Everyone loves a good underdog story. In some ways, we can all relate to the downtrodden character who rises against insurmountable odds. And the requisite feel-good ending is as sweet and satisfying as a warm cup of cocoa at the end of a cold and bitter day. The underdog plot is a sure-fire recipe for […]

Covid is (hopefully) on the way out and life has got back to normal in Britain; even so, 2022 was deeply troubling. The pandemic didn’t close schools this year, but climate change did, the temperature reaching 40 degrees in the UK for the first time, smashing records reached in only 2019. The UK also faced […]

A new book titled Out of the Box presents a decade’s worth of research, curation and documentation revolving around ‘box art’. The term is a vague one, but the book’s author, Tom Buchanan, offers a comprehensible – if slightly ambiguous – definition: “Artworks which have evolved, been created within, or even escaped from a box.” […]

For a brief period in 2022, it looked like no-one would play (or talk about) anything other than Elden Ring ever again. Gamers around the world were hooked, with the title dominating online discourse for weeks on end. In reality, it was one blockbuster release amongst an overwhelming array of games covering a spectrum of […]

If you’ve ever written an essay or research paper, you’ve probably been told not to use contractions. However, what about contractions in writing? When you’re writing a book, can you use them? Does this differ in academic writing and scholarly writing? Contractions are a type of informal writing, and yet, they sound far more natural […]

Quirky type and bright colours were a key theme in 2022, suggesting that brands had rediscovered their sense of fun after a tough couple of years The last 12 months have seen rebrands galore, as companies from across sectors tweaked logos, updated brand guidelines, and announced full-scale visual identity updates. Aston Martin commissioned Peter Saville […]

Over the years, many books, films and documentaries have taken as their premise the rituals of rural life, studying the quirks and foibles of the strange yet loveable characters that can be found in small villages the world over. In photographer Thomas Rousset’s latest body of work, which has been published as a photobook by […]

Have you ever felt a rush of writing anxiety when trying to write your story? Do you often label this writer’s block before letting it take over? Has writing anxiety made you feel like you’re a poor writer, and then it tricked you into giving up? Here are four common problems that feed writing anxiety […]

CR spoke with people from the worlds of design, advertising and film to find out whether AI is a creative industry killer or the most promising new technology to come along in years “Creativity has been this last bastion of something that seemed untouchable from robots and AI, and it’s this precious process that’s believed […]

Last year I began CR’s round-up of the best book covers of the year with a plea to publishers to credit their designers when sharing newly created work for forthcoming titles. One of the issues raised at the time, by Penguin studio manager Ebyan Egal, was that far from being a simple enough request to […]