You dont need to be a media scholar to know that in a digital world, the landscape for print magazines has been challenging over the past decade-plus. According to IBIS Worlds global magazine publishing market study, the categoryworth $105.2 billion this yearhas been declining at a compound annual growth rate of 2.4% since 2019, a trend that is expected to continue.And yet, print magazine covers are everywhere online, and more relevant than ever.Its a testament to the enduring influence of certain legacy media outlets and their talented art directors. But more than anything, magazine covers uniquely offer a static snapshot of culture at large, and collectively form a visual timeline of the times. This past year had a particularly unrelenting news cycleand one polarizing person often at the center of it all: Donald Trump. As the U.S. election cycle kicked into high gear, designers were once again there to opine on him and the rest of the political world.Were still on the wave of using magazine covers as protest [art], notes Jaap Biemansart director of Volkskrant Magazine and curator of the popular Instagram account Cover Junkiein a written exchange from the Netherlands. I adore that. It [keeps] them relevant. View this post on Instagram A post shared by coverjunkie (@coverjunkie)Unsurprisingly, Biemans doesnt see those ubiquitous Trump covers going anywhere anytime soon. But hes optimistic that creatives will be able to continue to find fresh takes on the incoming president and politics at large moving forward.Thats what a good designer does. [They] will always find something different, something surprising. [ . . . ] Maybe its time not to show the man himself but focus on his plans, his ideas, and visualize that instead of another weird orange hair cover.Of course, there was more to 2024 than Trump the fall of Joe Biden and the rise (and fall) of Kamala Harris. Gaza. Ukraine. The Olympics. The continued cultural domination of Taylor Swifts Eras tour.And they were all in print, dominating magazine coversand disseminating online far beyond the physical reach of any given periodical.What follows are 15 striking covers that uniquely told the story of 2024, with some commentary from Biemans. Biemans also included five standalone covers that embody great design for designs sake because, well . . . this year was a lot, on and off the page.[Image: Bloomberg Businessweek]Bloomberg Businessweek As if its art director had access to a crystal ball, Bloomberg Businessweek nailed this cover in January, quite accurately presaging the year to come with a convoluted maze.Dont we all think the same when seeing this cover? Biemans asks. What a world were living in. A year of unbridled chaos, but a charming approach.[Image: Politico]PoliticoWhile endless Trump covers take a predictable route, here, concept rides high, providing a simple, brilliant spin on the aforementioned rote imagery.This artwork nailed it! Content-wise and visually, [its] the best Trump cover of the year.[Image: The New York Times Magazine]The New York Times MagazineIs this photo from 1948 or 2024? Its not immediately clearand therein lies the power of this cover.[Image: The Atlantic]The AtlanticPutting the table of contents directly on the cover of The Atlantic might seem like an aptly chaotic anti-establishment approach to a chaotic anti-establishment politician. But rather, this cover served as a warning that laid bare the stakes of the election.Biemans loves the approach, and ventures that David Carson did the same at some point in his career. If he did, though, Id wager it lacked the sobering punch of creative director Peter Mendelsund and teams treatment here.[Image: The Wall Street Journal]The Wall Street JournalThis isnt a magazine cover. But in spotlighting the void left by journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was held as a political prisoner in Russia until August, The Wall Street Journal took newspaper editorial design to new heights, rivaling the best glossies out there today.White space tells more than a thousand words, Biemans says. Hail to The Wall Street Journal for running the story like this.[Image: The Economist]The EconomistThis haunting image of Ukraines embattled president Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes use not of white space, but black. The result is a cover on the edge of an abyss, where every ounce of gravity is felt.[Image: The New York Times Magazine]NYT MagAs Biemans notes, this cover makes the viewer instantly curiousand its starkness makes a statement. Moreover, by undertaking the visual heresy of erasing an image of Martin Luther King Jr.s Selma to Montgomery March, The New York Times Magazine deftly underscores the thesis of its cover story.[Image: Time]TIMEOne word sufficed on the first cover following Joe Bidens disastrous late June debate performance. No words were needed on the second, as the party quickly rushed to embrace Kamala Harris in the race against Trump.Per Biemans: Genius thinking of their art department. The discussion back then was that Biden had to leave because of his age. Well, let him leave and walk off the cover! [ . . . ] But when you add the other candidate a week later on the same composition, [that] deserves a design hallelujah.[Image: Hommes China]HOMMES China The 2024 Olympics were a break from politics (at least in theory). And no magazine captured them with as much vibrancy and life as LOfficiel Hommes China.This seriesits a split runis so crispy and full of joy. The colors! The fun! Best of the year. This makes me smile.[Image: The New European]The New EuropeanNational Lampoons 1973 cover If You Dont Buy This Magazine, Well Kill This Dog became a classic, and was ranked at No. 7 in the American Society of Magazine Editors Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years. The New European trotted the classic visual back out as Trump made claims that immigrants were eating dogs in Ohio.Big shout-out to The New European. They try to make something spectacular each week.