The IDEO team quickly discovered that the challenge of designing a Digital@FEMSA super app for tens of millions of customers was matched only by the operational complexity of bringing together different teams that had already created various apps with separate value propositions. Not to mention the 22,000 stores specifically tailored to local communities.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team built on FEMSA’s already deep understanding of its customers by meeting them in their homes and communities. The team discovered that users didn't care about long-term rewards; instead, they wanted everyday help to thrive long-term. Connecting omnichannel rewards to regular spending would allow them to save time and money—something they said was particularly important. Along with market research, insights like these directly informed the app's design, ensuring that it was compatible with users' everyday habits and preferences.

Meanwhile, the project team also worked to ensure the app fit the priorities of the various teams inside Digital@FEMSA, designing a comprehensive process for testing joint value propositions. Together, the team created a new design system, iconography, and set of unifying principles. IDEO also worked closely with the Digital@FEMSA teams to ensure that the app's design was in line with their strategic goals and technical capabilities, and built the app's initial information architecture. They incorporated secure transactions, effortless coupon redemption, personalized offers, and a cohesive loyalty program.

From there, the IDEO and Digital@FEMSA teams quickly transitioned into the design and development phase, producing prototypes of the new app, dubbed Spin Premia. With the help of user testing, they were able to continuously iterate to improve the app's features and functionalities, creating a user experience that was both seamless and intuitive. In just 10 months, they went from a small digital team with an ambitious idea, to a 150+ people product organization and an MVP launched in one region. And thanks to a tight partnership, the teams were able to seamlessly integrate Spin Premia into Digital@FEMSA's existing systems, resulting in a scalable implementation nationwide just a few months later.

The introduction of Spin Premia was a milestone in FEMSA's digital transformation path. Following a true ship and iterate model, just a few months into the project, the company released a smaller, focused version of the app in just one city in Mexico to quickly learn from customer experience before expanding to new regions. Since then, the Spin Premia app has quickly gained popularity, offering a safe and user-friendly platform that millions of Mexican consumers have embraced. It has also allowed FEMSA to broaden its digital portfolio and extend its customer base throughout Mexico, elevating customer satisfaction and fueling business expansion.

13 million Mexicans visit FEMSA’s OXXO convenience stores every day. But the company had ambitions to leverage digital experiences to increase customer engagement.

‍

To get there, Digital@FEMSA needed to deliver exceptional digital products with the agility to serve an entire population.

4.7 stars

Spin Premia’s app store rating

22.8 million

active Spin Premia program users

‍

Midscale hotel brands are the fastest-growing hotel segment in the US, attractive to both travelers and hotel owners. But often, their messaging feels repetitive, and travelers have a tough time differentiating between them. With a warm, thoughtfully designed midscale brand, IHG had an enormous opportunity to distinguish itself in a crowded market. 

IHG’s goal was to deliver a guest experience that felt genuinely unique and resonant—and quickly. With costs on the rise, many owners were motivated to turn toward conversion brands, which allow them to refurbish hotels under a new brand rather than invest in construction, a way to grow their portfolio in a tight financing market. Meanwhile, IHG’s competitors were set to introduce new conversion brands of their own. The company was looking for a partner that could work swiftly and iteratively to deliver a distinct brand.

For the IDEO team, the answer lay in communicating the brand’s value, starting with a custom logo rendered by hand. Inspired by vintage sign painting and modernist typography, the team sketched different versions of the letterforms, reviewing them with IHG until they had a set that brought to life the generosity and sense of invitation associated with the hotel’s spaces. They also worked to ensure the wordmark was visually balanced and would translate well across a variety range of scales. From there, they built an expansive brand world, including bespoke navigation icons, a full interior and exterior signage system, and a video to support the Garner launch.

The result is a hotel brand that stands apart in its category for both travelers and owners: thoughtful and well-designed yet affordable. As competition in the midscale segment continues to increase, Garner has been central to IHG’s growth strategy. Launched in the fall of 2023, Garner opened 100 hotels worldwide in just 16 months, making it the fastest-ever IHG brand to scale globally. The brand’s increasing popularity among owners and developers is driven by the growing demand for conversion properties, which accounted for 52% of IHG’s room openings in 2025. Garner plans to continue its rapid expansion with nearly 80 additional hotels in 12 key markets, including the US, Mexico, Italy, and Japan.

Conversions account for 12% of the global hotel pipeline, enabling hotels to switch brands and refurbish, boosting revenue without expensive construction.
‍

The US midscale hotel segment, valued at $14B, is expected to reach $18B by 2030.

