I've been calling 2026 the Year of the Weird. The ask it poses is a bold one: to remain unequivocally ourselves.
Wait, hear me out — this is not a fluffy, "bE yOurSelf!" request. Because if you're really willing to be weird, you're willing to be brave. You're seeking the real truth, not loud noise.
Culture stays alive through odd angles, unexpected palettes, the critical video shot from the missing point of view, the voices that don't quite fit the mold. When everything begins to look the same, the weird difference becomes a form of clarity. Uniformity can be efficient, but it can also become fragile. Uniformity doesn't like what's different.
Year of the Weird means two things:
- Make work that stands out. Even if it makes you nervous (because that's how you know you're doing something truly bold). Based.
- Make work that is true. Take responsibility for what appears on the page, knowing that every sentence helps shape what is normalized, believed, and true. Truth is rarely black and white, and we must be willing to sit in those gray spaces. If there is no truth, then everything floats in spectacle.
In a time of increasing sameness, the bravest thing we can do is leave behind work so honest and strange its truth demands to be noticed.
In the age of AI, Hermès went in a different direction with a hand-illustrated website by artist Linda Merad. Much like the Arts and Crafts Movement emerged in response to industrialization, the growing accessibility of AI in creative work may drive renewed respect for human craft.
Visual artists and illustrators Julie Legrand and Nina Izycka work together to create zines based around a specific natural theme. The latest was seaweed.
A digital museum cataloging old computer interfaces and telling a story about the evolution of design through interfaces ranging from Mac OS 1.1 to Windows Vista.
