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2025-06-06 07:52:50 ·

BenchmarkQED: Automated benchmarking of RAG systems

One of the key use cases for generative AI involves answering questions over private datasets, with retrieval-augmented generation as the go-to framework. As new RAG techniques emerge, there’s a growing need to benchmark their performance across diverse datasets and metrics.
To meet this need, we’re introducing BenchmarkQED, a new suite of tools that automates RAG benchmarking at scale, available on GitHub. It includes components for query generation, evaluation, and dataset preparation, each designed to support rigorous, reproducible testing.
BenchmarkQED complements the RAG methods in our open-source GraphRAG library, enabling users to run a GraphRAG-style evaluation across models, metrics, and datasets. GraphRAG uses a large language model to generate and summarize entity-based knowledge graphs, producing more comprehensive and diverse answers than standard RAG for large-scale tasks.
In this post, we walk through the core components of BenchmarkQED that contribute to the overall benchmarking process. We also share some of the latest benchmark results comparing our LazyGraphRAG system to competing methods, including a vector-based RAG with a 1M-token context window, where the leading LazyGraphRAG configuration showed significant win rates across all combinations of quality metrics and query classes.
In the paper, we distinguish between local queries, where answers are found in a small number of text regions, and sometimes even a single region, and global queries, which require reasoning over large portions of or even the entire dataset.
Conventional vector-based RAG excels at local queries because the regions containing the answer to the query resemble the query itself and can be retrieved as the nearest neighbor in the vector space of text embeddings. However, it struggles with global questions, such as, “What are the main themes of the dataset?” which require understanding dataset qualities not explicitly stated in the text.
AutoQ: Automated query synthesis
This limitation motivated the development of GraphRAG a system designed to answer global queries. GraphRAG’s evaluation requirements subsequently led to the creation of AutoQ, a method for synthesizing these global queries for any dataset.
AutoQ extends this approach by generating synthetic queries across the spectrum of queries, from local to global. It defines four distinct classes based on the source and scope of the queryforming a logical progression along the spectrum.
Figure 1. Construction of a 2×2 design space for synthetic query generation with AutoQ, showing how the four resulting query classes map onto the local-global query spectrum.
AutoQ can be configured to generate any number and distribution of synthetic queries along these classes, enabling consistent benchmarking across datasets without requiring user customization. Figure 2 shows the synthesis process and sample queries from each class, using an AP News dataset.
Figure 2. Synthesis process and example query for each of the four AutoQ query classes.

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AutoE: Automated evaluation framework
Our evaluation of GraphRAG focused on analyzing key qualities of answers to global questions. The following qualities were used for the current evaluation:

Comprehensiveness: Does the answer address all relevant aspects of the question?
Diversity: Does it present varied perspectives or insights?
Empowerment: Does it help the reader understand and make informed judgments?
Relevance: Does it address what the question is specifically asking?

The AutoE component scales evaluation of these qualities using the LLM-as-a-Judge method. It presents pairs of answers to an LLM, along with the query and target metric, in counterbalanced order. The model determines whether the first answer wins, loses, or ties with the second. Over a set of queries, whether from AutoQ or elsewhere, this produces win rates between competing methods. When ground truth is available, AutoE can also score answers on correctness, completeness, and related metrics.
An illustrative evaluation is shown in Figure 3. Using a dataset of 1,397 AP News articles on health and healthcare, AutoQ generated 50 queries per class . AutoE then compared LazyGraphRAG to a competing RAG method, running six trials per query across four metrics, using GPT-4.1 as a judge.
These trial-level results were aggregated using metric-based win rates, where each trial is scored 1 for a win, 0.5 for a tie, and 0 for a loss, and then averaged to calculate the overall win rate for each RAG method.
Figure 3. Win rates of four LazyGraphRAG configurations across methods, broken down by the AutoQ query class and averaged across AutoE’s four metrics: comprehensiveness, diversity, empowerment, and relevance. LazyGraphRAG outperforms comparison conditions where the bar is above 50%.
The four LazyGraphRAG conditionsdiffer by query budgetand chunk size. All used GPT-4o mini for relevance tests and GPT-4o for query expansionand answer generation, except for LGR_b200_c200_mini, which used GPT-4o mini throughout.
Comparison systems were GraphRAG , Vector RAG with 8k- and 120k-token windows, and three published methods: LightRAG, RAPTOR, and TREX. All methods were limited to the same 8k tokens for answer generation. GraphRAG Global Search used level 2 of the community hierarchy.
LazyGraphRAG outperformed every comparison condition using the same generative model, winning all 96 comparisons, with all but one reaching statistical significance. The best overall performance came from the larger budget, smaller chunk size configuration. For DataLocal queries, the smaller budgetperformed slightly better, likely because fewer chunks were relevant. For ActivityLocal queries, the larger chunk sizehad a slight edge, likely because longer chunks provide a more coherent context.
Competing methods performed relatively better on the query classes for which they were designed: GraphRAG Global for global queries, Vector RAG for local queries, and GraphRAG Drift Search, which combines both strategies, posed the strongest challenge overall.
Increasing Vector RAG’s context window from 8k to 120k tokens did not improve its performance compared to LazyGraphRAG. This raised the question of how LazyGraphRAG would perform against Vector RAG with 1-million token context window containing most of the dataset.
Figure 4 shows the follow-up experiment comparing LazyGraphRAG to Vector RAG using GPT-4.1 that enabled this comparison. Even against the 1M-token window, LazyGraphRAG achieved higher win rates across all comparisons, failing to reach significance only for the relevance of answers to DataLocal queries. These queries tend to benefit most from Vector RAG’s ranking of directly relevant chunks, making it hard for LazyGraphRAG to generate answers that have greater relevance to the query, even though these answers may be dramatically more comprehensive, diverse, and empowering overall.
Figure 4. Win rates of LazyGraphRAG  over Vector RAG across different context window sizes, broken down by the four AutoQ query classes and four AutoE metrics: comprehensiveness, diversity, empowerment, and relevance. Bars above 50% indicate that LazyGraphRAG outperformed the comparison condition.
AutoD: Automated data sampling and summarization
Text datasets have an underlying topical structure, but the depth, breadth, and connectivity of that structure can vary widely. This variability makes it difficult to evaluate RAG systems consistently, as results may reflect the idiosyncrasies of the dataset rather than the system’s general capabilities.
The AutoD component addresses this by sampling datasets to meet a target specification, defined by the number of topic clustersand the number of samples per cluster. This creates consistency across datasets, enabling more meaningful comparisons, as structurally aligned datasets lead to comparable AutoQ queries, which in turn support consistent AutoE evaluations.
AutoD also includes tools for summarizing input or output datasets in a way that reflects their topical coverage. These summaries play an important role in the AutoQ query synthesis process, but they can also be used more broadly, such as in prompts where context space is limited.
Since the release of the GraphRAG paper, we’ve received many requests to share the dataset of the Behind the Tech podcast transcripts we used in our evaluation. An updated version of this dataset is now available in the BenchmarkQED repository, alongside the AP News dataset containing 1,397 health-related articles, licensed for open release.
We hope these datasets, together with the BenchmarkQED tools, help accelerate benchmark-driven development of RAG systems and AI question-answering. We invite the community to try them on GitHub.
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#benchmarkqedautomatedbenchmarking #ofrag #systems

BenchmarkQED: Automated benchmarking of RAG systems
One of the key use cases for generative AI involves answering questions over private datasets, with retrieval-augmented generation as the go-to framework. As new RAG techniques emerge, there’s a growing need to benchmark their performance across diverse datasets and metrics. To meet this need, we’re introducing BenchmarkQED, a new suite of tools that automates RAG benchmarking at scale, available on GitHub. It includes components for query generation, evaluation, and dataset preparation, each designed to support rigorous, reproducible testing.   BenchmarkQED complements the RAG methods in our open-source GraphRAG library, enabling users to run a GraphRAG-style evaluation across models, metrics, and datasets. GraphRAG uses a large language model to generate and summarize entity-based knowledge graphs, producing more comprehensive and diverse answers than standard RAG for large-scale tasks. In this post, we walk through the core components of BenchmarkQED that contribute to the overall benchmarking process. We also share some of the latest benchmark results comparing our LazyGraphRAG system to competing methods, including a vector-based RAG with a 1M-token context window, where the leading LazyGraphRAG configuration showed significant win rates across all combinations of quality metrics and query classes. In the paper, we distinguish between local queries, where answers are found in a small number of text regions, and sometimes even a single region, and global queries, which require reasoning over large portions of or even the entire dataset. Conventional vector-based RAG excels at local queries because the regions containing the answer to the query resemble the query itself and can be retrieved as the nearest neighbor in the vector space of text embeddings. However, it struggles with global questions, such as, “What are the main themes of the dataset?” which require understanding dataset qualities not explicitly stated in the text.   AutoQ: Automated query synthesis This limitation motivated the development of GraphRAG a system designed to answer global queries. GraphRAG’s evaluation requirements subsequently led to the creation of AutoQ, a method for synthesizing these global queries for any dataset. AutoQ extends this approach by generating synthetic queries across the spectrum of queries, from local to global. It defines four distinct classes based on the source and scope of the queryforming a logical progression along the spectrum. Figure 1. Construction of a 2×2 design space for synthetic query generation with AutoQ, showing how the four resulting query classes map onto the local-global query spectrum. AutoQ can be configured to generate any number and distribution of synthetic queries along these classes, enabling consistent benchmarking across datasets without requiring user customization. Figure 2 shows the synthesis process and sample queries from each class, using an AP News dataset. Figure 2. Synthesis process and example query for each of the four AutoQ query classes. About Microsoft Research Advancing science and technology to benefit humanity View our story Opens in a new tab AutoE: Automated evaluation framework Our evaluation of GraphRAG focused on analyzing key qualities of answers to global questions. The following qualities were used for the current evaluation: Comprehensiveness: Does the answer address all relevant aspects of the question? Diversity: Does it present varied perspectives or insights? Empowerment: Does it help the reader understand and make informed judgments? Relevance: Does it address what the question is specifically asking?   The AutoE component scales evaluation of these qualities using the LLM-as-a-Judge method. It presents pairs of answers to an LLM, along with the query and target metric, in counterbalanced order. The model determines whether the first answer wins, loses, or ties with the second. Over a set of queries, whether from AutoQ or elsewhere, this produces win rates between competing methods. When ground truth is available, AutoE can also score answers on correctness, completeness, and related metrics. An illustrative evaluation is shown in Figure 3. Using a dataset of 1,397 AP News articles on health and healthcare, AutoQ generated 50 queries per class . AutoE then compared LazyGraphRAG to a competing RAG method, running six trials per query across four metrics, using GPT-4.1 as a judge. These trial-level results were aggregated using metric-based win rates, where each trial is scored 1 for a win, 0.5 for a tie, and 0 for a loss, and then averaged to calculate the overall win rate for each RAG method. Figure 3. Win rates of four LazyGraphRAG configurations across methods, broken down by the AutoQ query class and averaged across AutoE’s four metrics: comprehensiveness, diversity, empowerment, and relevance. LazyGraphRAG outperforms comparison conditions where the bar is above 50%. The four LazyGraphRAG conditionsdiffer by query budgetand chunk size. All used GPT-4o mini for relevance tests and GPT-4o for query expansionand answer generation, except for LGR_b200_c200_mini, which used GPT-4o mini throughout. Comparison systems were GraphRAG , Vector RAG with 8k- and 120k-token windows, and three published methods: LightRAG, RAPTOR, and TREX. All methods were limited to the same 8k tokens for answer generation. GraphRAG Global Search used level 2 of the community hierarchy. LazyGraphRAG outperformed every comparison condition using the same generative model, winning all 96 comparisons, with all but one reaching statistical significance. The best overall performance came from the larger budget, smaller chunk size configuration. For DataLocal queries, the smaller budgetperformed slightly better, likely because fewer chunks were relevant. For ActivityLocal queries, the larger chunk sizehad a slight edge, likely because longer chunks provide a more coherent context. Competing methods performed relatively better on the query classes for which they were designed: GraphRAG Global for global queries, Vector RAG for local queries, and GraphRAG Drift Search, which combines both strategies, posed the strongest challenge overall. Increasing Vector RAG’s context window from 8k to 120k tokens did not improve its performance compared to LazyGraphRAG. This raised the question of how LazyGraphRAG would perform against Vector RAG with 1-million token context window containing most of the dataset. Figure 4 shows the follow-up experiment comparing LazyGraphRAG to Vector RAG using GPT-4.1 that enabled this comparison. Even against the 1M-token window, LazyGraphRAG achieved higher win rates across all comparisons, failing to reach significance only for the relevance of answers to DataLocal queries. These queries tend to benefit most from Vector RAG’s ranking of directly relevant chunks, making it hard for LazyGraphRAG to generate answers that have greater relevance to the query, even though these answers may be dramatically more comprehensive, diverse, and empowering overall. Figure 4. Win rates of LazyGraphRAG  over Vector RAG across different context window sizes, broken down by the four AutoQ query classes and four AutoE metrics: comprehensiveness, diversity, empowerment, and relevance. Bars above 50% indicate that LazyGraphRAG outperformed the comparison condition. AutoD: Automated data sampling and summarization Text datasets have an underlying topical structure, but the depth, breadth, and connectivity of that structure can vary widely. This variability makes it difficult to evaluate RAG systems consistently, as results may reflect the idiosyncrasies of the dataset rather than the system’s general capabilities. The AutoD component addresses this by sampling datasets to meet a target specification, defined by the number of topic clustersand the number of samples per cluster. This creates consistency across datasets, enabling more meaningful comparisons, as structurally aligned datasets lead to comparable AutoQ queries, which in turn support consistent AutoE evaluations. AutoD also includes tools for summarizing input or output datasets in a way that reflects their topical coverage. These summaries play an important role in the AutoQ query synthesis process, but they can also be used more broadly, such as in prompts where context space is limited. Since the release of the GraphRAG paper, we’ve received many requests to share the dataset of the Behind the Tech podcast transcripts we used in our evaluation. An updated version of this dataset is now available in the BenchmarkQED repository, alongside the AP News dataset containing 1,397 health-related articles, licensed for open release.   We hope these datasets, together with the BenchmarkQED tools, help accelerate benchmark-driven development of RAG systems and AI question-answering. We invite the community to try them on GitHub. Opens in a new tab #benchmarkqedautomatedbenchmarking #ofrag #systems

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BenchmarkQED: Automated benchmarking of RAG systems

One of the key use cases for generative AI involves answering questions over private datasets, with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) as the go-to framework. As new RAG techniques emerge, there’s a growing need to benchmark their performance across diverse datasets and metrics. To meet this need, we’re introducing BenchmarkQED, a new suite of tools that automates RAG benchmarking at scale, available on GitHub (opens in new tab). It includes components for query generation, evaluation, and dataset preparation, each designed to support rigorous, reproducible testing.   BenchmarkQED complements the RAG methods in our open-source GraphRAG library, enabling users to run a GraphRAG-style evaluation across models, metrics, and datasets. GraphRAG uses a large language model (LLM) to generate and summarize entity-based knowledge graphs, producing more comprehensive and diverse answers than standard RAG for large-scale tasks. In this post, we walk through the core components of BenchmarkQED that contribute to the overall benchmarking process. We also share some of the latest benchmark results comparing our LazyGraphRAG system to competing methods, including a vector-based RAG with a 1M-token context window, where the leading LazyGraphRAG configuration showed significant win rates across all combinations of quality metrics and query classes. In the paper, we distinguish between local queries, where answers are found in a small number of text regions, and sometimes even a single region, and global queries, which require reasoning over large portions of or even the entire dataset. Conventional vector-based RAG excels at local queries because the regions containing the answer to the query resemble the query itself and can be retrieved as the nearest neighbor in the vector space of text embeddings. However, it struggles with global questions, such as, “What are the main themes of the dataset?” which require understanding dataset qualities not explicitly stated in the text.   AutoQ: Automated query synthesis This limitation motivated the development of GraphRAG a system designed to answer global queries. GraphRAG’s evaluation requirements subsequently led to the creation of AutoQ, a method for synthesizing these global queries for any dataset. AutoQ extends this approach by generating synthetic queries across the spectrum of queries, from local to global. It defines four distinct classes based on the source and scope of the query (Figure 1, top) forming a logical progression along the spectrum (Figure 1, bottom). Figure 1. Construction of a 2×2 design space for synthetic query generation with AutoQ, showing how the four resulting query classes map onto the local-global query spectrum. AutoQ can be configured to generate any number and distribution of synthetic queries along these classes, enabling consistent benchmarking across datasets without requiring user customization. Figure 2 shows the synthesis process and sample queries from each class, using an AP News dataset. Figure 2. Synthesis process and example query for each of the four AutoQ query classes. About Microsoft Research Advancing science and technology to benefit humanity View our story Opens in a new tab AutoE: Automated evaluation framework Our evaluation of GraphRAG focused on analyzing key qualities of answers to global questions. The following qualities were used for the current evaluation: Comprehensiveness: Does the answer address all relevant aspects of the question? Diversity: Does it present varied perspectives or insights? Empowerment: Does it help the reader understand and make informed judgments? Relevance: Does it address what the question is specifically asking?   The AutoE component scales evaluation of these qualities using the LLM-as-a-Judge method. It presents pairs of answers to an LLM, along with the query and target metric, in counterbalanced order. The model determines whether the first answer wins, loses, or ties with the second. Over a set of queries, whether from AutoQ or elsewhere, this produces win rates between competing methods. When ground truth is available, AutoE can also score answers on correctness, completeness, and related metrics. An illustrative evaluation is shown in Figure 3. Using a dataset of 1,397 AP News articles on health and healthcare, AutoQ generated 50 queries per class (200 total). AutoE then compared LazyGraphRAG to a competing RAG method, running six trials per query across four metrics, using GPT-4.1 as a judge. These trial-level results were aggregated using metric-based win rates, where each trial is scored 1 for a win, 0.5 for a tie, and 0 for a loss, and then averaged to calculate the overall win rate for each RAG method. Figure 3. Win rates of four LazyGraphRAG (LGR) configurations across methods, broken down by the AutoQ query class and averaged across AutoE’s four metrics: comprehensiveness, diversity, empowerment, and relevance. LazyGraphRAG outperforms comparison conditions where the bar is above 50%. The four LazyGraphRAG conditions (LGR_b200_c200, LGR_b50_c200, LGR_b50_c600, LGR_b200_c200_mini) differ by query budget (b50, b200) and chunk size (c200, c600). All used GPT-4o mini for relevance tests and GPT-4o for query expansion (to five subqueries) and answer generation, except for LGR_b200_c200_mini, which used GPT-4o mini throughout. Comparison systems were GraphRAG (Local, Global, and Drift Search), Vector RAG with 8k- and 120k-token windows, and three published methods: LightRAG (opens in new tab), RAPTOR (opens in new tab), and TREX (opens in new tab). All methods were limited to the same 8k tokens for answer generation. GraphRAG Global Search used level 2 of the community hierarchy. LazyGraphRAG outperformed every comparison condition using the same generative model (GPT-4o), winning all 96 comparisons, with all but one reaching statistical significance. The best overall performance came from the larger budget, smaller chunk size configuration (LGR_b200_c200). For DataLocal queries, the smaller budget (LGR_b50_c200) performed slightly better, likely because fewer chunks were relevant. For ActivityLocal queries, the larger chunk size (LGR_b50_c600) had a slight edge, likely because longer chunks provide a more coherent context. Competing methods performed relatively better on the query classes for which they were designed: GraphRAG Global for global queries, Vector RAG for local queries, and GraphRAG Drift Search, which combines both strategies, posed the strongest challenge overall. Increasing Vector RAG’s context window from 8k to 120k tokens did not improve its performance compared to LazyGraphRAG. This raised the question of how LazyGraphRAG would perform against Vector RAG with 1-million token context window containing most of the dataset. Figure 4 shows the follow-up experiment comparing LazyGraphRAG to Vector RAG using GPT-4.1 that enabled this comparison. Even against the 1M-token window, LazyGraphRAG achieved higher win rates across all comparisons, failing to reach significance only for the relevance of answers to DataLocal queries. These queries tend to benefit most from Vector RAG’s ranking of directly relevant chunks, making it hard for LazyGraphRAG to generate answers that have greater relevance to the query, even though these answers may be dramatically more comprehensive, diverse, and empowering overall. Figure 4. Win rates of LazyGraphRAG (LGR) over Vector RAG across different context window sizes, broken down by the four AutoQ query classes and four AutoE metrics: comprehensiveness, diversity, empowerment, and relevance. Bars above 50% indicate that LazyGraphRAG outperformed the comparison condition. AutoD: Automated data sampling and summarization Text datasets have an underlying topical structure, but the depth, breadth, and connectivity of that structure can vary widely. This variability makes it difficult to evaluate RAG systems consistently, as results may reflect the idiosyncrasies of the dataset rather than the system’s general capabilities. The AutoD component addresses this by sampling datasets to meet a target specification, defined by the number of topic clusters (breadth) and the number of samples per cluster (depth). This creates consistency across datasets, enabling more meaningful comparisons, as structurally aligned datasets lead to comparable AutoQ queries, which in turn support consistent AutoE evaluations. AutoD also includes tools for summarizing input or output datasets in a way that reflects their topical coverage. These summaries play an important role in the AutoQ query synthesis process, but they can also be used more broadly, such as in prompts where context space is limited. Since the release of the GraphRAG paper, we’ve received many requests to share the dataset of the Behind the Tech (opens in new tab) podcast transcripts we used in our evaluation. An updated version of this dataset is now available in the BenchmarkQED repository (opens in new tab), alongside the AP News dataset containing 1,397 health-related articles, licensed for open release.   We hope these datasets, together with the BenchmarkQED tools (opens in new tab), help accelerate benchmark-driven development of RAG systems and AI question-answering. We invite the community to try them on GitHub (opens in new tab). Opens in a new tab

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Visual Effects Society RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-06-05 08:04:51 ·

VFX EMMY CONTENDERS: SETTING THE BENCHMARK FOR VISUAL EFFECTS ON TV

By JENNIFER CHAMPAGNE

House of the Dragon expands its dragon-filled world in its second season, offering more large-scale battles and heightened aerial warfare.The 2025 Emmy race for outstanding visual effects is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in years with major genre heavyweights breaking new ground on what’s possible on television. As prestige fantasy and sci-fi continue to dominate, the battle for the category will likely come down to sheer scale, technical innovation and how seamlessly effects are integrated into storytelling. Returning titans like House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have proven their ability to deliver breathtaking visuals. At the same time, Dune: Prophecy enters the conversation as a visually stunning newcomer. The Boys remains the category’s wildcard, bringing its own brand of hyper-realistic, shock-value effects to the race. With its subtle yet immersive world-building, The Penguin stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. Each series offers a distinct approach to digital effects, making for an intriguing showdown between blockbuster-scale world-building and more nuanced, atmospheric craftsmanship.

Sharing the arena with marquee pacesetters HBO’s The Last of Us, Disney+’s Andor and Netflix’s Squid Game, these series lead the charge in ensuring that the 2025 Emmy race isn’t just about visual spectacle; it’s about which shows will set the next benchmark for visual effects on television. The following insights and highlights from VFX supervisors of likely Emmy contenders illustrate why their award-worthy shows have caught the attention of TV watchers and VFX Emmy voters.

The Penguin, with its subtle yet immersive world-building, stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. For The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power VFX Supervisor Jason Smith, the second season presented some of the Amazon series’ most ambitious visual effects challenges. From the epic Battle of Eregion to the painstaking design of the Entwives, Smith and his team at Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision. “The Battle of Eregion was amazing to work on – and challenging too, because it’s a pivotal moment in Tolkien’s story,” Smith states. Unlike typical large-scale clashes, this battle begins as a siege culminating in an explosive cavalry charge. “We looked for every way we could to heighten the action during the siege by keeping the armies interacting, even at a distance,” Smith explains. His team introduced projectiles and siege weaponry to create dynamic action, ensuring the prolonged standoff felt kinetic. The environment work for Eregion posed another challenge. The city was initially constructed as a massive digital asset in Season 1, showcasing the collaborative brilliance of the Elves and Dwarves. In Season 2, that grandeur had to be systematically razed to the ground. “The progression of destruction had to be planned extremely carefully,” Smith notes. His team devised seven distinct levels of damage, mapping out in granular detail which areas would be smoldering, reduced to rubble or utterly consumed by fire. “Our goal was to have the audience feel the loss that the Elves feel as this beautiful symbol of the height of Elvendom is utterly razed.”

The SSVFX team helped shape a world for Lady in the Lake that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise.One of most ambitious effects for Season 4 of The Boys was Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself. The sequence required eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming, for one shot. The final effect was a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement.The Penguin, HBO Max’s spinoff series of The Batman, centers on Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb’s ruthless rise to power, and relies on meticulous environmental effects, smoothly integrating CG elements to enhance Gotham’s noir aesthetic without ever calling attention to the work itself. “The most rewarding part of our work was crafting VFX that don’t feel like VFX,” says VFX Supervisor Johnny Han. Across the series’ 3,100 VFX shots, every collapsing freeway, skyline extension and flicker of light from a muzzle flash had to feel utterly real – woven so naturally into the world of Gotham that viewers never stopped to question its authenticity.

Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce in Dune: Prophecy. The production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation, but its full grandeur came to life in post by extending this environment with CG.The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power refined its environments, which elevate Middle-earth’s realism.Some of the series’ most striking visual moments were also its most understated. The shift of Gotham’s seasons – transforming sunlit summer shoots into autumn’s muted chill – helped shape the show’s somber tone, reinforcing the bleak, crime-ridden undercurrent. The city’s bridges and skyscrapers were meticulously augmented, stretching Gotham beyond the limits of practical sets while preserving its grounded, brutalist aesthetic. Even the scars and wounds on Sofia Falcone were enhanced through digital artistry, ensuring that her past traumas remained ever-present, etched into her skin.

The series wasn’t without its large-scale effects – far from it. Han and his team orchestrated massive sequences of urban devastation. “The floodwaters were one of our biggest challenges,” Han notes, referring to the ongoing impact of the catastrophic deluge that left Gotham in ruins. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets – not as an action set piece, but as a deeply personal moment of loss. “Telling Victor’s story of how he lost his entire family in the bombing and floods of Gotham was heartbreaking,” Han says. “Normally, you create an event like that for excitement, for tension. But for us, it was about capturing emotional devastation.”

Perhaps the most technically intricate sequences were the shootouts, hallmarks of Gotham’s criminal underbelly. “We programmed millisecond-accurate synced flash guns to mimic dramatic gunfire light,” Han explains, ensuring that the interplay of practical and digital elements remained imperceptible. Every muzzle flash, every ricochet was meticulously planned and rendered. The ultimate achievement for Han and his team wasn’t crafting the biggest explosion or the most elaborate digital sequence – it was making Gotham itself feel inescapably real. He says, “Nothing was more important to us than for you to forget that there are 3,100 VFX shots in this series.”

The challenge for The Residence was making one of the most recognizable buildings in the world feel both immersive and narratively engaging.Bringing the universe of Dune to life on TV for HBO’s Dune: Prophecy requires a delicate balance of realism and imagination, grounded in natural physics, yet awe-inspiring in scale. Dune: Prophecy looks to challenge traditional fantasy dominance with its stunning, desert-bound landscapes and intricate space-faring visuals, uniting the grandeur of Denis Villeneuve’s films with the demands of episodic storytelling. Set thousands of years before the events of the films, the series explores the early days of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive order wielding extraordinary abilities. Translating that power into a visual language required technical innovation. “Kudos to Important Looking Pirates for the space folding andAgony work,” says VFX Supervisor Mike Enriquez. No Dune project would be complete without its most iconic inhabitant, the sandworm. VFX Producer Terron Pratt says. “We’re incredibly proud of what the team at Image Engine created. Precise animation conveyed this creature’s weight and massive scale, while incredibly detailed sand simulations integrated it into the environment.” Every grain of sand had to move believably in response to the worm’s colossal presence to ensure the physics of Arrakis remained authentic.

Floodwaters play a significant part in the destruction of Gotham in The Penguin. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets.American Primeval integrated visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways. The massacre sequence showcases technical mastery and pulls the audience into the brutal reality of the American frontier.For the Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce, the Dune: Prophecy production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation. However, its full grandeur came to life in post. “By extending this environment with CG, we amplified the scope of our world, making it feel expansive and deeply impactful,” Pratt explains. The result was a sprawling, futuristic cityscape that retained a tangible weight with impeccably amalgamated practical and digital elements.

Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building for Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision.Visual effects extended beyond character work for Lady in the Lake, playing a key role in the show’s immersive world-building.For House of the Dragon VFX Supervisor Daði Einarsson, Season 2 presented some of the HBO show’s most complex and ambitious visual effects work. The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 was a milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle. “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege,” Einarsson says. Capturing the actors’ performances mid-flight required a combination of motion-controlled cameras, preprogrammed motion bases with saddles and LED volume lighting – all mapped directly from fully animated previsualized sequences approved by director Alan Taylor and Showrunner Ryan J. Condal. On the ground, the battlefield required digital crowd replication, extensive environment extensions, and pyrotechnic enhancements to create a war zone that felt both vast and intimately chaotic. “In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work,” Einarsson explains. Under the supervision of Sven Martin, the Pixomondo team stitched together breathtaking aerial combat, ensuring the dragons moved with the weight and raw power befitting their legendary status.

Blood, weapon effects and period-accurate muzzle flashes heightened the intensity of the brutal fight sequences in American Primeval. The natural elements and violence reflected the harsh realities of the American west in 1857.The Residence brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through the White House in this political murder mystery.Episode 7 introduced Hugh Hammer’s claim of Vermithor, Westeros’ second-largest dragon. Rather than breaking the sequence into multiple shots, Einarsson and director Loni Peristere saw an opportunity to craft something exceptional: a single, uninterrupted long take reminiscent of Children of Men and Gravity. “It took a lot of planning to design a series of beats that cohesively flowed from one into the next, with Hugh leading the camera by action and reaction,” Einarsson says. The sequence, which involved Hugh dodging Vermithor’s flames and ultimately claiming the beast through sheer bravery, was technically demanding. To achieve this, the team stitched together five separate takes of Hugh’s performance, shot over two separate days weeks apart, due to the set needing to be struck and rebuilt in different configurations. VFX Supervisor Wayne Stables and the team at Wētā ensured the transitions were imperceptible, uniting practical and digital elements into a continuous, immersive moment. “The Dragonmont Cavern environment was a beautiful, raised gantry and cave designed byJim Clay and expanded by Wētā,” Einarsson says. Then Rowley Imran’s stunt team and Mike Dawson’s SFX team engulfed the set in practical flames so every element, from fire to dust to movement, contributed to the illusion of real-time danger.

For Einarsson, the most significant challenge wasn’t just in making these sequences visually spectacular – it was ensuring they belonged within the same world as the quiet, dialogue-driven moments in King’s Landing. “The aim is for incredibly complex and spectacular visual effects scenes to feel like they belong in the same world as two people talking in a council chamber,” he states. Every dragon, flame and gust of wind had to feel as lived-in as the politics playing out beneath them.

Season 4 of The Boys delivered the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. A challenge was crafting a believable yet expressive sea creature and keeping it grounded while still embracing the show’s signature absurdity.In The Penguin, Gotham isn’t just a city; it’s a living, breathing entity shaped by destruction, decay and the quiet menace lurking beneath its streets.The Boys continues to defy genre norms, delivering audacious, technically complex effects that lean into its hyperviolent, satirical take on superheroes. For The Boys VFX Supervisor Stephan Fleet, Season 4 delivered some of the Amazon Prime show’s most dramatic effects yet, from the self-replicating Splinter to the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself, presented a unique challenge. Fleet says, “His introduction on the podium was a complex motion control sequence. Eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming – for one shot.” Splinter’s design came with an added layer of difficulty. “We had to figure out how to make a nude male clone,” Fleet says. “Normally, you can hide doubles’ bodies in clothes – not this time!” The final effect required a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement, requiring multiple iterations to make it work. Ambrosius became one of The Boys’ most unexpected breakout characters. “It’s fun making a full-on character in the show that’s an octopus,” Fleet reveals in a nod to the show’s absurd side. “As much as possible, we aim for a grounded approach and try to attain a level of thought and detail you don’t often find on TV.”

While the battle for outstanding visual effects will likely be dominated by large-scale fantasy and sci-fi productions, several standout series are also making waves with their innovative and immersive visual storytelling. Netflix’s The Residence, led by VFX Supervisor Seth Hill, brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, enhancing the grandeur of the White House setting in this political murder mystery. “Using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through an iconic location like the White House was really fun,” Hill says. “It’s a cool and unique use of visual effects.” One of the most ambitious sequences involved what the team called the Doll House, a digital rendering of the White House with its south façade removed, exposing the interior like a cross-section of a dollhouse. Hill explains. “Going back and forth from filmed footage to full CGI – that jump from grounded realism to abstract yet still real – was quite tricky,” he says, adding, “VFX is best when it is in service of the storytelling, and The Residence presented a unique opportunity to do just that. It was a big challenge and a tough nut to crack, but those creative and technical hurdles are a good part of what makes it so rewarding.”

“We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege. In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work.”—Daði Einarsson, VFX Supervisor, House of the Dragon

The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 of House of the Dragon Season 2 was a major milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle.Season 2 of House of the Dragon presented some of the most complex and ambitious visual effects work for the show to date.For Jay Worth, VFX Supervisor on Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake, the challenge was two-fold: create seamless effects and preserve the raw emotional truth of a performance. One of the most significant technical achievements was de-aging Natalie Portman. “It seems so easy on paper, but the reality was far more challenging,” Worth admits. Worth had tackled de-aging before, but never with the same level of success. “For me, it is simply because of her performance.” Portman delivered a nuanced, youthful portrayal that felt entirely authentic to the time period. “It made our job both so much easier and set the bar so high for us. Sometimes, you can hide in a scene like this – you pull the camera back, cut away before the most expressive parts of the dialogue, or the illusion breaks,” Worth explains. In Lady in the Lake, there was nowhere to hide. “I think that is what I am most proud of with these shots. It felt like the longer you stayed on them, the more you believed them. That is a real feat with this sort of work.” Skully VFX handled the de-aging. “They nailed the look early on and delivered throughout the project on this difficult task.” Working alongside Production Designer Jc Molina, the VFX team helped shape a world that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise. “We were entrusted with the most important part of this show – do we believe this performance from this character in this part of her journey? – and we feel like we were able to deliver on this challenge.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Netflix’s American Primeval, under the guidance of VFX Supervisor Andrew Ceperley, delivers rugged, visceral realism in its portrayal of the untamed American frontier. With brutal battle sequences, sprawling landscapes and historical re-creations that interweave practical and digital effects, the series stands as a testament to how VFX can enhance grounded, historical storytelling. Ceperley says, “The standout is definitely the nearly three-minute single-shot massacre sequence in the forest episode.” Designed to immerse the audience in the raw, chaotic violence of the frontier, the scene captures every brutal detail with unrelenting intensity. The challenge was crafting invisible visual effects, enhancing practical stunts and destruction without breaking the immersive, handheld camera style. “The sequence was designed to be one shot made up of 10 individual takes, shot over seven days, seamlessly stitched together, all while using a handheld camera on an extremely wide-angle lens.” One of the most complex moments involved a bull smashing through a wagon while the characters hid underneath. Rather than relying on CGI, the team took a practical approach, placing a 360-degree camera under the wagon while the special effects team rigged it to explode in a way that simulated an impact. “A real bull was then guided to run toward the 360 camera and leap over it,” Ceperley says. The footage was blended with live-action shots of the actors with minimal CGI enhancements – just dust and debris – to complete the effect. Adding to the difficulty, the scene was set at sunset, giving the team an extremely limited window to capture each day’s footage. The massacre sequence was a prime example of integrating visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways, blending old-school in-camera effects with modern stitching techniques to create a visceral cinematic moment that stayed true to the show’s raw, historical aesthetic. “Using old techniques in new, even strange ways and seeing it pay off and deliver on the original vision was the most rewarding part.”
#vfx #emmy #contenders #setting #benchmark

VFX EMMY CONTENDERS: SETTING THE BENCHMARK FOR VISUAL EFFECTS ON TV
By JENNIFER CHAMPAGNE House of the Dragon expands its dragon-filled world in its second season, offering more large-scale battles and heightened aerial warfare.The 2025 Emmy race for outstanding visual effects is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in years with major genre heavyweights breaking new ground on what’s possible on television. As prestige fantasy and sci-fi continue to dominate, the battle for the category will likely come down to sheer scale, technical innovation and how seamlessly effects are integrated into storytelling. Returning titans like House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have proven their ability to deliver breathtaking visuals. At the same time, Dune: Prophecy enters the conversation as a visually stunning newcomer. The Boys remains the category’s wildcard, bringing its own brand of hyper-realistic, shock-value effects to the race. With its subtle yet immersive world-building, The Penguin stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. Each series offers a distinct approach to digital effects, making for an intriguing showdown between blockbuster-scale world-building and more nuanced, atmospheric craftsmanship. Sharing the arena with marquee pacesetters HBO’s The Last of Us, Disney+’s Andor and Netflix’s Squid Game, these series lead the charge in ensuring that the 2025 Emmy race isn’t just about visual spectacle; it’s about which shows will set the next benchmark for visual effects on television. The following insights and highlights from VFX supervisors of likely Emmy contenders illustrate why their award-worthy shows have caught the attention of TV watchers and VFX Emmy voters. The Penguin, with its subtle yet immersive world-building, stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. For The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power VFX Supervisor Jason Smith, the second season presented some of the Amazon series’ most ambitious visual effects challenges. From the epic Battle of Eregion to the painstaking design of the Entwives, Smith and his team at Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision. “The Battle of Eregion was amazing to work on – and challenging too, because it’s a pivotal moment in Tolkien’s story,” Smith states. Unlike typical large-scale clashes, this battle begins as a siege culminating in an explosive cavalry charge. “We looked for every way we could to heighten the action during the siege by keeping the armies interacting, even at a distance,” Smith explains. His team introduced projectiles and siege weaponry to create dynamic action, ensuring the prolonged standoff felt kinetic. The environment work for Eregion posed another challenge. The city was initially constructed as a massive digital asset in Season 1, showcasing the collaborative brilliance of the Elves and Dwarves. In Season 2, that grandeur had to be systematically razed to the ground. “The progression of destruction had to be planned extremely carefully,” Smith notes. His team devised seven distinct levels of damage, mapping out in granular detail which areas would be smoldering, reduced to rubble or utterly consumed by fire. “Our goal was to have the audience feel the loss that the Elves feel as this beautiful symbol of the height of Elvendom is utterly razed.” The SSVFX team helped shape a world for Lady in the Lake that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise.One of most ambitious effects for Season 4 of The Boys was Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself. The sequence required eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming, for one shot. The final effect was a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement.The Penguin, HBO Max’s spinoff series of The Batman, centers on Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb’s ruthless rise to power, and relies on meticulous environmental effects, smoothly integrating CG elements to enhance Gotham’s noir aesthetic without ever calling attention to the work itself. “The most rewarding part of our work was crafting VFX that don’t feel like VFX,” says VFX Supervisor Johnny Han. Across the series’ 3,100 VFX shots, every collapsing freeway, skyline extension and flicker of light from a muzzle flash had to feel utterly real – woven so naturally into the world of Gotham that viewers never stopped to question its authenticity. Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce in Dune: Prophecy. The production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation, but its full grandeur came to life in post by extending this environment with CG.The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power refined its environments, which elevate Middle-earth’s realism.Some of the series’ most striking visual moments were also its most understated. The shift of Gotham’s seasons – transforming sunlit summer shoots into autumn’s muted chill – helped shape the show’s somber tone, reinforcing the bleak, crime-ridden undercurrent. The city’s bridges and skyscrapers were meticulously augmented, stretching Gotham beyond the limits of practical sets while preserving its grounded, brutalist aesthetic. Even the scars and wounds on Sofia Falcone were enhanced through digital artistry, ensuring that her past traumas remained ever-present, etched into her skin. The series wasn’t without its large-scale effects – far from it. Han and his team orchestrated massive sequences of urban devastation. “The floodwaters were one of our biggest challenges,” Han notes, referring to the ongoing impact of the catastrophic deluge that left Gotham in ruins. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets – not as an action set piece, but as a deeply personal moment of loss. “Telling Victor’s story of how he lost his entire family in the bombing and floods of Gotham was heartbreaking,” Han says. “Normally, you create an event like that for excitement, for tension. But for us, it was about capturing emotional devastation.” Perhaps the most technically intricate sequences were the shootouts, hallmarks of Gotham’s criminal underbelly. “We programmed millisecond-accurate synced flash guns to mimic dramatic gunfire light,” Han explains, ensuring that the interplay of practical and digital elements remained imperceptible. Every muzzle flash, every ricochet was meticulously planned and rendered. The ultimate achievement for Han and his team wasn’t crafting the biggest explosion or the most elaborate digital sequence – it was making Gotham itself feel inescapably real. He says, “Nothing was more important to us than for you to forget that there are 3,100 VFX shots in this series.” The challenge for The Residence was making one of the most recognizable buildings in the world feel both immersive and narratively engaging.Bringing the universe of Dune to life on TV for HBO’s Dune: Prophecy requires a delicate balance of realism and imagination, grounded in natural physics, yet awe-inspiring in scale. Dune: Prophecy looks to challenge traditional fantasy dominance with its stunning, desert-bound landscapes and intricate space-faring visuals, uniting the grandeur of Denis Villeneuve’s films with the demands of episodic storytelling. Set thousands of years before the events of the films, the series explores the early days of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive order wielding extraordinary abilities. Translating that power into a visual language required technical innovation. “Kudos to Important Looking Pirates for the space folding andAgony work,” says VFX Supervisor Mike Enriquez. No Dune project would be complete without its most iconic inhabitant, the sandworm. VFX Producer Terron Pratt says. “We’re incredibly proud of what the team at Image Engine created. Precise animation conveyed this creature’s weight and massive scale, while incredibly detailed sand simulations integrated it into the environment.” Every grain of sand had to move believably in response to the worm’s colossal presence to ensure the physics of Arrakis remained authentic. Floodwaters play a significant part in the destruction of Gotham in The Penguin. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets.American Primeval integrated visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways. The massacre sequence showcases technical mastery and pulls the audience into the brutal reality of the American frontier.For the Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce, the Dune: Prophecy production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation. However, its full grandeur came to life in post. “By extending this environment with CG, we amplified the scope of our world, making it feel expansive and deeply impactful,” Pratt explains. The result was a sprawling, futuristic cityscape that retained a tangible weight with impeccably amalgamated practical and digital elements. Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building for Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision.Visual effects extended beyond character work for Lady in the Lake, playing a key role in the show’s immersive world-building.For House of the Dragon VFX Supervisor Daði Einarsson, Season 2 presented some of the HBO show’s most complex and ambitious visual effects work. The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 was a milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle. “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege,” Einarsson says. Capturing the actors’ performances mid-flight required a combination of motion-controlled cameras, preprogrammed motion bases with saddles and LED volume lighting – all mapped directly from fully animated previsualized sequences approved by director Alan Taylor and Showrunner Ryan J. Condal. On the ground, the battlefield required digital crowd replication, extensive environment extensions, and pyrotechnic enhancements to create a war zone that felt both vast and intimately chaotic. “In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work,” Einarsson explains. Under the supervision of Sven Martin, the Pixomondo team stitched together breathtaking aerial combat, ensuring the dragons moved with the weight and raw power befitting their legendary status. Blood, weapon effects and period-accurate muzzle flashes heightened the intensity of the brutal fight sequences in American Primeval. The natural elements and violence reflected the harsh realities of the American west in 1857.The Residence brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through the White House in this political murder mystery.Episode 7 introduced Hugh Hammer’s claim of Vermithor, Westeros’ second-largest dragon. Rather than breaking the sequence into multiple shots, Einarsson and director Loni Peristere saw an opportunity to craft something exceptional: a single, uninterrupted long take reminiscent of Children of Men and Gravity. “It took a lot of planning to design a series of beats that cohesively flowed from one into the next, with Hugh leading the camera by action and reaction,” Einarsson says. The sequence, which involved Hugh dodging Vermithor’s flames and ultimately claiming the beast through sheer bravery, was technically demanding. To achieve this, the team stitched together five separate takes of Hugh’s performance, shot over two separate days weeks apart, due to the set needing to be struck and rebuilt in different configurations. VFX Supervisor Wayne Stables and the team at Wētā ensured the transitions were imperceptible, uniting practical and digital elements into a continuous, immersive moment. “The Dragonmont Cavern environment was a beautiful, raised gantry and cave designed byJim Clay and expanded by Wētā,” Einarsson says. Then Rowley Imran’s stunt team and Mike Dawson’s SFX team engulfed the set in practical flames so every element, from fire to dust to movement, contributed to the illusion of real-time danger. For Einarsson, the most significant challenge wasn’t just in making these sequences visually spectacular – it was ensuring they belonged within the same world as the quiet, dialogue-driven moments in King’s Landing. “The aim is for incredibly complex and spectacular visual effects scenes to feel like they belong in the same world as two people talking in a council chamber,” he states. Every dragon, flame and gust of wind had to feel as lived-in as the politics playing out beneath them. Season 4 of The Boys delivered the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. A challenge was crafting a believable yet expressive sea creature and keeping it grounded while still embracing the show’s signature absurdity.In The Penguin, Gotham isn’t just a city; it’s a living, breathing entity shaped by destruction, decay and the quiet menace lurking beneath its streets.The Boys continues to defy genre norms, delivering audacious, technically complex effects that lean into its hyperviolent, satirical take on superheroes. For The Boys VFX Supervisor Stephan Fleet, Season 4 delivered some of the Amazon Prime show’s most dramatic effects yet, from the self-replicating Splinter to the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself, presented a unique challenge. Fleet says, “His introduction on the podium was a complex motion control sequence. Eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming – for one shot.” Splinter’s design came with an added layer of difficulty. “We had to figure out how to make a nude male clone,” Fleet says. “Normally, you can hide doubles’ bodies in clothes – not this time!” The final effect required a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement, requiring multiple iterations to make it work. Ambrosius became one of The Boys’ most unexpected breakout characters. “It’s fun making a full-on character in the show that’s an octopus,” Fleet reveals in a nod to the show’s absurd side. “As much as possible, we aim for a grounded approach and try to attain a level of thought and detail you don’t often find on TV.” While the battle for outstanding visual effects will likely be dominated by large-scale fantasy and sci-fi productions, several standout series are also making waves with their innovative and immersive visual storytelling. Netflix’s The Residence, led by VFX Supervisor Seth Hill, brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, enhancing the grandeur of the White House setting in this political murder mystery. “Using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through an iconic location like the White House was really fun,” Hill says. “It’s a cool and unique use of visual effects.” One of the most ambitious sequences involved what the team called the Doll House, a digital rendering of the White House with its south façade removed, exposing the interior like a cross-section of a dollhouse. Hill explains. “Going back and forth from filmed footage to full CGI – that jump from grounded realism to abstract yet still real – was quite tricky,” he says, adding, “VFX is best when it is in service of the storytelling, and The Residence presented a unique opportunity to do just that. It was a big challenge and a tough nut to crack, but those creative and technical hurdles are a good part of what makes it so rewarding.” “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege. In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work.”—Daði Einarsson, VFX Supervisor, House of the Dragon The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 of House of the Dragon Season 2 was a major milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle.Season 2 of House of the Dragon presented some of the most complex and ambitious visual effects work for the show to date.For Jay Worth, VFX Supervisor on Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake, the challenge was two-fold: create seamless effects and preserve the raw emotional truth of a performance. One of the most significant technical achievements was de-aging Natalie Portman. “It seems so easy on paper, but the reality was far more challenging,” Worth admits. Worth had tackled de-aging before, but never with the same level of success. “For me, it is simply because of her performance.” Portman delivered a nuanced, youthful portrayal that felt entirely authentic to the time period. “It made our job both so much easier and set the bar so high for us. Sometimes, you can hide in a scene like this – you pull the camera back, cut away before the most expressive parts of the dialogue, or the illusion breaks,” Worth explains. In Lady in the Lake, there was nowhere to hide. “I think that is what I am most proud of with these shots. It felt like the longer you stayed on them, the more you believed them. That is a real feat with this sort of work.” Skully VFX handled the de-aging. “They nailed the look early on and delivered throughout the project on this difficult task.” Working alongside Production Designer Jc Molina, the VFX team helped shape a world that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise. “We were entrusted with the most important part of this show – do we believe this performance from this character in this part of her journey? – and we feel like we were able to deliver on this challenge.” On the other end of the spectrum, Netflix’s American Primeval, under the guidance of VFX Supervisor Andrew Ceperley, delivers rugged, visceral realism in its portrayal of the untamed American frontier. With brutal battle sequences, sprawling landscapes and historical re-creations that interweave practical and digital effects, the series stands as a testament to how VFX can enhance grounded, historical storytelling. Ceperley says, “The standout is definitely the nearly three-minute single-shot massacre sequence in the forest episode.” Designed to immerse the audience in the raw, chaotic violence of the frontier, the scene captures every brutal detail with unrelenting intensity. The challenge was crafting invisible visual effects, enhancing practical stunts and destruction without breaking the immersive, handheld camera style. “The sequence was designed to be one shot made up of 10 individual takes, shot over seven days, seamlessly stitched together, all while using a handheld camera on an extremely wide-angle lens.” One of the most complex moments involved a bull smashing through a wagon while the characters hid underneath. Rather than relying on CGI, the team took a practical approach, placing a 360-degree camera under the wagon while the special effects team rigged it to explode in a way that simulated an impact. “A real bull was then guided to run toward the 360 camera and leap over it,” Ceperley says. The footage was blended with live-action shots of the actors with minimal CGI enhancements – just dust and debris – to complete the effect. Adding to the difficulty, the scene was set at sunset, giving the team an extremely limited window to capture each day’s footage. The massacre sequence was a prime example of integrating visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways, blending old-school in-camera effects with modern stitching techniques to create a visceral cinematic moment that stayed true to the show’s raw, historical aesthetic. “Using old techniques in new, even strange ways and seeing it pay off and deliver on the original vision was the most rewarding part.” #vfx #emmy #contenders #setting #benchmark

