5 June, 2025 In this series, Clare Dowdy speaks with design studios that are 30+ years old, to find out some of the secrets behind their longevity. Michael Johnson set up his London-based brand consultancy Johnson Banks in 1992. From Duolingo to Pink Floyd, Cancer Research UK to the Royal Astronomical Society, the studio works with “people who want to do big things.” He sat down with Clare Dowdy to discuss what he’s learned over the past 33 years. Michael Johnson How did Johnson Banks come about? My 20s were very turbulent: eight jobs in eight years, a lot of different countries, different cities, learning on the job. My last job – at Smith & Milton – was relatively settled, I was kind of running a corporate design department. I had a client there, Tom Banks. After I left, he also left his role at Legal & General with the projects I had been working on, and we used that as a basis for the company. That was 1992, the back end of a recession. For a couple of years, everything was fine. Then we started having “creative differences.” And the pressures of running a tiny design company are substantial. So we parted ways in 1995, but I kept the name. Johnson Banks’ symbol for the V&A’s William Morris show At that time, we weren’t really in the branding world. For a decade, we were very distracted by getting on the graphic design map, trying to win D&AD awards, doing lovely stamp projects. And then we started to get some cultural projects: the V&A and the British Council. I started to think, OK, now we’re beginning to show what we can do. When and why did you start thinking seriously about your strategy offering? When we started to get into the branding arena, I knew we were underpowered in terms of the strategic thinking. I may have thought that I could do it, but it takes a bit to persuade clients when you’re 35, with hair almost down to your knees. If you’re up against important-looking people who can field a few grey hairs, you’re going to lose that pitch. So we partnered with strategic companies like management consultancy Circus, and followed that model for much of the 2000s. That led to the Shelter rebrand, and a few other quite big branding projects followed. Johnson Banks’ visual identity for Shelter Eventually we realised that we could do the strategy ourselves. I had sometimes been a little frustrated by the work that my strategic partners – naming no names – were doing. It sounds a bit mean, but sometimes I would get this 90-page PowerPoint document from them, and I’d put it on my designers’ desks, and their faces would go blank. I think that 20 years ago, there was still a bit of the idea that you’ve paid £100,000, so here’s your huge document. We slowly realised that if we were in control of the process, and were involved all the way through, then that jump out of the verbal brand to the visual brand could be much better managed. How did you rethink your strategy offer? The penny dropped in the mid-2000s when we worked with Save The Children. At the time, and I don’t think they’d mind me saying this, Save The Children were a bit of a basket case. They were associated with WI fairs and cake baking, and they had a royal as their patron – they were nothing like what they are now. I realised we needed to work out what they stood for before we did any design. I did this huge chart, and stuck it on a wall at the client’s office. And I said, it strikes me that there are strategic choices that you have got to make as a comms team about where you want to take the Save the Children brand. Johnson Banks’ poster for Save the Children That was an incredibly productive meeting, and also it helped us realise that before we got anywhere near the design, we needed to sort this out. I know that sounds like really basic stuff now. I didn’t trust my instinct for a decade or so, but in that Save the Children meeting, a light bulb went on for me. Once you’d worked out how to do strategy in-house why didn’t you scale up? A lot of companies would have done that. That’s how companies grow, and can end up quite quickly at 60 people. We have nearly always been around six to eight people. Because I could bridge that gap between the verbal and the visual, it meant we didn’t need to add people. And I’ve discovered over the last 25 years, that with a really good account director, Katherine Heaton, and me, and a design team, there is a heck of a lot that we can do. So we stayed small and partnered with filmmakers, animators, cultural specialists. Post-pandemic, a lot of people have adopted that hub and spoke model – we did it 20 years ago. Probably twice a year we’ll lose a pitch because of our scale. But conversely, with some clients you can sell in the fact that they’ll always deal with Michael Johnson. They’re not going to be handed down the chain, because there is no chain. Johnson Banks’ logos for Jodrell Bank Alongside this direct contact with you, what’s your main selling point? It seems to be that we think pretty hard about stuff. We almost never jump into design. A lot of thought goes into what we do, sometimes way too much. Sometimes our projects are incredibly difficult, gargantuan, intertwined and really hard to unpick. That’s a slightly poisoned chalice, because then people go, gosh, well, if they could unpick that, then they could unpick our Gordian knot. For example, we’re working on a major London university brand at the moment that has over 60,000 staff and students, 11 faculties, and hundreds of centres and institutes and departments, and we’re trying to navigate a way through. How did you work out what you wanted to specialise in? Sometimes you can get sucked into something that you just don’t want to be doing. By the end of the 1990s, Johnson Banks had got a reputation for doing annual reports. Part of me quite liked doing them because there was an interplay between words and pictures. And we were getting senior level access to clients, which makes you feel a bit better, because you’re having an interface with chief executives. But then I was thinking, hang on, we’re in danger of getting stuck here, because of course, they’re cyclical. And the death of the annual report – and the death of print – was coming over the horizon, with the internet. Johnson Banks’ Annual Report for Polygram (1995) Since then, my interests have changed. I do not have any interest any more in doing awful blue chips or terrible fintechs. I want to apply all the comms and the branding that I’ve learned to people who could really use it – not-for-profit, culture, education, philanthropy. You know, doing good. How did you build up this not-for-profit work? You lean into the referrals you’ll inevitably get within silos where you want to be referred. I learned this from Mary Lewis of Lewis Moberly. We were pretty close in the 1990s and she always said that referral business is the best business. Over 85% of our clients are not-for-profit – most design companies have a 20-80 split between non-profits and commercial clients. I never liked that ratio, what you might cruelly call ‘the Robin Hood principle’ – we are going to steal from our luxury car account and give to the charity. We did do a bit of that for a while. We did an airline in 2009/10 at the same time we were doing charities. I would justify that with the Robin Hood principle, but I just felt more and more uncomfortable with that. Johnson Banks’ campaign visuals for Cancer Research UK As