Sharp Teeth, Blend Modes, and Good Hugs

Five finds celebrating craft, creativity, and the occasional cuddly creature

Nov 04, 2025

Hello! Happy November 👋

Here’s what caught my eye in design, product, and tech this month 👇

The Badger and the Crocodile 🦡🐊

It’s graduate job-hunting season, and with that comes the annual Arts Thread Global Creative Graduate Showcase. I found the incredible work of Isaac Meardon, an illustration graduate from Nottingham Trent University.

Detailed black and white illustration by Isaac Meardon featuring intricate linework, layered patterns, and a badger and crocodile with "SNAP" typography overlaid — graduate illustration work demonstrating delicate lighting and inventive composition — Crikey, she’s a beaut, mate! | © Isaac Meardon

The delicate, purposeful lighting and inventive typography elevate every composition. Isaac’s entry, “The Badger and the Crocodile”, is a strong graduate piece, and an immediate Instagram follow from me.

Brutalist Botanicals 🌿

WildWorld branding by UnitedUs showing hand-stamped botanical design with yellow and green tones — combining organic fieldwork illustration with bold industrial sans serif typography and structured design system — Spot the hidden mushroom! | © UnitedUs

I love a mashup of two seemingly incompatible themes in design, seen in UnitedUs’ work on “WildWorld”. On the nature side, organic, hand-stamped botanical fieldwork is merged with industrial, bold sans serif type, structured design systems, and high-contrast linework, all adding up to a utilitarian sensibility that feels more like a field guide than a cushy-cute lifestyle brand. Plus, there’s a tiny hidden mushroom tucked into the W 🥺

Confusing Blend Modes

Some slick motion design by BUCK for the hipsters at Nothing, makers of cyperpunkesque technology. The ‘digital mixed media’ aesthetic (with layered blend modes) looks fantastic. As is the sound design, which is too often forgotten in motion work. Bonus points if someone can explain what it’s about, though. Something something AI.

Shifty scammers 🕵️‍♂️

Film noir style illustration by Con McHugh for Scam Spotter showing a silhouetted character peeking from behind a window — featuring high-contrast black and white linework and animation design that reframes scam awareness without fear tactics — Up to no good | ©Upperquad

Con McHugh produced these shadowy film noir illustrations with Upperquad for Scam Spotter, complete with boiling lines and noisy gradients. The film noir aesthetic immediately signals shifty intent, but the animation style reframes scammers as opportunistic rather than menacing and cunning. It ditches the scare tactics and highlights the agency we have to avoid being scammed — refreshingly different from conventional government campaigns.

A stop-motion video game 💙

I’m highly excited for Out of Words, a stop-motion co-op video game from some Danish folks that consider important details like “I think it’s very good at hugging people because it’s got six lil’ arms!”

Stop-motion animated character with blue hair and bright turquoise eyes holding a teal six-armed creature in a co-op video game — handmade stop-motion craft demonstrating character design and tactile animation detail — Basically my cat | © Kong Orange, WiredFly & Morten Søndergaard

I hope that this labour of love finds success, because it feels important for us to embrace human craft, creativity, and making models right now. Or just embrace whatever the cuddly blue thing is.

Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed that collection of things, and that you had a good Halloween if you partake. As always, feel free to reach out if you spot any cool things that could work in this newsletter next month.

I hope you have a great November,
Tom 🐢