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VFX EMMY CONTENDERS: SETTING THE BENCHMARK FOR VISUAL EFFECTS ON TV

By JENNIFER CHAMPAGNE House of the Dragon expands its dragon-filled world in its second season, offering more large-scale battles and heightened aerial warfare. (Image courtesy of HBO) The 2025 Emmy race for outstanding visual effects is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in years with major genre heavyweights breaking new ground on what’s possible on television. As prestige fantasy and sci-fi continue to dominate, the battle for the category will likely come down to sheer scale, technical innovation and how seamlessly effects are integrated into storytelling. Returning titans like House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have proven their ability to deliver breathtaking visuals. At the same time, Dune: Prophecy enters the conversation as a visually stunning newcomer. The Boys remains the category’s wildcard, bringing its own brand of hyper-realistic, shock-value effects to the race. With its subtle yet immersive world-building, The Penguin stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. Each series offers a distinct approach to digital effects, making for an intriguing showdown between blockbuster-scale world-building and more nuanced, atmospheric craftsmanship. Sharing the arena with marquee pacesetters HBO’s The Last of Us, Disney+’s Andor and Netflix’s Squid Game, these series lead the charge in ensuring that the 2025 Emmy race isn’t just about visual spectacle; it’s about which shows will set the next benchmark for visual effects on television. The following insights and highlights from VFX supervisors of likely Emmy contenders illustrate why their award-worthy shows have caught the attention of TV watchers and VFX Emmy voters. The Penguin, with its subtle yet immersive world-building, stands apart from the spectacle-driven contenders, using “invisible” VFX to transform Gotham into a post-flooded, decaying metropolis. (Image courtesy of HBO) For The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power VFX Supervisor Jason Smith, the second season presented some of the Amazon series’ most ambitious visual effects challenges. From the epic Battle of Eregion to the painstaking design of the Entwives, Smith and his team at Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision. “The Battle of Eregion was amazing to work on – and challenging too, because it’s a pivotal moment in Tolkien’s story,” Smith states. Unlike typical large-scale clashes, this battle begins as a siege culminating in an explosive cavalry charge. “We looked for every way we could to heighten the action during the siege by keeping the armies interacting, even at a distance,” Smith explains. His team introduced projectiles and siege weaponry to create dynamic action, ensuring the prolonged standoff felt kinetic. The environment work for Eregion posed another challenge. The city was initially constructed as a massive digital asset in Season 1, showcasing the collaborative brilliance of the Elves and Dwarves. In Season 2, that grandeur had to be systematically razed to the ground. “The progression of destruction had to be planned extremely carefully,” Smith notes. His team devised seven distinct levels of damage, mapping out in granular detail which areas would be smoldering, reduced to rubble or utterly consumed by fire. “Our goal was to have the audience feel the loss that the Elves feel as this beautiful symbol of the height of Elvendom is utterly razed.” The SSVFX team helped shape a world for Lady in the Lake that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise. (Image courtesy of Apple TV+) One of most ambitious effects for Season 4 of The Boys was Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself. The sequence required eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming, for one shot. The final effect was a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) The Penguin, HBO Max’s spinoff series of The Batman, centers on Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb’s ruthless rise to power, and relies on meticulous environmental effects, smoothly integrating CG elements to enhance Gotham’s noir aesthetic without ever calling attention to the work itself. “The most rewarding part of our work was crafting VFX that don’t feel like VFX,” says VFX Supervisor Johnny Han. Across the series’ 3,100 VFX shots, every collapsing freeway, skyline extension and flicker of light from a muzzle flash had to feel utterly real – woven so naturally into the world of Gotham that viewers never stopped to question its authenticity. Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce in Dune: Prophecy. The production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation, but its full grandeur came to life in post by extending this environment with CG.(Images courtesy of HBO) The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power refined its environments, which elevate Middle-earth’s realism. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) Some of the series’ most striking visual moments were also its most understated. The shift of Gotham’s seasons – transforming sunlit summer shoots into autumn’s muted chill – helped shape the show’s somber tone, reinforcing the bleak, crime-ridden undercurrent. The city’s bridges and skyscrapers were meticulously augmented, stretching Gotham beyond the limits of practical sets while preserving its grounded, brutalist aesthetic. Even the scars and wounds on Sofia Falcone were enhanced through digital artistry, ensuring that her past traumas remained ever-present, etched into her skin. The series wasn’t without its large-scale effects – far from it. Han and his team orchestrated massive sequences of urban devastation. “The floodwaters were one of our biggest challenges,” Han notes, referring to the ongoing impact of the catastrophic deluge that left Gotham in ruins. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets – not as an action set piece, but as a deeply personal moment of loss. “Telling Victor’s story of how he lost his entire family in the bombing and floods of Gotham was heartbreaking,” Han says. “Normally, you create an event like that for excitement, for tension. But for us, it was about capturing emotional devastation.” Perhaps the most technically intricate sequences were the shootouts, hallmarks of Gotham’s criminal underbelly. “We programmed millisecond-accurate synced flash guns to mimic dramatic gunfire light,” Han explains, ensuring that the interplay of practical and digital elements remained imperceptible. Every muzzle flash, every ricochet was meticulously planned and rendered. The ultimate achievement for Han and his team wasn’t crafting the biggest explosion or the most elaborate digital sequence – it was making Gotham itself feel inescapably real. He says, “Nothing was more important to us than for you to forget that there are 3,100 VFX shots in this series.” The challenge for The Residence was making one of the most recognizable buildings in the world feel both immersive and narratively engaging. (Photo: Erin Simkin. Courtesy of Netflix) Bringing the universe of Dune to life on TV for HBO’s Dune: Prophecy requires a delicate balance of realism and imagination, grounded in natural physics, yet awe-inspiring in scale. Dune: Prophecy looks to challenge traditional fantasy dominance with its stunning, desert-bound landscapes and intricate space-faring visuals, uniting the grandeur of Denis Villeneuve’s films with the demands of episodic storytelling. Set thousands of years before the events of the films, the series explores the early days of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive order wielding extraordinary abilities. Translating that power into a visual language required technical innovation. “Kudos to Important Looking Pirates for the space folding and [Lila’s] Agony work,” says VFX Supervisor Mike Enriquez. No Dune project would be complete without its most iconic inhabitant, the sandworm. VFX Producer Terron Pratt says. “We’re incredibly proud of what the team at Image Engine created. Precise animation conveyed this creature’s weight and massive scale, while incredibly detailed sand simulations integrated it into the environment.” Every grain of sand had to move believably in response to the worm’s colossal presence to ensure the physics of Arrakis remained authentic. Floodwaters play a significant part in the destruction of Gotham in The Penguin. One particularly harrowing sequence required simulating a tsunami tearing through the streets. (Image courtesy of HBO) American Primeval integrated visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways. The massacre sequence showcases technical mastery and pulls the audience into the brutal reality of the American frontier. (Photo: Justin Lubin. Courtesy of Netflix) For the Zimia spaceport, an enormous hub of interstellar commerce, the Dune: Prophecy production team built a vast practical set to provide a strong scale foundation. However, its full grandeur came to life in post. “By extending this environment with CG, we amplified the scope of our world, making it feel expansive and deeply impactful,” Pratt explains. The result was a sprawling, futuristic cityscape that retained a tangible weight with impeccably amalgamated practical and digital elements. Wētā FX sought to advance digital world-building for Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power while staying true to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) Visual effects extended beyond character work for Lady in the Lake, playing a key role in the show’s immersive world-building. (Image courtesy of Apple TV+) For House of the Dragon VFX Supervisor Daði Einarsson, Season 2 presented some of the HBO show’s most complex and ambitious visual effects work. The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 was a milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle. “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege,” Einarsson says. Capturing the actors’ performances mid-flight required a combination of motion-controlled cameras, preprogrammed motion bases with saddles and LED volume lighting – all mapped directly from fully animated previsualized sequences approved by director Alan Taylor and Showrunner Ryan J. Condal. On the ground, the battlefield required digital crowd replication, extensive environment extensions, and pyrotechnic enhancements to create a war zone that felt both vast and intimately chaotic. “In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work,” Einarsson explains. Under the supervision of Sven Martin, the Pixomondo team stitched together breathtaking aerial combat, ensuring the dragons moved with the weight and raw power befitting their legendary status. Blood, weapon effects and period-accurate muzzle flashes heightened the intensity of the brutal fight sequences in American Primeval. The natural elements and violence reflected the harsh realities of the American west in 1857. (Image courtesy of Netflix) The Residence brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through the White House in this political murder mystery. (Photo: Jessica Brooks. Courtesy of Netflix) Episode 7 introduced Hugh Hammer’s claim of Vermithor, Westeros’ second-largest dragon. Rather than breaking the sequence into multiple shots, Einarsson and director Loni Peristere saw an opportunity to craft something exceptional: a single, uninterrupted long take reminiscent of Children of Men and Gravity. “It took a lot of planning to design a series of beats that cohesively flowed from one into the next, with Hugh leading the camera by action and reaction,” Einarsson says. The sequence, which involved Hugh dodging Vermithor’s flames and ultimately claiming the beast through sheer bravery, was technically demanding. To achieve this, the team stitched together five separate takes of Hugh’s performance, shot over two separate days weeks apart, due to the set needing to be struck and rebuilt in different configurations. VFX Supervisor Wayne Stables and the team at Wētā ensured the transitions were imperceptible, uniting practical and digital elements into a continuous, immersive moment. “The Dragonmont Cavern environment was a beautiful, raised gantry and cave designed by [Production Designer] Jim Clay and expanded by Wētā,” Einarsson says. Then Rowley Imran’s stunt team and Mike Dawson’s SFX team engulfed the set in practical flames so every element, from fire to dust to movement, contributed to the illusion of real-time danger. For Einarsson, the most significant challenge wasn’t just in making these sequences visually spectacular – it was ensuring they belonged within the same world as the quiet, dialogue-driven moments in King’s Landing. “The aim is for incredibly complex and spectacular visual effects scenes to feel like they belong in the same world as two people talking in a council chamber,” he states. Every dragon, flame and gust of wind had to feel as lived-in as the politics playing out beneath them. Season 4 of The Boys delivered the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. A challenge was crafting a believable yet expressive sea creature and keeping it grounded while still embracing the show’s signature absurdity. (Image courtesy of Prime Video) In The Penguin, Gotham isn’t just a city; it’s a living, breathing entity shaped by destruction, decay and the quiet menace lurking beneath its streets. (Images courtesy of HBO) The Boys continues to defy genre norms, delivering audacious, technically complex effects that lean into its hyperviolent, satirical take on superheroes. For The Boys VFX Supervisor Stephan Fleet, Season 4 delivered some of the Amazon Prime show’s most dramatic effects yet, from the self-replicating Splinter to the fully CG octopus character, Ambrosius. Splinter, who has the ability to duplicate himself, presented a unique challenge. Fleet says, “His introduction on the podium was a complex motion control sequence. Eight hours of rehearsal, six hours of filming – for one shot.” Splinter’s design came with an added layer of difficulty. “We had to figure out how to make a nude male clone,” Fleet says. “Normally, you can hide doubles’ bodies in clothes – not this time!” The final effect required a mix of prosthetic cover-up pieces and VFX face replacement, requiring multiple iterations to make it work. Ambrosius became one of The Boys’ most unexpected breakout characters. “It’s fun making a full-on character in the show that’s an octopus,” Fleet reveals in a nod to the show’s absurd side. “As much as possible, we aim for a grounded approach and try to attain a level of thought and detail you don’t often find on TV.” While the battle for outstanding visual effects will likely be dominated by large-scale fantasy and sci-fi productions, several standout series are also making waves with their innovative and immersive visual storytelling. Netflix’s The Residence, led by VFX Supervisor Seth Hill, brings a refined, detailed approach to environmental augmentation, enhancing the grandeur of the White House setting in this political murder mystery. “Using visual effects to take the audience on a journey through an iconic location like the White House was really fun,” Hill says. “It’s a cool and unique use of visual effects.” One of the most ambitious sequences involved what the team called the Doll House, a digital rendering of the White House with its south façade removed, exposing the interior like a cross-section of a dollhouse. Hill explains. “Going back and forth from filmed footage to full CGI – that jump from grounded realism to abstract yet still real – was quite tricky,” he says, adding, “VFX is best when it is in service of the storytelling, and The Residence presented a unique opportunity to do just that. It was a big challenge and a tough nut to crack, but those creative and technical hurdles are a good part of what makes it so rewarding.” “We were tasked with pitting three dragons against each other in an all-out aerial war above a castle siege. In the air, we created a fully CG version of the environment to have full control over the camera work.”—Daði Einarsson, VFX Supervisor, House of the Dragon The Battle at Rook’s Rest in Episode 4 of House of the Dragon Season 2 was a major milestone for the series, marking the first full-scale dragon-on-dragon aerial battle. (Image courtesy of HBO) Season 2 of House of the Dragon presented some of the most complex and ambitious visual effects work for the show to date. (Photo: Theo Whiteman. Courtesy of HBO) For Jay Worth, VFX Supervisor on Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake, the challenge was two-fold: create seamless effects and preserve the raw emotional truth of a performance. One of the most significant technical achievements was de-aging Natalie Portman. “It seems so easy on paper, but the reality was far more challenging,” Worth admits. Worth had tackled de-aging before, but never with the same level of success. “For me, it is simply because of her performance.” Portman delivered a nuanced, youthful portrayal that felt entirely authentic to the time period. “It made our job both so much easier and set the bar so high for us. Sometimes, you can hide in a scene like this – you pull the camera back, cut away before the most expressive parts of the dialogue, or the illusion breaks,” Worth explains. In Lady in the Lake, there was nowhere to hide. “I think that is what I am most proud of with these shots. It felt like the longer you stayed on them, the more you believed them. That is a real feat with this sort of work.” Skully VFX handled the de-aging. “They nailed the look early on and delivered throughout the project on this difficult task.” Working alongside Production Designer Jc Molina, the VFX team helped shape a world that felt rich, lived-in and historically precise. “We were entrusted with the most important part of this show – do we believe this performance from this character in this part of her journey? – and we feel like we were able to deliver on this challenge.” On the other end of the spectrum, Netflix’s American Primeval, under the guidance of VFX Supervisor Andrew Ceperley, delivers rugged, visceral realism in its portrayal of the untamed American frontier. With brutal battle sequences, sprawling landscapes and historical re-creations that interweave practical and digital effects, the series stands as a testament to how VFX can enhance grounded, historical storytelling. Ceperley says, “The standout is definitely the nearly three-minute single-shot massacre sequence in the forest episode.” Designed to immerse the audience in the raw, chaotic violence of the frontier, the scene captures every brutal detail with unrelenting intensity. The challenge was crafting invisible visual effects, enhancing practical stunts and destruction without breaking the immersive, handheld camera style. “The sequence was designed to be one shot made up of 10 individual takes, shot over seven days, seamlessly stitched together, all while using a handheld camera on an extremely wide-angle lens.” One of the most complex moments involved a bull smashing through a wagon while the characters hid underneath. Rather than relying on CGI, the team took a practical approach, placing a 360-degree camera under the wagon while the special effects team rigged it to explode in a way that simulated an impact. “A real bull was then guided to run toward the 360 camera and leap over it,” Ceperley says. The footage was blended with live-action shots of the actors with minimal CGI enhancements – just dust and debris – to complete the effect. Adding to the difficulty, the scene was set at sunset, giving the team an extremely limited window to capture each day’s footage. The massacre sequence was a prime example of integrating visual effects with practical techniques in creative, unconventional ways, blending old-school in-camera effects with modern stitching techniques to create a visceral cinematic moment that stayed true to the show’s raw, historical aesthetic. “Using old techniques in new, even strange ways and seeing it pay off and deliver on the original vision was the most rewarding part.”

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Smashing Magazine RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-06-03 08:11:10 ·

Designing For Neurodiversity

This article is a sponsored by TetraLogical
Neurodivergent needs are often considered as an edge case that doesn’t fit into common user journeys or flows. Neurodiversity tends to get overlooked in the design process. Or it is tackled late in the process, and only if there is enough time.
But people aren’t edge cases. Every person is just a different person, performing tasks and navigating the web in a different way. So how can we design better, more inclusive experiences that cater to different needs and, ultimately, benefit everyone? Let’s take a closer look.

Neurodiversity Or Neurodivergent?
There is quite a bit of confusion about both terms on the web. Different people think and experience the world differently, and neurodiversity sees differences as natural variations, not deficits. It distinguishes between neurotypical and neurodivergent people.

Neurotypical people see the world in a “typical” and widely perceived as expected way.
Neurodivergent people experience the world differently, for example, people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, synesthesia, and hyperlexia.

According to various sources, around 15–40% of the population has neurodivergent traits. These traits can be innateor acquired. But they are always on a spectrum, and vary a lot. A person with autism is not neurodiverse — they are neurodivergent.
One of the main strengths of neurodivergent people is how imaginative and creative they are, coming up with out-of-the-box ideas quickly. With exceptional levels of attention, strong long-term memory, a unique perspective, unbeatable accuracy, and a strong sense of justice and fairness.
Being different in a world that, to some degree, still doesn’t accept these differences is exhausting. So unsurprisingly, neurodivergent people often bring along determination, resilience, and high levels of empathy.
Design With People, Not For Them
As a designer, I often see myself as a path-maker. I’m designing reliable paths for people to navigate to their goals comfortably. Without being blocked. Or confused. Or locked out.
That means respecting the simple fact that people’s needs, tasks, and user journeys are all different, and that they evolve over time. And: most importantly, it means considering them very early in the process.
Better accessibility is better for everyone. Instead of making decisions that need to be reverted or refined to be compliant, we can bring a diverse group of people — with accessibility needs, with neurodiversity, frequent and infrequent users, experts, newcomers — in the process, and design with them, rather than for them.
Neurodiversity & Inclusive Design Resources
A wonderful resource that helps us design for cognitive accessibility is Stéphanie Walter’s Neurodiversity and UX toolkit. It includes practical guidelines, tools, and resources to better understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, and ADHD.

Another fantastic resource is Will Soward’s Neurodiversity Design System. It combines neurodiversity and user experience design into a set of design standards and principles that you can use to design accessible learning interfaces.
Last but not least, I’ve been putting together a few summaries about neurodiversity and inclusive design over the last few years, so you might find them helpful, too:

ADHD
Autism
Children
Colorblindness
Deafness
Dyscalculia
Dyslexia
Legibility
Left-Handed Users
Mental Health
Motivation
Older Adults
Screen Readers
Teenagers

A huge thank-you to everyone who has been writing, speaking, and sharing articles, resources, and toolkits on designing for diversity. The topic is often forgotten and overlooked, but it has an incredible impact. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾
#designing #neurodiversity

Designing For Neurodiversity
This article is a sponsored by TetraLogical Neurodivergent needs are often considered as an edge case that doesn’t fit into common user journeys or flows. Neurodiversity tends to get overlooked in the design process. Or it is tackled late in the process, and only if there is enough time. But people aren’t edge cases. Every person is just a different person, performing tasks and navigating the web in a different way. So how can we design better, more inclusive experiences that cater to different needs and, ultimately, benefit everyone? Let’s take a closer look. Neurodiversity Or Neurodivergent? There is quite a bit of confusion about both terms on the web. Different people think and experience the world differently, and neurodiversity sees differences as natural variations, not deficits. It distinguishes between neurotypical and neurodivergent people. Neurotypical people see the world in a “typical” and widely perceived as expected way. Neurodivergent people experience the world differently, for example, people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, synesthesia, and hyperlexia. According to various sources, around 15–40% of the population has neurodivergent traits. These traits can be innateor acquired. But they are always on a spectrum, and vary a lot. A person with autism is not neurodiverse — they are neurodivergent. One of the main strengths of neurodivergent people is how imaginative and creative they are, coming up with out-of-the-box ideas quickly. With exceptional levels of attention, strong long-term memory, a unique perspective, unbeatable accuracy, and a strong sense of justice and fairness. Being different in a world that, to some degree, still doesn’t accept these differences is exhausting. So unsurprisingly, neurodivergent people often bring along determination, resilience, and high levels of empathy. Design With People, Not For Them As a designer, I often see myself as a path-maker. I’m designing reliable paths for people to navigate to their goals comfortably. Without being blocked. Or confused. Or locked out. That means respecting the simple fact that people’s needs, tasks, and user journeys are all different, and that they evolve over time. And: most importantly, it means considering them very early in the process. Better accessibility is better for everyone. Instead of making decisions that need to be reverted or refined to be compliant, we can bring a diverse group of people — with accessibility needs, with neurodiversity, frequent and infrequent users, experts, newcomers — in the process, and design with them, rather than for them. Neurodiversity & Inclusive Design Resources A wonderful resource that helps us design for cognitive accessibility is Stéphanie Walter’s Neurodiversity and UX toolkit. It includes practical guidelines, tools, and resources to better understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, and ADHD. Another fantastic resource is Will Soward’s Neurodiversity Design System. It combines neurodiversity and user experience design into a set of design standards and principles that you can use to design accessible learning interfaces. Last but not least, I’ve been putting together a few summaries about neurodiversity and inclusive design over the last few years, so you might find them helpful, too: ADHD Autism Children Colorblindness Deafness Dyscalculia Dyslexia Legibility Left-Handed Users Mental Health Motivation Older Adults Screen Readers Teenagers A huge thank-you to everyone who has been writing, speaking, and sharing articles, resources, and toolkits on designing for diversity. The topic is often forgotten and overlooked, but it has an incredible impact. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 #designing #neurodiversity

SMASHINGMAGAZINE.COM

Designing For Neurodiversity

This article is a sponsored by TetraLogical Neurodivergent needs are often considered as an edge case that doesn’t fit into common user journeys or flows. Neurodiversity tends to get overlooked in the design process. Or it is tackled late in the process, and only if there is enough time. But people aren’t edge cases. Every person is just a different person, performing tasks and navigating the web in a different way. So how can we design better, more inclusive experiences that cater to different needs and, ultimately, benefit everyone? Let’s take a closer look. Neurodiversity Or Neurodivergent? There is quite a bit of confusion about both terms on the web. Different people think and experience the world differently, and neurodiversity sees differences as natural variations, not deficits. It distinguishes between neurotypical and neurodivergent people. Neurotypical people see the world in a “typical” and widely perceived as expected way. Neurodivergent people experience the world differently, for example, people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, synesthesia, and hyperlexia. According to various sources, around 15–40% of the population has neurodivergent traits. These traits can be innate (e.g., autism) or acquired (e.g., trauma). But they are always on a spectrum, and vary a lot. A person with autism is not neurodiverse — they are neurodivergent. One of the main strengths of neurodivergent people is how imaginative and creative they are, coming up with out-of-the-box ideas quickly. With exceptional levels of attention, strong long-term memory, a unique perspective, unbeatable accuracy, and a strong sense of justice and fairness. Being different in a world that, to some degree, still doesn’t accept these differences is exhausting. So unsurprisingly, neurodivergent people often bring along determination, resilience, and high levels of empathy. Design With People, Not For Them As a designer, I often see myself as a path-maker. I’m designing reliable paths for people to navigate to their goals comfortably. Without being blocked. Or confused. Or locked out. That means respecting the simple fact that people’s needs, tasks, and user journeys are all different, and that they evolve over time. And: most importantly, it means considering them very early in the process. Better accessibility is better for everyone. Instead of making decisions that need to be reverted or refined to be compliant, we can bring a diverse group of people — with accessibility needs, with neurodiversity, frequent and infrequent users, experts, newcomers — in the process, and design with them, rather than for them. Neurodiversity & Inclusive Design Resources A wonderful resource that helps us design for cognitive accessibility is Stéphanie Walter’s Neurodiversity and UX toolkit. It includes practical guidelines, tools, and resources to better understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, and ADHD. Another fantastic resource is Will Soward’s Neurodiversity Design System. It combines neurodiversity and user experience design into a set of design standards and principles that you can use to design accessible learning interfaces. Last but not least, I’ve been putting together a few summaries about neurodiversity and inclusive design over the last few years, so you might find them helpful, too: ADHD Autism Children Colorblindness Deafness Dyscalculia Dyslexia Legibility Left-Handed Users Mental Health Motivation Older Adults Screen Readers Teenagers A huge thank-you to everyone who has been writing, speaking, and sharing articles, resources, and toolkits on designing for diversity. The topic is often forgotten and overlooked, but it has an incredible impact. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

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Lifehacker RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-06-01 17:57:06 ·