100 new Garner Hotels

in less than 3 years—the fastest-scaling brand in IHG's history

500 Garner Hotels

planned in the next 10 years; 1,000 over the next 20

Alzheimer’s and dementia are notoriously difficult to treat—and scientists estimate that some 50 percent of people who have dementia are undiagnosed. Recognition of symptoms and early intervention are key. Together and IDEO set out to conduct user research to inspire new products that would help patients with cognitive decline take charge of their brain health.

The first priority was to expand the reach of the Moving Together program, which combines group movement exercises with mindfulness techniques, led by a trained group instructor. The IDEO team conducted remote and in-person interviews in Florida, where one in five residents is age 65 and older, and rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia are among the highest in the country. One of the key insights the team discovered was that many older adults didn’t understand how behaviors like smoking, exercise, and diet can be risk factors for cognitive decline. Their input inspired a new design principle for the program: “No naked feedback.” Any time participants received health coaching advice about modifying their lifestyle, they would also be given resources on why and how to do it, so they would have a pathway to boosting their brain health. 

The IDEO team folded insights like this one into the design for four new product offerings, including personalized brain health education, new online community engagement tools, partnership programs, and health coaching services, as well as a new user interface to illustrate them. Along with Together they also developed an implementation roadmap of next steps to bring the new digital product offerings to market, such as hiring a brain health coach and creating a new course curriculum. Now, Together has enrolled 165 people in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial, which is looking at outcomes such as reduced risk of Alzheimer's and maintenance of cognitive function for the Brain Health Together program. With trial completion in Q3 2024 and product launch in early 2025, growing numbers of people with MCI will have access to this exciting program. Together incorporated almost all of the elements from the IDEO roadmap into the final curriculum, and the team often refers back to insights the team gathered as guiding design principles.

Fighting barriers to diagnosis

With its online program growing, Together wanted to take on an even bigger problem: dementia underdiagnosis. Co-founder Dr. Deborah Barnes had recently developed an algorithm that uses patients’ health records to calculate their risk of undiagnosed dementia, called the electronic health record Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia Assessment Rule (eRADAR). Together was looking to find creative ways to equip and empower providers to use risk scores like eRADAR in primary care settings.

One piece of the puzzle? Many primary care doctors are unaware that better management of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia can have a positive impact on other chronic health issues—like diabetes, hypertension, and depression. So by encouraging providers to prioritize dementia care, they can help support the overall health of older adults with cognitive decline. The IDEO team recommended a curriculum for continuing education courses for doctors that make that link clear—another step toward increasing dementia diagnosis and improving overall health.

‍
Better help, sooner

To understand the patient experience, Together and IDEO decided to work directly with patients and caregivers to uncover what was stopping them from asking for dementia screening. The IDEO team quickly learned many patients were afraid of facing a diagnosis that signified a loss of agency and control, especially when they didn’t believe there were good treatment options. Often, they were unaware that there were things they could do to improve their brain health. They needed to know what steps to take after a diagnosis, and who could provide actionable advice. In response, the IDEO team designed a digital activity toolkit and physical booklet to guide patient families through the early stages of a dementia diagnosis, including recognizing the signs and symptoms, having better conversations with their doctor, and getting connected to support groups and programs like Moving Together.

Solving the problem of dementia underdiagnosis involves complex systems-level thinking and designing for the entire health ecosystem of patients, providers, and insurance payers, and solutions for Alzheimer’s and dementia care are still in their infancy. But already, this work is empowering patients and doctors to prioritize brain health and get screened sooner, and Together, which has since been acquired by Linus Health, is still working to move dementia care forward.

Approximately 12-18% of people aged 60 or older live with mild cognitive impairment, while memory loss, Alzheimer's and dementia affect more than 50 million people around the world.

‍

An estimated 50% of people living with dementia are undiagnosed.

165 enrolled

in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial

Many companies view culture-building initiatives as nice-to-haves. At Moderna, Mindsets are a business imperative, crucial to its plans to develop breakthrough products quickly.

