1. Rigged by design.

A Hermès Birkin bag sits tantalizingly inside a SoHo claw machine called "PAIN," but no amount of quarters will ever claim it. The installation by creative studio Uncommon is deliberately impossible. The claw will never quite reach, the grip will never hold, the prize will always slip away. Supposedly, It's a metaphor for NYC hustle culture, where the most coveted rewards hover just out of reach no matter how hard you work or how much you spend. The Birkin becomes a symbol of unattainable luxury, mocking those who believes they can claw their way to the top.

The rigged game cuts deeper than surface-level commentary about expensive handbags. It's about the fundamental unfairness of a system that promises anyone can make it while ensuring most people can't. You can't win the Birkin, but you can buy PAIN merchandise: an encapsulation of late-stage capitalism where participation trophies cost money and the real prizes remain locked behind glass. Uncommon, the same studio behind last year's viral rat-infested platform boots, has created another piece of performance art that forces passersby to confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes the game really is rigged, and the house always wins.

2. Rolling art galleries.

Across Southeast Asia, trucks and tuk-tuks roll through cities as mobile art galleries, their surfaces exploding with hand-painted celebrities, synthetic flowers, and intricate geometric patterns. Photographer Christopher Herwig spent 10,000 kilometers documenting this vernacular tradition called sajavat: the deep cultural impulse to ornament everything, in this case, from ancient bullock carts to modern three-wheelers. His new book Trucks and Tuks captures drivers who transform their vehicles into rolling shrines, complete with dangling good luck charms and wallpaper depicting idyllic scenes that contrast sharply with their grinding daily reality.

But this mobile folk art is disappearing as governments crack down on vehicle modifications for safety reasons and mass-produced decals replace hand-crafted decoration. Herwig's project becomes both celebration and eulogy, documenting what he calls "the poetry of the road" before bureaucracy flattens it into regulation-approved blandness. The book reveals something profound about human nature: given any canvas (even the side of a rickshaw) people will find ways to express hope, identity, and dreams. It's street art that literally moves, carrying its makers' aspirations through mountain passes and city traffic until the day someone in an office decides it's too dangerous to be beautiful.

3. Digital training wheels.

Back in high school, I spent countless hours agonizing over whether to end a text message with a smiley face or leave it bare. Every character held weight. Too many exclamation points seemed desperate, but none felt cold. The rise of SMS and instant messaging turned communication into an art form where punctuation revealed personality and response time measured friendship. Now parents face a starker choice: give their 8-year-old a smartphone and watch them navigate that same minefield of digital nuance, or keep them offline while classmates coordinate everything through group chats.

Pentagram designed KARRI as a middle path: a voice messaging device that lets kids stay connected without drowning in the complexities of text-based communication. The pocket-sized gadget strips smartphones down to voice messages and GPS tracking, using a "slide to talk" interface that feels more like a walkie-talkie than a phone. It's thoughtful design addressing a genuinely modern dilemma: how do you teach digital communication without creating digital obsessives? KARRI represents design at its most optimistic. The belief that we can engineer our way around technology's pitfalls by simply removing the addictive parts. Whether it delays smartphone addiction or just postpones the inevitable remains to be seen, but at least someone's building technology that serves childhood rather than consuming it.