[Image: Variety]VarietyThanks to Swiftie culture, friendship bracelets became one of the defining ephemeral elements of 2023/2024. As such, thats all Variety really needed to capture a phenomenon.Thats how you make an attractive cover, Biemans notes. Crispy colors! Body parts! [A] simple pose! [It] sounds simple, [but those are the] hardest to make.[Image: Bloomberg Businessweek]BloombergThe Democratic Partys near-immediate coalescence around Kamala Harris took some by surpriseand she was no doubt to many a somewhat blank slate. Here, Bloomberg Businessweek sought to color in some lines.[Image: The New Yorker]The New YorkerBarry Blitt on the eve of the presidential election . . .[Image: New York Magazine]New York. . . And, yeah. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you fall on, that sums it up.The magazine is talking to the reader here, Biemans concludes. [A] direct approach with impact.And now, to cleanse the timeline of the year that was. . . .[Image: The New Yorker]The New Yorker The New Yorker sometimes gets dogged for its gentler seasonal covers at times when the world may feel as if its burning. But well take a moment of zen from artist Peter de Sve any day. (Props if you can spot the Easter Egg.)[Image: Vogue Arabia]Vogue A hypnotic Vogue Arabia cover featuring a surreal Monica Belluci.[Image: New York magazine]New YorkThe type. The cats. The colors. The fact that it was not about politics.[Image: The New York Times Magazine]NYT Magazine A moving, beautiful cover by Gaia Alari for a moving, beautiful essay by Sam Anderson. (Its okay to cry here. I did.)[Image: The Paris Review]Paris Review And finally, a moment of artistic bliss thats neither here nor there, courtesy of Nicolas Party.This magazine doesnt scream, but it says, very calmly: Pick me up, read me, Biemans notes. Isnt this a beauty?Yes. Yes it is. And sometimes, thats enough.

As the former CEO of AT&T Business, Anne Chow led a $35 billion business comprised of more than 35,000 employees who collectively served 3 million business customers worldwide. Known for her inspirational ability to create and grow high-performing teams, she was also the first woman of color to hold the position of CEO at AT&T. She is currently the lead director on the board of Franklin Covey, serves on the boards of 3M and CSX, and teaches at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management.Inclusive leadership has been pigeonholed into boilerplate DEI initiatives. The world requires significantly more complex growth, innovation, and personalization than these narrow concepts of inclusion. What the world needs is bigger leaders who lead big. This is what Anne Chow, former CEO of AT&T Business, has concluded after over three decades of leadership experience as the first woman of color to hold that title in company history. Chow emphasizes the power of a humanistic approach to strengthening companies as they are rocked by seismic technological shifts. Through her suggested practices and mindsets, leaders can advance work that matters, engage a dynamic workforce, and foster an agile workplace.Below, Chow shares five key insights from her new book,Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion.Listen to the audio versionread by Chow herselfin the Next Big Idea App.1. Go beyond the daily grindBigger leaders must do the work to develop, harness, and evolve purpose as the foundation and reason for being. Without purpose, work risks becoming meaningless or irrelevant, stakeholders will be uninspired, loyalty will be scarce, and a purpose-led team will outcompete you.Some people might think that unless youre the founder of a company, an entrepreneur, or a CEO, the purpose of your work is for someone else to decide. This couldnt be further from the truth. Our purpose is the essential why behind the work we do. It is different than an organizations mission, which represents an objective and set of actions that an individual or set of people are charged with.No matter the kind of work you do, you are on a mission to reach a destination that yields desired outcomes for stakeholders. If you are not sure what your purpose is, ask yourself,what if we didnt exist? Who would care and why?Be sure this purpose resonates with your priority stakeholders.Your purpose is the central rallying point for your efforts. Its most engaging when tied to hopes, personally and for the world. Without purpose, there is no inspiration. Linking talent to purpose on a journey of growth is an energizing mix.2. Values are vitalBigger leaders are clear about organizational values. These are the guiding principles you and your team must embody. They set the foundation for culture and behavioral norms, processes, and practices that emerge as your work advances forward.Too often, values become an exercise in spinning platitudes. Big values resonate deeply with stakeholders, often both professionally and personally, but only if leaders and every team member live by them. You will have both existing core values and aspirational values, those which you must develop and invest in to fully deliver on goals.Value grounding should not be done alone, nor is it a public relations task. Invite input from stakeholders, especially team members. Ensuring ownership from your team is paramount. Include an understanding of the consequences. If values are not practiced, include an understanding of the consequences. Tough decisions will often be made more clearly and confidently based on values that must be stated and lived.When it comes to establishing values, the most important constituent to cater to is your workforce. Your teams values will impact recruiting and retaining top talent and will establish a foundation for inclusive collaboration. Research shows that value alignment increases job satisfaction, collaboration, communication, and trust, while reducing turnover.3. Performance for stakeholdersThink of stakeholders as a collection of communities that impact or are impacted by your