LAI #75: Generative AI vs. Agentic AI vs. AI Agents 0 like May 15, 2025 Share this post Author(s): Towards AI Editorial Team Originally published on Towards AI. Good morning, AI enthusiasts, This week’s issue dives into where the field is heading — beyond generation, toward autonomy and better error awareness. We’re starting with a breakdown of the increasingly fuzzy but important distinctions between Generative AI, Agentic AI, and AI Agents. Then we move into applied innovation: Microsoft’s GraphRAG, multimodal RAG systems using Cohere and Gemini, and a practical framework for predicting when your model is about to get something wrong. Also in the mix: DNNs vs. tree-based models for e-commerce ranking, a powerful Cursor.ai-like browser extension from the community, and this week’s poll on when vibes are enough — and when accuracy has to come first. Let’s get into it. — Louis-François Bouchard, Towards AI Co-founder & Head of Community Learn AI Together Community Section! Featured Community post from the Discord Retconned has built Sophon, an AI chat app that enhances your browsing experience by understanding and interacting with your tabs. With its intelligent composer, it can see the tabs you have open, allowing it to understand context and autofill forms, textboxes, or fields with a single click. It is a browser extension and completely free. Check it out here. Share your feedback in the thread and support a fellow community member! AI poll of the week! Most of you are doing vibe checks, and of course, for general tasks, the entire idea is for the AI to not feel like AI. But would you also rely on “vibes” for more quantitative tasks, where output accuracy matters more than output feel? Share in the thread, let’s decide together! Meme of the week! Meme shared by rucha8062 TAI Curated Section Article of the week How GraphRAG Works Step-by-Step By Mariana Avelino This blog explains Microsoft’s GraphRAG, a method that uses knowledge graphs for retrieval-augmented generation. Key detailed processes were graph creation, involving entity extraction, community partitioning, and querying, with distinct Local and Global Search functions. It outlined how entities, relationships, and community reports are generated and used for LLM response generation, including context management and semantic retrieval. Our must-read articles 1. Distill-then-Detect: A Practical Framework for Error-Aware Machine Learning By Shenggang Li The author presented a framework, “Distill-then-Detect,” to address prediction errors in machine learning models, particularly the “big misses” on critical data slices. This approach involves distilling a compact “student” model from a larger “teacher” model. It then quantifies teacher uncertainty and trains a meta-model to predict where the teacher is likely to err. By combining these signals into a risk score and applying conformal calibration for thresholding, the system effectively flags high-risk predictions. Experiments demonstrated that this method identified error-prone cases with balanced precision and recall while clustering these errors provided actionable insights into problematic data segments. 2. Beyond Text: Building Multimodal RAG Systems with Cohere and Gemini By Sridhar Sampath Traditional Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems often fail to process visual data. This article details a multimodal RAG system designed to overcome this limitation by understanding both text and images within documents. It utilizes Cohere’s multimodal embeddings to create unified vector representations from content like PDFs. Gemini 2.5 Flash then generates context-aware answers using either matched text or images, with FAISS managing vector indexing. It explains the system’s workflow, from document upload to answer generation, demonstrating its enhanced capability to extract information from charts, tables, and other visuals compared to text-only RAG. 3. Generative AI vs. Agentic AI vs. AI Agents: What Everyone Needs to Know By Poojan Vig The article clarified the distinct roles of Generative AI, Agentic AI, and AI Agents. It explained that Generative AI produces new content based on learned patterns. Agentic AI focuses on strategy, planning, and iteration towards a goal without continuous human intervention. AI Agents then sense their environment and execute actions in the digital or real world. Using a cooking analogy and examples like automated customer service, the piece illustrated how these AI types can operate independently or collaboratively to perform complex tasks. 4. DNNs vs Traditional Tree-Based Models for E-Commerce Ranking By Nikhilesh Pandey The author discusses the evolution of e-commerce ad ranking systems, detailing the shift from traditional tree-based models to Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). It outlines why tree-based models have reached their limits and how DNNs offer superior capabilities for handling complex data, personalization, and achieving better conversion rate (CVR) predictions. Using DoorDash Ads as a case study, the piece illustrates the iterative migration process, including defining baselines, optimizing model training and evaluation with techniques like data normalization and distributed processing, and addressing challenges such as the offline-online performance gap. If you are interested in publishing with Towards AI, check our guidelines and sign up. We will publish your work to our network if it meets our editorial policies and standards. Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor. Published via Towards AI Towards AI - Medium Share this post

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More UK-based chip designer Arm offers the architecture for systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) that are used by some of the world’s largest tech brands, from Nvidia to Amazon to Google parent company Alphabet and beyond, all without ever manufacturing any hardware of its own — though that’s reportedly due to change this year. And you’d think with a record setting last quarter of $1.24 billion in total revenue, it might want to just keep things steady and keep raking in the cash. But Arm sees how fast AI has taken off in the enterprise, and with some of its customers delivering record revenue of their own by offering AI graphics processing units that incorporate Arm’s tech, Arm wants a piece of the action. Today, the company announced a new product naming strategy that underscores its shift from a supplier of component IP to a platform-first company. “It’s about showing customers that we have much more to offer than just hardware and chip designs. specifically — we have a whole ecosystem that can help them scale AI and do so at lower cost with greater efficiency,” said Arm’s chief marketing officer Ami Badani, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat over Zoom yesterday. Indeed, as Arm CEO Rene Haas told the tech news outlet Next Platform back in February, Arm’s history of creating lower-power chips than the competition (cough cough, Intel) has set it up extremely well to serve as the basis for power-hungry AI training and inference jobs. According to his comments in that article, today’s data center consume approximately 460 terawatt hours of electricity per year, but that is expected to triple by the end of this decade, and could jump from being 4 percent of all of the world’s energy usage to 25 percent — unless more Arm power-saving chip designs and their accompanying optimized software and firmware are used in the infrastructure for these centers. From IP to platform: a significant shift As AI workloads scale in complexity and power requirements, Arm is reorganizing its offerings around complete compute platforms. These platforms allow for faster integration, more efficient scaling, and lower complexity for partners building AI-capable chips. To reflect this shift, Arm is retiring its prior naming conventions and introducing new product families that are organized by market: Neoverse for infrastructure Niva for PCs Lumex for mobile Zena for automotive Orbis for IoT and edge AI The Mali brand will continue to represent GPU offerings, integrated as components within these new platforms. Alongside the renaming, Arm is overhauling its product numbering system. IP identifiers will now correspond to platform generations and performance tiers labeled Ultra, Premium, Pro, Nano, and Pico. This structure is aimed at making the roadmap more transparent to customers and developers. Emboldened by strong results The rebranding follows Arm’s strong Q4 fiscal year 2025 (ended March 31), where the company crossed the $1 billion mark in quarterly revenue for the first time. Total revenue hit $1.24 billion, up 34% year-over-year, driven by both record licensing revenue ($634 million, up 53%) and royalty revenue ($607 million, up 18%). Notably, this royalty growth was driven by increasing deployment of the Armv9 architecture and adoption of Arm Compute Subsystems (CSS) across smartphones, cloud infrastructure, and edge AI. The mobile market was a standout: while global smartphone shipments grew less than 2%, Arm’s smartphone royalty revenue rose roughly 30%. The company also entered its first automotive CSS agreement with a leading global EV manufacturer, furthering its penetration into the high-growth automotive market. While Arm hasn’t disclosed the EV manufacturer’s precise name yet, Badani told VentureBeat that it sees automotive as a major growth area in addition to AI model providers and cloud hyperscalers such as Google and Amazon. “We’re looking at automotive as a major growth area and we believe that AI and other advances like self-driving are going to be standard, which our designs are perfect for,” the CMO told VentureBeat. Meanwhile, cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure continued expanding their use of Arm-based silicon to run AI workloads, affirming Arm’s growing influence in data center compute. Growing a new platform ecosystem with software and vertically integrated products Arm is complementing its hardware platforms with expanded software tools and ecosystem support. Its extension for GitHub Copilot, now free for all developers, lets users optimize code using Arm’s architecture. More than 22 million developers now build on Arm, and its Kleidi AI software layer