20 of the Best TV Shows on Prime Video

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Like shopping on Amazon itself, Prime Video can sometimes feel like a jumble sale: a proliferation of TV and movies from every era, none of it terribly well-curated. There’s a lot to sort through, and the choices can be a little overwhelming. Presentation issues aside, there are some real gems to be found, as long as you’re willing to dig a bit—the streamer offers more than a few impressive exclusives, though they sometimes get lost amid the noise. Here are 20 of the best TV series Prime Video has to offer, including both ongoing and concluded shows.OvercompensatingComedian Benito Skinner plays himself, sort of, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college, desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come. Much of the show's appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's a frequently raunchy college comedy, but it's simultaneously a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The impressive cast includes Adam DiMarcoand Rish ShahYou can stream Overcompensating here. ÉtoileAmy Sherman-Palladino and David Palladinoare back on TV and back in the dance worldwith this series about two world-renowned ballet companiesthat decide to spice things up by swapping their most talented dancers. Each company is on the brink of financial disaster, and so Jack McMillan, director of the Metropolitan Ballet, and Geneviève Lavigne, director of of Le Ballet National, come up with the plan, and recruit an eccentric billionaireto pay for it. Much of the comedy comes from the mismatched natures of their swapped dancers, and there's a tangible love of ballet that keeps things light, despite the fancy title. You can stream Étoile here.FalloutA shockingly effective video game adaptation, Fallout does post-apocalyptic TV with a lot more color and vibrancy than can typically be ascribed to the genre. The setup is a little complicated, but not belabored in the show itself: It's 2296 on an Earth devastated two centuries earlier by a nuclear war between the United States and China, exacerbated by conflicts between capitalists and so-called communists. Lucy MacLeanemerges from the underground Vault where she's lived her whole life protected from the presumed ravages of the world above, hoping to find her missing father, who was kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is dominated by various factions, each of which considers the others dangerous cults, and believes that they alone know mankind's way forward. It's also overrun by Ghouls, Gulpers, and other wild radiation monsters. Through all of this, Lucy remains just about the only human with any belief in humanity, or any desire to make things better. You can stream Fallout here.DeadlochBoth an excellent crime procedural and an effective satire of the genre, this Australian import does about as well as setting up its central mystery as Broadchurch and its manyimitators. Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up dead on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude and generally obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. Unraveling the web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town is appropriately addictive, with the added bonus of cop thriller tropes getting mercilessly mocked all the way. You can stream Deadlock here.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.ReacherGetting high marks for his portrayal of the Lee Childs’ characteris Alan Ritchson, playing Reacher with an appropriately commanding physical presence. The first season finds the former U.S. Army military policeman visiting the rural town of Margrave, Georgia...where he’s quickly arrested for murder. His attempts to clear his name find him caught up in a complex conspiracy involving the town’s very corrupt police force, as well as shady local businessmen and politicians. Subsequent seasons find our ripped drifter reconnecting with members of his old army special-investigations unit, including Frances Neagley, who's getting her own spin-off. You can stream Reacher here. The BondsmanIt's tempting not to include The Bondsman among Prime's best, given that it's representative of an increasingly obnoxious trend: shows that get cancelled before they ever really got a chance. This Kevin Bacon-led action horror thriller did well with critics and on the streaming charts, and it's had a consistent spot among Prime's top ten streaming shows, but it got the pink slip anyway. Nevertheless, what we did get is a lot of fun: Bacon plays Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter who dies on the job only to discover that he's been resurrected by the literal devil, for whom he now works. It comes to a moderately satisfying conclusion, despite the cancellation. You can stream The Bondsman here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.The ExpanseA pick-up from the SyFy channel after that network all but got out of the original series business, The Expanse started good and only got better with each succeeding season. Starring Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Dominique Tipper among a sizable ensemble, the show takes place in a near-ish future in which we’ve spread out into the solar system, while largely taking all of the usual political bullshit and conflicts with us. A salvage crew comes upon an alien microorganism with the potential to upend pretty much everything, if humanity can stop fighting over scraps long enough to make it matter. The show brings a sense of gritty realism to TV sci-fi, without entirely sacrificing optimism—or, at least, the idea that well-intentioned individuals can make a difference. You can stream The Expanse here. Mr. & Mrs. SmithOne-upping the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie on which it's based, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as a couple of spies tasked to pose as a married couple while coordinatingon missions. Smartly, each episode takes on a standalone mission in a different location, while complicating the relationship between the two and gradually upping the stakes until the season finale, which sees them pitted against each other. The show is returning for season two, though it's unclear if Glover and Erskine will be returning, or if we'll be getting a new Mr. & Mrs. You can stream Mr. & Mrs. Smith here. Good OmensMichael Sheen and David Tennant are delightful as, respectively, the hopelessly naive angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, wandering the Earth for millennia and determined not to let the perpetual conflict between their two sides get in the way of their mismatched friendship. In the show’s world, from the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, heaven and hell are are less representative of good and evil than hidebound bureaucracies, more interested in scoring points on each other than in doing anything useful for anyone down here. It’s got a sly, quirky, sometimes goofy sense of humor, even while it asks some big questions about who should get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Following some depressingly gross revelations about writer and showrunner Gaiman, it was announced that he'd be off the production and the third season would be reduced to a movie-length conclusion, date tbd. You can stream Good Omens here. The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladinoabout the title’s Midge Maisel, a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is both warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. You can stream Mrs. Maisel here. The BoysThere’s a lot of superhero stuff out there, no question, but, as there was no series quite like the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book on which this show is based, there’s nothing else quite like The Boys. The very dark satire imagines a world in which superheroes are big with the public, but whose powers don’t make them any better than the average jerk. When his girlfriend is gruesomely killed by a superhero who couldn’t really care less, Wee Hughieis recruited by the title agency. Led by Billy Butcher, the Boys watch over the world’s superpowered individuals, putting them down when necessary and possible. A concluding fifth season is on the way, as is a second season of the live-action spin-off. An animated miniseriescame out in 2022. The Man in the High CastleFrom a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and in which the United States is split down the middle; Japan governing the west and Germany the east. The title’s man in the high castle offers an alternate view, though, one in which the Allies actually won, with the potential to rally opposition to the Axis rulers. As the show progresses through its four seasons, the parallels to our increasingly authoritarian-friendly world, making it one of the more relevant shows of recent years. You can stream The Man in the High Castle here. The Wheel of TimeAn effective bit of fantasy storytelling, The Wheel of Time sees five people taken from a secluded village by Moiraine Damodred, a powerful magic user who believes that one of them is the reborn Dragon: a being who will either heal the world, or destroy it entirely. The show has an epic sweep while smartly focusing on the very unworldly villagers, experiencing much of this at the same time as the audience. This is another mixed recommendation in that, while the show itself is quite good, it has just been cancelled following a third season that saw it really getting into its groove. The show goes through the fourth and fifth books of Robert Jordan's fantasy series, so, I suppose, you can always jump into the novels to finish the story. You can stream Wheel of Time here. The Devil’s HourJessica Rainejoins Peter Capaldifor a slightly convoluted but haunting series that throws in just about every horror trope that you can think of while still managing to ground things in the two lead performances. Raine plays a social worker whose life is coming apart on almost every level: She’s caring for her aging mother, her marriage is ending, her son is withdrawn, and she wakes up at 3:33 am every morning exactly. She’s as convincing in the role as Capaldi is absolutely terrifying as a criminal linked to at least one killing who knows a lot more than he makes clear. You can stream The Devil's Hour here. Batman: Caped CrusaderI know, there's a lot of Batman out there. But this one's got real style, harkening back to Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s. With a 1940s-esque setting, the show dodges some of the more outlandish superhero tropes to instead focus on a Gotham City rife with crime, corrupt cops, and gang warfare. There's just enough serialization across the first season to keep things addictive. You can stream Caped Crusader here. Secret LevelThis is pretty fun: an anthology of animated shorts from various creative teams that tell stories set within the worlds of variousvideo games, including Unreal, Warhammer, Sifu, Mega Man, and Honor of Kings. It's hard to find consistent threads given the variety of source material, but that's kinda the point: There's a little something for everyone, and most shorts don't demand any extensive knowledge of game lore—though, naturally, they're a bit more fun for the initiated. The voice cast includes the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his son Patrick Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. You can stream Secret Level here. CrossJames Patterson's Alex Cross novels have been adapted three times before, all with mixed results: Morgan Freeman played the character twice, and Tyler Perry took on the role in 2012. Here, the forensic psychologist/police detective of a few dozen novels is played by Aldis Hodge, and it feels like he's finally nailed it. There are plenty of cop-drama tropes at work here, but the series is fast-paced and intense, and Hodge is instantly compelling in the iconic lead role. You can stream Cross here. FleabagFleabag isn’t a Prime original per se, nor even a co-production, but Amazon is the show’s American distributor and still brands it as such, so we’re going to count it. There’s no quick synopsis here, but stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the title characterin the comedy drama about a free-spirited, but also deeply angry single woman in living in London. Waller-Bridge won separate Emmys as the star, creator, and writer of the series, and co-stars Sian Clifford, Olivia Coleman, Fiona Shaw, and Kristin Scott Thomas all received well-deserved nominations. You can stream Fleabag here.
#best #shows #prime #video

20 of the Best TV Shows on Prime Video
We may earn a commission from links on this page.Like shopping on Amazon itself, Prime Video can sometimes feel like a jumble sale: a proliferation of TV and movies from every era, none of it terribly well-curated. There’s a lot to sort through, and the choices can be a little overwhelming. Presentation issues aside, there are some real gems to be found, as long as you’re willing to dig a bit—the streamer offers more than a few impressive exclusives, though they sometimes get lost amid the noise. Here are 20 of the best TV series Prime Video has to offer, including both ongoing and concluded shows.OvercompensatingComedian Benito Skinner plays himself, sort of, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college, desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come. Much of the show's appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's a frequently raunchy college comedy, but it's simultaneously a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The impressive cast includes Adam DiMarcoand Rish ShahYou can stream Overcompensating here. ÉtoileAmy Sherman-Palladino and David Palladinoare back on TV and back in the dance worldwith this series about two world-renowned ballet companiesthat decide to spice things up by swapping their most talented dancers. Each company is on the brink of financial disaster, and so Jack McMillan, director of the Metropolitan Ballet, and Geneviève Lavigne, director of of Le Ballet National, come up with the plan, and recruit an eccentric billionaireto pay for it. Much of the comedy comes from the mismatched natures of their swapped dancers, and there's a tangible love of ballet that keeps things light, despite the fancy title. You can stream Étoile here.FalloutA shockingly effective video game adaptation, Fallout does post-apocalyptic TV with a lot more color and vibrancy than can typically be ascribed to the genre. The setup is a little complicated, but not belabored in the show itself: It's 2296 on an Earth devastated two centuries earlier by a nuclear war between the United States and China, exacerbated by conflicts between capitalists and so-called communists. Lucy MacLeanemerges from the underground Vault where she's lived her whole life protected from the presumed ravages of the world above, hoping to find her missing father, who was kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is dominated by various factions, each of which considers the others dangerous cults, and believes that they alone know mankind's way forward. It's also overrun by Ghouls, Gulpers, and other wild radiation monsters. Through all of this, Lucy remains just about the only human with any belief in humanity, or any desire to make things better. You can stream Fallout here.DeadlochBoth an excellent crime procedural and an effective satire of the genre, this Australian import does about as well as setting up its central mystery as Broadchurch and its manyimitators. Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up dead on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude and generally obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. Unraveling the web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town is appropriately addictive, with the added bonus of cop thriller tropes getting mercilessly mocked all the way. You can stream Deadlock here.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.ReacherGetting high marks for his portrayal of the Lee Childs’ characteris Alan Ritchson, playing Reacher with an appropriately commanding physical presence. The first season finds the former U.S. Army military policeman visiting the rural town of Margrave, Georgia...where he’s quickly arrested for murder. His attempts to clear his name find him caught up in a complex conspiracy involving the town’s very corrupt police force, as well as shady local businessmen and politicians. Subsequent seasons find our ripped drifter reconnecting with members of his old army special-investigations unit, including Frances Neagley, who's getting her own spin-off. You can stream Reacher here. The BondsmanIt's tempting not to include The Bondsman among Prime's best, given that it's representative of an increasingly obnoxious trend: shows that get cancelled before they ever really got a chance. This Kevin Bacon-led action horror thriller did well with critics and on the streaming charts, and it's had a consistent spot among Prime's top ten streaming shows, but it got the pink slip anyway. Nevertheless, what we did get is a lot of fun: Bacon plays Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter who dies on the job only to discover that he's been resurrected by the literal devil, for whom he now works. It comes to a moderately satisfying conclusion, despite the cancellation. You can stream The Bondsman here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerAll the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfootwith a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.The ExpanseA pick-up from the SyFy channel after that network all but got out of the original series business, The Expanse started good and only got better with each succeeding season. Starring Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Dominique Tipper among a sizable ensemble, the show takes place in a near-ish future in which we’ve spread out into the solar system, while largely taking all of the usual political bullshit and conflicts with us. A salvage crew comes upon an alien microorganism with the potential to upend pretty much everything, if humanity can stop fighting over scraps long enough to make it matter. The show brings a sense of gritty realism to TV sci-fi, without entirely sacrificing optimism—or, at least, the idea that well-intentioned individuals can make a difference. You can stream The Expanse here. Mr. & Mrs. SmithOne-upping the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie on which it's based, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as a couple of spies tasked to pose as a married couple while coordinatingon missions. Smartly, each episode takes on a standalone mission in a different location, while complicating the relationship between the two and gradually upping the stakes until the season finale, which sees them pitted against each other. The show is returning for season two, though it's unclear if Glover and Erskine will be returning, or if we'll be getting a new Mr. & Mrs. You can stream Mr. & Mrs. Smith here. Good OmensMichael Sheen and David Tennant are delightful as, respectively, the hopelessly naive angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, wandering the Earth for millennia and determined not to let the perpetual conflict between their two sides get in the way of their mismatched friendship. In the show’s world, from the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, heaven and hell are are less representative of good and evil than hidebound bureaucracies, more interested in scoring points on each other than in doing anything useful for anyone down here. It’s got a sly, quirky, sometimes goofy sense of humor, even while it asks some big questions about who should get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Following some depressingly gross revelations about writer and showrunner Gaiman, it was announced that he'd be off the production and the third season would be reduced to a movie-length conclusion, date tbd. You can stream Good Omens here. The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselMrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladinoabout the title’s Midge Maisel, a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is both warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. You can stream Mrs. Maisel here. The BoysThere’s a lot of superhero stuff out there, no question, but, as there was no series quite like the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book on which this show is based, there’s nothing else quite like The Boys. The very dark satire imagines a world in which superheroes are big with the public, but whose powers don’t make them any better than the average jerk. When his girlfriend is gruesomely killed by a superhero who couldn’t really care less, Wee Hughieis recruited by the title agency. Led by Billy Butcher, the Boys watch over the world’s superpowered individuals, putting them down when necessary and possible. A concluding fifth season is on the way, as is a second season of the live-action spin-off. An animated miniseriescame out in 2022. The Man in the High CastleFrom a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and in which the United States is split down the middle; Japan governing the west and Germany the east. The title’s man in the high castle offers an alternate view, though, one in which the Allies actually won, with the potential to rally opposition to the Axis rulers. As the show progresses through its four seasons, the parallels to our increasingly authoritarian-friendly world, making it one of the more relevant shows of recent years. You can stream The Man in the High Castle here. The Wheel of TimeAn effective bit of fantasy storytelling, The Wheel of Time sees five people taken from a secluded village by Moiraine Damodred, a powerful magic user who believes that one of them is the reborn Dragon: a being who will either heal the world, or destroy it entirely. The show has an epic sweep while smartly focusing on the very unworldly villagers, experiencing much of this at the same time as the audience. This is another mixed recommendation in that, while the show itself is quite good, it has just been cancelled following a third season that saw it really getting into its groove. The show goes through the fourth and fifth books of Robert Jordan's fantasy series, so, I suppose, you can always jump into the novels to finish the story. You can stream Wheel of Time here. The Devil’s HourJessica Rainejoins Peter Capaldifor a slightly convoluted but haunting series that throws in just about every horror trope that you can think of while still managing to ground things in the two lead performances. Raine plays a social worker whose life is coming apart on almost every level: She’s caring for her aging mother, her marriage is ending, her son is withdrawn, and she wakes up at 3:33 am every morning exactly. She’s as convincing in the role as Capaldi is absolutely terrifying as a criminal linked to at least one killing who knows a lot more than he makes clear. You can stream The Devil's Hour here. Batman: Caped CrusaderI know, there's a lot of Batman out there. But this one's got real style, harkening back to Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s. With a 1940s-esque setting, the show dodges some of the more outlandish superhero tropes to instead focus on a Gotham City rife with crime, corrupt cops, and gang warfare. There's just enough serialization across the first season to keep things addictive. You can stream Caped Crusader here. Secret LevelThis is pretty fun: an anthology of animated shorts from various creative teams that tell stories set within the worlds of variousvideo games, including Unreal, Warhammer, Sifu, Mega Man, and Honor of Kings. It's hard to find consistent threads given the variety of source material, but that's kinda the point: There's a little something for everyone, and most shorts don't demand any extensive knowledge of game lore—though, naturally, they're a bit more fun for the initiated. The voice cast includes the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his son Patrick Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. You can stream Secret Level here. CrossJames Patterson's Alex Cross novels have been adapted three times before, all with mixed results: Morgan Freeman played the character twice, and Tyler Perry took on the role in 2012. Here, the forensic psychologist/police detective of a few dozen novels is played by Aldis Hodge, and it feels like he's finally nailed it. There are plenty of cop-drama tropes at work here, but the series is fast-paced and intense, and Hodge is instantly compelling in the iconic lead role. You can stream Cross here. FleabagFleabag isn’t a Prime original per se, nor even a co-production, but Amazon is the show’s American distributor and still brands it as such, so we’re going to count it. There’s no quick synopsis here, but stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the title characterin the comedy drama about a free-spirited, but also deeply angry single woman in living in London. Waller-Bridge won separate Emmys as the star, creator, and writer of the series, and co-stars Sian Clifford, Olivia Coleman, Fiona Shaw, and Kristin Scott Thomas all received well-deserved nominations. You can stream Fleabag here. #best #shows #prime #video

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20 of the Best TV Shows on Prime Video

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Like shopping on Amazon itself, Prime Video can sometimes feel like a jumble sale: a proliferation of TV and movies from every era, none of it terribly well-curated. There’s a lot to sort through, and the choices can be a little overwhelming. Presentation issues aside, there are some real gems to be found, as long as you’re willing to dig a bit—the streamer offers more than a few impressive exclusives, though they sometimes get lost amid the noise. Here are 20 of the best TV series Prime Video has to offer, including both ongoing and concluded shows.Overcompensating (2025 – ) Comedian Benito Skinner plays himself, sort of, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college, desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come (relatable, except for the jock part). Much of the show's appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's a frequently raunchy college comedy, but it's simultaneously a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The impressive cast includes Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus) and Rish Shah (Ms. Marvel) You can stream Overcompensating here. Étoile (2025 –, renewed for season two) Amy Sherman-Palladino and David Palladino (Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) are back on TV and back in the dance world (following Bunheads) with this series about two world-renowned ballet companies (one in NYC and one in Paris) that decide to spice things up by swapping their most talented dancers. Each company is on the brink of financial disaster, and so Jack McMillan (Luke Kirby), director of the Metropolitan Ballet, and Geneviève Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg), director of of Le Ballet National, come up with the plan, and recruit an eccentric billionaire (Simon Callow) to pay for it. Much of the comedy comes from the mismatched natures of their swapped dancers, and there's a tangible love of ballet that keeps things light, despite the fancy title. You can stream Étoile here.Fallout (2024 – , renewed for second and third seasons) A shockingly effective video game adaptation, Fallout does post-apocalyptic TV with a lot more color and vibrancy than can typically be ascribed to the genre (in the world of Fallout, the aesthetic of the 1950s hung on for a lot longer than it did in ours). The setup is a little complicated, but not belabored in the show itself: It's 2296 on an Earth devastated two centuries earlier by a nuclear war between the United States and China, exacerbated by conflicts between capitalists and so-called communists. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) emerges from the underground Vault where she's lived her whole life protected from the presumed ravages of the world above, hoping to find her missing father, who was kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is dominated by various factions, each of which considers the others dangerous cults, and believes that they alone know mankind's way forward. It's also overrun by Ghouls, Gulpers, and other wild radiation monsters. Through all of this, Lucy remains just about the only human with any belief in humanity, or any desire to make things better. You can stream Fallout here.Deadloch (2023 –, renewed for a second season) Both an excellent crime procedural and an effective satire of the genre, this Australian import does about as well as setting up its central mystery as Broadchurch and its many (many) imitators. Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up dead on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude and generally obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. Unraveling the web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town is appropriately addictive, with the added bonus of cop thriller tropes getting mercilessly mocked all the way. You can stream Deadlock here.The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022 – , third season coming) All the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfoot (the people we’ll much later know as Hobbits) with a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.Reacher (2022 – , fourth season coming) Getting high marks for his portrayal of the Lee Childs’ character (from both book and TV fans) is Alan Ritchson (Titans), playing Reacher with an appropriately commanding physical presence. The first season finds the former U.S. Army military policeman visiting the rural town of Margrave, Georgia...where he’s quickly arrested for murder. His attempts to clear his name find him caught up in a complex conspiracy involving the town’s very corrupt police force, as well as shady local businessmen and politicians. Subsequent seasons find our ripped drifter reconnecting with members of his old army special-investigations unit, including Frances Neagley (Maria Stan), who's getting her own spin-off. You can stream Reacher here. The Bondsman (2025, one season) It's tempting not to include The Bondsman among Prime's best, given that it's representative of an increasingly obnoxious trend: shows that get cancelled before they ever really got a chance. This Kevin Bacon-led action horror thriller did well with critics and on the streaming charts, and it's had a consistent spot among Prime's top ten streaming shows, but it got the pink slip anyway. Nevertheless, what we did get is a lot of fun: Bacon plays Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter who dies on the job only to discover that he's been resurrected by the literal devil, for whom he now works. It comes to a moderately satisfying conclusion, despite the cancellation. You can stream The Bondsman here. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022 – , third season coming) All the talk around The Rings of Power in the lead-up to the series had to do with the cost of the planned five seasons expected to be somewhere in the billion dollar range. At that price point, it’s tempting to expect a debacle—but the resulting series is actually quite good, blending epic conflict with more grounded characters in a manner that evokes both Tolkien, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. Set thousands of years before those tales, the series follows an ensemble cast lead by Morfydd Clark as Elven outcast Galadriel and, at the other end of the spectrum, Markella Kavenagh as Nori, a Harfoot (the people we’ll much later know as Hobbits) with a yearning for adventure who finds herself caught up in the larger struggles of a world about to see the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the fall of the idyllic island kingdom of Númenor, and the the last alliance of Elves and humans. You can stream The Rings of Power here.The Expanse (2015 – 2022, six seasons) A pick-up from the SyFy channel after that network all but got out of the original series business, The Expanse started good and only got better with each succeeding season. Starring Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Dominique Tipper among a sizable ensemble, the show takes place in a near-ish future in which we’ve spread out into the solar system, while largely taking all of the usual political bullshit and conflicts with us. A salvage crew comes upon an alien microorganism with the potential to upend pretty much everything, if humanity can stop fighting over scraps long enough to make it matter. The show brings a sense of gritty realism to TV sci-fi, without entirely sacrificing optimism—or, at least, the idea that well-intentioned individuals can make a difference. You can stream The Expanse here. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024 – , renewed for a second season) One-upping the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie on which it's based, Mr. & Mrs. Smith stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as a couple of spies tasked to pose as a married couple while coordinating (and sometimes competing against one another) on missions. Smartly, each episode takes on a standalone mission in a different location, while complicating the relationship between the two and gradually upping the stakes until the season finale, which sees them pitted against each other. The show is returning for season two, though it's unclear if Glover and Erskine will be returning, or if we'll be getting a new Mr. & Mrs. You can stream Mr. & Mrs. Smith here. Good Omens (2019– , conclusion coming) Michael Sheen and David Tennant are delightful as, respectively, the hopelessly naive angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, wandering the Earth for millennia and determined not to let the perpetual conflict between their two sides get in the way of their mismatched friendship. In the show’s world, from the 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, heaven and hell are are less representative of good and evil than hidebound bureaucracies, more interested in scoring points on each other than in doing anything useful for anyone down here. It’s got a sly, quirky, sometimes goofy sense of humor, even while it asks some big questions about who should get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. Following some depressingly gross revelations about writer and showrunner Gaiman, it was announced that he'd be off the production and the third season would be reduced to a movie-length conclusion, date tbd. You can stream Good Omens here. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 – 2023, five seasons) Mrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls) about the title’s Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is both warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. You can stream Mrs. Maisel here. The Boys (2019 – , fifth and final season coming) There’s a lot of superhero stuff out there, no question, but, as there was no series quite like the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book on which this show is based, there’s nothing else quite like The Boys. The very dark satire imagines a world in which superheroes are big with the public, but whose powers don’t make them any better than the average jerk. When his girlfriend is gruesomely killed by a superhero who couldn’t really care less (collateral damage, ya know), Wee Hughie (Jack Quaid) is recruited by the title agency. Led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the Boys watch over the world’s superpowered individuals, putting them down when necessary and possible. A concluding fifth season is on the way, as is a second season of the live-action spin-off (Gen V). An animated miniseries (Diabolical) came out in 2022. The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019, four seasons) From a novel by Philip K. Dick (whose work has been the basis for Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, among many others), The Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II, and in which the United States is split down the middle; Japan governing the west and Germany the east. The title’s man in the high castle offers an alternate view, though, one in which the Allies actually won, with the potential to rally opposition to the Axis rulers. As the show progresses through its four seasons, the parallels to our increasingly authoritarian-friendly world, making it one of the more relevant shows of recent years. You can stream The Man in the High Castle here. The Wheel of Time (2021 – 2025, three seasons) An effective bit of fantasy storytelling, The Wheel of Time sees five people taken from a secluded village by Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), a powerful magic user who believes that one of them is the reborn Dragon: a being who will either heal the world, or destroy it entirely. The show has an epic sweep while smartly focusing on the very unworldly villagers, experiencing much of this at the same time as the audience. This is another mixed recommendation in that, while the show itself is quite good, it has just been cancelled following a third season that saw it really getting into its groove. The show goes through the fourth and fifth books of Robert Jordan's fantasy series, so, I suppose, you can always jump into the novels to finish the story. You can stream Wheel of Time here. The Devil’s Hour (2022 – , renewed for a third season) Jessica Raine (Call the Midwife) joins Peter Capaldi (The Thick of It, Doctor Who) for a slightly convoluted but haunting series that throws in just about every horror trope that you can think of while still managing to ground things in the two lead performances. Raine plays a social worker whose life is coming apart on almost every level: She’s caring for her aging mother, her marriage is ending, her son is withdrawn, and she wakes up at 3:33 am every morning exactly. She’s as convincing in the role as Capaldi is absolutely terrifying as a criminal linked to at least one killing who knows a lot more than he makes clear. You can stream The Devil's Hour here. Batman: Caped Crusader (2024 – , second season coming) I know, there's a lot of Batman out there. But this one's got real style, harkening back to Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s (no surprise, given that Bruce Timm developed this one too). With a 1940s-esque setting, the show dodges some of the more outlandish superhero tropes to instead focus on a Gotham City rife with crime, corrupt cops, and gang warfare. There's just enough serialization across the first season to keep things addictive. You can stream Caped Crusader here. Secret Level (2024 – , renewed for a second season) This is pretty fun: an anthology of animated shorts from various creative teams that tell stories set within the worlds of various (15 so far) video games, including Unreal, Warhammer, Sifu, Mega Man, and Honor of Kings. It's hard to find consistent threads given the variety of source material, but that's kinda the point: There's a little something for everyone, and most shorts don't demand any extensive knowledge of game lore—though, naturally, they're a bit more fun for the initiated. The voice cast includes the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his son Patrick Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Gabriel Luna, Ariana Greenblatt, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. You can stream Secret Level here. Cross (2024 – , renewed for a second season) James Patterson's Alex Cross novels have been adapted three times before, all with mixed results: Morgan Freeman played the character twice, and Tyler Perry took on the role in 2012. Here, the forensic psychologist/police detective of a few dozen novels is played by Aldis Hodge (Leverage, One Night in Miami...), and it feels like he's finally nailed it. There are plenty of cop-drama tropes at work here, but the series is fast-paced and intense, and Hodge is instantly compelling in the iconic lead role. You can stream Cross here. Fleabag (2016–2019, two seasons) Fleabag isn’t a Prime original per se, nor even a co-production, but Amazon is the show’s American distributor and still brands it as such, so we’re going to count it. There’s no quick synopsis here, but stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the title character (only ever known as Fleabag) in the comedy drama about a free-spirited, but also deeply angry single woman in living in London. Waller-Bridge won separate Emmys as the star, creator, and writer of the series (all in the same year), and co-stars Sian Clifford, Olivia Coleman, Fiona Shaw, and Kristin Scott Thomas all received well-deserved nominations. You can stream Fleabag here.