work. Examples include team members, suppliers, customers, investors, and partners. Depending on your industry, they could also include regulators, lobbyists, analysts, unions, volunteers, and more. Each stakeholder group will likely have distinct needs, but they can help or hinder your efforts only to the degree you engage and include them. How can you ensure they all feel connected to you or that they belong? How can you get them to work with you effectively? It requires considering their perspectives, with a bias toward making better decisions for greater outcomes. Ultimately, all work is about performance.Performance has many facets, whether financial, operational, customer, organizational, reputational, or otherwise. Step one to ensuring an inclusive approach to performance is understanding stakeholder priorities. What do they view as success for you and your team? How would they measure it? Too often, leaders focus on output and activity rather than outcomes and impact. Be sure to understand thewhybehind any given goal and establish metrics and milestones that matter.Most importantly, stakeholders are whom you are performing for and with. Establishing clarity on what success looks like for stakeholder groups is paramount to delivering upon your purpose. As examples, shareholders will care most about return on investment and return on equity. Customers may care most about your ability to innovate and keep promises as they relate to products and services. Suppliers will care about win-win scenarios that enable them to grow alongside you, and employees will want to work in a high-trust environment with meaningful work where they are respected, valued, appreciated, and included. Remember: not all stakeholder priorities are always treated equally. Prioritization is key.4. Win with well-beingFor people to perform at their best, they must be at their best amid a global mental health crisis. Most people say that work is a source of at least one mental health challenge. Recent studies show that managers have just as much of an impact on peoples mental health as their spouses and even more than their doctors or therapists. Of course, leaders arent therapists, but they can drastically improve their teams outcomes by focusing on employee wellbeing and fostering a culture of belonging.The pressures in the workforce are real. Many feel stress, burnout, exhaustion, loneliness, depression, and anxiety to the point where these mental health behavior disorders are the leading cause of disability. A third of workers feel depressed or anxious at least once a week. These are emotions that most people would not be comfortable revealing, especially at work. There is a bias that these feelings are signs of weakness as opposed to simply a part of being human.Contrary to common perception, mental health struggles are not relegated to one generation or a segment of the population. Every demographic is hurting. Most leaders are not mental health professionals, and they must respect the boundaries surrounding these sensitive issues. Yet the responsibility to safeguard the well-being of the workforce has landed at their feet due to the expectations of their people and the link between well-being and performance results. Well-being, whether physical, mental, emotional, or financial, is a leadership responsibility.5. Fortify with flexibilityIf you want to bend, not break, under pressure, you need flexibility in your people, practices, and policies. Bigger leaders champion flexible jobs, careers, and lives. Flexibility goes far beyond hybrid work environments. Rather, flexibility is all about understanding a more strategic, inclusive view of someones job, far beyond the day-to-day.First, leaders must recognize that an employee has a job in the context of their career, which is ongoing, growing, and vital. Their career exists as a subset of their life. Yes, its a significant part. After all, we will spend about a third of our lives working, but its simply a part of the vast landscape of our lives. Too many managers focus solely on the job at hand, their intent on generating the output and meeting the metrics of the day, and are honed in on what is on the immediate horizon.Some managers dont even take this to an individual level. They concentrate on the whole group because the collective work is how theyll be measured. This approach misses the necessary human connection. Each leader should help teams elevate their performance, both individually as well as collectively. Weve seen growing experimentation across different companies about thewhere,how, and evenwhenof work, including four-day work weeks.The bigger leader considers the different ways in which each individual can be most productive and engaged, as well as creative ways for the team to collaborate. Once you expand this in the context of career, bigger leaders are compelled to more deeply understand what growth aspirations each team member has and act accordingly with emphasis on developmental experiences, programs, and more. Ultimately, perhaps the most important context for a flexible workplace is the acknowledgment that ones job and career exist as a single part of ones whole life. Embrace the fact that peoples lives always remain at the top of their minds. Jobs and careers are building blocks to life, not the other way around.A flexible foundation of culture requires leadership, commitment, and action. These actions should include policies and practices that support the whole individual in the context of their evolving lives. Your people can only perform at their best when they feel at their best. Leadership is all about motivating, aligning, and inspiring a group to deliver upon a common purpose. Leading bigger, also known as inclusive leadership, is about a whole fleet of boats rowing with purpose together. Leading bigger enables us to advance work that matters, develop a vital, innovative workforce, and create trusted, agile workplaces.This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.