our percentages went up and up in not-for-profit, eventually I said, look, we should just tell people this is who we are, and this is what we do. It was obvious anyway, so let’s be explicit about it. A few people said we were crazy, that we’d never get any work. But the reverse has been the case. We’re on our sixth environmental project. If you say this is what we want to do, and this is what we will do for you, then I think, funnily enough, clients find that very helpful. How did you build up to bigger projects? Let’s take education. We’ve done three or four really interesting campaigns for universities and now we’re in the position where we can do university rebrands, and have won a top 10 global university. But it has taken 15 years of education work to get to that point. I may not have thought that it would take quite so long to persuade people that we could do their identity. But education is a very conservative sector, and moves slowly, like museums and galleries. If you’re small, you can afford for a sector to move slowly, whereas bigger agencies need a pipeline. I’ve watched dozens of companies get to this critical point where they’ve grown and grown and then they’ve just fallen off the cliff because they’ve been feeding the monster. To help with that, agencies often add a new business person. No-one ever talks about this, but a new business person costs around £50,000. The rule of thumb, in my world at least, is that you have to take that salary and triple it with turnover to pay that salary. So you need £150,000 worth of projects to pay for the new business person before you’ve made a penny. So to make a profit, the new business person has to bring in over £200,000 of work. And if this person can do it, which is not guaranteed, then the company has to scale. It’s so easy to get caught on a treadmill. What else has helped you stay in business so long? We’ve always led with the thought behind the idea, not the way it looked. Because I was always much more interested in the idea behind something, I think that has helped us not get sucked into the visual, to use the type face du jour, the colour that everyone else is using. And it’s understandable, because graphic designers want to do stuff that their peers really like. But paradoxically the trick, in my opinion, is to try and zag away from the trends. Create a new trend yourself. Johnson Banks’ globe symbol for the COP 26 climate conference Design disciplines in this article Industries in this article Brands in this article What to read next Neville Brody on clients, education, and his unexpected OBE Graphic Design 30 Jan, 2025

Virtuos rebuild of Oblivion Remastered topped April's sales charts, with Microsoft's PlayStation launches also charting well.Read More

Relic has announced Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition, a modernized version of its 20-year-old RTS classic.Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition, due out on PC via Steam and GOG later this year, presents the original gameplay as fans will remember it, but optimized for modern hardware. IGN has an exclusive interview with design director Philippe Boulle where we run through all the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition details — it’s well worth a read if you’re into Dawn of War in any way.PlayFans have long-called for a revival of the Dawn of War franchise, and the first game in the series, which is considered one of the best if not the best Warhammer 40,000 games ever made, is a potential first start. The hope is of course that Relic uses this release as a platform for the creation of a brand new Dawn of War game; Dawn of War 4 perhaps.The Definitive Edition includes all the Dawn of War and standalone expansion content (four classic Dawn of War campaigns, nine armies, and over 200 maps all in one game). There’s 4K support, upscaled textures (4x the originals), and image-based lighting for a higher level of fidelity while retaining the classic experience. World lighting, unit reflections, and shadows have all been improved, and new unit gloss and emissive lighting “will faithfully enhance the moment-to-moment action.”The camera now lets you pull back further to see more on-screen, and the HUD and screen layout have been optimized for widescreen viewing. Dawn of War has also been upgraded to a 64-bit platform to support the ongoing efforts of the modding community and will be compatible with over 20 years of community mods upon release.Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition Screenshots“The Definitive Edition celebrates the original Dawn of War and preserves the legacy of this landmark Warhammer 40,000 title for years to come,” said Justin Dowdeswell, CEO at Relic Entertainment.“Warhammer 40,000 is more popular than ever, and we want new players to experience where the classic Dawn of War franchise began, while providing a platform for our long-time fans to relive it in its entirety.”Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition was announced during the Warhammer Skulls 2025 broadcast. In case you missed it, check out all the announcements and trailers from the show.Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Metal Boxes Dawn of War Definitive Edition - a modern version of the best Warhammer strategy game ever made - has just been announced All the mods made over the past twenty years will still work too, which is beautiful. Image credit: Relic Entertainment News by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on May 22, 2025 This is not a drill, check on the closest 30+ year old Warhammer fan you know. Dawn of War Definitive Edition has just been revealed during the Warhammer Skulls event! A modern remaster of the legendary RTS game, it'll come with all expansions packaged together in a shiny new package, and is set to release later this year. The DOW Definitive Edition will feature 4K support, upscaled textures, new models, and various drastic graphical improvements. The camera has been improved, which is a much-needed change, plus the UI and HUD have been overhailed to support widescreen setups. But perhaps the coolest feature of all is the fact that the 20 years history of mods made for the original Dawn of War will still work with the Definitive Edition, which is a brilliant touch. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. CEO of Relic Justin Dowdeswell provided the following quote in an accompanying press release, "The Definitive Edition celebrates the original Dawn of War and preserves the legacy of this landmark Warhammer 40,000 title for years to come, Warhammer 40,000 is more popular than ever, and we want new players to experience where the classic Dawn of War franchise began, while providing a platform for our long-time fans to relive it in its entirety." This is likely the biggest reveal of the Warhammer Skulls event for many of the old heads watching, as the original Dawn of War is the crowning achievement of the old era of Warhammer games. Bringing it back now, when the IP is getting a surge of life and love, cements the time we're living in right now as the golden age of Warhammer games. It's also good to hear know that none of the voice lines or models will be changed aside from technical improvements, which means we should still be able to damn the Space Marines and their metal boxes. Are you excited for the Dawn of War Definitive Edition? Let us know below!