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2025-06-01 16:29:50 ·

June 2025

In our June issue
Our June issue looks at the housing spectrum, with a particular focus on non-market and affordable housing.
Odile Hénault starts our journey in Montreal, where two shelters—Le Christin by Atelier Big City and Les Studios du PAS by L. McComber in collaboration with Inform—offer dignity to people experiencing homelessness.
We next travel to Beaverton Heights, a transitional housing project in the Region of Durham, Ontario. Designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects, the complex addresses the often-invisible homelessness of a rural area, and expands the aesthetic possibilities of modular construction.
In Toronto, we visit Gerrard Healthy Housing by Atkinson Architect, which aims to add gentle density to an established neighbourhood. We also tour Anduhuaun, LGA Architectural Partners’ shelter for Indigenous women, which offers a place of nurture and grounding for its clients.
LGA Architectural Partners is the coordinating firm behind the new Canadian Housing Catalogue, a repository of designs for multi-family homes. John Lorinc examines the catalogue’s potential for widespread uptake.
Our long-read this month is a report by Yellowknife-based Kristel Derkowski on the driving factors behind the Northern housing crisis—and ways to start addressing it.
In this month’s AIA Canada Society Journal, a quartet of Canadian educators explore how architecture schools are contributing to addressing the housing affordability crisis through research, studios, and hands-on initiatives.
On the other end of the housing spectrum, Adele Weder visits Revery Architecture’s The Butterfly and First Baptist Church. She looks at how the striking landmark delivers tangible benefits for both residents and the wider public.
Our issue is rounded out by an obituary for Dick Mah Sai-Chew, and reviews of books on the history of the barrack, James Strutt’s round houses, and sustainable housing in a circular economy.
-Elsa Lam, editor
The post June 2025 appeared first on Canadian Architect.
#june

June 2025
In our June issue Our June issue looks at the housing spectrum, with a particular focus on non-market and affordable housing. Odile Hénault starts our journey in Montreal, where two shelters—Le Christin by Atelier Big City and Les Studios du PAS by L. McComber in collaboration with Inform—offer dignity to people experiencing homelessness. We next travel to Beaverton Heights, a transitional housing project in the Region of Durham, Ontario. Designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects, the complex addresses the often-invisible homelessness of a rural area, and expands the aesthetic possibilities of modular construction. In Toronto, we visit Gerrard Healthy Housing by Atkinson Architect, which aims to add gentle density to an established neighbourhood. We also tour Anduhuaun, LGA Architectural Partners’ shelter for Indigenous women, which offers a place of nurture and grounding for its clients. LGA Architectural Partners is the coordinating firm behind the new Canadian Housing Catalogue, a repository of designs for multi-family homes. John Lorinc examines the catalogue’s potential for widespread uptake. Our long-read this month is a report by Yellowknife-based Kristel Derkowski on the driving factors behind the Northern housing crisis—and ways to start addressing it. In this month’s AIA Canada Society Journal, a quartet of Canadian educators explore how architecture schools are contributing to addressing the housing affordability crisis through research, studios, and hands-on initiatives. On the other end of the housing spectrum, Adele Weder visits Revery Architecture’s The Butterfly and First Baptist Church. She looks at how the striking landmark delivers tangible benefits for both residents and the wider public. Our issue is rounded out by an obituary for Dick Mah Sai-Chew, and reviews of books on the history of the barrack, James Strutt’s round houses, and sustainable housing in a circular economy. -Elsa Lam, editor The post June 2025 appeared first on Canadian Architect. #june

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June 2025

In our June issue Our June issue looks at the housing spectrum, with a particular focus on non-market and affordable housing. Odile Hénault starts our journey in Montreal, where two shelters—Le Christin by Atelier Big City and Les Studios du PAS by L. McComber in collaboration with Inform—offer dignity to people experiencing homelessness. We next travel to Beaverton Heights, a transitional housing project in the Region of Durham, Ontario. Designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects, the complex addresses the often-invisible homelessness of a rural area, and expands the aesthetic possibilities of modular construction. In Toronto, we visit Gerrard Healthy Housing by Atkinson Architect, which aims to add gentle density to an established neighbourhood. We also tour Anduhuaun, LGA Architectural Partners’ shelter for Indigenous women, which offers a place of nurture and grounding for its clients. LGA Architectural Partners is the coordinating firm behind the new Canadian Housing Catalogue, a repository of designs for multi-family homes. John Lorinc examines the catalogue’s potential for widespread uptake. Our long-read this month is a report by Yellowknife-based Kristel Derkowski on the driving factors behind the Northern housing crisis—and ways to start addressing it. In this month’s AIA Canada Society Journal, a quartet of Canadian educators explore how architecture schools are contributing to addressing the housing affordability crisis through research, studios, and hands-on initiatives. On the other end of the housing spectrum, Adele Weder visits Revery Architecture’s The Butterfly and First Baptist Church. She looks at how the striking landmark delivers tangible benefits for both residents and the wider public. Our issue is rounded out by an obituary for Dick Mah Sai-Chew (1928-2025), and reviews of books on the history of the barrack, James Strutt’s round houses, and sustainable housing in a circular economy. -Elsa Lam, editor The post June 2025 appeared first on Canadian Architect.

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2025-06-01 16:00:55 ·

AIA Canada Journal: Canadian educators on housing affordability

Architectural education is an important part of becoming an architect. It provides a foundation in art and architectural history, basic concepts of design, and foundational technical knowledge. It promotes critical thinking, examines social and economic complexities, and encourages creativity and teamwork. I may be biased, but I believe the camaraderie and pride that are part of architectural students’ design studio experience are unmatched by any other educational program.
   In this issue of the AIA Canada Journal, Pauline Thimm, Hannah Allawi and I reached out to schools of architecture from across the country. Our conversations centred on research themes in today’s design studios, with a focus on housing affordability. Students and faculties are actively engaging in challenging the status quo on the shortage of housing. It takes a village to derive plausible solutions—and schools of architecture across the country are united in bringing their voices and minds to this pressing issue. In a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-supported partnership, AIA Canada Society is also actively participating in research on designing inclusive, sustainable and healthy cities.
We want to thank all the educators who took time to speak with us and provide their invaluable insights.
-Dora Ng, AIA Canada Society President

Rick Haldenby
Professor, School of Architecture, University of Waterloo
Rick Haldenby, FRAIC, served as Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo from 1988 to 2013, and founded the Waterloo Rome Program in 1979. Among many accomplishments, Haldenby was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2021, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture, the Special Jury Prize at the Kitchener Waterloo Arts Awards, and the Dr. Jean Steckle Award for Heritage Education from the Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation.
Q: Kitchener-Waterloo is known as a university town that is home to top Ontario post-secondary institutions. Tell us a bit about the twin cities.
A: The Waterloo Region’s industrial development began with the arrival of German-speaking immigrants in the 19th century. Its cities were literally “founded on factories.” Its prosperity was influenced by a rail-based transport system. In the late 19th century, the extension of the Grand Trunk Railway contributed to the industrialization of the area. In the 1950s, visionary community leaders made concerted efforts to build educational infrastructure, and in just a few years created the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College. The region experienced significant growth in manufacturing industries, insurance companies, and high-tech businesses over time. Home to two universities and a college, it is an education hub that attracts talents and businesses, which increases the demand for housing for students and families. The once-suburban neighbourhood of Northdale, surrounded by these post-secondary institutions, saw a surge in student population in the early 2000s, including a large percentage of international students. We saw a building boom to increase medium-density housing like stacked townhomes and row houses, as well as taller buildings up to 30+ stories in what was once a primarily low-density town.
Q: Like the building boom in Waterloo, we saw many residential high-rises going up in the GTA, but this growth still does not adequately address housing demand. In many cities across Canada, there are unprecedented housing issues including affordability and homelessness. What do you see emerging as key areas of interest and inquiry among students at your school? Is housing one of them?
A: Connection between affordability and homelessness is not a one-to-one problem. The housing crisis can have many dimensions. In our undergraduate design studios, we are laying the groundwork for approaches to affordability, environmental responsibility and social justice. Many of my colleagues and graduate students at the University of Waterloo are involved in various research studies, exhibitions and campaigns, including the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. We also try to keep a balance to cover diverse topics in architecture, including housing. Second- and third-year design studios focus on urban intensification amid the building boom, enabling students to discuss ideas for keeping cities habitable and attractive for future growth. Design studios have also worked with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity to support the ambitious program to build affordable housing for families in need.
In partnership with the City of Cambridge, Waterloo architecture students designed and built tiny homes as prototypes for emergency shelter. Photo courtesy University of Waterloo
Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis?
A: Through collaboration and communication with the community, the School of Architecture has engaged with social housing agencies, municipality planning authorities, Indigenous groups and aging-in-place consultants to develop housing solutions for a diverse population including seniors. Moving the School of Architecture from Waterloo to Cambridge in 2004 was a communal project with great support from the City of Cambridge. Occupying the repurposed silk mill in Cambridge, the school aims to be the design campus for the city to allow exchange of creative ideas and intellectual stimulation. Since the move, we have had many opportunities to collaborate and work closely with the municipality. The Tiny Homes project is an initiative in partnership with the City of Cambridge, whereby Waterloo architecture students were engaged to design and build prototype tiny homes that offer practical, cost-effective and dignified emergency housing solutions. It is an example of collaboration that makes a meaningful difference.

Photo by Danielle Sneesby
Shauna Mallory-Hill
Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba
Shauna Mallory-Hill, PhD, is currently Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture. Her 25-year-long career spans teaching, research and advocacy, with a focus on building systems, universal and sustainable design, as well as building performance evaluation. Her sponsored research includes accessible design, along with post-occupancy work on how sustainably designed environments impact human health and productivity.
Q: How is The University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecturespecifically engaging in design explorations addressing housing?
A: In addition to hosting public events and delivering focused design studios, we are actively engaged and support research collaborations including funded research with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counciland the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We are also committed to partnering and working with communities.

In 2022, U of M professor Lancelot Coar’s undergraduate studio engaged with One House Many Nations to develop a mobile design and construction trailer for on-site design-build work. Photo by Lancelot Coar
One House Many Nationsoriginally started as a grassroots movement to shed light on the housing crisis faced by Indigenous communities. For the past four years, OHMN, led by Dr. Alex Wilson and Sylvia McAdam, has been working with faculty and students from FAUM, houseless First Nations youth, and students at Saskatoon’s Nutana Collegiate to design and construct small, affordable homes that are trucked to remote Indigenous communities in Northern Saskatchewan. After a house is delivered, it is occupied by one of the youth participants. Each year, another house is built, informed by post-occupancy data that was collected on the previous year’s house. First Nations youth participants have learned to advocate for community needs while gaining skills and knowledge about home-building and maintenance. Lancelot Coar’s 2022 undergraduate architecture studio engaged with OHMN to create a mobile design lab that can be brought onsite to design-build in First Nations communities. OHMN’s work was exhibited at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2023.
Q: What are key areas of interest and inquiry among students at your school? Is housing one of them?
A: We are seeing that this generation is increasingly concerned about what is happening to the world—concerns about sustainability, housing, and food deserts are paramount. Students want to work on things that are meaningful. Students also really embrace hands-on learning. Any time students are encouraged and supported to engage with community, they feel like they are making a difference.
   Here in Winnipeg, we can all see the encampments of the unhoused. It is apparent that there is work to do to solve this dilemma.This past year, one of our housing-themed studios worked with a local grassroots organization, St. Boniface Street Links, in the design and construction of a prototype transitional house as a safer interim housing solution. This housing project ultimately was built and included as part of the annual Warming Huts design competition at the Forks.
Q: Are there any barriers to collaborating in this way, involving practitioners and real community groups?
A: We often get groups who approach us to collaborate. We need to be clear that we are not providing a design service, but we are committed to the exploration of ideas and working together on important problems.
   It is important to me that doing housing research work in collaboration with Indigenous communities is respectful, responsible and reciprocal. Ensuring that some benefit of the research stays with the community is crucial, given the long history of research involving Indigenous populations where this did not happen. A willingness to listen and understand community priorities and context—and adapt—is key. It can be difficult for some to have enough capacity to deal with added administration; a local liaison is helpful.
The Wîkiwin student-built house is part of an ongoing collaboration with Kawéchiwasik Development Corporation at York Factory First Nation. Photo by Shauna Mallory-Hill
Q: Some of your current research and design work is supported by the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge. Can you tell us a bit about that project?
A: The CMHC funding in part supports the Wîkiwin Training Enterprise of York Factory First Nation project, geared to building healthy homes by leveraging local resources and tradespeople in collaboration with the Kawéchiwasik Development Corporation. The purpose is to provide design education and construction skills in the northern communities where they are needed. A key goal is that kids won’t need to leave their communities to get skills, and communities can develop capacity to increase their self-sufficiency.
   In collaboration with FAUM, the project will include a comprehensive education model based on a co-created curriculum, training programs, housing designs and research on building materials. Students earn micro-credentials through distance education to get basic training in design and construction, or have the opportunity to work as research assistants to assist with collection of data, such as indoor air quality.
   Focusing on sustainable construction techniques, using local materials like stone and wood, the initiative promises to employ residents, cut production costs, and enhance housing quality. Additionally, the creation of a year-round skilled trades school facility and housing for students and teachers will boost the local labour force.
   Stage 2 of the project involves the building of the Wîkiwin skilled trades training and research facility and dormitory. This phase will also see the expansion of the educational curriculum in partnership with the University of Manitoba, ultimately increasing the labour force capacity of York Factory First Nation and creating more opportunities for its youth.

Sasha Tsenkova
Professor of Planning and Director of the Cities, Policy & Planning Lab at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, University of Calgary
Sasha Tsenkova, PhD, is a professor at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at the University of Calgary. With a background in architecture, urbanism, and planning, her work spans over 30 years of research, teaching, and professional practice, focusing on creating more inclusive and sustainable urban environments. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada/Academy of Social Sciences.
Q: Major cities across Canada are seeing unprecedented housing issues. As an educator, what have you seen in research or studio projects that tackle these issues?
A: We are a nation of suburban homeowners, where much of the wealth creation in the urban system is driven by investment in housing. Today, income and wealth inequality in Canadian cities is higher than ever before, which is exacerbated by the suburban homeownership model. In cities, newcomers to the housing market—young and old—face incredible affordability constraints. Homelessness has grown exponentially and homeownership is not within the reach of the middle class. In the design world, we must begin to address, through systemic intervention, these challenges. Many of our research and studio projects focus on sustainable urbanism through designs that explore strategies to provide affordable homes across the income spectrum and embrace different types of housing.
We cannot continue to replicate a model of postwar city building that no longer serves the needs of the people. We encourage students to learn from successful cities in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, where a more systematic approach to neighbourhood design and redevelopment allows various types of housing to be built along the same street within a community. This is a different approach to growth premised on urban regeneration and intensification, where people come before cars and community identity evolves over time.
Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis?
A: We focus on community-engaged scholarship, research and teaching at SAPL. Integration with communities of practice is necessary, but so is a direct relationship with clients, so that we situate our studio projects in the real-world. The housing crisis is multi-faceted and future professionals need to be aware of the complexity of design intervention—solutions require a nexus of policy, planning and design approaches. In a graduate school, we must prepare aspiring designers, architects and planners to embrace these challenges.
The interface with critical practice is the ultimate test for us to remain relevant and committed to innovation and excellence within the realm of what we can control. Studio teaching needs to address housing affordability in a systematic way, as it will make a critical difference within Canadian society and will define the future of our cities. This requires a much stronger emphasis on sustainable urbanism and community-based projects.
Q: What policies do you feel cities in Canada should create or address to aid in addressing the housing crisis and homelessness?
A: The planning regulation, upzoning, and permitting processes can be improved to enhance infill housing, gentle density and inner-city intensification. Recognizing that cities and neighbourhoods need to be built for people and not for cars requires a focus on transit-oriented development in strategic locations where low-density retail, industrial and housing sites can be redeveloped to become mixed-use urban villages with a variety of housing types. Changes to minimum parking standards and lot coverage can energize the infusion of missing middle housing to create opportunities for multi-generational living, cohousing and home sharing with renters. But the real difference in addressing the homelessness and affordability crisis is the renewed investment into affordable housing through partnerships of federal, provincial and municipal governments with non-profit organizations. We need to grow this segment of the housing market and to make sure that it is an integral part of our urban neighbourhoods through the design process.
Q: What role do you think schools of architecture and design have in tackling the housing crisis in Canada?
A: We need to make a major commitment to building knowledge and capacity that focuses on solutions to the housing crisis in our curriculum. Design thinking is premised on innovation; it is part of the competency, creativity and collaboration that we try to instill in future professionals. Architects today are absent from the design of neighbourhoods on the periphery of our cities. We need to bring back that creativity and the knowledge of architects, planners, and designers, and develop the prototypes that will provide solutions to the housing crisis.
   SAPL is moving downtown so that we can be a part of downtown rebuilding and innovation. Our adaptive reuse of existing office space in Calgary’s downtown will provide opportunities to connect to local businesses and residents and offer immersion in city life that is critical for our students. Our school will be a living urban design lab, where we embrace social justice, community-inspired design work and collaborate with different communities of practice to demonstrate viable solutions for changing cities and changing societies.

Sara Stevens
Associate Professor & Chair – Urban Design at the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia
Sara Stevens is an architectural historian and Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her book Developing Expertisestudies real estate development in 20th-century American cities. She is a member of the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation, curators of the Canada Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Q: Major cities across Canada are seeing unprecedented housing issues. As an educator, what have you seen in research or studio projects that tackle these issues?
A: There are so many great examples of design studios in Canada that are looking at housing challenges, such as the ‘Not for Sale’ study abroad course on contemporary housing that recently won the ACSA’s 2024 Architectural Education Award. McGill has a long history of housing research with the Minimum Cost Housing Group, which was the subject of a recent exhibition curated by Ipek Türeli. The work of Shawn Bailey and Lancelot Coar at the University of Manitoba is bringing really innovative pedagogy to the question of housing for Indigenous communities to design schools.
Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis?
A: At UBC, questions around missing middle housing brought forth a collaboration between Haeccity Studio Architects and UBC students that resulted in a publication of the students’ work, co-sponsored by SALA and the Urbanarium, an organization in Vancouver that is a forum for sharing ideas about city building, particularly around climate change and housing affordability. The Urbananium’s design competitions have focused on missing middle housing, mixed-use neighbourhoods, and the codes and regulations that are barriers to housing affordability. Their current competition, Decoding Timber Towers, is focused on prefab and mass timber housing.
Q: What policies do you feel cities in Canada should create or address to aid in the housing crisis and homelessness?
A: I think that Canada needs to take UNDRIP and the TRC Calls to Action seriously. We can’t separate the issue of housing for Indigenous people, and the history of colonization that it’s part of, from the housing challenges everyone else faces. The United Nations Housing as a Human Right work is a great resource on this, as their work also points to the problems of financialization and the effect this has had on renters, social housing, and un-housed folks.
The Land Back Courtyard was part of the Not For Sale exhibition at the Canada Pavilion in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Photo by Maris Mezulis
Q: What role do you think schools of architecture and design have in tackling the housing crisis in Canada?
A: Schools of architecture and design can play an important role by educating students about the role of architects in the housing crisis in Canada. We need the next generation of architects to understand that they have a part to play. It’s not an issue that can be solved through policy and the market alone: their expertise in design, which of course touches policy and works with the private sector, is inherently part of this issue.
   To develop deeper conversations around this, I am working with collaborators in the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation to organize a super-studio across Canada for the next school yearcalled “End Housing Alienation Now!” that is inviting all schools of architecture to run studios on a shared set of themes and principles.We have commitments from almost all the schools already, and have hosted a number of conversations with people from the schools to develop how this will work, balancing what is shared vs. independent, the different schedules and levels of students, etc.
For these studios, one ambition is that the studios work with local activists, advocates, and professional practices to show students how important these kinds of collaborations can be, and how important embedded local knowledge is. We hope to share resources and create opportunities for students to connect across geographies to ensure that many, many people with lots of passion and expertise are focused on this topic.