For companies working on solutions as vital as a COVID-19 vaccine, delays and mistakes don’t just mean missing a product launch date—they’re life-or-death, and on a large scale. Moderna had to ensure that its employees knew how to make the right decisions, evaluate risk, and move quickly—even if they came from organizations with more bureaucracy and less risk tolerance. In 2021, IDEO sat down with longtime Moderna veterans to hear stories about moments that exemplify the company's culture, like the day a critical piece of equipment arrived but was too big to fit through the door. Taking it apart would have added days to their timeline. So employees took sledgehammers to a wall instead. Stories like this one fed into the crafting of the list of Mindsets, such as “Act with urgency: Action today compounds the lives saved tomorrow” and “We behave like owners: The solutions we’re building go beyond any job description.”

To gather feedback, the team shared the draft Mindsets with a diverse set of employees—new hires, veterans, folks already closely aligned with the culture, folks for whom it wasn’t the most natural fit, and a plethora of employee resource groups. CEO Stéphane Bancel and the leadership team took crafting and iterating on the Mindsets very seriously, wordsmithing and tweaking them with the team until they were ready to share them officially. Now, new hires learn about the company’s Mindsets in Moderna ONE, an onboarding process that IDEO helped revamp, while existing employees attend a workshop to ensure everyone at the company knows not only what to do but also how to do it effectively. In a matter of weeks, IDEO helped Moderna codify its culture for employees and set the company up for continued success. Moderna continues to embed these Mindsets across the entire employee lifecycle to systematically scale its culture.

For employees new and old, the clarity of the Mindsets has made it easier to understand expectations and to understand the company itself. Long-term veterans responded with comments like, "These really help explain why we're working this way,” while one newbie said, "It feels like a homecoming to hear the culture that we’re trying to bring through.” But more than just solving a cultural issue, the new Mindsets have fulfilled a business imperative: Holding on to the secret sauce that made Moderna successful to begin with, setting the stage for its next five years of breakthroughs.

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 health crisis a pandemic in March of 2020, Moderna had fewer than 1,000 employees. Four years later, it’s more than five times the size.

Ranked #1

BioSpace Best Place to Work, large company in 2024

Ranked #6

Boston Consulting Group’s 50 Most Innovative Report in 2023

Ranked #4

Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 List in 2023

As an org designer, my job is to use the tools of design to enhance organizational culture, boost collaboration and teamwork, improve structures and processes, enable learning and development, and create a sense of purpose and belonging. Then, I sleep.

6:30am: Morning run

If I’m going to help inspire other people, I need to start by getting inspired myself. For me, that comes from running in Prospect Park twice a week. Being near trees elevates my mood and restores me. It’s the only time during my day in urban New York City when I can actually smell plants and dirt.

8:30am: The Book-lyn Bridge

I take the subway from Brooklyn, where I live, to our New York City office. I don’t mind the commute because I can read two to three books a week. It’s often a chance for me to dive into new perspectives on culture, leadership, and collaboration. Reading Jake Knapp’s book Sprint sparked so many ideas, I asked him to speak with our clients—and he did!

10:00am: Get the gears turning

Once I’ve settled into our studio in the West Village, I lead a quick morning standup in our project space with my teammates before our clients join us. We often work side-by-side with our org change clients, either by hosting them in our project space or by going to their offices (or both!).

11:00am: Disrupt your wallet

In this project, we’re helping our client organization launch an internal user-centricity team. This team will help train employees to better understand the way their customers feel about and use their products. Today we are kicking off a workshop with a new group of employees. To teach them about human-centered design, we’re doing an exercise where they split up into pairs and redesign each other's wallets. If you want to improve an object that people carry with them all day every day, you’ve got to listen closely to their needs and idiosyncrasies.

12:30pm: Lunchtime making

Every Thursday at lunch, the entire studio comes together for a craft project to engage our senses and inspire us. We call it “Maketime.” Today, our clients are joining us to do blind contour drawings. My colleague Loren is leading the session. We sit at tables facing another person. Loren asks each of us to draw the person across from us without looking down at our paper and without lifting up our pen. Then we share our drawings, laughing at the results. This technique helps build hand/eye communication.

2:30pm: Remote synthesis

So much of org design is about communication. But many companies have teams that work remotely. This client's core team is based in the tri-state area, but the extended team is farther away. So, this afternoon, my teammate Nili and I are leading a session with our extended client team to synthesize the research we’ve done together. We’ve designed a series of concepts and tested them out with employees in the organization. Based on that feedback, we’re positioning the concepts on a 2x2, where one axis shows how desirable the concept was for employees, and one axis shows how feasible the concept was to implement.