21 May, 2025 Clare Dowdy finds out about the excitement, and challenges, that come with working with an early-stage company. “Culturally, working with founders is intense, in the best possible way,” says Kelly Mackenzie, founder and creative director of White Bear. The London and Dublin based branding agency has form working with founder-led companies, including Tom Parker Creamery and chocolate brand Luvli. “The business isn’t just what they do, it’s often wrapped up in their identity, sense of self-worth and purpose,” Mackenzie explains. And because of this intensity, the agency becomes almost as invested as the client. “When we’re asked to evolve or build their brand, we often tell them that it’s like being asked to mind their child,” Mackenzie says. “Naming that emotional connection early builds trust. It helps them feel safe in a process they’ve often never experienced before.” Many designers talk of going on a journey with these clients. “You have a very close relationship with the founders, and get to know them very deeply,” says Hijinks co-founder Marc Allenby. “Their idea is usually based on passion, and you – as a designer – are fuelled by that passion. That energy is self-motivating, you really care about what you’re creating.” The WeRepresent logo and wordmark designed by Hijinks When Hijinks presented the founder of talent agency WeRepresent with their logo, she burst into tears, which isn’t standard practice when presenting to bigger clients. But Hijinks had created an animated version that “breathed” – a nod to the founder’s traumatic experience of being in a coma on a ventilator with Covid. A moving approach, in more ways than one. The entrepreneurial spirit found in start-ups can be infectious. “Rather than being jaded, they have a youthful energy, and that attracts us,” says Russell Potter, the co-founder of architecture and design firm SODA, whose many hospitality start-up clients include the Instagram-beloved crumble shop, Humble Crumble. Then there’s the potential for creative freedom. “It’s a blank canvas. We’re creating something from nothing,” says Allenby at Hijinks, in contrast to a more mature brand that will come with its own baggage. But these clients may not have worked with a design studio before process, and inevitably there’s a lot of hand-holding. Dundee-based Agency of None branded the start-up QuickBlock “Start-ups by their nature, are often a very small group of people, all trying to cover many roles. So the role of the designer is often as an educator, as much as a designer,” says Lyall Bruce, director of Dundee-based Agency of None, whose start-up clients include QuickBlock, a sustainable building block made from recycled food packaging, and coffee roaster Bryte. As a consequence of this inexperience, the brief is rarely formal. It might be a loose deck, a stream-of-consciousness call, or a rough vision, according to Mackenzie. “And throughout, there will be extra calls to talk through thinking, being available on WhatsApp or Slack, and giving reassurance at each step.” That naivety is both beautiful and brilliant, says Potter at SODA. But if you’re not careful, you can get dragged into a lot of business decisions. “We’re often asked to comment above our pay grade – we can’t always have the answers,” he says. “Someone client side has to have a leap of faith and make a decision.” Inevitably budgets are tight, and agencies often need to explain the value of effective design, “Once they see the link between strong branding and commercial outcomes, budget conversations become much easier,” says Mackenzie at White Bear. Although, as several designers pointed out, this challenge is not unique to start-up clients.But for start-ups, agencies often break down payment into smaller chunks, as a way of protecting themselves. The interior of the new Crunch sandwich shop in London’s Soho designed by KIDZ KIDZ, which has offices in Amsterdam, Belgrade, Dubai and Paris, designed the new Crunch sandwich shop in London’s Soho. “Working with early-stage companies inevitably involves risk — timelines can shift, priorities may change, or funding may fall through,” says KIDZ co-founder Dmitrii Mironov. “To protect our team and ensure a smooth process, we break the work into smaller, clearly defined stages. We require prepayment for each stage; keep written records of all agreements, even when communication is fast and informal; limit the number of revisions and fix the scope of work for each stage; and withhold certain deliverables until full payment is received.” They’ve had a few cases where a project wasn’t completed because the client pivoted or changed direction unexpectedly. “While that’s never ideal, it’s part of the reality of working with start-ups,” he adds. And sometimes it makes sense to rethink payment completely. In lieu of fees from a business consultancy, Hijinks did a skills swap. Meanwhile, when Run for the Hills designed a third site for restaurant chain Cricket in London’s White City, they threw in a £5,000 bar bill to make up for the smaller fee. That allowed the agency to take the team out, thereby boosting morale, and host clients, thereby showcasing their work. The interior of one of the Humble Crumble shops, designed by SODA studio In 2015, SODA had a start-up client in the hospitality sector who offered to pay part of the fee in Bitcoin. “We ummed and ahhed, but decided to take the £19,000 in money,” Potter says. Some years later, it would have been worth over £1 million, though Potter points out that they would have sold it before then. Then there’s the gamble of a profit share, where you’re investing in their business in lieu of partial payment. At a former agency, product designer Jake Weir occasionally ended up doing sweat equity to help out, “so you’re basically partners.” When a hairdresser with limited funding came to him wanting to develop a new hair curler, the agency was given shares in the company for their design input. “We were incentivised to make it work,” Weir says. The product was a success – ultimately sold to BaByliss for “millions.” But even when budgets are low, these jobs are still worth doing sometimes. “We’ll do them as a passion project as they’re quick turnaround and they give younger guys in the studio more on-site experience,” Potter says. What happens when the client’s dream is never going to make it? MAP Project Office was once asked to design a very specific backpack. “We wondered if there was a market for this,” says MAP’s creative director, Weir. When people are pouring their life savings into a project, there’s a responsibility to warn them of the risks. Regardless, founders often have their mind set on these things. In these circumstances, MAP will look for a way to “dial the founders’ single-mindedness down,” Weirs says. “If you relax the concept a little bit, you can make it less niche and more accessible, especially