in a serene, forested enclave of Portland, Oregon, the Mori House merges mid-century modern architecture with contemporary minimalist sensibilities. Originally designed in 1963 by Saul Zaik, a revered figure in Pacific Northwest architecture, this home has been thoughtfully reimagined by SHED Architecture & Design to meet the aesthetic and functional needs of its new owners: a young family with a passion for design.Set on a sloped, wooded lot, the Mori House makes a striking yet understated statement. The property includes a detached garage and studio, along with a teahouse pavilion, accessible via elevated decks. These elements, framed by towering trees, create a peaceful retreat that prioritizes connection with the natural environment.Zaiks original blueprint was a celebration of mid-century modern design, marked by clear geometries and the use of organic materials. The current remodel extends this vision, weaving in Japanese-inspired minimalism. SHEDs approach preserves the houses architectural integrity while enhancing light, space, and the fluidity between indoors and outdoors.Central to the redesign is the transformation of the vertical circulation. The removal of the original spiral staircase and loft unveils a dramatic vaulted ceiling, showcasing a nail-laminated wood roof that draws attention to a new central skylight. This skylight, a focal point of the home, infuses the living spaces with soft, natural light and highlights the structural rhythm of the house.On the main floor, the living, dining, and kitchen areas flow seamlessly along the southern axis, framed by expansive glazing that opens to the forest. A newly positioned fireplace anchors the living room, offering panoramic views that extend to Mount Saint Helens on clear days.The kitchens design enhances functionality while celebrating craftsmanship, with custom fir accents and thoughtfully placed windows that connect the space to the landscape. A horizontal window runs along one wall above the cooktop displaying framed views of mature rhododendrons.The primary suite, positioned on the northern side of the house, embodies serene luxury. Featuring a walk-in closet and an elegant bathroom complete with a Japanese soaking tub, it combines comfort with understated elegance. Fir slats above the suites entry doors subtly diffuse light, maintaining a connection to the skylight above.The renovation also enhances the lower level, turning it into a versatile space for family life. Three flexible rooms suitable as bedrooms, offices, or fitness areas accompany a shared bath and a dedicated wine cellar. A cozy lounge, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows, offers a tranquil space for relaxation, reinforcing the homes strong bond with its natural surroundings.For more from SHED Architecture & Design, visit shedbuilt.com.Photography by Rafael Soldi.

Thats a wrap on Design Milks gift guides for the 2024 holiday season! If you missed any were rounding up all 15 gift guides below so theyre in one place when youre ready to do your shopping. Click each banner below to take you to that guide Happy shopping!Hope you enjoyed our 2024 Gift Guide series and thank you for supporting Design Milk!

If a brand is more important than the product, then is the experience more important than the brand? If the products are similar, what makes themunique?What does the user or customer find importantThe brand, the product, or the experience? Image by theauthor.The never-ending debate on whether a brand is more important than the product often boils down to what drives product success: emotional connection or functional quality. However, most of the time, this is not an either-or question as businesses ideally need both to work harmoniously. User experience and service design influence the overall product experience, impacting the products success and companyimage.An excellent user experience might not be able to save a poor product, but can a stellar brand keep a poor product afloat? Conversely, can a negative brand image make a great product obsolete?Place, people, and thepastX (Twitter) has been making headlines recently and is witnessing a mass user exodus. 115000 users from the US alone have left the platform since the beginning of November 2024, discussing alternatives such as BlueSky, Threads, and Mastodon. Between November 5 and 15, the usage of the Bluesky app grew by 519% for US-based users. Many users cite bots, AI training models, advertisements, negative interactions, and politics as their main reasons for fleeing or reducing the number of posts on X. Is this due to the product or the brand? Will it likely face a similar fate to MySpace orGoogle+?Reeds Law states that the value of a social network depends on how well it can facilitate the formation of groups and not how well they facilitate connections between individuals. If users can define their own interactions and form groups among shared interests, it can provide a personalized experience. If this is possible on all platforms, what makes a person chooseone?Logos of Threads, X and Mastodon.X, Threads, and Mastodon generally offer a similar text-based social media product, but do they offer something new to the user? If not tied to innovation or market demand, will the branding, business decisions, or product experience drive or reduce engagement on these platforms?Emotional