has surpassed 8 billion cumulative installs across devices. Arm’s leadership sees the rebrand as a natural step in its long-term strategy. By providing vertically integrated platforms with performance and naming clarity, the company aims to meet increasing demand for energy-efficient AI compute from device to data center. As Haas wrote in Arm’s blog post, Arm’s compute platforms are foundational to a future where AI is everywhere—and Arm is poised to deliver that foundation at scale. What it means for AI and data decision makers This strategic repositioning is likely to reshape how technical decision makers across AI, data, and security roles approach their day-to-day work and future planning. For those managing large language model lifecycles, the clearer platform structure offers a more streamlined path for selecting compute architectures optimized for AI workloads. As model deployment timelines tighten and the bar for efficiency rises, having predefined compute systems like Neoverse or Lumex could reduce the overhead required to evaluate raw IP blocks and allow faster execution in iterative development cycles. For engineers orchestrating AI pipelines across environments, the modularity and performance tiering within Arm’s new architecture could help simplify pipeline standardization. It introduces a practical way to align compute capabilities with varying workload requirements—whether that’s running inference at the edge or managing resource-intensive training jobs in the cloud. These engineers, often juggling system uptime and cost-performance tradeoffs, may find more clarity in mapping their orchestration logic to predefined Arm platform tiers. Data infrastructure leaders tasked with maintaining high-throughput pipelines and ensuring data integrity may also benefit. The naming update and system-level integration signal a deeper commitment from Arm to support scalable designs that work well with AI-enabled pipelines. The compute subsystems may also accelerate time-to-market for custom silicon that supports next-gen data platforms—important for teams that operate under budget constraints and limited engineering bandwidth. Security leaders, meanwhile, will likely see implications in how embedded security features and system-level compatibility evolve within these platforms. With Arm aiming to offer consistent architecture across edge and cloud, security teams can more easily plan for and enforce end-to-end protections, especially when integrating AI workloads that demand both performance and strict access controls. The broader effect of this branding shift is a signal to enterprise architects and engineers: Arm is no longer just a component provider—it’s offering full-stack foundations for how AI systems are built and scaled. Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

It hasn’t been that long since Apple had no status at all in enterprise IT. Its products were used in some creative departments and at home, but that’s as far as things went. The iPod and iPhone changed all that, even while general exposure to powerful mobile tech transformed perceptions around what to expect from the tools you use at work. The Apple user experience is the company’s biggest not-so-secret weapon, and it is interesting that even decades since the first PCs appeared, Apple still delivers intuitive user experiences  people enjoy using. Consumer simple, enterprise ready Those user experiences have generated expectations, and as my old chum Dean Hager, former Jamf CEO liked to describe it, people entering the workplace wanted the systems they used there to be as easy and intuitive to understand as the Apple products they used elsewhere. Apple’s user experience eventually became something incoming enterprise employees expected — many would simply quit their job if they were using crummier tech at work than they were at home. At the end of the day, Apple won the enterprise one consumer user at a time. But the other piece to Apple’s success is that organizations that have deployed Apple products at scale have experienced significant improvements on their bottom line. Multiple reports tell us employees are happier using Apple products, they’re more productive using Apple products, and spend less on tech support on Apple products than on PCs. Staff retention rates improve even as productivity grows — and the reduced tech support costs make life easier for IT and dramatically reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of an Apple fleet.  How Apple wins for enterprise IT None of this came easy. Apple had to take its basic product (the Mac) and its OS X operating system and figure out how to best apply that tech to mobile devices. That’s what we began to get with the iPod and saw in living Technicolor with the iPhone; Apple took the power of computing and placed it inside the device you always have with you – your phone. Of course, the ability to run more complex applications on your iPhone made it possible for employees to get more work done using the device, which spawned the Bring Your Own Device wave that really began to express itself around 2010. Not only did employees want to be able to use the same platform at work as at home, but they also wanted to use the same mobile devices at work as at home. The biggest evidence of that was the abject failure of Windows Mobile as it showed people didn’t want to use the same PC they used at work in their mobile existences; they remained hooked on experience Apple’s ease-of-use.  They did then.  They do now. The evidence is everywhere You can see this is the direction of travel each time you read yet another report explaining Apple’s growing enterprise sales across all of its products, or the fast-proliferating number of Very Large Indeed Apple deployments at giant global companies. Not to mention that once employee choice schemes are put in place, the majority of employees seem to prefer Apple to any other platform. While it’s still early days on spatial computing, we can already see Vision Pro devices staking spaces across key industries as Apple takes what was once more or less the Mac experience and makes it both ambient and hyper-mobile. Spatial computing isn’t just about computing that surrounds you, it’s about computing that takes you there. Along this journey, Apple has thought deeply about what it offers and attempted to take down barriers to enterprise deployment. That’s why the company provides APIs for Mobile Device Management; that’s why it has high-grade security features I’m certain the company’s own CEO also uses, such as Lockdown Mode; that’s also why it remains so deeply committed to delivering regular software and hardware updates, so no enterprise professionals find themselves left insecure or abandoned on their workplace tech journey.  Want to do more? You can, thanks to the company’s’ rich set of developer tools, which provide a robust environment for enterprise development and integration.  Support and updates The fact that Apple’s hardware is reliable is also good for enterprise sales. Coupled with annual software updates that bring sometimes-exciting new features, user engagement remains high throughout the usable life of these devices, which now usually extends to an easy five years. Once that time is up, the resilience and reliability of the devices means they still fetch good value in the second-user markets; most major purchasers might also draw reassurance that the recycling and salvaging of the products will have some impact on their own carbon targets.  Enterprises also like reliability for another reason, it helps them plan ahead.  Not only do they know that it is unlikely Apple will make too many major changes (though we do experience smaller ones), but they also know that unlike Windows 11, you will not wake one morning to find your PC has been updated to a new operating system without consent. These little communications do count, particularly if you are running several hundred systems in your fleet. You also cannot ignore the impact of the CrowdStrike debacle on that lovely feeling of peace and calm enterprises perhaps enjoyed before it took place. Apple’s platform security may not be something we can take for granted any longer, but it still exists — and while it makes sense to stay watchful, it remains unmatched. Its major software updates remain free (at least until regulators utterly wreck the company’s business). That’s always an easy budget line item at the end of the day.  What Apple gets wrong It is interesting, given all that it gets right, the extent to which critics like to focus on what Apple gets wrong. Some of the most common criticisms could translate into easy wins for Apple: Yes, I think it should provide more in-depth granular information to assist enterprise IT deployments, but I would also argue that its free certification courses remain the best possible way to find the answers you need to begin managing larger or newer Apple deployments. Those courses are free, well-constructed and give you a thorough grounding for this work. Though I would really like Apple to give Configurator the power to register multiple devices at once – and a little more automation would come in useful to a lot of admins, particularly in the education sector.  But what’s super-interesting about so many of the criticisms made around Apple in the enterprise is that they tend toward being smaller, more granular problems that the company could conceivably resolve once it stops pouring all of its R&D resources into AI development.  And that’s my point, really — to quietly point out that the nature of the criticisms Apple’s current enterprise solutions receive actually reflect how successfully it has penetrated the sector. It is now being asked to solve really complex questions that reflect the myriad complexities of enterprise IT requirements. It won’t solve all of them overnight, but its progress in the sector since earlier this century suggests it will probably get around to resolving many of them, one challenge at a time. And, rest assured, while Apple never speaks about it, I’m confident that the company does actually read criticism; it just needs to be selective concerning which challenges to solve first. And at times it must also consider whether those challenges will still be relevant a few years as tech deployment requirements change. Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Chips are a critical component of the AI industry. But new chips don’t hit the market with the same speed as new AI models and products do. Cognichip has a lofty goal of creating a foundational AI model that can help bring new chips to market faster. San Francisco-based Cognichip is working to build a physics-informed foundational AI model that can be used by semiconductor companies to speed up the development process of new chips. The company is calling this approach “artificial chip intelligence” and hopes it can help speed up chip production times by 50% and reduce the associated costs as well. This ambitious idea comes from semiconductor industry veteran Faraj Aalaei, who worked at various companies including Fujitsu Network Communications and Centillium Communications. Aalaei told TechCrunch that his company’s origin story begins back in 2015. At the time, Aalaei was a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which would often meet to talk about what was ailing their industry. He was growing concerned about what was happening in the semiconductor industry. He gave a presentation to the group about the stark drop in venture capital investing into semiconductor companies, which peaked at 200 deals a year in 2000, he said, and dropped to just one or two a year by 2015. “I essentially warned the other CEOs that this cannot be good for us,” Aalaei said. “It cannot be good for the semiconductor industry in America, and that what we needed to do is to fundamentally change things about it. If that trend continues, then we’re going to lose our competitiveness. We’re going to lose the energy that brings in new ideas to the table.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Considering how long it takes new chips to come to market, it’s not surprising these companies weren’t attracting venture investors, he said. Then he sat on the idea for almost a decade. He went on to found Candou Ventures in 2016, and through that fund got to watch the rise in AI startups. When he realized that advancements in generative AI had gotten to a point where it could be used to potentially help solve some of the semiconductor industry’s existent challenges, he decided to launch Cognichip in 2024. Cognichip has been operating in stealth ever since and has amassed a team of AI experts from places like Stanford, Google, and MIT to start building. Aalaei said it will take at least a few years to build the model to “ultimate performance” but said it should be able to help companies before it reaches that goal. “When we get to that point, this artificial chip intelligence, we will be building a system that can actually act like an expert engineer,” Aalaei said. “Once we achieve that vision, then you can actually get the same work done with a fraction of the people and in much, much shorter time.” Cognichip is now emerging from stealth with $33 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Lux Capital and Mayfield with participation from FPV and Candou Ventures. Navin Chaddha, a managing partner at Mayfield, told TechCrunch that when he was introduced to Aalaei, he felt they were “cut from the same cloth.” The vast majority of work in the semiconductor industry is still being done by humans; he said he thinks the timing is right to bring AI into the mix. “This is a major pain point, and the solution this company will provide will be a pain killer and not a vitamin for the semiconductor industry,” Chaddha said. “If you don’t have humans doing the job, can AI do it where there’s shortage of talent? Number one, great team, second, [they are] solving a real pain point in a massive, trillion-dollar industry.” Aalaei said that he hopes Cognichip will also be able to help democratize access to building chips so that more semiconductor companies can get started and land investment. Easier access also means that smaller companies can build more specific chips for specialized or smaller models, too, he said. All of this will depend on when, or if, the company can reach artificial chip intelligence. “What we’re doing is not some incremental change,” Aalaei said. “We’re not building an [electronic design automation] tool, we’re not trying to tweak the process a little bit. We’re trying to set a new goal for our industry and bring some major change.”

Quantum computing may still be regarded by many IT leaders as a very niche technology, but broader business use cases may be just a few years away. While only a handful of companies have machines with logical qubits today, delegates at the Commercialising Quantum Computing conference in London were told that a machine with 100 logical qubits would offer quantum advantage in material science by 2028. This means that, by then, a sufficiently powerful and stable quantum computer would start delivering business value better than what would be possible using high performance computing. Mark Jackson, senior quantum evangelist at Quantinuum, said the company was already using generative quantum artificial intelligence (AI). In a fireside chat at the conference, Jackson spoke about the interaction between quantum computing and AI. It is largely acknowledged that a quantum computer is not good at providing a precise answer, such as if applied to big data analysis. But, according to Jackson, it shines when used for machine learning, which can be applied to identify a correct answer. Quantum-enhanced machine learning can process large datasets far quicker than conventional computers, especially when applied to detecting patterns. “Quantum computers can detect patterns that would be missed by other conventional computing methods,” said Jackson. This ability to detect patterns in massive datasets could revolutionise cyber security. Becky Pickard, managing director of global cyber operations at Barclays, pointed out during a panel discussion that a lot of progress has been made with machine learning and how to apply it on a day-to-day basis: “We’re working with massive volumes of data – 12Tbytes – on a daily basis.” She suggested that quantum machine learning could help. From an optimisation perspective, she is keen to see the development of quantum computing applied in a way that reshapes cyber defence.  HSBC is one of the organisations that has been working on quantum computing for several years. Discussing the return on investment opportunity, and how quantum computing can be used to build more optimised financial models, Phil Intallura, global head of quantum technologies at HSBC, said: “When you breakdown the opportunities, financial services is one of the biggest beneficiaries.” As Intallura points out, banks are always looking for a better financial model: “There’s one thing that catalyses commercial organisations more than anything else, and that’s confidence. If you can show a solution using quantum technology that can get a better output based than using a supercomputers, [business decision-makers] will give you much more runway than you need.” Another application area is the ability to generate a true random number, which can feed into financial model simulations. In March, a team of researchers from JPMorganChase, Quantinuum, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Texas at Austin published a paper in Nature discussing a technique known as Random Circuit Sampling (RCS). RCS is used to perform a certified-randomness-expansion protocol, which outputs more randomness than it takes as input. It is a task that is often used to demonstrate quantum supremacy since it cannot be achieved on a classical computer. Speaking of the usefulness of a quantum number generator at HSBC, Intallura said: “Using quantum random numbers as your entropy source to classical simulation does not change any of the underlying model practices in classical models. You’re just injecting a different source of entropy than what we would [normally] use.” For Intallura, regulatory pressure and the need to ensure financial transactions are secure is helping to inform quantum computing plans at financial institutions.  The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has ratified a number of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards. Banks face pressure from regulators to replace RSA-2048 encryption by 2035 and migrate fully over to quantum safe encryption standards to protect banking transactions.But, as Mark Carney, lead of quantum cyber security research at Santander Global, noted, post-quantum cryptography needs both software and hardware acceleration. “We want to be able to have PQC at speed in our devices and on our payment cards,” he said. “We want to give our customers the very best cryptography that we possibly can – not just for regulatory purposes, but also because it gives a sense of assurance.” Among the promises of quantum computing is that it can be applied to solve complex optimisation problems. As and when they become commercially viable, such systems will need to work alongside traditional enterprise IT. This is something that Gerard Mullery, interim CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits, recognised during his presentation at the event. Mullery sees a need for quantum computing to be embedded in enterprise workflows.  “As AI agents autonomously orchestrate enterprise workflows, quantum compute platforms must be designed to integrate with them,” he added. What is clear from the experts who spoke at the Commercialising Quantum Computing conference is that a useful machine is perhaps only a few years away. This will have enough logical qubits to solve real-world problems. As such devices evolve, it is likely more organisations will draw on quantum computing for certain combinatorial optimisation problems, which will need to integrate with classical computing in the datacentre. As quantum computing becomes more accessible, there will also be a need to bolster cryptography with PQC. Read more about quantum developments Cisco lays out plans for networking in era of quantum computing: The network equipment provider has opened a new lab and developed a prototype chip as it fleshes out its quantum networking strategy. Quantum datacentre deployments: How they are supporting evolving compute projects: Quantum datacentre deployments are emerging worldwide, so what are they and where are the benefits?