3:30pm: Meet them where they are

We head out to the client’s office to meet with the core team. In order to make sure we’re practicing the collaboration that we preach, we make sure to spend part of the week in the client’s offices, instead of always asking them to come to us. We request a reserved workspace so we can all sit together. We’re discussing how we’ll set up this new user-centricity team: who will be on the team, what roles and responsibilities will they have, how will they work together, and whom will they need to hire.

4:30pm: Getting physical

If you haven’t noticed yet, much of my day revolves around communication and inspiration. I love that organizational design involves getting deeply curious about how a company works (informally and formally) both by listening to teams as they collaborate and by watching for the intangible behaviors that come out in meetings and hallway conversations.

One of my favorite activities to do with clients is Creative Tensions. We put a slide on the screen that prompts them to make a choice. For example:

“Purposefulness: When it comes to meaningful change that leadership and employees want to make in the world…”

There’s lack of clarity or disagreement <------------> There is alignment

We ask people to move with their bodies to one side of the room or the other to articulate their answer. All of a sudden you can physically see all the spectrum of ideas and philosophies in the room. Then, we ask a few people to share why they are standing where they are standing.

5:30pm: Write it out

After a full day of collaborating, observing, and facilitating, I’m back at the office to write an article with my colleague Hailey. Since organizational design is a new field and can feel like a black box (even to other designers at IDEO), we are always thinking about ways to share how we work. We're working on an article about using metaphors to uncover organizational dynamics (a colleague snapped this photo for the cover of the emo rock band we’ll start one day).

6:30pm: Signing off

One more check in with the clients over Slack, and I’m headed home. Eat, Sleep, run, org design. Repeat.

When people ask me about what I do for a living, I say that I help people and teams do their best work. But that’s a little vague, so here’s the nitty gritty...

I didn’t start out working at an enlightened company—I started out working in the art world, in upscale art galleries, private art clubs, and various museums. My surroundings were beautiful, but I was miserable. The politics and sexism were intense. I never felt like I could speak my mind.

Luckily, I eventually landed at IDEO. For the past 10-plus years, I’ve helped create events, experiences, and rituals that keep our studio culture healthy and our designers happy. Now, I’m Co-Director of the experience team in Chicago. Our mission: Design for belonging.

My team and I use tools like our studio space, food, events, experiences, and rituals to help make everyone who comes through our doors feel welcome, supported, and empowered to do the best work of their lives. We do things like throw spur-of-the moment pop-ups that break up the afternoon, and plan group lunches so people will eat together—like a family—instead of having sad lunches alone at their desks. We even plan crafting sessions and inspirational field trips.

Not convinced that thoughtful extras like spa water and storytelling events can actually help fuel the ideas that drive revenue? Consider the case of Uber.

Remember Travis Kalanick, the former CEO?

The deposed chief executive set the tone for the company’s culture. Under him, Uber flouted local laws and criticized competitors in its quest for success. Thanks to the company’s pervasive “bro” culture, sexual harassment and discrimination were rampant. Employees were pitted against one another, and management turned a blind eye to infractions from top performers.

Contrast Kalanick’s approach to leadership and culture to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who took the company’s reins in 2014. He inherited a company lacking innovation—and relevance. Microsoft’s stock performance was flat. His goal was to shift the culture from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all.” “Microsoft’s culture had been rigid,” he wrote in his book, Hit Refresh. “Each employee had to prove that he or she was the smartest person in the room. The culture change I wanted was centered on exercising a growth mindset every day.”

Three years later, not only are employees happier, more innovative, and empathic, but the company has generated more than $250 billion in market value—more than Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, and WeWork—combined.

As an experience director, I’m laser-focused on making sure employees feel safe to fail and explore, that they feel connected to others, and that they have what they need to solve problems and come up with innovative solutions. My job is to set the conditions for great work.

So how do you actually do that? Here are five ways to jump-start your company culture.

1. Define and build on your company’s cultural values

Values are the compass that an organization uses to select staff members, reward current employees, and make business decisions. If you’re just starting a company and need to define your values from scratch, Greenhouse, the company that designed the recruiting software IDEO uses, has a helpful culture mapping exercise to help get you started. Need further inspiration? Check out Google’s values: “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” “Fast is better than slow.” “Great just isn’t good enough.”

2. Leverage naturally-occurring behaviors

Put on your anthropologist hat. What interesting or unusual things are people already doing around the office that you could build on? (It’s faster and easier to build on existing behaviors than to encourage new ones.) At one company, I noticed people were wary of talking to strangers. Unfortunately, since it was a co-working space, almost everyone was a stranger. I also observed that people would use the kitchen as a shortcut to the bathroom, and that it was a neutral zone—no one group owned it. High foot traffic + no ownership = opportunity to spark casual conversation and community! You can do what I did—look for unused spaces in your own workplace and use questions on Post-it Notes to spur random conversations—or move shared resources like printers or snacks to the middle of the space instead of tucking them away in a corner.