As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine
The post AIA Canada Journal: Canadian educators on housing affordability appeared first on Canadian Architect.
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AIA Canada Journal: Canadian educators on housing affordability
Architectural education is an important part of becoming an architect. It provides a foundation in art and architectural history, basic concepts of design, and foundational technical knowledge. It promotes critical thinking, examines social and economic complexities, and encourages creativity and teamwork. I may be biased, but I believe the camaraderie and pride that are part of architectural students’ design studio experience are unmatched by any other educational program.    In this issue of the AIA Canada Journal, Pauline Thimm, Hannah Allawi and I reached out to schools of architecture from across the country. Our conversations centred on research themes in today’s design studios, with a focus on housing affordability. Students and faculties are actively engaging in challenging the status quo on the shortage of housing. It takes a village to derive plausible solutions—and schools of architecture across the country are united in bringing their voices and minds to this pressing issue. In a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-supported partnership, AIA Canada Society is also actively participating in research on designing inclusive, sustainable and healthy cities. We want to thank all the educators who took time to speak with us and provide their invaluable insights. -Dora Ng, AIA Canada Society President Rick Haldenby Professor, School of Architecture, University of Waterloo Rick Haldenby, FRAIC, served as Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo from 1988 to 2013, and founded the Waterloo Rome Program in 1979. Among many accomplishments, Haldenby was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2021, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture, the Special Jury Prize at the Kitchener Waterloo Arts Awards, and the Dr. Jean Steckle Award for Heritage Education from the Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation. Q: Kitchener-Waterloo is known as a university town that is home to top Ontario post-secondary institutions. Tell us a bit about the twin cities. A: The Waterloo Region’s industrial development began with the arrival of German-speaking immigrants in the 19th century. Its cities were literally “founded on factories.” Its prosperity was influenced by a rail-based transport system. In the late 19th century, the extension of the Grand Trunk Railway contributed to the industrialization of the area. In the 1950s, visionary community leaders made concerted efforts to build educational infrastructure, and in just a few years created the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College. The region experienced significant growth in manufacturing industries, insurance companies, and high-tech businesses over time. Home to two universities and a college, it is an education hub that attracts talents and businesses, which increases the demand for housing for students and families. The once-suburban neighbourhood of Northdale, surrounded by these post-secondary institutions, saw a surge in student population in the early 2000s, including a large percentage of international students. We saw a building boom to increase medium-density housing like stacked townhomes and row houses, as well as taller buildings up to 30+ stories in what was once a primarily low-density town. Q: Like the building boom in Waterloo, we saw many residential high-rises going up in the GTA, but this growth still does not adequately address housing demand. In many cities across Canada, there are unprecedented housing issues including affordability and homelessness. What do you see emerging as key areas of interest and inquiry among students at your school? Is housing one of them? A: Connection between affordability and homelessness is not a one-to-one problem. The housing crisis can have many dimensions. In our undergraduate design studios, we are laying the groundwork for approaches to affordability, environmental responsibility and social justice. Many of my colleagues and graduate students at the University of Waterloo are involved in various research studies, exhibitions and campaigns, including the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. We also try to keep a balance to cover diverse topics in architecture, including housing. Second- and third-year design studios focus on urban intensification amid the building boom, enabling students to discuss ideas for keeping cities habitable and attractive for future growth. Design studios have also worked with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity to support the ambitious program to build affordable housing for families in need. In partnership with the City of Cambridge, Waterloo architecture students designed and built tiny homes as prototypes for emergency shelter. Photo courtesy University of Waterloo Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis? A: Through collaboration and communication with the community, the School of Architecture has engaged with social housing agencies, municipality planning authorities, Indigenous groups and aging-in-place consultants to develop housing solutions for a diverse population including seniors. Moving the School of Architecture from Waterloo to Cambridge in 2004 was a communal project with great support from the City of Cambridge. Occupying the repurposed silk mill in Cambridge, the school aims to be the design campus for the city to allow exchange of creative ideas and intellectual stimulation. Since the move, we have had many opportunities to collaborate and work closely with the municipality. The Tiny Homes project is an initiative in partnership with the City of Cambridge, whereby Waterloo architecture students were engaged to design and build prototype tiny homes that offer practical, cost-effective and dignified emergency housing solutions. It is an example of collaboration that makes a meaningful difference. Photo by Danielle Sneesby Shauna Mallory-Hill Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba Shauna Mallory-Hill, PhD, is currently Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture. Her 25-year-long career spans teaching, research and advocacy, with a focus on building systems, universal and sustainable design, as well as building performance evaluation. Her sponsored research includes accessible design, along with post-occupancy work on how sustainably designed environments impact human health and productivity. Q: How is The University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecturespecifically engaging in design explorations addressing housing? A: In addition to hosting public events and delivering focused design studios, we are actively engaged and support research collaborations including funded research with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counciland the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We are also committed to partnering and working with communities.    In 2022, U of M professor Lancelot Coar’s undergraduate studio engaged with One House Many Nations to develop a mobile design and construction trailer for on-site design-build work. Photo by Lancelot Coar One House Many Nationsoriginally started as a grassroots movement to shed light on the housing crisis faced by Indigenous communities. For the past four years, OHMN, led by Dr. Alex Wilson and Sylvia McAdam, has been working with faculty and students from FAUM, houseless First Nations youth, and students at Saskatoon’s Nutana Collegiate to design and construct small, affordable homes that are trucked to remote Indigenous communities in Northern Saskatchewan. After a house is delivered, it is occupied by one of the youth participants. Each year, another house is built, informed by post-occupancy data that was collected on the previous year’s house. First Nations youth participants have learned to advocate for community needs while gaining skills and knowledge about home-building and maintenance. Lancelot Coar’s 2022 undergraduate architecture studio engaged with OHMN to create a mobile design lab that can be brought onsite to design-build in First Nations communities. OHMN’s work was exhibited at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2023. Q: What are key areas of interest and inquiry among students at your school? Is housing one of them? A: We are seeing that this generation is increasingly concerned about what is happening to the world—concerns about sustainability, housing, and food deserts are paramount. Students want to work on things that are meaningful. Students also really embrace hands-on learning. Any time students are encouraged and supported to engage with community, they feel like they are making a difference.    Here in Winnipeg, we can all see the encampments of the unhoused. It is apparent that there is work to do to solve this dilemma.This past year, one of our housing-themed studios worked with a local grassroots organization, St. Boniface Street Links, in the design and construction of a prototype transitional house as a safer interim housing solution. This housing project ultimately was built and included as part of the annual Warming Huts design competition at the Forks. Q: Are there any barriers to collaborating in this way, involving practitioners and real community groups? A: We often get groups who approach us to collaborate. We need to be clear that we are not providing a design service, but we are committed to the exploration of ideas and working together on important problems.    It is important to me that doing housing research work in collaboration with Indigenous communities is respectful, responsible and reciprocal. Ensuring that some benefit of the research stays with the community is crucial, given the long history of research involving Indigenous populations where this did not happen. A willingness to listen and understand community priorities and context—and adapt—is key. It can be difficult for some to have enough capacity to deal with added administration; a local liaison is helpful. The Wîkiwin student-built house is part of an ongoing collaboration with Kawéchiwasik Development Corporation at York Factory First Nation. Photo by Shauna Mallory-Hill Q: Some of your current research and design work is supported by the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge. Can you tell us a bit about that project? A: The CMHC funding in part supports the Wîkiwin Training Enterprise of York Factory First Nation project, geared to building healthy homes by leveraging local resources and tradespeople in collaboration with the Kawéchiwasik Development Corporation. The purpose is to provide design education and construction skills in the northern communities where they are needed. A key goal is that kids won’t need to leave their communities to get skills, and communities can develop capacity to increase their self-sufficiency.    In collaboration with FAUM, the project will include a comprehensive education model based on a co-created curriculum, training programs, housing designs and research on building materials. Students earn micro-credentials through distance education to get basic training in design and construction, or have the opportunity to work as research assistants to assist with collection of data, such as indoor air quality.    Focusing on sustainable construction techniques, using local materials like stone and wood, the initiative promises to employ residents, cut production costs, and enhance housing quality. Additionally, the creation of a year-round skilled trades school facility and housing for students and teachers will boost the local labour force.    Stage 2 of the project involves the building of the Wîkiwin skilled trades training and research facility and dormitory. This phase will also see the expansion of the educational curriculum in partnership with the University of Manitoba, ultimately increasing the labour force capacity of York Factory First Nation and creating more opportunities for its youth. Sasha Tsenkova Professor of Planning and Director of the Cities, Policy & Planning Lab at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, University of Calgary Sasha Tsenkova, PhD, is a professor at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at the University of Calgary. With a background in architecture, urbanism, and planning, her work spans over 30 years of research, teaching, and professional practice, focusing on creating more inclusive and sustainable urban environments. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada/Academy of Social Sciences. Q: Major cities across Canada are seeing unprecedented housing issues. As an educator, what have you seen in research or studio projects that tackle these issues? A: We are a nation of suburban homeowners, where much of the wealth creation in the urban system is driven by investment in housing. Today, income and wealth inequality in Canadian cities is higher than ever before, which is exacerbated by the suburban homeownership model. In cities, newcomers to the housing market—young and old—face incredible affordability constraints. Homelessness has grown exponentially and homeownership is not within the reach of the middle class. In the design world, we must begin to address, through systemic intervention, these challenges. Many of our research and studio projects focus on sustainable urbanism through designs that explore strategies to provide affordable homes across the income spectrum and embrace different types of housing. We cannot continue to replicate a model of postwar city building that no longer serves the needs of the people. We encourage students to learn from successful cities in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, where a more systematic approach to neighbourhood design and redevelopment allows various types of housing to be built along the same street within a community. This is a different approach to growth premised on urban regeneration and intensification, where people come before cars and community identity evolves over time.   Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis? A: We focus on community-engaged scholarship, research and teaching at SAPL. Integration with communities of practice is necessary, but so is a direct relationship with clients, so that we situate our studio projects in the real-world. The housing crisis is multi-faceted and future professionals need to be aware of the complexity of design intervention—solutions require a nexus of policy, planning and design approaches. In a graduate school, we must prepare aspiring designers, architects and planners to embrace these challenges. The interface with critical practice is the ultimate test for us to remain relevant and committed to innovation and excellence within the realm of what we can control. Studio teaching needs to address housing affordability in a systematic way, as it will make a critical difference within Canadian society and will define the future of our cities. This requires a much stronger emphasis on sustainable urbanism and community-based projects. Q: What policies do you feel cities in Canada should create or address to aid in addressing the housing crisis and homelessness? A: The planning regulation, upzoning, and permitting processes can be improved to enhance infill housing, gentle density and inner-city intensification. Recognizing that cities and neighbourhoods need to be built for people and not for cars requires a focus on transit-oriented development in strategic locations where low-density retail, industrial and housing sites can be redeveloped to become mixed-use urban villages with a variety of housing types. Changes to minimum parking standards and lot coverage can energize the infusion of missing middle housing to create opportunities for multi-generational living, cohousing and home sharing with renters. But the real difference in addressing the homelessness and affordability crisis is the renewed investment into affordable housing through partnerships of federal, provincial and municipal governments with non-profit organizations. We need to grow this segment of the housing market and to make sure that it is an integral part of our urban neighbourhoods through the design process. Q: What role do you think schools of architecture and design have in tackling the housing crisis in Canada? A: We need to make a major commitment to building knowledge and capacity that focuses on solutions to the housing crisis in our curriculum. Design thinking is premised on innovation; it is part of the competency, creativity and collaboration that we try to instill in future professionals. Architects today are absent from the design of neighbourhoods on the periphery of our cities. We need to bring back that creativity and the knowledge of architects, planners, and designers, and develop the prototypes that will provide solutions to the housing crisis.    SAPL is moving downtown so that we can be a part of downtown rebuilding and innovation. Our adaptive reuse of existing office space in Calgary’s downtown will provide opportunities to connect to local businesses and residents and offer immersion in city life that is critical for our students. Our school will be a living urban design lab, where we embrace social justice, community-inspired design work and collaborate with different communities of practice to demonstrate viable solutions for changing cities and changing societies. Sara Stevens Associate Professor & Chair – Urban Design at the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia Sara Stevens is an architectural historian and Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her book Developing Expertisestudies real estate development in 20th-century American cities. She is a member of the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation, curators of the Canada Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Q: Major cities across Canada are seeing unprecedented housing issues. As an educator, what have you seen in research or studio projects that tackle these issues? A: There are so many great examples of design studios in Canada that are looking at housing challenges, such as the ‘Not for Sale’ study abroad course on contemporary housing that recently won the ACSA’s 2024 Architectural Education Award. McGill has a long history of housing research with the Minimum Cost Housing Group, which was the subject of a recent exhibition curated by Ipek Türeli. The work of Shawn Bailey and Lancelot Coar at the University of Manitoba is bringing really innovative pedagogy to the question of housing for Indigenous communities to design schools. Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis? A: At UBC, questions around missing middle housing brought forth a collaboration between Haeccity Studio Architects and UBC students that resulted in a publication of the students’ work, co-sponsored by SALA and the Urbanarium, an organization in Vancouver that is a forum for sharing ideas about city building, particularly around climate change and housing affordability. The Urbananium’s design competitions have focused on missing middle housing, mixed-use neighbourhoods, and the codes and regulations that are barriers to housing affordability. Their current competition, Decoding Timber Towers, is focused on prefab and mass timber housing. Q: What policies do you feel cities in Canada should create or address to aid in the housing crisis and homelessness? A: I think that Canada needs to take UNDRIP and the TRC Calls to Action seriously. We can’t separate the issue of housing for Indigenous people, and the history of colonization that it’s part of, from the housing challenges everyone else faces. The United Nations Housing as a Human Right work is a great resource on this, as their work also points to the problems of financialization and the effect this has had on renters, social housing, and un-housed folks. The Land Back Courtyard was part of the Not For Sale exhibition at the Canada Pavilion in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Photo by Maris Mezulis Q: What role do you think schools of architecture and design have in tackling the housing crisis in Canada? A: Schools of architecture and design can play an important role by educating students about the role of architects in the housing crisis in Canada. We need the next generation of architects to understand that they have a part to play. It’s not an issue that can be solved through policy and the market alone: their expertise in design, which of course touches policy and works with the private sector, is inherently part of this issue.    To develop deeper conversations around this, I am working with collaborators in the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation to organize a super-studio across Canada for the next school yearcalled “End Housing Alienation Now!” that is inviting all schools of architecture to run studios on a shared set of themes and principles.We have commitments from almost all the schools already, and have hosted a number of conversations with people from the schools to develop how this will work, balancing what is shared vs. independent, the different schedules and levels of students, etc. For these studios, one ambition is that the studios work with local activists, advocates, and professional practices to show students how important these kinds of collaborations can be, and how important embedded local knowledge is. We hope to share resources and create opportunities for students to connect across geographies to ensure that many, many people with lots of passion and expertise are focused on this topic. As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post AIA Canada Journal: Canadian educators on housing affordability appeared first on Canadian Architect. #aia #canada #journal #canadian #educators

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AIA Canada Journal: Canadian educators on housing affordability

Architectural education is an important part of becoming an architect. It provides a foundation in art and architectural history, basic concepts of design, and foundational technical knowledge. It promotes critical thinking, examines social and economic complexities, and encourages creativity and teamwork. I may be biased, but I believe the camaraderie and pride that are part of architectural students’ design studio experience are unmatched by any other educational program.    In this issue of the AIA Canada Journal, Pauline Thimm, Hannah Allawi and I reached out to schools of architecture from across the country. Our conversations centred on research themes in today’s design studios, with a focus on housing affordability. Students and faculties are actively engaging in challenging the status quo on the shortage of housing. It takes a village to derive plausible solutions—and schools of architecture across the country are united in bringing their voices and minds to this pressing issue. In a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-supported partnership, AIA Canada Society is also actively participating in research on designing inclusive, sustainable and healthy cities. We want to thank all the educators who took time to speak with us and provide their invaluable insights. -Dora Ng, AIA Canada Society President Rick Haldenby Professor, School of Architecture, University of Waterloo Rick Haldenby, FRAIC, served as Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo from 1988 to 2013, and founded the Waterloo Rome Program in 1979. Among many accomplishments, Haldenby was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2021, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture, the Special Jury Prize at the Kitchener Waterloo Arts Awards, and the Dr. Jean Steckle Award for Heritage Education from the Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation. Q: Kitchener-Waterloo is known as a university town that is home to top Ontario post-secondary institutions. Tell us a bit about the twin cities. A: The Waterloo Region’s industrial development began with the arrival of German-speaking immigrants in the 19th century. Its cities were literally “founded on factories.” Its prosperity was influenced by a rail-based transport system. In the late 19th century, the extension of the Grand Trunk Railway contributed to the industrialization of the area. In the 1950s, visionary community leaders made concerted efforts to build educational infrastructure, and in just a few years created the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College. The region experienced significant growth in manufacturing industries, insurance companies, and high-tech businesses over time. Home to two universities and a college, it is an education hub that attracts talents and businesses, which increases the demand for housing for students and families. The once-suburban neighbourhood of Northdale, surrounded by these post-secondary institutions, saw a surge in student population in the early 2000s, including a large percentage of international students. We saw a building boom to increase medium-density housing like stacked townhomes and row houses, as well as taller buildings up to 30+ stories in what was once a primarily low-density town. Q: Like the building boom in Waterloo, we saw many residential high-rises going up in the GTA, but this growth still does not adequately address housing demand. In many cities across Canada, there are unprecedented housing issues including affordability and homelessness. What do you see emerging as key areas of interest and inquiry among students at your school? Is housing one of them? A: Connection between affordability and homelessness is not a one-to-one problem. The housing crisis can have many dimensions. In our undergraduate design studios, we are laying the groundwork for approaches to affordability, environmental responsibility and social justice. Many of my colleagues and graduate students at the University of Waterloo are involved in various research studies, exhibitions and campaigns, including the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. We also try to keep a balance to cover diverse topics in architecture, including housing. Second- and third-year design studios focus on urban intensification amid the building boom, enabling students to discuss ideas for keeping cities habitable and attractive for future growth. Design studios have also worked with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity to support the ambitious program to build affordable housing for families in need. In partnership with the City of Cambridge, Waterloo architecture students designed and built tiny homes as prototypes for emergency shelter. Photo courtesy University of Waterloo Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis? A: Through collaboration and communication with the community, the School of Architecture has engaged with social housing agencies, municipality planning authorities, Indigenous groups and aging-in-place consultants to develop housing solutions for a diverse population including seniors. Moving the School of Architecture from Waterloo to Cambridge in 2004 was a communal project with great support from the City of Cambridge. Occupying the repurposed silk mill in Cambridge, the school aims to be the design campus for the city to allow exchange of creative ideas and intellectual stimulation. Since the move, we have had many opportunities to collaborate and work closely with the municipality. The Tiny Homes project is an initiative in partnership with the City of Cambridge, whereby Waterloo architecture students were engaged to design and build prototype tiny homes that offer practical, cost-effective and dignified emergency housing solutions. It is an example of collaboration that makes a meaningful difference. Photo by Danielle Sneesby Shauna Mallory-Hill Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba Shauna Mallory-Hill, PhD, is currently Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture. Her 25-year-long career spans teaching, research and advocacy, with a focus on building systems, universal and sustainable design, as well as building performance evaluation. Her sponsored research includes accessible design, along with post-occupancy work on how sustainably designed environments impact human health and productivity. Q: How is The University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture (FAUM) specifically engaging in design explorations addressing housing? A: In addition to hosting public events and delivering focused design studios, we are actively engaged and support research collaborations including funded research with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). We are also committed to partnering and working with communities.    In 2022, U of M professor Lancelot Coar’s undergraduate studio engaged with One House Many Nations to develop a mobile design and construction trailer for on-site design-build work. Photo by Lancelot Coar One House Many Nations (OHMN) originally started as a grassroots movement to shed light on the housing crisis faced by Indigenous communities. For the past four years, OHMN, led by Dr. Alex Wilson and Sylvia McAdam, has been working with faculty and students from FAUM, houseless First Nations youth, and students at Saskatoon’s Nutana Collegiate to design and construct small, affordable homes that are trucked to remote Indigenous communities in Northern Saskatchewan. After a house is delivered, it is occupied by one of the youth participants. Each year, another house is built, informed by post-occupancy data that was collected on the previous year’s house(s). First Nations youth participants have learned to advocate for community needs while gaining skills and knowledge about home-building and maintenance. Lancelot Coar’s 2022 undergraduate architecture studio engaged with OHMN to create a mobile design lab that can be brought onsite to design-build in First Nations communities. OHMN’s work was exhibited at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2023. Q: What are key areas of interest and inquiry among students at your school? Is housing one of them? A: We are seeing that this generation is increasingly concerned about what is happening to the world—concerns about sustainability, housing, and food deserts are paramount. Students want to work on things that are meaningful. Students also really embrace hands-on learning. Any time students are encouraged and supported to engage with community, they feel like they are making a difference.    Here in Winnipeg, we can all see the encampments of the unhoused. It is apparent that there is work to do to solve this dilemma.This past year, one of our housing-themed studios worked with a local grassroots organization, St. Boniface Street Links, in the design and construction of a prototype transitional house as a safer interim housing solution. This housing project ultimately was built and included as part of the annual Warming Huts design competition at the Forks. Q: Are there any barriers to collaborating in this way, involving practitioners and real community groups? A: We often get groups who approach us to collaborate. We need to be clear that we are not providing a design service, but we are committed to the exploration of ideas and working together on important problems.    It is important to me that doing housing research work in collaboration with Indigenous communities is respectful, responsible and reciprocal. Ensuring that some benefit of the research stays with the community is crucial, given the long history of research involving Indigenous populations where this did not happen. A willingness to listen and understand community priorities and context—and adapt—is key. It can be difficult for some to have enough capacity to deal with added administration (meetings, paperwork, report writing, etc.); a local liaison is helpful. The Wîkiwin student-built house is part of an ongoing collaboration with Kawéchiwasik Development Corporation at York Factory First Nation. Photo by Shauna Mallory-Hill Q: Some of your current research and design work is supported by the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge. Can you tell us a bit about that project? A: The CMHC funding in part supports the Wîkiwin Training Enterprise of York Factory First Nation project, geared to building healthy homes by leveraging local resources and tradespeople in collaboration with the Kawéchiwasik Development Corporation. The purpose is to provide design education and construction skills in the northern communities where they are needed. A key goal is that kids won’t need to leave their communities to get skills, and communities can develop capacity to increase their self-sufficiency.    In collaboration with FAUM, the project will include a comprehensive education model based on a co-created curriculum, training programs, housing designs and research on building materials. Students earn micro-credentials through distance education to get basic training in design and construction, or have the opportunity to work as research assistants to assist with collection of data, such as indoor air quality.    Focusing on sustainable construction techniques, using local materials like stone and wood, the initiative promises to employ residents, cut production costs, and enhance housing quality. Additionally, the creation of a year-round skilled trades school facility and housing for students and teachers will boost the local labour force.    Stage 2 of the project involves the building of the Wîkiwin skilled trades training and research facility and dormitory. This phase will also see the expansion of the educational curriculum in partnership with the University of Manitoba, ultimately increasing the labour force capacity of York Factory First Nation and creating more opportunities for its youth. Sasha Tsenkova Professor of Planning and Director of the Cities, Policy & Planning Lab at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape (SAPL), University of Calgary Sasha Tsenkova, PhD, is a professor at the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at the University of Calgary. With a background in architecture, urbanism, and planning, her work spans over 30 years of research, teaching, and professional practice, focusing on creating more inclusive and sustainable urban environments. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada/Academy of Social Sciences. Q: Major cities across Canada are seeing unprecedented housing issues. As an educator, what have you seen in research or studio projects that tackle these issues? A: We are a nation of suburban homeowners, where much of the wealth creation in the urban system is driven by investment in housing. Today, income and wealth inequality in Canadian cities is higher than ever before, which is exacerbated by the suburban homeownership model. In cities, newcomers to the housing market—young and old—face incredible affordability constraints. Homelessness has grown exponentially and homeownership is not within the reach of the middle class. In the design world, we must begin to address, through systemic intervention, these challenges. Many of our research and studio projects focus on sustainable urbanism through designs that explore strategies to provide affordable homes across the income spectrum and embrace different types of housing. We cannot continue to replicate a model of postwar city building that no longer serves the needs of the people. We encourage students to learn from successful cities in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, where a more systematic approach to neighbourhood design and redevelopment allows various types of housing to be built along the same street within a community. This is a different approach to growth premised on urban regeneration and intensification, where people come before cars and community identity evolves over time.   Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis? A: We focus on community-engaged scholarship, research and teaching at SAPL. Integration with communities of practice is necessary, but so is a direct relationship with clients, so that we situate our studio projects in the real-world. The housing crisis is multi-faceted and future professionals need to be aware of the complexity of design intervention—solutions require a nexus of policy, planning and design approaches. In a graduate school, we must prepare aspiring designers, architects and planners to embrace these challenges. The interface with critical practice is the ultimate test for us to remain relevant and committed to innovation and excellence within the realm of what we can control. Studio teaching needs to address housing affordability in a systematic way, as it will make a critical difference within Canadian society and will define the future of our cities. This requires a much stronger emphasis on sustainable urbanism and community-based projects. Q: What policies do you feel cities in Canada should create or address to aid in addressing the housing crisis and homelessness? A: The planning regulation, upzoning, and permitting processes can be improved to enhance infill housing, gentle density and inner-city intensification. Recognizing that cities and neighbourhoods need to be built for people and not for cars requires a focus on transit-oriented development in strategic locations where low-density retail, industrial and housing sites can be redeveloped to become mixed-use urban villages with a variety of housing types. Changes to minimum parking standards and lot coverage can energize the infusion of missing middle housing to create opportunities for multi-generational living, cohousing and home sharing with renters. But the real difference in addressing the homelessness and affordability crisis is the renewed investment into affordable housing through partnerships of federal, provincial and municipal governments with non-profit organizations. We need to grow this segment of the housing market and to make sure that it is an integral part of our urban neighbourhoods through the design process. Q: What role do you think schools of architecture and design have in tackling the housing crisis in Canada? A: We need to make a major commitment to building knowledge and capacity that focuses on solutions to the housing crisis in our curriculum. Design thinking is premised on innovation; it is part of the competency, creativity and collaboration that we try to instill in future professionals. Architects today are absent from the design of neighbourhoods on the periphery of our cities. We need to bring back that creativity and the knowledge of architects, planners, and designers, and develop the prototypes that will provide solutions to the housing crisis.    SAPL is moving downtown so that we can be a part of downtown rebuilding and innovation. Our adaptive reuse of existing office space in Calgary’s downtown will provide opportunities to connect to local businesses and residents and offer immersion in city life that is critical for our students. Our school will be a living urban design lab, where we embrace social justice, community-inspired design work and collaborate with different communities of practice to demonstrate viable solutions for changing cities and changing societies. Sara Stevens Associate Professor & Chair – Urban Design at the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (SALA), University of British Columbia Sara Stevens is an architectural historian and Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her book Developing Expertise (Yale University Press, 2016) studies real estate development in 20th-century American cities. She is a member of the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation, curators of the Canada Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Q: Major cities across Canada are seeing unprecedented housing issues (affordability issues and homelessness). As an educator, what have you seen in research or studio projects that tackle these issues? A: There are so many great examples of design studios in Canada that are looking at housing challenges, such as the ‘Not for Sale’ study abroad course on contemporary housing that recently won the ACSA’s 2024 Architectural Education Award. McGill has a long history of housing research with the Minimum Cost Housing Group, which was the subject of a recent exhibition curated by Ipek Türeli. The work of Shawn Bailey and Lancelot Coar at the University of Manitoba is bringing really innovative pedagogy to the question of housing for Indigenous communities to design schools. Q: Any examples of collaboration between studio projects and practicing professionals in tackling the housing crisis? A: At UBC, questions around missing middle housing brought forth a collaboration between Haeccity Studio Architects and UBC students that resulted in a publication of the students’ work, co-sponsored by SALA and the Urbanarium, an organization in Vancouver that is a forum for sharing ideas about city building, particularly around climate change and housing affordability. The Urbananium’s design competitions have focused on missing middle housing, mixed-use neighbourhoods, and the codes and regulations that are barriers to housing affordability. Their current competition, Decoding Timber Towers, is focused on prefab and mass timber housing. Q: What policies do you feel cities in Canada should create or address to aid in the housing crisis and homelessness? A: I think that Canada needs to take UNDRIP and the TRC Calls to Action seriously. We can’t separate the issue of housing for Indigenous people, and the history of colonization that it’s part of, from the housing challenges everyone else faces. The United Nations Housing as a Human Right work is a great resource on this, as their work also points to the problems of financialization and the effect this has had on renters, social housing, and un-housed folks. The Land Back Courtyard was part of the Not For Sale exhibition at the Canada Pavilion in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Photo by Maris Mezulis Q: What role do you think schools of architecture and design have in tackling the housing crisis in Canada? A: Schools of architecture and design can play an important role by educating students about the role of architects in the housing crisis in Canada. We need the next generation of architects to understand that they have a part to play. It’s not an issue that can be solved through policy and the market alone: their expertise in design, which of course touches policy and works with the private sector, is inherently part of this issue.    To develop deeper conversations around this, I am working with collaborators in the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation to organize a super-studio across Canada for the next school year (25-26) called “End Housing Alienation Now!” that is inviting all schools of architecture to run studios on a shared set of themes and principles. (This builds off of the exhibition and campaign we did for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, which the teaching award I mentioned is also related to.) We have commitments from almost all the schools already, and have hosted a number of conversations with people from the schools to develop how this will work, balancing what is shared vs. independent, the different schedules and levels of students, etc. For these studios, one ambition is that the studios work with local activists, advocates, and professional practices to show students how important these kinds of collaborations can be, and how important embedded local knowledge is. We hope to share resources and create opportunities for students to connect across geographies to ensure that many, many people with lots of passion and expertise are focused on this topic. As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post AIA Canada Journal: Canadian educators on housing affordability appeared first on Canadian Architect.