grounding means establishing a connection to a place, people, or past with a product. This connection will likely be even more important in the future, not only for food-related products but also for digital products and services.Results after searching for NBA-related content on X and Threats. The two products work, look, and feel rather similar. Image by theauthor.The faces of the products weuseMany digital products today have a person attached to the brand, such as Elon Musk on X, Steve Jobs/Tim Cook on Apple, Bill Gates on Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. These leaders impact the brand and product image, which can affect the adoption and engagement with the product. Figma, Adobe, LinkedIn, and Vimeo do not have a celebrity-like person attached to them. Do the celebrity CEOs of X, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook fall under celebrity endorsement strategy or CEO branding?There is this inherent tension in advertising between these ideas that celebrities are there to bolster and endorse the product, yet they are also known to take attention away from the product.Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson, Wharton Neuroscience InitiativeCEO branding and celebrity endorsement can help a company connect with consumers and build or destroy customer confidence. Confidence comes from the ability to persuade, which is based on evolution and biology about following the lead of a high-status individual. Besides marketing and advertising, how can customers feel confident about a good product from a startup or a company without celebrity CEOs? Does the product or the experience rule over the brand afterall?Image by Felix Mittermeier onPexels.Bill Gates predicted that Content is King in 1996. Is it still true in 2024 andbeyond?In 1996, Bill Gates wrote Content is King in an essay about how the Internet and distribution of information and entertainment (content) would become a business opportunity for companies of allsizes.The way we engage and what we consider as content has changed over the years. It is common today to follow companies and strangers on the Internet for content related or unrelated to the product or person. Something unheard of two decades ago. The means to consume content and the type of content shared also vary by the products weuse.Users browse Reddit to discover content, not because of their branding, but because the usability of the product and content interaction makes it a unique and enjoyable experience. Comments on why users enjoy Reddit over other social media platforms highlight the desire to stay anonymous, discover interesting content, and engage with people sharing similar interests who are not necessarily within their immediate social circle. This brings an interesting question: Is the content king or the queen? Queen refers to the most valuable piece in chess, which alone might have a hard time surviving against a fleet from the opponent.Reddit r/nba. Screenshot by theauthor.The people come to your site because of the content you provide. This is still a solid statement, although what if the content can be retrieved from multiple sources, such as feeds or TLDR apps? Content exclusivity was more common 20 years ago. In todays digital age, there are multiple products and means that can provide the same or similar content, so how will the consumer make a decision? The product experience might triumph over the brand afterall.Fear of missingoutThe dot-com bubble from the late 1990s saw the rise of many online products and services, driven by the increased global adoption of the Internet and personal computing. Companies without viable business plans jumped aboard with endless IPOs, resulting in a burst in2000.In 2012, my washing machine had AI written on the surface, but what was the AI? Sensors counting the level of water are not necessarily AI, right? Perhaps it was more about marketing and branding.Is the current direction with AI-enhanced products looking at repeating the characteristics of the dot-com craze? We witness a plethora of new products utilizing AI come about, but are we reaching a point where the market is starting to become saturated with AI-based solutions? Is it AI for FOMOs (Fear Of Missing Out) sake, AI for brandings sake, or AI for improving the product and experience?Image prompted by the author via Adobe Firefly Image3.Building products and solvingproblemsCiting the infamous quote attributed to Henry Ford: If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Do customers know what they want? When analyzing insights, does the UX researcher know how to read between the lines to make assumptions about what the user mayneed?Henry Fords quote provides quite a good reflection on how solving user problems can result in innovation.Why did Segways electronic scooter fail, but lightweight electric scooters thrive? Both products were re-thinking short-distance transportation, but Segway was about technological innovation, and the latter about value innovation. The Segway was loaded with technology and had a hefty price tag of $5,000, all the while being big and heavy, generally too big to use on sidewalks or bring up to offices. On the contrary, reducing the amount of technology and rethinking how the users would use such a product took off 95% of the price, making the product lighter and more compact to