3. Identify and empower cultural mavens

As an experience director, I’m always look for new collaborators. Though some cultural experiences can come from the top down, others work better when they come from the bottom up. They feel more authentic. I’m always trying to identify new cultural mavens within our organization, and I empower them by giving them some time, money, or resources to bring their ideas to life. For example, at IDEO, we noticed a few of our designers were natural teachers and always went out of their way to show others how to learn a new skill. This aligned perfectly with two of our company values—“Learn from Failure” and “Make Others Successful”—so we gave those designers a budget and set them free to build on their ideas. Now we regularly have Nerd Nights where people learn to code, and Shop Class where we make things like concrete planters and leather wallets.

4. Prioritize face-to-face interactions

Digital tools are efficient, sure, but the only way to build authentic, human relationships is face-to-face. Period. When you find yourself using a digital tool to communicate with an individual or a group, think: Could this be done in person instead? Am I hiding behind this tool, this emoji? Encourage others to get out from behind their screens, too. One easy way? Get people to eat their meals together.

5. Design meaningful rituals

We participate in rituals in institutions, politics, and religion all the time. But they’re not commonly talked about in the world of business, even though they’re a simple way to make cultural values tangible. At IDEO, I was part of a team that started IDEO Stories, a Moth-like live storytelling event designed to help teach our designers how to tell better project stories. After the first event, it became clear it wasn’t just a good way to learn a new skill—it was a way to celebrate an individual’s unique backstory and unite the community.

For the last seven years in Chicago, we’ve also held an Annual Studio Awards party, an Oscars-inspired evening where the community votes on award-worthy project work from the past year. Categories are tweaked each year to incentivize emerging behaviors that are beneficial to our business.

Have ideas for rituals of your own? Share them with us on Twitter, so we can inspire each other.

Often, people want to write culture off as a slew of perks you might find at tech companies. But really, culture is about creating an environment that makes it possible for people to work together to come up with innovative products and ideas—the same products and ideas that drive revenue.

We met a beer and sausage vendor in Germany who keeps an array of hats stored on his gearshift, a humorous-looking makeshift hat hook. When we asked him more about it he explained that he often sells his wares at football games, so it’s important that he wear the right football club’s hat. “One time, when I wore the wrong one by accident, they called me an ass and tipped the van over,” he said. “You always have to howl with the wolves.”

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

You can’t beat the smell of fresh ink, the texture and weight of high-quality paper, and the sound as you flip through the pages. When holding a magazine, I’m not simply reading it—I’m immersed in it.

I asked my fellow designers which publications they find the most exciting, and I’ve included a few of my favorites, too:

1. Apartamento

Yes, I suppose it’s an interior design magazine, but instead of focusing on beautiful, minimalist, multi-million-dollar houses (not that there's anything wrong with that), Apartamento covers real, lived-in homes and the creative people who occupy them. Raw portrait photography, cluttered spaces, and intimate interviews show how people really choose to live. Based in Barcelona, Spain, it’s survived through subscription revenue and a higher newsstand price, and has bucked the trend of featuring numerous ads or sponsored content. Plus, its perfect novel size, centered layout, patterned spine, and chunky typography are delightfully raw and unfussy. —Lindsey Turner, IDEO Cambridge

2. B

B magazine is published in South Korea. Every issue, it takes an advertisement-free, documentary approach to a single iconic brand. It’s covered many amazing brands, from the luxury to the mundane, including LEGO, Ray-Ban, and Bic. Each issue goes deep into the people, history, evolution, products, experiences, and philosophies of the brand it covers. Fans and collectors are also often included. I recommend it to anyone who likes branding and brand strategy, or just loves products and design. The many ways it looks at a brand and all its expressions goes far beyond simple identity and logo. —Clark Scheffy, IDEO San Francisco

3. Banana

In 2014, first generation Asian-Americans Vicky Ho and Kathleen Tso launched Banana magazine, a lifestyle magazine dedicated to exploring the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures. Ho and Tso are not claiming to be experts in Asian culture, but rather are discovering it right alongside their readers. Their goal is to understand what this third identity—neither Asian nor American, but Asian-American—means. As a designer, I think it’s fascinating to understand how cultures can blend together. With the growing influence of Asian countries on design trends, this magazine is relevant, vibrant, and bold, and offers great graphic design inspiration. —Coline Prevost, IDEO Palo Alto