for a first product.” White Bear’s work with the Tom Parker Creamery brand And experienced designers in this sector get good at spotting the jobs to avoid. Start-ups have a reputation for being short-lived. It’s commonly said that 90% of them fail, although the source for this stat is not at all clear. Harvard Business Review puts it more modestly, claiming that more than two-thirds of them never deliver a positive return to investors. The food and beverage sector, in particular, is full of such tragedies, according to The Grocer. But these potential risks shouldn’t be a reason not to take on a start-up. “The reason the project fails is not because of the design,” says Trotman at Run for the Hills, “unless the client has shittified it.” A fish restaurant that Run for the Hills worked on in London had great interiors and a cool brand, Trotman says. “But it failed on the food, and we can’t do anything about the food.” Conversely, when they do well, the agency is part of that success story. In 2005, Big Fish named and branded start-up chocolate puddings company Gü, cleverly persuading its founder to ditch his name, The Belgian Chocolate Company. Just seven later, it was sold for £32.5m. And because the agency is so embedded – it’s personal, remember – the work takes on real significance. “You really get the chance to make a lasting impact and build a long-term working relationship,” says Bruce at Agency of None. And better still for the broader industry. “The experience they have here will set up the relationship with design forever.” Design disciplines in this article Brands in this article What to read next More human resources – designers brand new workplace apps Brand Identity 15 Apr, 2025

Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season 6 episode 9 “Execution”.  The wages of sin is death? You got that right, Wharton. In “Execution”, the wages of the commanders’ sins were a glittering firework of a death thanks to Joseph Lawrence – economist, loving father, freedom fighter and part-time James Bond.  Talk about laying low the arrogance of the terrible (“Guess you decided to join the winners,” crowed Nick, just before they were all blasted into bitesize BBQ chunks). Amid calls for cigars, Lawrence and his Mayday bomb laid the whole plane approximately 30,000 feet lower than planned, ensuring that his epitaph would read more than: Designed Gilead, Good at Sarcasm. Lawrence’s poignant sacrifice was the best part of this penultimate episode. Nobody could ever think that noose would really tighten around June’s neck this close to the end, making that scaffold scene much more perfunctory than its histrionic tone suggested. Ann Dowd’s Aunt Lydia already has a job lined up in sequel series The Testaments, which effectively took the rope from around her neck too even before Mayday struck. Moira, Janine… They were all bound to get out of it somehow – a sentiment that’s has been this show’s curse for seasons now.  Every arrest, every blocked escape route, every cage, we’ve been able to calmly wait through instead of holding our breath in terror that this could be the moment we lose someone important. We never do because The Handmaid’s Tale is too protective of its main characters – a crazy thing to type considering what this story has put them all through. What were the words to the Taylor Swift song that soundtracked this week’s opening scenes? “I rose up from the dead. I do it all the time.” That could have been this show’s theme song. It’s certainly June’s. Finally, though, finally, we’ve lost somebody. Two somebodies. Joseph Lawrence and Nick Blaine aren’t coming back for the sequel, and the work done in this final season to explain their inner workings paid off handsomely.  Unlike June, I shed no tears for Nick, who made his choice and now has to live – or rather not live – with it. After his Jezebels betrayal and the “Forget it, Rita, it’s Chinatown” moment that followed, we understood that Nick was no heroic double agent, but a lost kid who’d sold out his ideals for survival. Well, look how well that ended up. June may have silently howled as he climbed those steps into the jet, but I was mentally ushering him up them with a cheery ‘byeee’.  Lawrence, however, hurt. There hasn’t been enough screentime developing his redemption-through-love-of-a-child arc this season, but what little we’ve seen has been effective. Joseph thawing over little Angela – whose future he must have been picturing when he chose to follow Wharton and co. onto that plane – has been a beautiful final path for a complex character. The grouchy, wry loner melting under the full-beam affection of a child is a storytelling classic for a reason, and here it gave us that wonderful goodbye scene with his copy of The Little Princess. Even Naomi seemed human for a millisecond as she took on board Lawrence’s plea to ignore one of Gilead’s ugly edicts and to teach their kidnapped child to read.  By the time that Lawrence, blindsided by the early arrival of the other commanders, made his brave choice and paused momentarily to put his hand on his chest in a goodbye gesture to June, I was feeling well fed. After years of asking where this brilliant, evil mind stood morally, Lawrence’s ending put him firmly on the “one of us” side.  The doubly widowed Serena’s place there is fixed too, according to June. Like Lawrence, Serena gave up the commanders to right her past wrongs, but more importantly, she did it for this episode’s theme of love. That’s what June exhorted Wharton to choose instead of revenge. That’s the plea June made to Serena about the world they both wanted for their children. Those were the words June, Janine and Moira exchanged as their leader was led away yet again in cuffs. (7 minutes 45 seconds, by the way – the amount of time between June and the Handmaids running triumphantly towards their freedom at the end of last episode, and them cowering at gunpoint under a bridge in this. This show is an abusive relationship.)  Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Setting up love as Gilead’s opposite is an unbeatable argument, as June found in her appeals to Serena, Wharton and last episode, to Aunt Lydia. What really sold those appeals though, and particularly to those audiences, was June’s Christianity. Making her character a theist has been a masterstroke on the part of this story’s creators, because it broadens the argument base. June, who can quote scripture with the best of them, can’t be dismissed as ignorant and godless. Her belief negates any accusation from the religious right that this show’s messages are anti-faith. They’re not. They’re anti-oppression, pro-love, and, in the right circumstances, all for taking out the bastards who grind us down. The Handmaid’s Tale concludes with “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Tuesday May 27 on Hulu. Season six airs on Channel 4 in the UK. 