charge and movearound.Technological innovation doesnt necessarily correlate to having a user-friendly product. If Segway was originally produced by Mercedes-Benz, would the brand presence have impacted its adoption? In this case, the product experience rules over thebrand.Youve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You cant start with the technology and try to figure out where youre going to try to sell itSteve Jobs, WWDC1997Is AI helping to solve a problem, or is it utilized towards technological innovation to create something new? Both, yet if a user cant use it to their advantage, is it part of a brand experience, technological innovation, or a product experience?Working together in harmony. Image prompted by the author via Adobe Firefly Image3.Video killed the radiostarWill AI take over the designers or developers jobs? Maybe not take over, but change and enhance. The introduction of development frameworks and content-management systems for example didnt take over jobs, but it allowed more people to access the technology and build products faster. Technological innovation also creates new jobs and opportunities. Besides prompt engineering, AI will likely generate new jobs aswell.AI can draft a complete design system in seconds. Similarly, WordPress or Webflow can create a site in a few steps. However, the use cases and demands still vary greatly. Ive often heard the following: We dont want the site to look like Wordpress, even if it is built on Wordpress. This translates into We dont want the site to look like all the other sites. Are we experiencing a similar situation with the current UI design landscape?In recent years, many digital products look, work, and feel the same. Familiarity makes it easy for the user to understand the product after all and re-inventing the wheel can be costly. This is also where branding has a chance to come into play. Branding is more than just colors and art direction.The results for searching NBA on Threads, LinkedIn, Youtube, Line, and Spotify. Can you spot the similarities? Image by theauthor.I used to have a Honda Civic Hatchback 88 and then a Volkswagen Polo 96, while they are a bit different in look and feel, the usability and iconography were still pretty much the same. You operate different cars by pushing the pedals and moving the stick-shift around. Familiar icons make it easy to switch between car models and brands, is it the same with different digital products?In comparison, I had to learn how to operate a lift truck when working in a factory, and while the appearance was similar, there was no familiar wheel, but a handle you had to turn around with one hand. It took a little time to get used to the change, but afterward, it was easy. When Objectives are different, the experience changes aswell.Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mindWalterLandorConsumer-facing apps may look, feel, and work the same, but a hospital medical application can be a different experience. The goals and context are different, but in most cases, we are most familiar with the apps that we have easy access to. When a hospital decides on an application or system to use across its facility, will the brand, the product, or the user experience contribute to decision-making?Website visitor statistics are now mostly private. Image by theauthor.The visual design we apply reflects oureraThroughout history, art and design have gone through different movements that shaped the look and feel of that time. The Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) movement in the 1890s aimed to break out from the historical styles into a modernized movement for total works of the arts, which was driven by the use of organic or geometric forms, harmony, and natural forms inspired by nature, rejecting excessive ornaments or Victorian-era decorative styles.If todays arts love the machine, technology, and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times. - Oskar SchlemmerThe Bauhaus movement was initiated around 1919 and is infamous for the approach that the function of an object should dictate its form, and re-uniting art and industrial design. Similarly, De Stijl in 1917 focused on simplicity and primary colors. These movements rejected the ideas of decorative styling, paving the way for more functional crafts.The form should follow function used to be the main idea to break away from the decorative output, but the practitioners themselves started to revert to the decorative styles.Branding initially started as a way to depict ownership, then evolved into a way to be recognized in the sea of options. Looks, style, and personality have become more important, and branding is not only for companies looking at marketing their products but also personal branding has risen due to the impact of the Internet. Brands also represent values, which can impact if a customer engages with a brand or aproduct.Jaguar logo 2024. Image by Jaguar MediaCentre.Logos and visual identities are elements of branding, which have also changed visually throughout history. Jaguar recently revised their logo to better communicate a step into the electronic vehicle industry. This rebrand has prompted mixed feelings online, but logos also change with visual styles of different eras and industries, as seen with the evolution of the Jaguar Logo from 1922 to2024.Have it yourwayWill AI