Lindsay SalazarEvery item on this page was hand-picked by a House Beautiful editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.From marble and concrete to zellige and subway, there are limitless possibilities when it comes to tile. While the material’s popularity has waxed and waned over the years, we’re currently entering a tile renaissance. No longer limited to just your floors or shower stalls, tile is covering everything from side tables to skylights, drenching bathrooms and kitchens in a glossy new light. “Clients aren’t defaulting to the standard white subway tile anymore,” says interior designer Sarah Stacey. “There’s a lot more interest in making intentional, expressive choices with tile now, whether it’s through color, pattern, or texture. People are much more willing to take creative risks than they were even a few years ago.” Interestingly enough, the biggest tile trend of the season is being anti-trend. Personality and joy-driven interiors are being prioritized instead of property value and neutral finishes. “Clients are less interested in safe, resale-driven choices and more open to statement moments, ” says interior designer Michelle Murphy of DEMI RYAN. “They want spaces that reflect them, not just trends—a dramatic shower wall, patterned floors, or jewel-box powder rooms.” Whether your aesthetic leans more towards color-drenching or pattern mixing, there’s a creative use of tile just begging to be a part of your next renovation or remodel. Below, 16 top experts reveal the tile trends they’re most excited about right now—alongside images showing how they used them to stunning advantage.See more current design trends we’re obsessed with:1Scalloped EdgesTrevor Tondro“I'm loving scalloped designs! This spring, we are seeing lots of scalloped edges in dinnerware, furniture, soft goods, and now in tile! We are thrilled to launch our Ashton Meadows collection with Studio McGee, which features a scalloped edge that is tailored yet whimsical. ” —DeeDee Gundberg, Chief Designer, Ann Sacks2Retro RevivalCourtesy of Tile of Spain“From kaleidoscopic patterns to '70s palettes, there is a marked nod towards a retro revival lately. A true hint of nostalgia can be seen with zesty colourways taking centre stage, while striking patterns create visual focal points, allowing interiors to celebrate bygone design eras in a new, contemporary fashion.” —María D Arráez, Director of Tile of Spain UKAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below3Color-DrenchingCourtesy of Ceramics of Italy“After attending Coverings 2025—the largest international tile and stone exhibition in North America—we’ve noticed a palpable shift towards playful and expressive tile designs. Italian ceramic manufacturers are leading the charge with small-format tiles featuring whimsical patterns and vibrant colors, ideal for both walls and floors in the bathroom. Notably, the trend of “color drenching,” and in the tile world, “mineral drenching," is gaining traction, where entire spaces are enveloped in rich tones and textures reminiscent of marble, onyx, or travertine, to fully immerse a space.”—Brittney Harmond, representative of Ceramics of Italy 4Natural MaterialsCourtesy of Vitale Design Group“The revival of earthly natural stones in 2025 truly brings sophistication and romance to the bathroom. This trend creates the perfect ambiance and enhances the mood through the use of warm tones in travertine, limestone, and bold vein marbles. Our second favorite trend is Zellige tiles. Zellige tiles are handmade Moroccan tiles that are multi-tonal, and the hand-glazing allows the colors to truly feel alive. These tiles bring timeless elegance & versatility to any space.”—Alexis Vitale, Vitale Design GroupAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below5Custom ConfigurationsJoseph Bradshaw“Mosaics offer such exciting possibilities, and we’re seeing a significant rise in the use of custom mosaics, especially. Designers are leveraging the versatility of mosaic tile to craft completely personalized designs, whether that’s a fully branded tile wall or an ancient Greece-inspired residential bathroom floor.” — Jamie Chappell, VP of Brand and Marketing at Fireclay Tile63D MotifsL'ANTIC COLONIAL“The 3D relief tile trend is particularly captivating. Tiles with dimensional surfaces play with light and shadow, adding depth and dynamism to spaces. This tactile quality not only enhances the visual appeal but also contributes to the overall sensory experience of the bathroom, aligning with the broader trend of creating spa-like, restorative environments at home.” —Jordana Moche, NYC Managing Director at PorcelanosaAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below7Rare PairingsLauren Miller“I like the mash-up of the unexpected—it used to be that limestone and marble weren’t really materials you mixed, but I like the recent departure from matching to something a little more freeform. I also like the exploration of deeper tones like oxblood marbles and green onyx.” —Sam Sacks, Sam Sacks Design8Sidestep ShinyGieves Anderson“My favorite trend is tile having a more natural and organic look, rather than the crisp modern look that has been popular. This is why I am using more ceramic tile and opting for more matte and honed pieces rather than the polished style we’ve been using for so long now. This allows the tile to have more warmth and dimension. It makes for a calming space to shower and get ready in, something I think everyone wants.”—Emily Del Bello, Emily Del Bello InteriorsAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below9Patterned LayoutsBrittany Dawn Short“I love that people are playing with tile patterns—using different colors to create checks, stripes, or more abstract layouts. It’s not about printed tiles, but about creating a pattern through placement and color. While it’s something that’s been around for a while, it feels exciting to see it coming back in fresh, modern ways.” Sarah Stacey, Sarah Stacey Interior Design10Handmade SlabsKate Leichhardt“I’m really drawn to anything that feels a little handmade and imperfect; it gives a space so much soul. I’m loving the trend of mixing shapes and patterns using the same tile, especially when it’s done with mosaics or geometric layouts. It feels creative without being chaotic. It brings in so much more personality and warmth than using a single stone alone.” —Amanda Jacobs, Amanda Jacobs DesignAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below11 Subtle TexturesCourtesy of Dart Studio“Earthy, sun-faded tones, like terracotta, muted sage, and chalky whites, are at the top of my list for this season. I’m also loving dimensional, sculpted tiles that add texture and warmth. They have a subtle mid-century edge that feels both nostalgic and modern. Clients are so much braver, mixing materials, playing with pattern and color, and treating bathrooms like real design moments, not just utility spaces. It’s about personality now, not just practicality.” —Olivia Botrie, Creative Director of Dart Studio12Playful StripesLindsay Brown“I’m happy to see clients embracing color and pattern more and more over the past few years. There has been less focus on resale value and aesthetics, and more design for the individual. This allows clients to take the pressure off of making choices for anyone other than themselves, which makes room for much more play. I am loving all-over tile, especially in bold patterns like stripes or checkerboard. I’m so ready to have fun with tile and am excited that there is more buy-in from clients currently!” —Avery Cox, Avery Cox DesignAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below13Grounding ColorsMargaret Larson“After living with an 80s-era color-blocked shower wall in a New York City rental, it’s a look I find hard to embrace fully. It tends to date a space much faster than you'd hope, especially in a bathroom. Instead, I prefer bringing color in more timeless ways. In a recent renovation, we used a deep evergreen tile on the floor—a rich, grounding pop that feels vibrant without sacrificing longevity.” —Kelsey Matyas, Kelsey Deirdre Designs14Bolder BacksplashesCourtesy of LIVDEN“We are excited to see more bold and unique kitchens this spring! We are hoping that eye-catching tile patterns make their way to kitchen backsplashes and not just powder baths. It’s time for kitchens to breathe more personality and style into the home, so we are excited that more homeowners seem to be open to adding a bold patterned tile to their backsplash.”—Hilary Gibbs and Georgie Smith, Founders of LIVDEN Advertisement - Continue Reading Below15Timeless MaterialsRoss Group Creative“We try to push clients towards classic selections that won’t look too trendy down the line. Tile is so difficult to remove and replace, so we like to make sure we are installing timeless options. Marble is our go-to in all shapes—hexagons, basketweaves, mosaics, and even classic subway all make for beautiful floors, shower walls, and backsplashes.” —Katie Figler, Kate Figler Interiors16Ribbon TilesKeyannaBowen“One of our favorite tile trends right now is the use of ribbon tiles and fluted formats to bring a new kind of texture to bathrooms [seen in the top border of the tile in this bathroom]. Their slim profiles and subtle ridges add quiet architecture to a space, layering in rhythm and movement without relying on bold decorative patterns. It is a more dimensional approach to bringing energy into a room while keeping the overall feeling elevated and restrained.” —Genevieve Webb and Ashley Mutch, Feather Hill Interiors