4. [BranD]

[BranD] is a Hong Kong-based magazine that explores communication design in visual art, advertising, products, graphic design, and architecture. It brings together designers, artists, art directors, marketing specialists, and business-minded people of all stripes to share new ways to express ideas and brands visually. I'm an avid reader of [BranD] for inspiration in my craft; it's a great vehicle to stay connected to the ways other designers are stretching their own skills and building their crafts in a discipline—comms design—that is always evolving. —Joshua Lavra, IDEO San Francisco

5. Cat People

Cat People is an English-Japanese bilingual magazine featuring interviews and works by cat-obsessed artists, designers, photographers, and writers. It’s only in its first issue, but it’s already sold out. I’m very excited for future editions because this magazine promises magnificent inspiration for design and feline die-hards (like me). —Camden Foley, IDEO Palo Alto

6. Cereal

Cereal is a biannual travel and style magazine based in the United Kingdom. Each issue highlights engaging interviews and stories about unique design, art, and fashion on a specific theme, such as sustainability or desire. I’ve followed this magazine since its inception in 2016 and have every issue to date. Cereal’s publisher offers beautiful magazines, city guides, art prints, and even a children’s book—all with some of the best photography and design I’ve ever seen. —Camden Foley, IDEO Palo Alto

7. The Collective Quarterly

The Collective Quarterly is a magazine about travel and creativity across the U.S. The magazine staff—a rotating team of writers, photographers, illustrators, and other creatives—visits small towns or regions around the country to interview artists, creators, and other cornerstones of local life. As a photographer, the exceptional photography caught my eye, particularly that of one of the co-founders, who still shoots film photos like I do. It’s inspired me to get out with my camera more often. I recommend the magazine to anyone who seeks a deeper appreciation of creativity in intimate communities, hopes to explore non-urban corners of the country, or wants to bask in the magic of film photos. —Tara Safaie, IDEO San Francisco

8. Drift

Back when I was a barista, my mornings were spent adjusting the espresso machine's grind and my tamp to each bean's age and provenance. I learned that coffee is ubiquitous, yet highly circumstantial; you can find it in virtually any city, and yet each urban environment and its inhabitants have radically different rituals, cultures, and methods of consumption for this most essential drink. Drift transports its readers to different cities and their respective coffee cultures, allowing readers to intimately engage with new adventures in new places through a common cup of joe. —Adam Cristobal, IDEO Palo Alto

9. The Gourmand

As we reach the peak of our food media zeitgeist, The Gourmand has emerged as one of the leading alternative voices in the space, covering everything from new ways of visualizing food emoji to Georgia O'Keeffe's strict diet. Boasting both witty writing and distinct art direction, the magazine offers a unique perspective and inspirational fodder to foodies, designers, and creatives of all stripes as we look for more visually appetizing ways to engage with the world. —Adam Cristobal, IDEO Palo Alto

10. Offscreen

Offscreen is a print magazine published three times a year, as well as a weekly newsletter, that takes a thoughtful, human-centred approach to technology. It’s is a slow counterbalance to the fast pace of popular media, exploring creativity and design through introspective writing and thoughtful human stories. Offscreen is a proponent of the “slow web,” celebrating the idea that not all that is instant and convenient is necessarily good for us. —Nathan Paterson, IDEO Tokyo

11. Surface

Surface is a New York magazine that covers a little of everything—design, architecture, fashion, culture, and travel. I picked it up because I judge magazines by their covers. Each cover features a great close-up portrait of a creative person—an architect, musician, industrial designer, etc. The portrait is paired with restrained, Swiss-style black typography and a grid well versed in white space. The magazine examines culture through the lens of design and has a whiff of one of my favorite blogs, Sight Unseen. It's conspicuous consumption for sure, but sometimes that's what magazines are for. —Lindsey Turner, IDEO Cambridge

Next time you want to explore cutting-edge design—or just enjoy a little eye candy—crack the cover of one of these magazines for an inspiring read.

‍

Thanks to the digital revolution, fewer and fewer of us are getting our hands on paper copies of books, magazines, or newspapers these days. Online subscriptions and digital versions can fill the void, but sometimes, picking up a glossy magazine is simply the best way to absorb inspiration.

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

‍

My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.