drive the future of product design by tailoring experiences to meet the needs and wants of the user, including the design and layout of interface elements and content strategy? This could include anything from font sizes to colors to content length and more. A blank canvas or content cards that will be populated byAI?Are brands and products becoming like sports teams? Are the products we use a statement of what brands we support or not, or do we use them to solve problems?Hypothetically, if Mark Zuckerberg were to acquire and become the CEO of Figma, would it impact the way you perceive Figma, or whether you use Figma ornot?Change is driven by business needs and changing consumer habits. Can AI assist in understanding the needs of users? The visual style and actions depict the standards and preferences of our time. Will we revert from minimalist design to more decorative design for the sake of being different, or wanting to elevate the product and brand experience?What is important? The brand, the product or the experience?References and furtherreadingPeople are fleeing Elon Musks X in Droves. What is Happening on Threads andBlueskyPeople are Fleeing Elon Musks X for Threads, and Bluesky. Welcome to the Era of Social Media FragmentationX Sees Largest User Exodus Since Elon MuskTakeoverBluesky Tops 20M Users, Narrowing Gap with Instagram ThreadsMySpaceWhat Went Wrong: The Site was a Massive Spaghetti-Ball MessWhy Facebook Beat MySpace, and Why MySpaces Revised Strategy Will LikelyFailFive Reasons Why Google+DiedThe Marketing Psychology Behind Celebrity EndorsementsCEO Branding Strategies for 2023 andBeyondWhy We Buy Products Connected to Place, People, andPastContent Is KingOriginal Bill Gates Essay & How It AppliesTodayWhy Do You Prefer Reddit Over Other SocialMedias?The Late 1990s Dot-Com Bubble Implodes in2000The Psychology Behind FOMO (Fear of MissingOut)Segway Case Study: Avoiding the Fate of ElectricScooterPrompt EngineeringArt NouveauMovementBauhaus MovementThe Bauhaus, 1919-1933De StijlOskar SchlemmerHistory ofBrandingFearless. Exuberant. Compelling. This is Jaguar, ReimaginedEvolution of the JaguarLogoSociety drives how we build products, create brands, and design experiences was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The traumatic shift to proportional measurements systems in digital designContinue reading on UX Collective

I love smart tech: Between smart cameras, sensors, and robots and every kind, these machines save time and effort. However, they're often expensive, which makes shopping holidays the perfect time to invest in this technology. This Black Friday, some of my favorite smart tech devices that I tested this year are on sale, so if you've been thinking about picking up a robot lawnmower or smart security camera system, now's the time.Best robot lawnmowers Credit: Amanda Blum Having now tested a number of lawn-mowing robots, the ease and reliability of the Luba 2 makes it my hands-down favorite. (Read my full review here.) Full of features from video monitoring to GPS location if removed from the yard, the Luba even has lawn-printing capabilities now. (I was underwhelmed by this, but did print a bunch of stars on the lawn for the Fourth of July.) The only reason to choose a different mower is if your lawn is too smallor has a lot of obstacles to mow around. The Luba 2 is rugged and will handle everything from a medium-sized yard to a field with ease. The bots come in different capacities, each with their own discount for Prime Day.LUBA 2 AWD 3000 (up to .75 yards): Regularly $2,499, now $2,149LUBA 2 AWD 3000 (up to 1.25 yards): Regularly $2,899, now $2,249LUBA 2 AWD 3000 (up to 2.5 yards): Regularly $4,099, now $3,649If your lawn is smaller, you might consider the Segway Navimow. (Read my full review here.) The distinction I make between the Luba 2 and the Navimow is that the Luba is really rugged, but lacks the gracefulness to turn on a dime or tightly navigate around obstacles. For smaller yards, the Navimow is a great option, and it's incredibly reliable. It does not enjoy a dip in the yard or a hill, so you'll want to ensure the landscape is decently flat, but it handles an incline without a problem. Credit: Amanda Blum Navimow i105N: regularly $999, now $799Best outdoor security camera I'm not saying you should hang your string lights off them, but you can. Credit: Amanda Blum There are lots of good outdoor security cameras, but whenever Im done testing others, I put my Eufy Solocams back up. Theres lots to like, including the extraordinary range of vision that comes from the spherical pan-and-tilt that allows you to rotate the camera almost 360 degrees. There are actually two cameras in eachone for a macroview and one for a microview. The microview is spectacular for detail: I can actually get a detailed look at individual plants in my yard while Im away. I love that you dont need a monthly plan if you get a Eufy hub for storing clips locally, and that the live view comes up reliably each time with minimal wait time. The two cameras on sale are the hardwired floodlightsthe S330 and E340. I have both up as we speak, but also be sure to look at the solar powered s340, which is not on sale but is still worth it for spots where you dont have the ability to hardwire.eufy Security Floodlight Cam S330: regularly $299.99, now $169.98 eufy Security Floodlight