How co-development companies are navigating a turbulent industry in 2025 GamesIndustry.biz catches up with some of the top companies working in the co-dev space to see how they are faring given current industry headwinds Image credit: Bethesda Softworks Feature by Alex Calvin Contributor Published on May 15, 2025 In one form or another, co-development companies have nearly always been around in the games industry. For as long as people have been making games, there have been companies and developers who have made a living helping out other studios with their projects. For the most part, these companies had a low profile, sitting in the shadows of the developers they were working for; but with the growing scale of modern AAA projects, co-development firms are more visible than ever. "There's a growing awareness and desire among studios worldwide to leverage distributed development and external services," says Jake DiGennaro, the chief revenue officer at Virtuos, which, along with Bethesda, co-developed the recently released The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered. "Some reputable studios that have shipped their own IP are even embracing a co-op model, working on original IP development while offering co-development services to others. This approach has long been a tradition in Japan and is now becoming mainstream in North America and Europe." Alejandro Garcia-Tunon, the head of co-dev at Side, adds: "Co-development definitely remains a key part of the game development ecosystem – if anything, more so now than ever before. An increased number of development specialities, as well as scopes that are well beyond what the game industry has seen in the past, have increased costs. "Having a full-time team of experts in each field you'd need to cover just wouldn't make sense, so bringing in an expert is a great way for studios and publishers to tap into that talent without blowing up their budgets." Helping hand The work that co-development companies are being brought in to assist with varies wildly. Sometimes it's individual disciplines (art and animation are the most popular, according to research from the External Development Summit), but for others it is entire segments of a project. "What we are finding is that the balance of the co-development work is changing from coding or feature-focused 'team augmentation' to fully rounded content teams that can take on a whole section of games or even whole games, like we did with the delivery of Lego Horizon Adventures," explains Ashley Liu, the managing director of Keywords Studios' Create arm. Garcia-Tunon adds: "It runs the gamut from individual specialities, like AI, combat, physics, networking, and UI, to taking on entire chunks of a game like a full biome or boss. Sometimes we will cover different aspects even within a single project. Image credit: Konami "When we worked on Silent Hill 2 Remake with Bloober Team, we worked on two boss fights in very different ways. For the fight with Eddie's character, we were creative consultants, advising how we could lift the level from the previous version and make it more of a pivotal moment in the game. With Maria, the final boss fight, Bloober Team already had a vision in mind which we were able to help execute from a technical perspective." Despite co-development companies becoming a bigger part of the industry, the sector isn't immune to the broader economics of the games market. For a variety of reasons, publishers have chosen to be more conservative in funding projects, and fewer games in development means less work for those whose role it is to help out. "Demand grew very strongly over the past decade as games became larger and more complex – developers required additional support," explains Liu. "In the last 18 months, the volume of work reversed due to the overall contraction of the industry, but projects are starting to come back as the industry realises there's been an overcorrection. Players expecting more engaging content will drive some renewed demand." The turbulence in the market, however, does present something of an opportunity for co-development companies. In an uncertain world where publishers are being more risk-averse, partners that provide a great deal of flexibility can be useful. "There are opportunities for co-development, though they may not look like what we've seen in the past," Liu says. "Specifically, as our clients restructure their businesses, there are now more opportunities for partners to fill resource gaps. "There are also opportunities with clients that perhaps would like us to take over their older titles, especially as their best teams move on to new projects." "The headwinds that we face collectively as an industry have reached a breaking point where we can't continue to make games the way we did 20 years ago" Jake DiGennaro, Virtuos Garcia-Tunon adds: "The last couple of years have been an anomaly, no question, but the uncertainty has been really challenging. The co-dev space has historically been growing year over year because the entire industry has been growing – more games equals more people needing help to make games. Our opportunities have come from our ability to quickly adapt to fit client demands." Some co-development companies view themselves as somewhat indispensable. The fact that games now require so many people, so many hours of work, and so many disciplines means that it is tough to make them without external help. "The headwinds that we face collectively as an industry have reached a breaking point where we can't continue to make games the way we did 20 years ago and expect not to run into a wall eventually," DiGennaro believes. "With the rising costs of production, the economics of creating a successful game have become increasingly difficult. "We have to acknowledge the fact that there's something about the way we make games that needs a paradigm shift. While factors like discoverability, delivery, and distribution all play important roles, the process of how we build games is a critical part of the problem," DiGennaro continues. "More than seeing this as an opportunity for co-development companies, I think it's an opportunity to reshape the collective mentality and methodologies of our industry towards increased sustainability and reduced volatility." As always, big games companies are very anxious about their IP and will often go to great lengths to protect it. Before its official reveal, screenshots and marketing materials for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered were leaked from Virtuos' backend on its Wordpress. "We have very strict processes and information controls at Side that have been honed over decades of work and thousands of games," Garcia-Tunon says. "But our business relies on our reputation – successful projects build great long-term relationships and recommendations from previous partners are worth their weight in gold." Image credit: Keywords Keywords' Liu adds: "Ensuring there are no leaks has always been a challenge in game development, especially for projects that take years to complete with hundreds of people working on it at different times. As with any studio, team composition changes throughout the project lifecycle, making leakages an ongoing area to monitor. "We can leverage experienced global IT and InfoSec departments to protect our client's IP and data. They oversee hundreds of projects, thousands of configurations, and have successfully dealt with a vast number of incidents, allowing us to bring a level of protection surpassing many of our competitors," Liu continues. "In the unlikely event of a data breach, we inform the client first and foremost and together we find a way to resolve the situation. Sometimes, because we are open and honest, the clients trust us more." What comes next Looking to the future, it's clear that co-development isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Modern video games are, by and large, too big and require too much specialist expertise to be made by one company, at least within a reasonable timeframe. Co-dev firms are here to stay. "Fundamentally, I think distributed co-development is how games will be – and should be – built moving forward," DiGennaro says. "It has the potential to make a profound impact in the sustainability of this industry." Liu adds: "Despite the layoffs and project cancellations, this industry will grow. We'll work with partners to release more creative content and better experiences, leveraging new technology to create games and mechanics that have never been seen before. We'll reach new artistic heights that truly engage players." But, as with the rest of the industry, change may be afoot in the near future. New technologies do look like they could have an impact on how games are made. "Workflows are already evolving to include developing technologies like AI," Garcia-Tunon admits. "That said, my outlook is positive – as long as we have humans playing games, we'll need humans to develop and discuss what games should look like."