Ready or not–and despite a spotty safety record–the EV maker is racing to launch a pilot ride service in Austin to show off its self-driving chops. Elon Musk is rolling out a handful of Tesla robotaxis in Austin next month, where up to 20 self-driving electric Model Ys will be unleashed to ferry passengers around the Texas city’s streets. He’s betting the future of Tesla on their success, as the automaker’s electric vehicle revenue tanks thanks to faster-growing Chinese rivals and a political backlash against Musk’s right-wing politics and role as job-slasher-in-chief for the Trump Administration. But there’s a big hitch: Tesla hasn’t proven its self-driving taxis are safe enough to start delivering rides. Given its misleadingly named Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) software’s deadly track record, Musk’s failure to provide detailed safety and technical data about Tesla’s technology and his determination to rely on cheap cameras instead of more robust sensors to navigate complicated urban environments, the Austin rollout could be a debacle. For the latest in cleantech and sustainability news, sign up here for our Current Climate newsletter. “It's going to fail for sure,” Dan O’Dowd, a long-time critic of Musk’s autonomous driving claims who’s spent his own money on Super Bowl commercials to call out Autopilot and FSD safety flaws, told Forbes. His anti-Tesla initiative, The Dawn Project, tests every update of FSD, a more advanced version of which is powering Musk’s robotaxis in Austin, as soon as they’re available. That update is to roll out to all Tesla drivers who pay a $99 monthly subscription fee. A pre-production Tesla Cybercab at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. O’Dowd has been putting the current version of FSD through its paces. “We drove it around Santa Barbara for 80 minutes and there were seven failures,” said O’Dowd, whose company Green Hills Software supplies security tech to defense and aerospace industry customers. “If there had not been a driver sitting in the driver's seat, it would’ve hit something.” While the company hasn’t booked a dollar of robotaxi revenue, that hasn’t stopped the world’s wealthiest person from declaring victory. “I don’t see anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present,” Musk said on the company’s April 22 results call. His assessment may be premature.“I was looking for a signal this was ready. I didn't get that.”   The sole public demonstration of Tesla’s robotaxi chops was staged drives of its new “Cybercab” at Warner Brothers Studio in Los Angeles last October. The event included hauling invited Tesla fans around a fake cityscape–free of pedestrians but with lots of Tesla technicians keeping close tabs on vehicles. It struck safety researcher Noah Goodall, who published a technical analysis of Tesla’s safety data, independently from his role with the Virginia Department of Transportation, as more amusement park attraction than real-world test. “It was just operating vehicles on a closed track on a movie lot. It was not impressive at all,” he said. “Navigating a real urban environment with uncertainty, other parties moving around, situations where just braking is not enough, that’s difficult. I was looking for a signal this was ready. I didn't get that.” Autonomy Promises In the decade since Tesla began selling customers its Autopilot and FSD features–for which it currently charges $8,000–the software has been linked to several fatal accidents where human drivers trusted the tech to drive their car, only for it to crash. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple probes of Tesla’s Autopilot feature since 2016, including one last year to determine if it needed additional safety features after linking Autopilot to those 13 deaths. Last October, NHTSA also began investigating problems with FSD linked to two fatalities. Despite the names, this software has always been designed to have a human behind the wheel. For the past decade, Musk has repeatedly claimed “full autonomy”–where a car can drive without human assistance–was only months or a year away, repeatedly missing his targets. Now, with Tesla’s EV sales down 13% in the first quarter, the company needs some buzz to reassure investors CEO Musk can turn things around. Robotaxis, as well as AI and humanoid robots, are exactly that, according to Musk. So it’s running extensive tests in downtown Austin. “There’s just always a convoy of Teslas going all over to Austin in circles,” Musk said on the call. But a recent Business Insider story, citing interviews with former Tesla test drivers, doesn’t inspire confidence. The program “feels very forced,” one former worker said. "It's this breakthrough moment for Tesla, but there is also this feeling of so many last-minute details being up in the air.”The downtown Austin skyline.Getty Images Tesla’s program will operate in a very limited area of Austin and rely heavily on remote operators to minimize accidents, according to an executive with another autonomous tech company, based on conversations with Texas officials, who asked not to be identified as the matter isn’t public. To back up the AI driving the vehicles, Tesla has also hired human staff to monitor and assist if they get into jams, taking full control if necessary. “As we iterate on the AI that powers them, we need the ability to access and control them remotely,” the company said in a posting for one such job. Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, the leader in robotaxi tech, also uses remote operators to assist the vehicles by providing suggested solutions to tricky situations, but those people don’t actually drive them. Lag and latency in cellular networks make remote operations unsafe. Limited Data Along with limited tests, there’s a dearth of trustworthy data about how well Tesla’s self-driving software operates. The company does file occasional safety performance reports about the software, but it’s not peer-reviewed by outside technical experts and it frames the data as positively as possible, according to Goodall, a technical witness in a lawsuit against Tesla over the death of Walther Huang, killed in 2018 when his Model X slammed into a highway divider while running on Autopilot. “With Full Self Driving, when they first started publishing numbers on that, they neglected to share that they’d only rolled the software out to drivers who had a very high safety score of 90 or above,” he said. “So of course the data showed it was safer, as your safest drivers were the only ones that had it.” By contrast, Waymo frequently posts detailed reports on how its robotaxis are performing, claiming the data is peer-reviewed by experts. Tesla also hasn’t yet shared details with the public about where in Austin it will offer its robotaxi service or exactly how it will operate. The city’s police and fire departments told Forbes the company contacted Austin’s Autonomous Vehicle Task Force, which includes their staff, and the city provided Tesla with “maps of schools and school zones; information about traffic control for special events; and information about our fire and police vehicles and procedures.” But a request to see communications between Tesla and the city was denied. “The City of Austin is withholding responsive documents without a ruling from the Attorney General’s office, as permitted by law,” it said in an email. “All responsive information has been withheld due to 3rd party.” The city didn’t respond to a question to confirm Tesla is that third party. The company, Musk and Ashok Elluswamy, head of Tesla’s autonomous vehicle program, didn’t respond to emails about the Austin rollout. NHTSA this week requested details about Tesla’s Austin plans to understand how the vehicles perform in bad weather. It’s been investigating Tesla collisions involving Autopilot and FSD in poor visibility situations since last October. It’s not clear if the company has responded yet. Tesla has had a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California for a decade, which requires companies to share safety data. Numerous competitors, including Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox, which hopes to operate robotaxis this year, Nuro and even Apple, which abandoned its program, have all submitted data on test miles logged including “disengagements”–when a human driver has to take over–as well as accident reports. Tesla hasn’t. Not Just Driving It’s hard to talk about Musk’s robotaxi dreams without comparing his approach to Waymo’s. The Alphabet unit has spent 16 years and billions of dollars trying to master every aspect of what a robotaxi has to do. Long before it gave its first paid rides to customers in Phoenix in 2018, the company tested intensely on public roads, privately at the “Castle,” its test facility at a decommissioned Air Force base in Central California, and with endless miles in virtual simulation to train its AI.A Waymo robotaxi in San Francisco.dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images Recognizing that robotaxis aren’t just a technical challenge, it also recruited people from the airline industry and businesses specializing in customer service. For robotaxis to work, the cars have to be good at doing small things that can be tough to master but are critical, like picking up and dropping off passengers. “We've been working on that for a long time,” said Chris Ludwick, director of Waymo’s product management team. “The first challenge with PUDO (the company’s shorthand for pickup, drop-off) is that when you get there, the on-road scene is going to be somewhat different each time. You may encounter construction or a stopped delivery truck or something like that. This leads to a whole suite of challenges of what do you do when you can't do the exact thing that you said to the rider when they requested the ride.” That includes developing a sophisticated app to guide passengers to the safest, most convenient spots for them and other road users. “You can't just block traffic. That's unacceptable. If you do that the community gets upset,” Ludwick said. “There's just a lot of small details you have to get right.” As far as safety, Waymo has avoided major accidents, injuries and fatalities so far, but its AI-enabled driver isn’t flawless. The company just recalled software in its fleet to fix a flaw that could cause vehicles to hit chains, gates and other barriers, following a NHTSA investigation. Cheaper Robotaxis In all the years Musk has promised autonomous Teslas and a robotaxi service, he hasn’t talked about what it’s doing to master ride-service essentials. But he does talk a big game about Tesla’s cost advantage. “The issue with Waymo’s car is it costs way more money,” the billionaire said on Tesla’s results call. “Their car is very expensive, made in low volume. Teslas probably cost 25% or 20% of what a Waymo costs and are made in very high volume,” last month. A base Model Y with FSD software costs consumers about $55,000 before taxes. While Waymo doesn’t disclose the cost of its modified, electric Jaguar I-PACE robotaxis, the lidar, radar, computers and other sensors mean it’s likely double that of Tesla’s vehicles. Those costs should drop substantially over the next year or so as Waymo shifts to lower-cost sensors and cheaper vehicles, including Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and a small electric van from China’s Zeekr. Boasts about cheaper Tesla robotaxis will be meaningless if they can’t safely pick up and drop off riders without causing traffic jams, yielding to pedestrians or avoiding collisions. That’s made harder by the fact that Tesla uses eight 5-megapixel cameras as the main sensors for its system–far lower resolution than the 48-megapixel system on Apple’s iPhone 16. They’re inexpensive, but struggle with sunlight glare and low light conditions. Musk denied that was the case on Tesla’s April 22 call, but tests by O’Dowd’s Dawn Project after that found FSD disengages when directly facing the sun.