Camera E340: regularly $219.99, now $149.98 Best indoor security camera Credit: Aqara/Amazon I firmly believe that all security cameras should be able to pan and tilt. The ability to move the focus around the room and find what you need is essential, particularly for an indoor camera. It is too frustrating to be away and have something just out of range. For this reason, I have really liked the Aqara 2K Indoor Security Camera E1. Its solid, low profile, never gets knocked over, and allows you to sweep a room for exactly what you're looking for. Aqara 2K Indoor Security Camera E1, Pan & Tilt: regularly $59.99, now $39.99Best robot vacuums Credit: Amanda Blum I wish I could say that all robot vacuums, particularly the expensive ones, were comparable and that youd probably get a good one if you just spent enough. Unfortunately, that hasnt been my experience. Even within a brand, the variance from one model to the next can be jarring. However, Roborock models have consistently been my favorites over the last year. If I was going to buy a robot vacuum tomorrow, it would be from the Roborock S8 line. The S8 Pro Ultra is somehow exceptional on both carpet and hard floors. It has the fewest hiccups in terms of getting lost, getting stuck, or having to clear the rollers. The mopping feature isnt simply an add-onit competently gets the floor clean. Roborock S8 Pro Ultra: regularly $1,599.99, now $899.99 Credit: Credit: Switchbot/YouTube If you've got a smaller house, an apartment, or just a dedicated space you want to add a robot vacuum to, my far and away favorite is the Switchbot k10+. The diminutive size allows it to get closer to walls and around chair legs than regular bots of its kind. While technically a vacuum and mop, the mopping function isn't worth bothering withif you just focus on it as a vacuum, it will impress you. Switchbot K10+ Robot Vacuum: regularly $399.99, now $279.99Best smart diffuserThis smart scent diffuser, which I thought would be fun but nothing more, turned out to be one of my favorite finds of the year. Two aspects I love: You can turn it on and off or schedule it from your phone, so it doesn't get overwhelming, and you can load two different scents and it will show them in your phone app. The diffuser ($34.99) is currently 30% off, but that's no matter. Where you'll get stung is the refills, and many of those are 30% off right now, so load up. 2 Pack, Lavender Fields: regularly $27.98, now $19.592 Pack, Salt: regularly $31.98, now $22.39 The Best Black Friday Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 2 ANC Earbuds With USB-C Charging Case $169.99 (List Price $249.00) Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 64GB Wi-Fi 11" Tablet $149.99 (List Price $219.99) Fire TV Stick 4K Streaming Device With Remote (2023 Model) $21.99 (List Price $49.99) Blink Outdoor 4 1080p Security Camera (3-Pack) $99.99 (List Price $259.99) Dell Inspiron 15 3535 Ryzen 7 1TB SSD 16GB RAM Laptop $449.99 (List Price $699.99) Seagate Portable 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive $99.90 (List Price $124.99) Bose QuietComfort Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones $199.00 (List Price $349.00) Deals are selected by our commerce team

Ive never really understood outdoor Christmas lightingit seemed like a lot of work to put it up and take it all down every year. But last year, I got to try out new permanent outdoor lights, and I am forever changed. You should use Black Friday as your excuse to grab permanent outdoor lights.Its not just that permanent lights will relieve you of hours of labor every year. They are also smart lights, and you can change them to basically any color you want. On a regular Tuesday, they can be a soft warm or cool white. For Christmas, sync them to musicchange it up for any holiday you want. (St. Patricks Day has never been so festive at my house.)They really are permanent, at least in that mine survived the worst Portland winter in 50 years. The lights dont use the hooks that youre accustomed to: They go up under your eaves or on the bottom of your gutters. They throw light against the exterior walls of the house, so the farther they are from the house (the deeper your eaves are), the more light is thrown. But if you have tiny gutters or eaves, dont worrythey'll still throw off plenty of light. And because of the range of colors these lights can achieve (thousands of blues, for instance) you can wash your house in a peaceful ombre, or have it light up like a flashing rainbow. Your choice.Govee permanent outdoor lights Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights, 100 foot strand $179.99 at Amazon $279.99 Save $100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $179.99 at Amazon $279.99 Save $100.00 Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights, 150 foot strand $279.99 at Amazon $419.99 Save $140.00 Get Deal Get Deal $279.99 at Amazon $419.99 Save $140.00 SEE -1 MORE The only downside to Govee's lights used to be their app, but over the last year, that's been vastly improved; as I've noted previously, the app has received an overhaul to improve the interface and refine the selection of preset options. This is their second version of these lights, and I've used them the last two weeks without issue. Eufy permanent outdoor lights Eufy Permanent Outdoor Lights, 100 foot strand $299.99 