An exposed grid of structural steel was used to bring a feeling of "industrial elegance" to House XO in Kerala, India, which has been designed by local architecture studio 3dor Concepts.The 205-square-metre dwelling was designed for a client with a background in the steel industry and is located on a site surrounded by large mango trees in the coastal town of Tanur.House XO has a structural steel frame surrounded by mango trees3dor Concepts aimed to blend "natural beauty with industrial design elements" for the home's design, using an oversized steel frame to create loft-style spaces with high ceilings and full-height windows overlooking the surrounding garden.Resembling a game of tic-tac-toe, a large white metal X and O have been inserted into the steel grid on the home's facade, while a section of ash-brick wall above has also been carved with a grid and letters.Local studio 3dor Concepts added a metal X and O to the facade"The tight site required careful space planning to accommodate parking, privacy, and functionality, all while fostering a strong connection to nature through expansive windows and an open layout that invites the outdoors in," explained the studio."The design features clean lines, minimalist furnishings, and industrial elements like exposed steel beams and large glass windows, creating an aesthetic that is both striking and functional, seamlessly blending with the tropical surroundings while maximising space and maintaining openness."Read: Oversized roof shelters house in Kerala by 3dor ConceptsSet back from the front of the site to create space for a driveway alongside a covered porch, the living, dining and kitchen area occupies a long, narrow area in the home's northeastern corner, with fully-glazed walls that can be slid open.On the smaller first floor, an additional living space overlooks the ground floor and connects to two en-suite bedrooms with full-height windows that are sheltered by metal grids on the home's exterior.Interior spaces at House XO were designed to have a minimal appearance"Material choices focused on sustainability and efficiency. I-section and C-section steel beams were used to reduce construction time and add industrial flair," explained the studio."Concrete walls were minimised, and lightweight fly ash bricks, made from recycled materials, were used throughout the house," it added. "The durable deck-sheet roof offers thermal insulation, completing the modern industrial aesthetic while ensuring energy efficiency."Large sliding glass doors overlook outdoor plantingThe interior finishes were kept minimal and largely white to create a simple backdrop to the natural surroundings and a feeling of "openness and airiness", with wooden grids on the walls referencing the home's facade.3dor Concepts was founded in 2013 by architects Muhammed Jiyad CP, Ahmed Thaneem Abdul Majeed and Muhammed Naseem M. The studio's previous projects include another home in Kerala that is sheltered by an oversized tiled roof.Also in Kerala, Tropical Architecture Bureau recently designed a home that blends "old-world charm with the modern".The photography is by Studio Iksha.The post Gridded steel frame envelops Indian home by 3dor Concepts appeared first on Dezeen.

Christmas, at least the actual day, is all but over, but its never too early to start thinking about gift ideas for next year. Music boxes are always a popular idea for the holidays since it can also be used the whole year round. Its also one of those things that you can innovate on, design-wise since there are a lot of shapes, colors, designs, concepts, and tunes that you can play around with. Even the materials that are used can also be played around with, like with this concept for a music box made from recycled materials.Designer: Hyunbin KimSnowie is a concept for a Christmas music box that is built from an unlikely source: coffee grounds. Its not normally associated with this product but were always on the lookout for ways to recycle something as common as coffee grounds. This music box is also not really a box as the shape of the base is a huge round mound of coffee grounds, sort of evoking a coffee bean although its not really bean-shaped. Since its a Christmas product its more about a snowball except its brown since its made from coffee.It also has a cute hat on top called a Snowie hat which uses aluminum material with a polishing technique finish. The hat spring serves as the winding mechanism for the music box component. Once you insert it on top and wind it up, the Christmas music is supposed to play. There is also a magnetic Snowie nose that is made from coffee grounds and other materials to give it a lighter color. There doesnt seem to be a functional component to it other than to give the music box (or circle) a cute nose. It can also be either round or triangular. If you mix the coffee grounds with other materials, you can also get other colors of the Snowie music box. Other than brown, there are also renders of ivory and white colors, although its not really clear what other materials can be mixed. Well, theres still a year to perfect this concept or have an actual product in time for Christmas 2025.The post Music box concept is made from coffee grounds with an aluminum hat first appeared on Yanko Design.

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