The bird above is not your typical charismatic species. It’s no bald eagle, no peregrine falcon. It’s a groundbird known as the lesser prairie-chicken that lives in the southern Great Plains. It’s not even the greater prairie-chicken, another, related avian species, that’s a bit larger. Today, however, this bird is very much worth paying attention to. In 2023, lesser prairie-chickens — which are actually fascinating birds, not least for their ridiculous mating rituals — were granted protection under the Endangered Species Act, the country’s strongest wildlife law. Scientists say this protection is justified: The population of lesser prairie-chickens has crashed since the last century from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of birds to roughly 30,000 today. Now the Trump administration is trying to axe those extinction-thwarting protections. In a motion filed earlier this month in a Texas court, the administration argued that federal officials made an error when listing prairie-chickens under the Endangered Species Act. The listing — which makes it illegal to kill or harm the birds, with a number of exceptions — should be tossed out, the administration said. The move isn’t totally unexpected. Prairie-chickens overlap in some areas with oil and gas drilling. And President Donald Trump has signaled that he will prioritize drilling over environmental safeguards. Yet it reveals that his administration will take extreme steps to undo wildlife protections if they stand in the way of his agenda. If his administration is successful in delisting the bird, it will signal that no endangered species is safe — especially those, like these chickens, that happen to live where fossil fuels are buried.Send us a tipDo you have a story idea or a tip to share? Reach Benji Jones at benji.jones@vox.com or at the secure encrypted address benjijones@protonmail.com. You can also find him on Signal at @benji.90.The dance of the prairie-chickenMale lesser prairie-chickens are extremely extra.Each spring, they come together in breeding grounds called leks to dance for females, hoping to attract them as mates. They inflate large sacs on their neck, flare yellow combs above their eyes, and raise wing-like feathers behind their heads. Then they stomp their feet and start booming, producing a noise that sounds like sped-up yodeling. (These are not to be confused with the greater sage-grouse, a bird in the same family that has a similarly spectacular display.)The Great Plains were once filled with these unusual dancing birds, which play important roles in grassland ecosystems: They provide food for raptors, spread seeds, and control insects. But in the last few centuries, prairie-chickens lost most of their habitat — largely to the expansion of oil and gas, commercial farming, housing developments, and, more recently, wind energy. Scientists estimate that the range of lesser prairie-chickens has shrunk by 83 percent to 90 percent since European settlement.“Grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent and in the world, and nowhere more so than in the southwestern Great Plains,” said Ted Koch, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership, a bird conservation group. Facing extinction as a result of powerful industries, the prairie-chicken has been caught up in a game of political ping pong. The government first granted them federal protection in 2014. Then, in response to a lawsuit filed by an oil-industry trade group and several counties in New Mexico, the Texas court tossed out the listing in 2015. They were officially delisted in 2016. The suit argued that in granting federal protections the government didn’t adequately consider existing voluntary efforts, such as habitat conservation, to conserve the birds.Shortly after, the Interior Department — the government agency that oversees endangered species listings — reevaluated the bird and once again determined, under the Biden administration, that it is at risk of extinction, even with those voluntary efforts in place. In 2023, Interior added the chickens back on the endangered species list. That brings us to the present day, when these forsaken birds could once again lose protection. Trump moves to strip endangered species protections on a technicalityThe Trump administration is arguing that the Interior Department made a mistake when it recently listed the birds again. It comes down to a somewhat wonky technicality. Briefly, the Endangered Species Act allows the government to grant formal protection to a species or to a population of a species — if those populations are important on their own, and at risk. That’s what the Biden administration did: It determined that there were two distinct populations of lesser-prairie chickens and it granted each of them slightly different protections. One of the populations is in the northern end of the birds’ range, including Oklahoma and Kansas, and the other is in the southern reaches of its range, in Texas and New Mexico. Under the Trump administration, Interior claims that it didn’t provide enough information to show that the two bird populations are distinct. That’s reason enough to delist the birds, the administration argues, while it reviews their status over the next year. If the species is delisted — even temporarily — the government would be able to permit activities, such as energy projects, even if they might harm the bird and the endangered grasslands it’s found in. Male lesser prairie-chickens fight for territory at a lek in Edwards County, Kansas. Michael Pearce/Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesAvian experts, meanwhile, say the reasoning behind the original listing — which was the result of months of work and more than 30,000 public comments — is sound, and these birds are very clearly in trouble. “The North American Grouse Partnership agrees completely that listing of chickens is warranted,” said Koch, a former biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the division within Interior that implements the Endangered Species Act.The move to delist prairie-chickens appears to be an effort by the Trump administration to skirt wildlife regulations that some perceive to stand in the way of the oil industry, said Jonathan Hayes, executive director of Audubon Southwest, a regional office of the National Audubon Society, a large environmental nonprofit. “Whether it’s true or not, this chicken symbolizes a challenge, or an impediment, to oil and gas development for industry,” Hayes told Vox. “We would expect this administration to push back on regulations that may or may not impact oil and gas. That’s what it feels like is happening here.” In a statement to Vox, the Interior Department said it has an “unwavering commitment to conserving and managing the nation’s natural and cultural resources…and overseeing public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans, while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people.”The new administration can quibble with the technical points of the listing, Koch said, but that will do nothing to change the reality: The bird is at risk of extinction and needs to be protected. “Whether somebody wants to engage in debate on technicalities is up to them, but simply and fundamentally lesser prairie-chickens are threatened with extinction,” Koch said. “Delisting lesser prairie chickens on a technicality is going to do nothing to address the underlying threat to these ecosystems.”The future for threatened species in the US There’s no guarantee that prairie-chickens will lose protection. The Trump administration’s motion to delist the birds came in response to a pair of lawsuits filed by both the state of Texas and groups representing the oil and livestock industries. The suits allege that the Interior Department made a mistake in splitting the birds into two distinct populations and failed to follow the best available information. (Interior’s spokesperson told Vox they will not comment on ongoing litigation.)Before Trump took office, the government was planning to defend its decision to protect the birds — and to split them up — in court, in response to those lawsuits. Now it’s reversing course and agreeing with Texas and the oil industry to toss out the listing.It’s possible that the judge overseeing this case could agree to remove protections, said Jason Rylander, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. In that case, groups like his would try to appeal to block the delisting. The court could also tell the government to review the bird’s status while keeping existing protections in place, Rylander says. What’s key here is that the decision to list lesser prairie-chickens involved a formal rulemaking process with public input. It’s not clear that the government can simply reverse its decision and yank federal protections without going through that process again.