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Lifehacker RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-06-01 15:52:38 ·

What Medical Guidelines (Finally) Say About Pain Management for IUD Insertion

Intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are an extremely effective and convenient form of birth control for many people—but it can also very painful to get one inserted. Current medical guidelines say that your doctor should be discussing pain management with you, and they also give advice to doctors on what methods tend to work best for most people. The newest set of guidelines is from ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. These guidelines actually cover a variety of procedures, including endometrial and cervical biopsies, but today I'll be talking about the IUD insertion portions. And in 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's released new contraceptive recommendations that include a section on how and why providers should help you with pain relief. Before we get into the new recommendations and what they say, it’s important to keep in mind that that not everybody feels severe pain with insertion—the estimate is that insertion is severely painful for 50% of people who haven't given birth, and only 10% of people who have, according to Rachel Flink, the OB-GYN I spoke with for my article on what to expect when you get an IUD.  I’m making sure to point this out because I’ve met people who are terrified at the thought of getting an IUD, because they think that severe pain is guaranteed and that doctors are lying if they say otherwise. In reality, there’s a whole spectrum of possible experiences, and both you and your provider should be informed and prepared for anything along that spectrum.Your provider should discuss pain management with youThe biggest thing in both sets of guidelines is not just the pain management options they discuss, but the guideline that says there is a place for this discussion and that it is important! You’ve always been able to ask about pain management, but providers are now expected to know that they need to discuss this with their patients. The ACOG guidelines say: "Options to manage pain should be discussed with and offered to all patients seeking in-office gynecologic procedures." And the CDC says: Before IUD placement, all patients should be counseled on potential pain during placement as well as the risks, benefits, and alternatives of different options for pain management. A person-centered plan for IUD placement and pain management should be made based on patient preference.“Person-centered” means that the plan should take into account what you want and need, not just what the provider is used to doing or thinks will be easiest. The CDC guidelines also say: “When considering patient pain, it is important to recognize that the experience of pain is individualized and might be influenced by previous experiences including trauma and mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety.” The ACOG guidelines, similarly, say that talking over the procedure and what to expect can help make the procedure more tolerable, regardless of how physically painful it ends up being.Lidocaine paracervical blocks may relieve painThere’s good news and bad news about the recommended pain medications. The good news is that there are recommendations. The bad news is that none of them are guaranteed to work for everyone, and it’s not clear if they work very well at all. The CDC says that a paracervical block“might” reduce pain with insertion. Three studies showed that the injections worked to reduce pain, while three others found they did not. The CDC rates the certainty of evidence as “low” for pain and for satisfaction with the procedure. The ACOG guidelines also mention local anesthetics, including lidocaine paracervical blocks, as one of the best options for pain management. Dr. Flink told me that while some of her patients appreciate this option, it’s often impossible to numb all of the nerves in the cervix, and the injection itself can be painful—so in many cases, patients decide it’s not worth it. Still, it’s worth discussing with your provider if this sounds like something you would like to try.Topical lidocaine may also helpLidocaine, the same numbing medication, can also be applied to the cervix as a cream, spray, or gel. Again, evidence is mixed, with six trials finding that it helped, and seven finding that it did not. The ACOG guidelines note that sometimes topical lidocaine has worked better than the injected kind. Unfortunately, they also say that it can be hard for doctors to find an appropriate spray-on product that can be used on the cervix.The CDC judged the certainty of to be a bit better here compared to the injection—moderate for reducing pain, and high for improving placement success. Other methods aren’t well supported by the evidenceFor the other pain management methods that the CDC group studied, there wasn’t enough evidence to say whether they work. These included analgesics like ibuprofen, and smooth-muscle-relaxing medications. The ACOG guidelines say that taking NSAIDSbefore insertion doesn't seem to help with insertion pain, even though that's commonly recommended. That approach does seem to work for some other procedures, though, and may help with pain that occurs after an IUD insertion. So it may not be a bad idea to take those four Advil if that's what your doc recommends, but it shouldn't be your only option. Or as the ACOG paper puts it: "Although recommending preprocedural NSAIDs is a benign, low-risk intervention unlikely to cause harm, relying on NSAIDs alone for pain management during IUD insertion is ineffective and does not provide the immediate pain control patients need at the time of the procedure." Both sets of guidelines also don't recommend misoprostol, which is sometimes used to soften and open the cervix before inserting an IUD. The ACOG guidelines describe the evidence as mixed, and the CDC guidelines specifically recommend against it. Moderate certainty evidence says that misoprostol doesn’t help with pain, and low certainty evidence says that it may increase the risk of adverse events like cramping and vomiting. What this means for youThe publication of these guidelines won’t change anything overnight at your local OB-GYN office, but it’s a good sign that discussions about pain management with IUD placement are happening more openly. The new guidelines also don’t necessarily take any options off the table. Even misoprostol, which the CDC now says not to use for routine insertions, “might be useful in selected circumstances,” it writes.Don’t be afraid to ask about pain management before your appointment; as we discussed before, some medications and procedures require that you and your provider plan ahead. And definitely don’t accept a dismissive reply about how taking a few Advil should be enough; it may help for some people, but that shouldn't be the end of the discussion. You deserve to have your provider take your concerns seriously.
#what #medical #guidelines #finally #say

What Medical Guidelines (Finally) Say About Pain Management for IUD Insertion
Intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are an extremely effective and convenient form of birth control for many people—but it can also very painful to get one inserted. Current medical guidelines say that your doctor should be discussing pain management with you, and they also give advice to doctors on what methods tend to work best for most people. The newest set of guidelines is from ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. These guidelines actually cover a variety of procedures, including endometrial and cervical biopsies, but today I'll be talking about the IUD insertion portions. And in 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's released new contraceptive recommendations that include a section on how and why providers should help you with pain relief. Before we get into the new recommendations and what they say, it’s important to keep in mind that that not everybody feels severe pain with insertion—the estimate is that insertion is severely painful for 50% of people who haven't given birth, and only 10% of people who have, according to Rachel Flink, the OB-GYN I spoke with for my article on what to expect when you get an IUD.  I’m making sure to point this out because I’ve met people who are terrified at the thought of getting an IUD, because they think that severe pain is guaranteed and that doctors are lying if they say otherwise. In reality, there’s a whole spectrum of possible experiences, and both you and your provider should be informed and prepared for anything along that spectrum.Your provider should discuss pain management with youThe biggest thing in both sets of guidelines is not just the pain management options they discuss, but the guideline that says there is a place for this discussion and that it is important! You’ve always been able to ask about pain management, but providers are now expected to know that they need to discuss this with their patients. The ACOG guidelines say: "Options to manage pain should be discussed with and offered to all patients seeking in-office gynecologic procedures." And the CDC says: Before IUD placement, all patients should be counseled on potential pain during placement as well as the risks, benefits, and alternatives of different options for pain management. A person-centered plan for IUD placement and pain management should be made based on patient preference.“Person-centered” means that the plan should take into account what you want and need, not just what the provider is used to doing or thinks will be easiest. The CDC guidelines also say: “When considering patient pain, it is important to recognize that the experience of pain is individualized and might be influenced by previous experiences including trauma and mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety.” The ACOG guidelines, similarly, say that talking over the procedure and what to expect can help make the procedure more tolerable, regardless of how physically painful it ends up being.Lidocaine paracervical blocks may relieve painThere’s good news and bad news about the recommended pain medications. The good news is that there are recommendations. The bad news is that none of them are guaranteed to work for everyone, and it’s not clear if they work very well at all. The CDC says that a paracervical block“might” reduce pain with insertion. Three studies showed that the injections worked to reduce pain, while three others found they did not. The CDC rates the certainty of evidence as “low” for pain and for satisfaction with the procedure. The ACOG guidelines also mention local anesthetics, including lidocaine paracervical blocks, as one of the best options for pain management. Dr. Flink told me that while some of her patients appreciate this option, it’s often impossible to numb all of the nerves in the cervix, and the injection itself can be painful—so in many cases, patients decide it’s not worth it. Still, it’s worth discussing with your provider if this sounds like something you would like to try.Topical lidocaine may also helpLidocaine, the same numbing medication, can also be applied to the cervix as a cream, spray, or gel. Again, evidence is mixed, with six trials finding that it helped, and seven finding that it did not. The ACOG guidelines note that sometimes topical lidocaine has worked better than the injected kind. Unfortunately, they also say that it can be hard for doctors to find an appropriate spray-on product that can be used on the cervix.The CDC judged the certainty of to be a bit better here compared to the injection—moderate for reducing pain, and high for improving placement success. Other methods aren’t well supported by the evidenceFor the other pain management methods that the CDC group studied, there wasn’t enough evidence to say whether they work. These included analgesics like ibuprofen, and smooth-muscle-relaxing medications. The ACOG guidelines say that taking NSAIDSbefore insertion doesn't seem to help with insertion pain, even though that's commonly recommended. That approach does seem to work for some other procedures, though, and may help with pain that occurs after an IUD insertion. So it may not be a bad idea to take those four Advil if that's what your doc recommends, but it shouldn't be your only option. Or as the ACOG paper puts it: "Although recommending preprocedural NSAIDs is a benign, low-risk intervention unlikely to cause harm, relying on NSAIDs alone for pain management during IUD insertion is ineffective and does not provide the immediate pain control patients need at the time of the procedure." Both sets of guidelines also don't recommend misoprostol, which is sometimes used to soften and open the cervix before inserting an IUD. The ACOG guidelines describe the evidence as mixed, and the CDC guidelines specifically recommend against it. Moderate certainty evidence says that misoprostol doesn’t help with pain, and low certainty evidence says that it may increase the risk of adverse events like cramping and vomiting. What this means for youThe publication of these guidelines won’t change anything overnight at your local OB-GYN office, but it’s a good sign that discussions about pain management with IUD placement are happening more openly. The new guidelines also don’t necessarily take any options off the table. Even misoprostol, which the CDC now says not to use for routine insertions, “might be useful in selected circumstances,” it writes.Don’t be afraid to ask about pain management before your appointment; as we discussed before, some medications and procedures require that you and your provider plan ahead. And definitely don’t accept a dismissive reply about how taking a few Advil should be enough; it may help for some people, but that shouldn't be the end of the discussion. You deserve to have your provider take your concerns seriously. #what #medical #guidelines #finally #say

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What Medical Guidelines (Finally) Say About Pain Management for IUD Insertion

Intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are an extremely effective and convenient form of birth control for many people—but it can also very painful to get one inserted. Current medical guidelines say that your doctor should be discussing pain management with you, and they also give advice to doctors on what methods tend to work best for most people. The newest set of guidelines is from ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. These guidelines actually cover a variety of procedures, including endometrial and cervical biopsies, but today I'll be talking about the IUD insertion portions. And in 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's released new contraceptive recommendations that include a section on how and why providers should help you with pain relief. Before we get into the new recommendations and what they say, it’s important to keep in mind that that not everybody feels severe pain with insertion—the estimate is that insertion is severely painful for 50% of people who haven't given birth, and only 10% of people who have, according to Rachel Flink, the OB-GYN I spoke with for my article on what to expect when you get an IUD. (She also gave me a great rundown of pain management options and their pros and cons, which I included in the article.)  I’m making sure to point this out because I’ve met people who are terrified at the thought of getting an IUD, because they think that severe pain is guaranteed and that doctors are lying if they say otherwise. In reality, there’s a whole spectrum of possible experiences, and both you and your provider should be informed and prepared for anything along that spectrum.Your provider should discuss pain management with youThe biggest thing in both sets of guidelines is not just the pain management options they discuss, but the guideline that says there is a place for this discussion and that it is important! You’ve always been able to ask about pain management, but providers are now expected to know that they need to discuss this with their patients. The ACOG guidelines say: "Options to manage pain should be discussed with and offered to all patients seeking in-office gynecologic procedures." And the CDC says: Before IUD placement, all patients should be counseled on potential pain during placement as well as the risks, benefits, and alternatives of different options for pain management. A person-centered plan for IUD placement and pain management should be made based on patient preference.“Person-centered” means that the plan should take into account what you want and need, not just what the provider is used to doing or thinks will be easiest. (This has sometimes been called “patient-centered” care, but “person-centered” is meant to convey that you and your provider understand that they are treating a whole person, with concerns outside of just their health, and you’re not only a patient who exists in a medical context.) The CDC guidelines also say: “When considering patient pain, it is important to recognize that the experience of pain is individualized and might be influenced by previous experiences including trauma and mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety.” The ACOG guidelines, similarly, say that talking over the procedure and what to expect can help make the procedure more tolerable, regardless of how physically painful it ends up being. (Dr. Flink told me that anti-anxiety medications during insertion are helpful for some of her patients, and that she’ll discuss them alongside options for physical pain relief.)Lidocaine paracervical blocks may relieve painThere’s good news and bad news about the recommended pain medications. The good news is that there are recommendations. The bad news is that none of them are guaranteed to work for everyone, and it’s not clear if they work very well at all. The CDC says that a paracervical block (done by injection, similar to the numbing injections used for dental work) “might” reduce pain with insertion. Three studies showed that the injections worked to reduce pain, while three others found they did not. The CDC rates the certainty of evidence as “low” for pain and for satisfaction with the procedure. The ACOG guidelines also mention local anesthetics, including lidocaine paracervical blocks, as one of the best options for pain management. Dr. Flink told me that while some of her patients appreciate this option, it’s often impossible to numb all of the nerves in the cervix, and the injection itself can be painful—so in many cases, patients decide it’s not worth it. Still, it’s worth discussing with your provider if this sounds like something you would like to try.Topical lidocaine may also helpLidocaine, the same numbing medication, can also be applied to the cervix as a cream, spray, or gel. Again, evidence is mixed, with six trials finding that it helped, and seven finding that it did not. The ACOG guidelines note that sometimes topical lidocaine has worked better than the injected kind. Unfortunately, they also say that it can be hard for doctors to find an appropriate spray-on product that can be used on the cervix.The CDC judged the certainty of to be a bit better here compared to the injection—moderate for reducing pain, and high for improving placement success (meaning that the provider was able to get the IUD inserted properly). Other methods aren’t well supported by the evidence (yet?)For the other pain management methods that the CDC group studied, there wasn’t enough evidence to say whether they work. These included analgesics like ibuprofen, and smooth-muscle-relaxing medications. The ACOG guidelines say that taking NSAIDS (like ibuprofen) before insertion doesn't seem to help with insertion pain, even though that's commonly recommended. That approach does seem to work for some other procedures, though, and may help with pain that occurs after an IUD insertion. So it may not be a bad idea to take those four Advil if that's what your doc recommends, but it shouldn't be your only option. Or as the ACOG paper puts it: "Although recommending preprocedural NSAIDs is a benign, low-risk intervention unlikely to cause harm, relying on NSAIDs alone for pain management during IUD insertion is ineffective and does not provide the immediate pain control patients need at the time of the procedure." Both sets of guidelines also don't recommend misoprostol, which is sometimes used to soften and open the cervix before inserting an IUD. The ACOG guidelines describe the evidence as mixed, and the CDC guidelines specifically recommend against it. Moderate certainty evidence says that misoprostol doesn’t help with pain, and low certainty evidence says that it may increase the risk of adverse events like cramping and vomiting. What this means for youThe publication of these guidelines won’t change anything overnight at your local OB-GYN office, but it’s a good sign that discussions about pain management with IUD placement are happening more openly. The new guidelines also don’t necessarily take any options off the table. Even misoprostol, which the CDC now says not to use for routine insertions, “might be useful in selected circumstances (e.g., in patients with a recent failed placement),” it writes.Don’t be afraid to ask about pain management before your appointment; as we discussed before, some medications and procedures require that you and your provider plan ahead. And definitely don’t accept a dismissive reply about how taking a few Advil should be enough; it may help for some people, but that shouldn't be the end of the discussion. You deserve to have your provider take your concerns seriously.

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Computerworld UK RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-06-01 15:50:47 ·

Europe threatens Apple with additional fines

The European Commission has published its full Digital Markets Actdecision against Apple, and it’s far, far worse than anybody expected. The Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has accepted absolutely none of Apple’s arguments against being fined, and the decision threatens yet more existential damage to the company.

Apple isn’t winning the argument, and, right or wrong, the decision has fangs.

Huge fines, big threats

Europe announced in April that it would fine Apple an eye-popping €500 million for noncompliance with the DMA, giving Apple 60 days to comply with its decision. One month later, the Commission published the full ruling against Apple, which details that changes the company made to its App Store rules did not go far enough to bring it into compliance.

The decision warns that Apple is subject to additional periodic fines in the future if it fails to comply with the Commission’s strict interpretation of the DMA, no matter how inherently punitive some of its demands may be. We’ll know soon enough if there are to be wider consequences to Europe’s demands. Apple now has 30 days to fully comply with the DMAor face additional fines.

The act itself came into force in November 2022 and began to be implemented against companies defined as ‘gatekeepers’ in 2023. The intention is to stop Apple and others from using their market position to impose anticompetitive limitations on developers.

Who is steering?

The big bugbear relates to Apple’s anti-steering restrictions, which prevent developers from telling customers they can purchase services outside the App Store. The DMA demands that Apple let developers offer this option, which Apple does, but Europe argues that the limitations the company makes on doing so are not in compliance with the law.

Europe also says Apple’s existing restrictions, fees, and technical limitations undermine the effectiveness of the DMA. That seems to mean Apple cannot charge a commission and cannot warn users of the consequences they face when shopping outside the App Store.

The Commission even plays dumb to the potential significance of permitting developers to link out to any website from within their apps, rather than being constrained to approvedsites. It says Apple has provided insufficient justification for this restriction and also wants Apple to remove messages warning users when they are about to make a transaction outside the App Store.

That’s going to be particularly pleasing to fraudsters, who may now attempt to create fake payment portals that look like reputable ones. Apple prevented billion in fraud last year, the company has confirmed. Perhaps once the first big frauds take place, the EU may catch up to the online risks we all know exist.

While I understand the original aim of Europe’s Digital Markets Act, the demands the Commission is making of Apple appear to go far beyond the original objective, which was to open up Apple’s platforms to competition.

The decisions now open Apple’s platform up to competitors.

There is a difference between the two, and, as described, it means Apple must now create and manage its platforms while permitting competitors to profit from those platforms at little or no cost.

Apple rejects Europe

Apple will fight in Europe.

“There is nothing in the 70-page decision released today that justifies the European Commission’s targeted actions against Apple, which threaten the privacy and security of our users in Europe and force us to give away our technology for free,” the company said. “Their decision and unprecedented fine came after the Commission continuously moved the goalposts on compliance, and repeatedly blocked Apple’s months-long efforts to implement a new solution. The decision is bad for innovation, bad for competition, bad for our products, and bad for users. While we appeal, we’ll continue engaging with the Commission to advocate on behalf of our European customers.”

When the fine was initially revealed, the company also said:

“Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free. We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way.”

My take?

Far from saving Europe’s tech industry, the manner in which the DMA is being applied will make the region even less relevant. Lacking a significant platform of its own, Europe’s approach will reduce choice and increase insecurity.

As the clear first target of the DMA, Apple will inevitably be forced to increase prices, charge developers more for access to its developer tools, and will I think simply stop selling some products and services in Europe, rather than threaten customer security. We know it can do this because it has done so before.

Fundamentally, of course, the big question remains unaddressed: How much profit it is legitimate to make on any product or service? I imagine the European Commission doesn’t want to go near a question as fundamental to capitalist wealth extraction as that. Can you imagine the collapse in executive bonuses that would follow a decision to define what the maximum profit made in any business transaction should be?

Lobbyists across the political spectrum would be appalled — that extra profit pays for their meals. Looking to the extent to which the current application of the DMA seems to favor Apple’s biggest competitors, I can’t help but imagine it’s been paying for a few European meals already. Nice work, if you can get it.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe.
#europe #threatens #apple #with #additional

Europe threatens Apple with additional fines
The European Commission has published its full Digital Markets Actdecision against Apple, and it’s far, far worse than anybody expected. The Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has accepted absolutely none of Apple’s arguments against being fined, and the decision threatens yet more existential damage to the company. Apple isn’t winning the argument, and, right or wrong, the decision has fangs. Huge fines, big threats Europe announced in April that it would fine Apple an eye-popping €500 million for noncompliance with the DMA, giving Apple 60 days to comply with its decision. One month later, the Commission published the full ruling against Apple, which details that changes the company made to its App Store rules did not go far enough to bring it into compliance. The decision warns that Apple is subject to additional periodic fines in the future if it fails to comply with the Commission’s strict interpretation of the DMA, no matter how inherently punitive some of its demands may be. We’ll know soon enough if there are to be wider consequences to Europe’s demands. Apple now has 30 days to fully comply with the DMAor face additional fines. The act itself came into force in November 2022 and began to be implemented against companies defined as ‘gatekeepers’ in 2023. The intention is to stop Apple and others from using their market position to impose anticompetitive limitations on developers. Who is steering? The big bugbear relates to Apple’s anti-steering restrictions, which prevent developers from telling customers they can purchase services outside the App Store. The DMA demands that Apple let developers offer this option, which Apple does, but Europe argues that the limitations the company makes on doing so are not in compliance with the law. Europe also says Apple’s existing restrictions, fees, and technical limitations undermine the effectiveness of the DMA. That seems to mean Apple cannot charge a commission and cannot warn users of the consequences they face when shopping outside the App Store. The Commission even plays dumb to the potential significance of permitting developers to link out to any website from within their apps, rather than being constrained to approvedsites. It says Apple has provided insufficient justification for this restriction and also wants Apple to remove messages warning users when they are about to make a transaction outside the App Store. That’s going to be particularly pleasing to fraudsters, who may now attempt to create fake payment portals that look like reputable ones. Apple prevented billion in fraud last year, the company has confirmed. Perhaps once the first big frauds take place, the EU may catch up to the online risks we all know exist. While I understand the original aim of Europe’s Digital Markets Act, the demands the Commission is making of Apple appear to go far beyond the original objective, which was to open up Apple’s platforms to competition. The decisions now open Apple’s platform up to competitors. There is a difference between the two, and, as described, it means Apple must now create and manage its platforms while permitting competitors to profit from those platforms at little or no cost. Apple rejects Europe Apple will fight in Europe. “There is nothing in the 70-page decision released today that justifies the European Commission’s targeted actions against Apple, which threaten the privacy and security of our users in Europe and force us to give away our technology for free,” the company said. “Their decision and unprecedented fine came after the Commission continuously moved the goalposts on compliance, and repeatedly blocked Apple’s months-long efforts to implement a new solution. The decision is bad for innovation, bad for competition, bad for our products, and bad for users. While we appeal, we’ll continue engaging with the Commission to advocate on behalf of our European customers.” When the fine was initially revealed, the company also said: “Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free. We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way.” My take? Far from saving Europe’s tech industry, the manner in which the DMA is being applied will make the region even less relevant. Lacking a significant platform of its own, Europe’s approach will reduce choice and increase insecurity. As the clear first target of the DMA, Apple will inevitably be forced to increase prices, charge developers more for access to its developer tools, and will I think simply stop selling some products and services in Europe, rather than threaten customer security. We know it can do this because it has done so before. Fundamentally, of course, the big question remains unaddressed: How much profit it is legitimate to make on any product or service? I imagine the European Commission doesn’t want to go near a question as fundamental to capitalist wealth extraction as that. Can you imagine the collapse in executive bonuses that would follow a decision to define what the maximum profit made in any business transaction should be? Lobbyists across the political spectrum would be appalled — that extra profit pays for their meals. Looking to the extent to which the current application of the DMA seems to favor Apple’s biggest competitors, I can’t help but imagine it’s been paying for a few European meals already. Nice work, if you can get it. You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe. #europe #threatens #apple #with #additional

WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM

Europe threatens Apple with additional fines

The European Commission has published its full Digital Markets Act (DMA) decision against Apple, and it’s far, far worse than anybody expected. The Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has accepted absolutely none of Apple’s arguments against being fined, and the decision threatens yet more existential damage to the company. Apple isn’t winning the argument, and, right or wrong, the decision has fangs. Huge fines, big threats Europe announced in April that it would fine Apple an eye-popping €500 million for noncompliance with the DMA, giving Apple 60 days to comply with its decision. One month later, the Commission published the full ruling against Apple, which details that changes the company made to its App Store rules did not go far enough to bring it into compliance. The decision warns that Apple is subject to additional periodic fines in the future if it fails to comply with the Commission’s strict interpretation of the DMA, no matter how inherently punitive some of its demands may be. (Can anyone else spell “tariffs”?) We’ll know soon enough if there are to be wider consequences to Europe’s demands. Apple now has 30 days to fully comply with the DMA (in Europe’s opinion) or face additional fines. The act itself came into force in November 2022 and began to be implemented against companies defined as ‘gatekeepers’ in 2023. The intention is to stop Apple and others from using their market position to impose anticompetitive limitations on developers. Who is steering? The big bugbear relates to Apple’s anti-steering restrictions, which prevent developers from telling customers they can purchase services outside the App Store. The DMA demands that Apple let developers offer this option, which Apple does, but Europe argues that the limitations the company makes on doing so are not in compliance with the law. Europe also says Apple’s existing restrictions, fees, and technical limitations undermine the effectiveness of the DMA. That seems to mean Apple cannot charge a commission and cannot warn users of the consequences they face when shopping outside the App Store. The Commission even plays dumb to the potential significance of permitting developers to link out to any website from within their apps, rather than being constrained to approved (and secure) sites. It says Apple has provided insufficient justification for this restriction and also wants Apple to remove messages warning users when they are about to make a transaction outside the App Store. That’s going to be particularly pleasing to fraudsters, who may now attempt to create fake payment portals that look like reputable ones. Apple prevented $2 billion in fraud last year, the company has confirmed. Perhaps once the first big frauds take place, the EU may catch up to the online risks we all know exist. While I understand the original aim of Europe’s Digital Markets Act, the demands the Commission is making of Apple appear to go far beyond the original objective, which was to open up Apple’s platforms to competition. The decisions now open Apple’s platform up to competitors. There is a difference between the two, and, as described, it means Apple must now create and manage its platforms while permitting competitors to profit from those platforms at little or no cost. Apple rejects Europe Apple will fight in Europe. “There is nothing in the 70-page decision released today that justifies the European Commission’s targeted actions against Apple, which threaten the privacy and security of our users in Europe and force us to give away our technology for free,” the company said. “Their decision and unprecedented fine came after the Commission continuously moved the goalposts on compliance, and repeatedly blocked Apple’s months-long efforts to implement a new solution. The decision is bad for innovation, bad for competition, bad for our products, and bad for users. While we appeal, we’ll continue engaging with the Commission to advocate on behalf of our European customers.” When the fine was initially revealed, the company also said: “Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free. We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way.” My take? Far from saving Europe’s tech industry, the manner in which the DMA is being applied will make the region even less relevant. Lacking a significant platform of its own, Europe’s approach will reduce choice and increase insecurity. As the clear first target of the DMA, Apple will inevitably be forced to increase prices, charge developers more for access to its developer tools, and will I think simply stop selling some products and services in Europe, rather than threaten customer security. We know it can do this because it has done so before. Fundamentally, of course, the big question remains unaddressed: How much profit it is legitimate to make on any product or service? I imagine the European Commission doesn’t want to go near a question as fundamental to capitalist wealth extraction as that. Can you imagine the collapse in executive bonuses that would follow a decision to define what the maximum profit made in any business transaction should be? Lobbyists across the political spectrum would be appalled — that extra profit pays for their meals. Looking to the extent to which the current application of the DMA seems to favor Apple’s biggest competitors, I can’t help but imagine it’s been paying for a few European meals already. Nice work, if you can get it. You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe.

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The Verge RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-05-31 12:27:09 ·

Playdate’s second season is off to a great (and very weird) start

A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of itch.io or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there’s something unique about the handheld’s seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it’s off to a solid start — and it even includes a bizarre mystery.Fulcrum Defender. Image: Subset GamesThe new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a dozen games, two of which will drop each week. The entire collection will run you To start, we have a pair of very different games. Fulcrum Defender, from FTL: Faster Than Light developer Subset Games, is sort of like a modern take on Asteroids. You control a little ship in the middle and fire guns at little squares flying toward you. The twist is that you use the crank to rotate the ship around and aim your shots. There’s also something of a roguelike element, where you steadily unlock random upgrades like new weapons or a larger spread for your bullets. The goal is to last for 10 straight minutes.It’s a pretty challenging game — so far, I’ve only really had success on easy mode — but it’s also surprisingly chill, eliciting that sort of zen state that the best shooters and puzzle games can create. This is helped by its lo-fi soundtrack that pretty much demands you play with headphones on. It’s an absorbing game.Dig! Dig! Dino! Image: Dom2D and FáyerOn the other end of the spectrum is Dig Dig Dino!, developed by Dom2D and Fáyer, who brag that the game “is perfect to play while watching TV! No time pressure, no quick reflexes needed!” It’s a puzzle game where you travel to different dig sites to uncover dinosaur bones, artifacts, and trash. You only have a limited amount of moves per dig, but you can upgrade your capacity over time — while also getting new tools to smash rocks or dig deeper — letting you dig both more and for longer. It’s sort of like a really cute take on Minesweeper, one clearly designed for short play sessions. It’s not exactly difficult, but there’s still something satisfying about uncovering a large dinosaur bone when you’re just about to run out of moves.These two games do a good job of showing the breadth of games possible on the Playdate; one is meant for quick bursts, the other for longer, more focused sessions. But the launch week package is rounded out by something a whole lot weirder. It’s called Blippo Plus and, well, it’s a series of TV channels you can flip between using the crank. Some are nothing but static, while others have giant FMV videos of strange TV shows or commercials. One show, called Tantric Computing, is nothing but closeup shots of someone using a computer mouse. Another, Werf’s Tavern, is some kind of musical talk show. There’s also a messaging tool and some kind of fax service.What’s most interesting about Blippo Plus, though, isn’t just that it’s odd. It’s also a mystery that seems like it will evolve over the course of the season. Playdate maker Panic says that “Playdate season 2 owners should tune in weekly and make sure they are connected to WiFi when season 2 updates at 10 AM PT on Thursdays.” There are lots of other promising games planned for season 2, including the point-and-click adventure Shadowgate PD and whatever the heck Long Puppy and Tiny Turnip are.But an FMV mystery that unfolds over the course of weeks is something that’s pretty unique to this format — and further evidence that the Playdate exists in its own parallel universe.See More:
#playdates #second #season #off #great

Playdate’s second season is off to a great (and very weird) start
A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of itch.io or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there’s something unique about the handheld’s seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it’s off to a solid start — and it even includes a bizarre mystery.Fulcrum Defender. Image: Subset GamesThe new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a dozen games, two of which will drop each week. The entire collection will run you To start, we have a pair of very different games. Fulcrum Defender, from FTL: Faster Than Light developer Subset Games, is sort of like a modern take on Asteroids. You control a little ship in the middle and fire guns at little squares flying toward you. The twist is that you use the crank to rotate the ship around and aim your shots. There’s also something of a roguelike element, where you steadily unlock random upgrades like new weapons or a larger spread for your bullets. The goal is to last for 10 straight minutes.It’s a pretty challenging game — so far, I’ve only really had success on easy mode — but it’s also surprisingly chill, eliciting that sort of zen state that the best shooters and puzzle games can create. This is helped by its lo-fi soundtrack that pretty much demands you play with headphones on. It’s an absorbing game.Dig! Dig! Dino! Image: Dom2D and FáyerOn the other end of the spectrum is Dig Dig Dino!, developed by Dom2D and Fáyer, who brag that the game “is perfect to play while watching TV! No time pressure, no quick reflexes needed!” It’s a puzzle game where you travel to different dig sites to uncover dinosaur bones, artifacts, and trash. You only have a limited amount of moves per dig, but you can upgrade your capacity over time — while also getting new tools to smash rocks or dig deeper — letting you dig both more and for longer. It’s sort of like a really cute take on Minesweeper, one clearly designed for short play sessions. It’s not exactly difficult, but there’s still something satisfying about uncovering a large dinosaur bone when you’re just about to run out of moves.These two games do a good job of showing the breadth of games possible on the Playdate; one is meant for quick bursts, the other for longer, more focused sessions. But the launch week package is rounded out by something a whole lot weirder. It’s called Blippo Plus and, well, it’s a series of TV channels you can flip between using the crank. Some are nothing but static, while others have giant FMV videos of strange TV shows or commercials. One show, called Tantric Computing, is nothing but closeup shots of someone using a computer mouse. Another, Werf’s Tavern, is some kind of musical talk show. There’s also a messaging tool and some kind of fax service.What’s most interesting about Blippo Plus, though, isn’t just that it’s odd. It’s also a mystery that seems like it will evolve over the course of the season. Playdate maker Panic says that “Playdate season 2 owners should tune in weekly and make sure they are connected to WiFi when season 2 updates at 10 AM PT on Thursdays.” There are lots of other promising games planned for season 2, including the point-and-click adventure Shadowgate PD and whatever the heck Long Puppy and Tiny Turnip are.But an FMV mystery that unfolds over the course of weeks is something that’s pretty unique to this format — and further evidence that the Playdate exists in its own parallel universe.See More: #playdates #second #season #off #great

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Playdate’s second season is off to a great (and very weird) start

A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of itch.io or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there’s something unique about the handheld’s seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it’s off to a solid start — and it even includes a bizarre mystery.Fulcrum Defender. Image: Subset GamesThe new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a dozen games, two of which will drop each week. The entire collection will run you $39. To start, we have a pair of very different games. Fulcrum Defender, from FTL: Faster Than Light developer Subset Games, is sort of like a modern take on Asteroids. You control a little ship in the middle and fire guns at little squares flying toward you. The twist is that you use the crank to rotate the ship around and aim your shots. There’s also something of a roguelike element, where you steadily unlock random upgrades like new weapons or a larger spread for your bullets. The goal is to last for 10 straight minutes.It’s a pretty challenging game — so far, I’ve only really had success on easy mode — but it’s also surprisingly chill, eliciting that sort of zen state that the best shooters and puzzle games can create. This is helped by its lo-fi soundtrack that pretty much demands you play with headphones on. It’s an absorbing game.Dig! Dig! Dino! Image: Dom2D and FáyerOn the other end of the spectrum is Dig Dig Dino!, developed by Dom2D and Fáyer, who brag that the game “is perfect to play while watching TV! No time pressure, no quick reflexes needed!” It’s a puzzle game where you travel to different dig sites to uncover dinosaur bones, artifacts, and trash. You only have a limited amount of moves per dig, but you can upgrade your capacity over time — while also getting new tools to smash rocks or dig deeper — letting you dig both more and for longer. It’s sort of like a really cute take on Minesweeper, one clearly designed for short play sessions. It’s not exactly difficult, but there’s still something satisfying about uncovering a large dinosaur bone when you’re just about to run out of moves.These two games do a good job of showing the breadth of games possible on the Playdate; one is meant for quick bursts, the other for longer, more focused sessions. But the launch week package is rounded out by something a whole lot weirder. It’s called Blippo Plus and, well, it’s a series of TV channels you can flip between using the crank. Some are nothing but static, while others have giant FMV videos of strange TV shows or commercials. One show, called Tantric Computing, is nothing but closeup shots of someone using a computer mouse. Another, Werf’s Tavern, is some kind of musical talk show. There’s also a messaging tool and some kind of fax service.What’s most interesting about Blippo Plus, though, isn’t just that it’s odd. It’s also a mystery that seems like it will evolve over the course of the season. Playdate maker Panic says that “Playdate season 2 owners should tune in weekly and make sure they are connected to WiFi when season 2 updates at 10 AM PT on Thursdays.” There are lots of other promising games planned for season 2, including the point-and-click adventure Shadowgate PD and whatever the heck Long Puppy and Tiny Turnip are.But an FMV mystery that unfolds over the course of weeks is something that’s pretty unique to this format — and further evidence that the Playdate exists in its own parallel universe.See More:

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Creative Boom RT hat einen Link geteilt

2025-05-31 10:50:52 ·

Koto creates unifying identity for Riot Games' League of Legends Championship Pacific

From Tokyo to Taipei, Ho Chi Minh to Seoul, Asia Pacific has long been a powerhouse in global esports. However, until now, the region's role in the League of Legends ecosystem lacked a central stage. That's all about to change with the inception of League of Legends Championship Pacific, Riot Games' ambitious new league for APAC.
This is the game developer's most significant step yet in unifying its fragmented competitive landscape. To bring that vision to life, Riot partnered with brand and digital studio Koto to craft an identity that would speak to fans across cultures, languages, and gaming styles. The result is a full-spectrum design system shaped by the region, for the region, and built to evolve alongside the fast-moving world of esports.
"At its heart, this project was about building pride and momentum," says Koto creative director Melissa Baillache. "Riot made it clear from the beginning: they wanted to give fans a brand that belongs to them."
The LCP brand makes that intent clear from the get-go. Under the platform What We're Made Of, Koto constructed an identity rooted in regional passion, from Japan's Oshi-style fandoms to Southeast Asia's hyper-social esports culture. The line isn't just a slogan; it's a rallying cry, making it clear that APAC isn't just participating in global esports – it's here to lead.

Designing for competition and community
Visually, the brand needed to deliver across an incredible range of touchpoints, from social teasers and broadcast graphics to merch, memes, and fan-created content. The design system is centred on The Pinnacle: a five-player emblem representing unity and competitive intensity. Rendered in molten, 3D finishes, it's a symbol of regional ambition and the raw energy of top-tier play.
That energy carries through a modular graphic system inspired by League's own gameplay, specifically the three in-game lanes that structure how matches unfold. This system offers a flexible yet distinctive frame for everything from stat-heavy broadcast overlays to highlight reels and in-arena hype moments.
The motion language is just as purposeful. It's fast, focused, and reactive, designed to mirror the breakneck pace of in-game action and the way fans consume esports content in real-time. Whether counting down to kick-off or amplifying a clutch play, the system pulses with immediacy.

Voice with impact
Koto also worked to develop a voice that cuts through the noise of a crowded digital space. LCP's tone is raw, energised, and emotionally charged, with tight headlines and punchy copy that speaks directly to fans. It's not just branding; it's storytelling engineered for social moments, match trailers, post-game celebrations, and everything in between.
The studio's verbal system extends to campaign slogans, hashtags, and commentary-style callouts, all of which work together to build momentum, fuel rivalries, and stoke regional pride.

A custom typeface that sets the tempo
At the core of the visual identity is LCP Ignite, a custom variable typeface designed to capture the rhythm and sharpness of League gameplay. Inspired by the 'fired up' ethos of competitive play, it flexes across every format, from match stats and player quotes to dynamic on-screen graphics.
Given the region's linguistic diversity, the system also includes a suite of secondary typefacesto ensure legibility and consistency in languages across APAC. The goal here was to create a type system that speaks to everyone, from die-hard fans to casual mobile viewers wherever they are.
Fuel for fandom
Koto's system goes beyond expectations by creating tools that grow with the community. A suite of icons and illustrations—all drawn from the strokes and geometry of LCP Ignite—provides creative fuel for Riot and fans. These assets flex across platforms, helping commentators, players, and creators build content that feels cohesive but never prescriptive.
Gerald Torto, senior strategy director at Koto, says: "The goal with LCP was to frame the league not just as a competition, but as a cultural force. The energy and sentiment captured in the idea 'What We're Made Of' is a fitting platform. It gives APAC an unapologetic and proud voice that looks ahead to an exciting future."

The scale of the system matches that ambition. Alongside Riot's APAC PubSports team, Koto delivered a complete brand toolkit with hundreds of assets – spanning physical, digital, and broadcast formats – built to scale across seasons, teams, and evolving tournament formats.
Setting the stage for APAC's next era
What sets this project apart is its commitment to longevity. LCP is a vast infrastructure investment into the future of competitive gaming in APAC, and the brand has already begun rolling out teaser campaigns, test broadcasts, and live events, setting the stage for a new chapter in League of Legends.
As Koto continues to expand its presence in the region, the LCP identity is a strong signal of what's possible when global ambition meets regional nuance. It's also a showcase of what the Sydney studio brings to the table: cross-cultural fluency, strategic storytelling, and a flair for building scalable, high-impact identities with soul.
With the official launch of LCP now live, Riot and Koto are inviting the world to witness what the region is made of.
#koto #creates #unifying #identity #riot

Koto creates unifying identity for Riot Games' League of Legends Championship Pacific
From Tokyo to Taipei, Ho Chi Minh to Seoul, Asia Pacific has long been a powerhouse in global esports. However, until now, the region's role in the League of Legends ecosystem lacked a central stage. That's all about to change with the inception of League of Legends Championship Pacific, Riot Games' ambitious new league for APAC. This is the game developer's most significant step yet in unifying its fragmented competitive landscape. To bring that vision to life, Riot partnered with brand and digital studio Koto to craft an identity that would speak to fans across cultures, languages, and gaming styles. The result is a full-spectrum design system shaped by the region, for the region, and built to evolve alongside the fast-moving world of esports. "At its heart, this project was about building pride and momentum," says Koto creative director Melissa Baillache. "Riot made it clear from the beginning: they wanted to give fans a brand that belongs to them." The LCP brand makes that intent clear from the get-go. Under the platform What We're Made Of, Koto constructed an identity rooted in regional passion, from Japan's Oshi-style fandoms to Southeast Asia's hyper-social esports culture. The line isn't just a slogan; it's a rallying cry, making it clear that APAC isn't just participating in global esports – it's here to lead. Designing for competition and community Visually, the brand needed to deliver across an incredible range of touchpoints, from social teasers and broadcast graphics to merch, memes, and fan-created content. The design system is centred on The Pinnacle: a five-player emblem representing unity and competitive intensity. Rendered in molten, 3D finishes, it's a symbol of regional ambition and the raw energy of top-tier play. That energy carries through a modular graphic system inspired by League's own gameplay, specifically the three in-game lanes that structure how matches unfold. This system offers a flexible yet distinctive frame for everything from stat-heavy broadcast overlays to highlight reels and in-arena hype moments. The motion language is just as purposeful. It's fast, focused, and reactive, designed to mirror the breakneck pace of in-game action and the way fans consume esports content in real-time. Whether counting down to kick-off or amplifying a clutch play, the system pulses with immediacy. Voice with impact Koto also worked to develop a voice that cuts through the noise of a crowded digital space. LCP's tone is raw, energised, and emotionally charged, with tight headlines and punchy copy that speaks directly to fans. It's not just branding; it's storytelling engineered for social moments, match trailers, post-game celebrations, and everything in between. The studio's verbal system extends to campaign slogans, hashtags, and commentary-style callouts, all of which work together to build momentum, fuel rivalries, and stoke regional pride. A custom typeface that sets the tempo At the core of the visual identity is LCP Ignite, a custom variable typeface designed to capture the rhythm and sharpness of League gameplay. Inspired by the 'fired up' ethos of competitive play, it flexes across every format, from match stats and player quotes to dynamic on-screen graphics. Given the region's linguistic diversity, the system also includes a suite of secondary typefacesto ensure legibility and consistency in languages across APAC. The goal here was to create a type system that speaks to everyone, from die-hard fans to casual mobile viewers wherever they are. Fuel for fandom Koto's system goes beyond expectations by creating tools that grow with the community. A suite of icons and illustrations—all drawn from the strokes and geometry of LCP Ignite—provides creative fuel for Riot and fans. These assets flex across platforms, helping commentators, players, and creators build content that feels cohesive but never prescriptive. Gerald Torto, senior strategy director at Koto, says: "The goal with LCP was to frame the league not just as a competition, but as a cultural force. The energy and sentiment captured in the idea 'What We're Made Of' is a fitting platform. It gives APAC an unapologetic and proud voice that looks ahead to an exciting future." The scale of the system matches that ambition. Alongside Riot's APAC PubSports team, Koto delivered a complete brand toolkit with hundreds of assets – spanning physical, digital, and broadcast formats – built to scale across seasons, teams, and evolving tournament formats. Setting the stage for APAC's next era What sets this project apart is its commitment to longevity. LCP is a vast infrastructure investment into the future of competitive gaming in APAC, and the brand has already begun rolling out teaser campaigns, test broadcasts, and live events, setting the stage for a new chapter in League of Legends. As Koto continues to expand its presence in the region, the LCP identity is a strong signal of what's possible when global ambition meets regional nuance. It's also a showcase of what the Sydney studio brings to the table: cross-cultural fluency, strategic storytelling, and a flair for building scalable, high-impact identities with soul. With the official launch of LCP now live, Riot and Koto are inviting the world to witness what the region is made of. #koto #creates #unifying #identity #riot

WWW.CREATIVEBOOM.COM

Koto creates unifying identity for Riot Games' League of Legends Championship Pacific

From Tokyo to Taipei, Ho Chi Minh to Seoul, Asia Pacific has long been a powerhouse in global esports. However, until now, the region's role in the League of Legends ecosystem lacked a central stage. That's all about to change with the inception of League of Legends Championship Pacific (LCP), Riot Games' ambitious new league for APAC. This is the game developer's most significant step yet in unifying its fragmented competitive landscape. To bring that vision to life, Riot partnered with brand and digital studio Koto to craft an identity that would speak to fans across cultures, languages, and gaming styles. The result is a full-spectrum design system shaped by the region, for the region, and built to evolve alongside the fast-moving world of esports. "At its heart, this project was about building pride and momentum," says Koto creative director Melissa Baillache. "Riot made it clear from the beginning: they wanted to give fans a brand that belongs to them." The LCP brand makes that intent clear from the get-go. Under the platform What We're Made Of, Koto constructed an identity rooted in regional passion, from Japan's Oshi-style fandoms to Southeast Asia's hyper-social esports culture. The line isn't just a slogan; it's a rallying cry, making it clear that APAC isn't just participating in global esports – it's here to lead. Designing for competition and community Visually, the brand needed to deliver across an incredible range of touchpoints, from social teasers and broadcast graphics to merch, memes, and fan-created content. The design system is centred on The Pinnacle: a five-player emblem representing unity and competitive intensity. Rendered in molten, 3D finishes, it's a symbol of regional ambition and the raw energy of top-tier play. That energy carries through a modular graphic system inspired by League's own gameplay, specifically the three in-game lanes that structure how matches unfold. This system offers a flexible yet distinctive frame for everything from stat-heavy broadcast overlays to highlight reels and in-arena hype moments. The motion language is just as purposeful. It's fast, focused, and reactive, designed to mirror the breakneck pace of in-game action and the way fans consume esports content in real-time. Whether counting down to kick-off or amplifying a clutch play, the system pulses with immediacy. Voice with impact Koto also worked to develop a voice that cuts through the noise of a crowded digital space. LCP's tone is raw, energised, and emotionally charged, with tight headlines and punchy copy that speaks directly to fans. It's not just branding; it's storytelling engineered for social moments, match trailers, post-game celebrations, and everything in between. The studio's verbal system extends to campaign slogans, hashtags, and commentary-style callouts, all of which work together to build momentum, fuel rivalries, and stoke regional pride. A custom typeface that sets the tempo At the core of the visual identity is LCP Ignite, a custom variable typeface designed to capture the rhythm and sharpness of League gameplay. Inspired by the 'fired up' ethos of competitive play, it flexes across every format, from match stats and player quotes to dynamic on-screen graphics. Given the region's linguistic diversity, the system also includes a suite of secondary typefaces (including Archivo, Kinkakuji and Thonglor Soi 4 Nr) to ensure legibility and consistency in languages across APAC. The goal here was to create a type system that speaks to everyone, from die-hard fans to casual mobile viewers wherever they are. Fuel for fandom Koto's system goes beyond expectations by creating tools that grow with the community. A suite of icons and illustrations—all drawn from the strokes and geometry of LCP Ignite—provides creative fuel for Riot and fans. These assets flex across platforms, helping commentators, players, and creators build content that feels cohesive but never prescriptive. Gerald Torto, senior strategy director at Koto, says: "The goal with LCP was to frame the league not just as a competition, but as a cultural force. The energy and sentiment captured in the idea 'What We're Made Of' is a fitting platform. It gives APAC an unapologetic and proud voice that looks ahead to an exciting future." The scale of the system matches that ambition. Alongside Riot's APAC PubSports team, Koto delivered a complete brand toolkit with hundreds of assets – spanning physical, digital, and broadcast formats – built to scale across seasons, teams, and evolving tournament formats. Setting the stage for APAC's next era What sets this project apart is its commitment to longevity. LCP is a vast infrastructure investment into the future of competitive gaming in APAC, and the brand has already begun rolling out teaser campaigns, test broadcasts, and live events, setting the stage for a new chapter in League of Legends. As Koto continues to expand its presence in the region, the LCP identity is a strong signal of what's possible when global ambition meets regional nuance. It's also a showcase of what the Sydney studio brings to the table: cross-cultural fluency, strategic storytelling, and a flair for building scalable, high-impact identities with soul. With the official launch of LCP now live, Riot and Koto are inviting the world to witness what the region is made of.

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