“He thinks having [lidar] does not add enough benefit to outweigh the cost. This is a pretty typical engineering argument in general but incorrect in this particular case.” “We went out and took the car and drove it directly into the setting sun and guess what: it gave up,” O’Dowd said. “It starts flashing and it starts panicking, red lights going, it starts making noises, says put your hands back on the wheel.” By contrast, Waymo uses multiple sensors, including the much more expensive lidar, to ensure its vehicles see all potential road hazards, in daylight or at night, in 3D.Elon Musk attends a Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on April 30, 2025.The Washington Post via Getty Images “Musk has repeatedly said lidar is expensive and not needed,” said Missy Cummings, an artificial intelligence expert who advised NHTSA on autonomous vehicles. “He thinks having it does not add enough benefit to outweigh the cost. This is a pretty typical engineering argument in general but incorrect in this particular case.” After the Austin rollout, Musk said last month the goal is to expand to other U.S. markets, China and Europe, “limited only by regulatory approvals.” And one day soon, he envisions every person who owns a Tesla flipping a switch and deploying their car while not in use to a Tesla robotaxi network, helping them make additional cash on the side (as long as they pay Tesla $99 per month).“It’s all lies.” The world’s wealthiest person has achieved remarkable things with Tesla’s EVs, SpaceX rockets and Starlink satellites. But for years he’s also repeatedly failed to deliver big ideas he touted as potential game-changers or massive moneymakers, including battery swapping stations, solar tile roofs, the Hyperloop and high-speed underground transportation networks created by his Boring Co. Whether self-driving vehicles join that list remains to be seen. After repeatedly promising and failing to deliver vehicles that safely drive themselves for the past decade, let alone pick up riders, his track record isn’t looking good. Critics have a harsher interpretation. “It's all lies, everything he says,” said O’Dowd. More from Forbes

Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season six episode eight “Exodus”. In the early days of The Handmaid’s Tale, the pre-Gilead flashback episodes were eagerly awaited. Who was June Osborne before she was captured and enslaved? Who had Commander and Mrs Waterford been before they played a part in the coup that destroyed America? It took three seasons before we saw one of the show’s most anticipated flashbacks – that of Aunt Lydia. Before Gilead, had its cruel enforcer been a prison warden? An army captain? A police officer? Nothing so authoritarian: Lydia Clements was an elementary school teacher with a background working in family law. She’d been married, we learned, but it hadn’t worked out and now she lived alone and relied on her faith for comfort and self-esteem. In flashback, we saw Lydia befriend Noelle, the single mother of one of her pupils, and allow herself to be pushed into the dating world at her young friend’s encouragement. Humiliated by a romantic rejection from a colleague, Lydia lashed out and reported Noelle to the authorities as an unfit parent, sending her son into foster care. Foreshadowing her role in Gilead, Lydia told herself that she had acted out of love, saved the child, and put his wayward mother on the path to salvation. Love has always been Lydia’s purported motivation. Love for God and for the tainted-but-redeemable souls of her “girls” has been her justification for meting out acts of outrageous cruelty. Having Janine blinded, or Emily mutilated, or June tortured, were all done for the girls’ own good, Lydia told herself. Everything she did was for the righteous love of the lord, as hallowed by the holy republic of Gilead. Now, in season six, Lydia has made a move that was genuinely motivated by love. When she arrived unexpectedly at Serena Joy and Commander Wharton’s wedding and discovered the Handmaids mid-rebellion, June asked her not to further punish the women, but to let them escape. Deep down, said June, Lydia must know that the Handmaid system was glorified rape, and that the women and girls she had delivered to the Commanders over the years did not deserve their abuse. It wasn’t until Lydia’s “special girl” Janine entered to make her appeal that Lydia finally thawed. She apologised for sending Janine into the home of the abusive Commander Bell, held her, and let the women leave. Speaking to US Weekly, actor Ann Dowd explains that Aunt Lydia is where she is “because she loves Janine as her daughter.” Lydia clearly saw similarities between Janine – who was also a young single mother – and Noelle in their early interactions, and over six seasons, has come to a genuine, familial love for Madeline Brewer’s character. Lydia is “a softer human being,” says Dowd, “because she has come to love in a real way – Janine and the girls.” Co-showrunner Yahlin Chang agrees. “In that moment, she can’t see what to do other than let them go. She does it out of love for Janine. She just goes over to Janine and says, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’” As the Handmaids, led by June, Janine and Moira, leave the Red Centre, Aunt Lydia sinks to her knees. “She understands what she’s done,” Dowd tells US Weekly. “She can’t bear it. I’m sure she’s begging for forgiveness. She’s not going to deny anything. When it comes to what she’s done, she would do it again.” We leave her praying for divine help. And she’s going to need it, according to co-showrunner Eric Tuchman, who told US Weekly: “Now we know she’s made that decision to liberate the Handmaids. She’s aligned with them in the eyes of Gilead. She has betrayed her duties to Gilead, so I can’t spoil what happens with her, but she’s on very shaky ground moving forward.” Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The Handmaid’s Tale streams on Hulu on Tuesdays in the US, and airs on Channel 4 on Saturdays in the UK.