“The government can’t act in a capricious way,” Hayes of Audubon said. “It can’t just blow with the wind, and that’s exactly what it did here. They just changed their minds when the administration changed. I’m not sure how they will legally defend their complete 180.”But no matter how this plays out, this effort to delist lesser prairie-chickens puts other threatened species in an even more precarious spot, especially those that live in regions with oil and gas.One example is the endangered dunes sagebrush lizard. It’s a small, scaly reptile that lives in the Permian Basin of Texas, the largest oil-producing region in the country, and nowhere else on Earth.The state of Texas similarly sued the government after it listed the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered last year. The suit — which asks the court to vacate the endangered listing — alleges, among other things, that the government didn’t rely on the best available data to evaluate the lizard’s extinction risk. That case is still pending, though environmental advocates fear that the Trump administration could side with Texas and claim it made a mistake when listing the lizard. Then there’s the beloved monarch butterfly. Following decades of population decline, the government proposed federal protections for the iconic insect late last year. Monarch habitat similarly overlaps with the oil and gas industry, as well as commercial farmland. Fossil-fuel groups have already asked the Trump administration to reconsider the listing. “As the Trump administration is in power, we can expect that endangered species protections are going to be under attack,” Rylander said. “I think there’s a chance we can stop this in court,” he said of efforts to delist the prairie-chicken, “but I think if we don’t, we will see more efforts to remand and vacate listings that they [the Trump administration] don’t want to have in place anymore.” It’s important to remember that wildlife protections benefit people, Koch said. And prairie-chickens are a good example. Most of the remaining birds live on sustainably managed, private ranchlands in the Great Plains, he said. Those lands — those working grassland ecosystems — are under threat from energy development and other industries that are more profitable. Saving prairie chickens means saving those lands. And saving those lands benefits the ranchers that live on them, he said.“The purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to conserve the ecosystems upon which we and all other species depend,” Koch said. “People depend on grassland ecosystems, and so do lesser prairie-chickens. We need to save grasslands for both of us.”See More:

Imagine waking up each day excited for work, knowing that your efforts contribute to a global movement that impacts the world. If you’re ready for a career transformation, then we have an exhilarating opportunity for you at the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF)!Join us, and you won’t just be changing jobs—you’ll be elevating your career on a global scale. At IxDF, we’re not just a company; we’re a movement dedicated to making high-quality design education accessible to everyone, everywhere. With team members and learners from over 100 countries, your role at IxDF will have a worldwide impact. From engaging with diverse cultures to contributing to a platform that reaches millions, your daily activities will be anything but ordinary.Our Commitment to Our MembersAt the core of every decision we make and every strategy we implement lies our unwavering commitment to our members—they are the fundamental reason for our existence. This profound dedication drives us to exceed their expectations at every turn. We are on the lookout for a candidate who embodies our ethos: someone who is not only exceptionally talented and diligent but who also possesses a profound empathy for our learners' needs and a relentless pursuit of excellence. Your role will be pivotal in ensuring that each member feels valued, supported, and inspired throughout their educational journey with us.Your place in the IxDF UniverseCorrespond daily with members and prospective learners across multiple channels—email, chat, and social media—providing quick, accurate responses to their questions. You’ll troubleshoot issues, offer guidance, and ensure a seamless user experience.Act as a brand ambassador by upholding our excellent reputation in every interaction. You’ll communicate our mission and values clearly, taking pride in representing a global community dedicated to design education. It’s a big responsibility, but also incredibly rewarding!Collaborate cross-functionally with teams across the organization to improve internal workflows and enhance the platform’s user experience. You’ll be the bridge between departments, ensuring that our operations are efficient and focused on delivering the best outcomes for our members.Support our Growth team in executing digital marketing initiatives, including managing paid media campaigns and overseeing content and engagement across our social media channels.Perform general administrative and ad-hoc project support, assisting extended team members as needed. Whether it’s organizing tasks, scheduling, or helping with project coordination, you’ll ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently.Maintain and improve documentation by ensuring that our knowledge resources are up-to-date, easy to access, and provide value to both our internal teams and learners. Your work will directly contribute to helping others succeed.Shape internal processes that directly impact engagement and key performance indicators (KPIs). You’ll analyze workflows and recommend improvements to help us provide even better services for our members.Update our internal knowledge base and contribute to department-wide initiatives focused on knowledge sharing. You’ll ensure that important insights and best practices are easily available to all, driving continuous improvement.Communicate and collaborate effectively with other teams to relay customer needs and insights. By sharing valuable feedback, you’ll help us maximize retention, improve member satisfaction, and drive growth.Embody our values as you are often the first point of contact for our community. You’ll play a key role in welcoming and supporting members, helping our foundation grow and strengthen through meaningful interactions.Take full accountability for your tasks, managing your responsibilities with independence and self-discipline. You’ll consistently deliver high-quality results, meet deadlines, and maintain focus while balancing multiple priorities with minimal supervision.About YouYou thrive in a fast-paced environment where you handle ad-hoc projects of varying complexities with ease and enthusiasm.You have experience in customer success, with bonus points if you’ve worked in digital marketing or managed social media channels.Helping people excites you, and you take pride in earning their gratitude through your support and problem-solving skills.You are resourceful and autonomous, always ready to take on new tasks and projects with a problem-solving mindset that ensures everything gets done efficiently.Attention to detail and thoroughness come naturally to you. You enjoy ensuring that every task is completed with care and precision.You relish solving problems—especially the ones that haven't even been noticed yet. Meeting specific needs of different people brings you satisfaction, and you enjoy proactively addressing challenges before they arise.You are fluent in written and spoken English with exceptional writing skills, perfect grammar and an appreciation for the power of tone, brevity and microcopy.You take full ownership of tasks, knowing what it means to see something through to completion and deliver high-quality results.Consistency is key for you, and you stay focused even when tasks become repetitive, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.You are comfortable with tight deadlines and excel at prioritizing tasks to meet them, keeping projects on track.Resilience is one of your strengths, and when things go off-track, you bounce back quickly, offering valuable solutions to move forward.You are highly self-disciplined, thriving in a flat hierarchy where you enjoy the freedom and minimal supervision that comes with it.You are located within a time zone from Europe (UTC+0) to East Asia (UTC+8), making it easy to collaborate with our global team.Bonus PointsYou get bonus points if the art of writing isn’t just a skill, but a passion. You find joy in crafting each sentence with care and precision.You have a genuine curiosity about user experience (UX) design and are interested in how it can improve the quality of life for people around the world.You love making complex concepts accessible, and you enjoy teaching or explaining ideas in a way