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $299.99 at Amazon Eufy Permanent Outdoor Lights, 50 foot strand $199.99 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $199.99 at Amazon SEE -1 MORE This is Eufy's first year producing these lights, but so far, I find them competitive with Govee's version. The UI is also slightly less chaotic than Govee. They offer a 50-foot strand that isn't marked down right now, but this one is: The Best Black Friday Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 2 ANC Earbuds With USB-C Charging Case $169.99 (List Price $249.00) Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 64GB Wi-Fi 11" Tablet $149.99 (List Price $219.99) Fire TV Stick 4K Streaming Device With Remote (2023 Model) $21.99 (List Price $49.99) Blink Outdoor 4 1080p Security Camera (3-Pack) $99.99 (List Price $259.99) Dell Inspiron 15 3535 Ryzen 7 1TB SSD 16GB RAM Laptop $449.99 (List Price $699.99) Seagate Portable 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive $99.90 (List Price $124.99) Bose QuietComfort Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones $199.00 (List Price $349.00) Deals are selected by our commerce team

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is back to once again paint a glorious portrait of the heavens. This time, the powerful telescope was set loose on the Sombrero galaxy, otherwise called Messier 104 or M104. The end result? A gorgeous image that reframes our understanding of that particular region of space.Upon closer inspection using the JWSTs mid-infrared view, the Sombrero galaxy no longer truly resembles its namesake. It looks more like an archery target, complete with a bullseye in the center. That bullseye? Its actually a supermassive black hole.The sharp resolution offered by Webbs Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) finally gives us a detailed glimpse of the outer ring, showing intricate clumps of dust. Previous images, captured via visible light, made the area appear smooth like a blanket. The JWST presents a more complicated picture.The clumpy nature of the dust indicates carbon-containing molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which typically illustrate the presence of young star-forming regions. This is likely the case here, though the Sombrero galaxy is thought to not be a hotbed of star formation.Scientists believe that the galaxy produces less than a single solar mass per year. The Milky Way galaxy, where youre most likely reading this from, creates roughly two solar masses per year. Messier 82, otherwise called the Cigar galaxy, is responsible for around 20 solar masses per year.The MIRI image also shows a whole bunch of galaxies littering the background of space, all with different shapes and colors. Astronomers are busy studying these background galaxies to determine how far away they are. As for the Sombrero galaxy, its 30 million light-years from Earth deep in the Virgo constellation. A galaxy too far for us to ever even hope of traveling to? Typical independent Virgo.Of course, this is just the latest glorious image provided to us by the JWST. It recently found the most distant galaxy ever observed and gave us a new perspective on everyones favorite ice giant, Uranus.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-just-released-a-stunning-new-image-of-the-sombrero-galaxy-captured-by-the-jwst-171642105.html?src=rss

Maxs Black Friday deal gives you six months of one of the best streaming services for only $18 (billed monthly). The sale applies to new and returning subscribers. This is the Max with Ads plan, which usually costs $10 monthly, so youre getting a 70-percent discount. Since the ad-free one costs $17 per month, perhaps thatll make it easier to stomach some commercials before each episode of The Last of Us. The deal is only available in the US and will automatically renew during the six months and beyond. If you dont want to pay $10 monthly after the discount period, just remember to cancel before the renewal date. Maxs lineup has series and films like The Last of Us, House of the Dragon, Euphoria, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Penguin, Dune: Part Two, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Barbie. In addition, you get full series from HBOs legendary archives, like The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and The City, Game Of Thrones and Six Feet Under. It also includes current and old content from Warner Bros., A24, Adult Swim, ID and the DC Universe. The Black Friday deal lasts from now through December 2. Head over to Max and log in or sign up. Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/max-black-friday-deal-get-six-months-of-access-for-only-18-165721872.html?src=rss

Sapphire 2025 is out. Check out the changes to Boris FX's suite of effects plugins for compositing and video editing apps, including new tools for mimicking the look of analog video.https://www.cgchannel.com/2024/11/boris-fx-releases-sapphire-2025/

We've updated our 2024 list of Black Friday and Cyber Week deals for CG artists with over 40 new offers, including Boris FX's Continuum, Sapphire, Silhouette and SynthEyes; Clip Studio Paint; DaVinci Resolve and Fusion Studio; Forest Pack and RailClone; LightWave; Redshift; SketchUp; TVPaint; Xencelabs pen displays; and ZBrushhttps://www.cgchannel.com/.../black-friday-cyber-monday.../