13 May, 2025 Clare Dowdy finds out how the iconic car brand taps into the appetite for personalisation among the super-rich, and the incredible range of options these customers can decide on. At Rolls-Royce’s site in West Sussex, visitors are asked to put on a purple overall-style jacket. Nothing unusual there, it’s routine at manufacturing facilities to be handed a coat. But this jacket is made by Norton & Sons of Savile Row. If you weren’t picked up from the station in a Roller and driven up the drive past the 65 box-cut lime trees to the factory’s front door (as I was), then the jacket might be your first whiff that things are done differently here. A constellation of the night sky picked out in tiny lights on the headliner (ceiling) of a new car This factory has cornered the – admittedly niche – market in bespoke one-off motor cars, an object that is becoming increasingly desired by the very wealthy. From the welcoming reception desk to the pristine production line, from the embroidery workshop to the private dining room, the atmosphere is deferential. These people know their target audience. At Rolls-Royce, it’s all about making customers feel special. For example, staff know customers like to mark important anniversaries. So a customer can decide to celebrate the day they made their first billion by having the exact constellation of that night sky picked out in tiny lights on the headliner (ceiling) of their new car. This makes particular sense if you have a chauffeur, as you get a great view of the headliner from the back seat. That service isn’t on offer to off-the-peg Rolls-Royce customers, but to those who pay the extra to have their car personalised. The home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood, outside Chichester And though it takes around three years to make an individualised car, demand is going up. Called Bespoke and Coachbuild, this service provides customers with a one-off Rolls-Royce, as they can choose their own detailing, materials, marquetry, patterns and paint colour. With Coachbuild, they can even dictate the shape of the car. That’s a four-year process. There was a surge in bespoke commissioning during the pandemic, when billionaires, like the rest of us, were twiddling their thumbs at home. These hand-crafted projects are increasingly complex, high-value and – all-importantly – high-margin. Meaning they need a lot of design input. So in January, Rolls-Royce earmarked £300million to extend its Bespoke and Coachbuild capabilities at Goodwood, outside Chichester. “Clients want more intriguing levels of bespoke, so we needed more space,” the RR spokesperson explains on my visit. Hence the new facility. Production takes place at the Goodwood site, designed by Grimshaw Architects, and opened in 2003 When RR’s Goodwood site, designed by Grimshaw Architects, opened in 2003, 300 staff made just one car a day. Now there are 2,500 staff at the site, producing 28 cars a day. Rolls-Royce was founded in the UK in 1904. Since 2003 it’s been part of BMW Group, when the German company acquired the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars marque. And that’s where Martina Starke comes in. Having joined BMW in 2001, she left her role as head of BMW Designworks’ Munich studio to become general manager of RR’s Bespoke Design in Goodwood in 2024. She oversees more than 30 designers, who collaborate with the engineers, craftspeople and artisans of Bespoke. These designers have backgrounds in 3D, colour trim, textiles, fashion, automotive and industrial design. Three designers work in the accessory design team, which can include creating anything from chess sets to picnic hampers “They not only create products, they create experiences and moments of wonder for our clients,” she says of the team. “I guide and support them as they look into the lifestyle of our clients to understand and capture their personal taste – so we can curate their beautiful masterpieces with material, colours and craftmanship.” She describes the work of Bespoke as storytelling. “My job is to nurture these stories as they come alive. They ask for something emotional and made for them – it’s a personal product.” But first the client must settle on the brief. This is either discussed at Goodwood, or with a designer and salesperson based at one of the company’s private offices in New York, Seoul, Dubai and Shanghai. The Middle East is the largest Bespoke region by average value per motor car, closely followed by North America and Europe. The ambition is to have a private office in every region, as having designers based in these key markets allows RR to react fast, Starke adds. These designers have a four-month induction course at Goodwood before they go into the field. Customers can choose their own design to have embroidered onto seats “There’s a conversation with the customer to understand what the idea is,” Starke says. So apart from headliners depicting the night sky, a customer might ask for a particular rose from their garden embroidered into the headliner, “or the face of your child, or dog, or horse painted in your vehicle so you have the loved ones with you in the car.” While imagination is limitless, the engineers need to confirm that it’s feasible. “If it’s possible, we might do several iterations. In the end we visualise the perfect wish,” Starke says. The fruits of this process include solid 18-carat gold sculptures, mother-of-pearl artworks, and holographic paint finishes. One client in Japan is having a cherry blossom design embroidered onto their headliner with 250,000 stitches. And when it comes to colour options, RR has 44,000 to choose from. But if the client can’t find the one they want, RR can make it up for them. This service was invaluable for the client who wanted the car exterior to match the colour of their dog’s fur. The private office at the Rolls-Royce site in Goodwood “What they really like is that we bring together the design and the craftmanship,” Starke says. “When they come to Goodwood and look at the woodwork or leather shop, they can touch, experience and understand it. When you have this high level of craftmanship it’s a different connection to people. It connects you to the makers.” This type of customisation is sought by clients who define luxury as something deeply personal to them, she adds. Starke’s department includes a three-strong accessory design team. “We’re not competing with other car brands, we’re competing with other luxury brands,” the spokesperson explains. Pieces in the accessories range include pens, luggage and dog leads Accessories designer Nick Abrams shows us a new magnetic chess set, which will sit along other pieces in the accessories range including pens, luggage and dog leads. This chess set costs €29,000, pre-tax. But of course, the client could customise it. All these opportunities for what Starke calls meaningful personal expression tap into a global trend. “Individualisation is growing because people want the storytelling. It’s self-expression, encapsulating your taste and philosophy,” she says. The exterior of Phantom Goldfinger, created to honour the 1964 James Bond film, Goldfinger Timandra Harkness is a broadcaster and author of Technology is Not the Problem explains why hyper-personalisation is a trend that’s still growing. “We live in an age increasingly obsessed with identity: consumers want what they buy to express who they are.” Now, mass production means most people in advanced economies can afford nice things, so merely wearing tall boots or gold lace isn’t enough, according to Harkness. “Standing out from the crowd today means buying things that only a few people can have, because they are artisanal, or limited-edition, or personalised. “Because mass production has put even luxury products within reach of the mass market, personalisation offers a way to stand out from the crowd,” she says. The interior of the Rolls-Royce Phantom Scintilla What does that mean for the top end of the market? “Bespoke products have added value: customers will pay a premium to own a commodity that nobody else owns, and that says something about them.” In 2024, RR’s one-off Arcadia Droptail was reported as costing its anonymous buyer $31million. 100 years ago, merely owning a car was a sign of wealth and status – and probably meant you could afford to employ a driver, Harkness points out. “Today it’s not even enough to drive a top-of-the-range car, so the wealthiest consumers need other ways to look – and feel – special. And feeling special is as important as outward signals,” she adds. “Nobody else will know this car matches your dog’s fur, but you will, and that will remind you every time you see it that nothing is too good for you, or your dog.” With the expansion of its personalisation capabilities, RR is betting on the continuation of this trend. If they’re right, then that will be good for the company and good for its designers. The interior of the Rolls-Royce Phantom Goldfinger Design disciplines in this article Industries in this article Brands in this article What to read next The car after the storm – Jaguar unveils new concept EV Automotive Design 3 Dec, 2024