that’s engaging and easy to understand.You have an exceptional talent for creating structure, and you take pride in organizing processes and tasks in a way that’s efficient and clear.What We Can OfferA highly valued role: Many organizations undervalue admin and support employees, but at IxDF, you’ll be joining one of our most valued and cherished teams. Your contributions will be recognized as essential to our success.Opportunities for growth and impact: At IxDF, you’ll have room to grow professionally while making a real difference. You’ll contribute to projects that directly impact our global community, adding value to the educational experience of thousands of learners.A Global, Purpose-Driven Team – Work alongside passionate professionals from all over the world, united by a common mission.Engagement with a Thriving Global Community – You’ll have the opportunity to support and interact with our local groups, educational partners, and community initiatives. Whether it’s helping organize IxDF Local Groups, facilitating partnerships with educational institutions, or engaging with our vibrant design community, your work will contribute to a stronger, more connected global network of UX professionals and learners.A full-time position, within a fully remote organization. Daily video-based collaboration with your colleagues from elsewhere on the planet, and you’ll get to meet up on team trips every year.A work culture with no fluffy titles, political agendas and corporate drama. Your colleagues value your warm character, your strong work ethic, and the results you deliver. Junior or senior, if you embody old-school virtues of always striving to deliver results, learn and become better every day, you'll thrive at the IxDF.A daily mission to help impact, empower, and enrich the lives of millions of people by creating affordable high-end design education for everyone across the planet. It’ll be yours too.A company where the distance between idea and execution is minimal. We’re a highly agile organization with zero bureaucracy or corporate politics – and with exceptional order and efficiency.A company culture where passion meets high performance and excellence. To help us improve the world (and yourself in the process), you’ll need grit, strong work ethic, long-term thinking, and self-discipline.We thrive because we have a hands-on attitude and a bias towards action as opposed to fluff-filled, unrealistic strategies. You’ll need crisp execution skills yourself and the ability to impress your colleagues with concrete results, just like they’ll impress you.How to Learn More and Apply  To submit your application as well as learn more about our Work Culture and Values, please visit https://www.interaction-design.org/about/careers Please apply as soon as you can—we’re firm believers of “the sooner, the better” and we’re looking forward to working with you! 

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/240206_Cavalry2_particles.mp4 Originally posted on 6 February 2024. Scroll down for news of the Cavalry 2.4 update. Scene Group has begun the next big series of releases for Cavalry, its motion design software. Cavalry 2.0 adds animatable scene cameras, making it possible to create 2.5D effects, plus an experimental new particle system, and increases scene playback speed around 200%. A next-gen 2D motion graphics tool inspired by 3D software Originally released in 2020, Cavalry is a procedural animation app “combining the power and flexibility of 3D with the ease of use of 2D”.Although currently a pure 2D animation tool, it supports workflows that will be familiar to 3D animators, including keyframing, curve editing, deformation, rigging, scattering and instancing. Scene Group’s background is also in 3D motion graphics: the firm is a spin-off from Mainframe North, which developed MASH, Maya’s motion graphics toolset. Once created, images may be exported in a range of file formats, including as JPEG, PNG or SVG sequences, as animated PNGs, as WEBM or QuickTime movies, or in Lottie format. https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/240206_Cavalry2_cameras.mp4 Add a Camera to a scene to create 2.5D animations Major changes in Cavalry 2.0 include support for Cameras, making it possible to create 2.5D effects like the one above.Users can create Freeform or Look At cameras, with the option to offset the position of the camera and look-at target to create secondary motion, and to set view distance limits for layers. Experimental new particle system creates 2D particle effects Cavalry 2.0 also introduces an experimental new particle system, for creating particle effects.It’s still a tech preview, but it already includes a range of standard basic features, including settings for particle shape, and a range of emitter types and modifiers. Particles can be emitted from points, shapes, paths or Distributions; and it is possible to direct particle motion with paths, goals, forces or turbulence. Other new features and performance improvements Other new features in Cavalry 2.0 include a new Auto-Animate behavior for animating Shapes with fewer keyframes, and support for tapered strokes along Shapes.Workflow improvements include the option to set up overrides for Pre-Comps, making it easier to create variants for a composition. Users can also now group Layers into simplified custom containers called Components, controlling which Attributes are exposed in the UI. Performance improvements include boosts of 10-600% in playback speed: the improvement is greater in complex scenes, but Scene Group says that the average is around 200%. Cavalry also now supports background rendering, making it possible to continue to work while a scene is rendering. https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/240524_Cavalry21_tw.mp4 Updated 23 May 2024: Scene Group has released Cavalry 2.1. The update focuses on the audio tools, adding support for multi-track audio playback, and the option to export audio from Cavalry. Audio projects can be exported as AAC files, or in MP4, QuickTime or WebM files. It is also possible to import audio files in more formats, now including AAC, MP3 and CAF. Updated 11 November 2024: Scene Group has released Cavalry 2.2. The biggest change in the update is support for OpenType fonts in the Text Shape, with the option to control OpenType features like ligatures and superscript procedurally. It is also possible to create color gradients along Strokes, and to add multiple Strokes to paths. Other changes include the option to fill closed paths with Stitches, new Sweep and Shape Falloff patterns, a new Quick Mask mode, and proportional easing when scaling keyframes. Users of the paid Pro edition also get a new Knot behavior, which automatically adds gaps to paths where they self-intersect, and a new Stroke Duplicator feature. Released 11 December 2025: Scene Group has released Cavalry 2.3. Workflow improvements include the option to save presets for Layers, Compositions and Render Queue Items, and to ‘seed‘ random values for Attributes. Users of the Pro edition get the option to open multiple viewports, and to convert images or shape layers to contours, and to convert contours within shapes to sub-meshes. Updated 15 May 2025: Scene Group has released Cavalry 2.4. It’s a sizeable update, adding the option to write custom image-manipulation filters in SkSL, and save them as third-party plugins. SkSL, the shading language used by open-source 2D graphics library Skia, is a variant of GLSL, so code from sites like Shadertoy should work with “minor modifications”. The update also adds a new SLA shader for creating a range of animatable noise types. Text styling and .xslx import Other changes include new styling options in the Text Shape, making it possible to apply apply effects like underline, strikethrough and superscript to text.It is also now possible to import Excel .xslx files. Pro edition: use 2D meshes to deform images and shaders Users of the paid Pro edition also get the option to create 2D meshes to deform images or shaders by placing control vertices.When creating 2.5D animation, it is now possible to use a Camera Guide – a representation of the region of the scene visible to the camera – to drive its animation. For managing complex projects, a new Dependency Graph window provides an editable schematic view of a composition, replacing the old Flow Graph. Price and system requirements Cavalry 2.4 is available for Windows 10+ and macOS 12.0+. The full software is available rental-only, with Pro subscriptions costing £192/year (around $255/year). The free edition caps renders at full HD resolution, and lacks the advanced features in this table. Read a full list of new features in Cavalry in the online release notes Read an overview of original Cavalry 2.0 update on Scene Group’s blog Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.