School of Design alumnus Brett Snyder (BA ’95) has released California Changing: 50 Sites of Climate Change in Augmented Reality. This book takes a small-scale approach seeing the ways that climate vulnerability and resilience has changed and is changing the very places we reside. Through a combination of research, architectural illustration, and augmented reality, the book offers readers an accessible and visually engaging way to understand the interconnected systems influencing the state’s future.

Station Design, a studio founded by School of Design alumni - Amber Li, Felix Cooper, Francesco Mauro, and Parrish André - has been featured in Core77 for their Moiré Clock, an elegant kinetic timepiece that transforms optical phenomena into a gentle expression of time. The recognition comes just months after the team launched their senior capstone collection, “Drop 01,” which sold out within 24 hours and showcased the collective’s shared ethos of craft, sustainability, and thoughtful design.

Each winter, New York City transforms. Storefronts glow, sidewalks slow, and crowds gather to peer into department store windows that have become as much a holiday tradition as ice skating in Rockefeller Center or the lighting of the tree. While these displays feel effortless—whimsical, nostalgic, and perfectly timed—the work behind them is anything but invisible.

For Joel Neely (BDes ’21), the holiday season means long days in the shop, late nights on installations, and the satisfaction of seeing months of fabrication come together on some of the world’s most famous retail stages. As a core team member at Spaeth Design in New York City, Neely has spent the last five years helping design, build, and install holiday windows for Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bergdorf Goodman, and Tiffany & Co. 

Every day, millions of New Yorkers move through Fulton Center, one of the busiest transit hubs in the city. For a brief moment at the top of each hour, the usual rush of advertising screens pauses, replaced instead by a quiet, poetic animation that transforms the subway system into a living, breathing story.

That story is A Data Love Letter to the Subway, a new MTA Arts & Design commission created at Pentagram and brought to life in motion by Senior Designer and Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design alumnus Yoshi Torralva (BDes ’22).

For Luis Garcia, design is a lens for understanding the world and a vehicle for transformation. As a PhD researcher and Teaching Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, Garcia’s work spans across continents, communities, and modes of teaching. Born and raised in Cuenca, Ecuador, he has spent his academic and professional life questioning what design can and should do in contexts marked by inequality, complexity, and resilience.

On November 10, 2025, family, friends, and both current and former students of the incomparable Myrna Rosen gathered to celebrate her incredible career as she retires after 40 years at the School of Design. Myrna's contributions to the craft of calligraphy cannot be understated and we can't thank her enough for her decades of experience, lessons, and her presence within the school.

When Dr. Nassim Parvin (PhD Design ’11) set out to explore what makes a technology “creepy,” she and collaborator Neda Atanasoski discovered much more than an uneasy feeling of being watched. Their new book, Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, dives into the cultural, political, and ethical implications of how we label and understand technologies that unsettle us.

Future City, an interactive museum experience designed by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design Master’s students Alexis Morrell, Ivy Huang, Jean Chu and Sandra Chang has been recognized with “Student Notable” Award at the 2025 Core77 Design Awards in the category of Emerging Technologies. Future City was designed in partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and it reimagines how younger generations engage with natural history by connecting the past, present and future through immersive storytelling. 

When UPMC Magee-Womens Cancer Services Staff enter the oncology unit on October 3rd, 2025, they will be met with the anticipated launch of Groundswell - a multi-level design ecosystem that supports the well-being of oncology staff. What originated as a concept pitch in a graduate course at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design is transitioning to a twelve-month quality improvement research study. This careful evolution showcases what is possible to achieve through sustained relationships, cross-disciplinary co-design, and strategic stakeholder engagement.

For Professor Sébastien Dubreil at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics, French isn’t just learned - it is played. What started as a series of classroom exercises has evolved into “Games For French”, an archive of card and board games to teach the language, culture and vocabulary in playful ways. This summer, School of Design senior Quinn Roberts (BDes ’26) interned with Professor Dubreil to bring these prototypes to life as a polished collection of ready-to-play games.