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· Design Week· Pushkar Mankar

The Outline: Duolingo update, a V&A Lego set, and the white stuff – 17/09/26

We’ve moved to Monday!

Welcome to your weekly digest of noteworthy stories, announcements, and interesting tidbits from across the design industry.

From a grassroots LEGO petition and a major acquisition to a new archive initiative and festival updates, here’s a detailed breakdown of what caught our attention across studios, streets, and archives over the past week.

Business News

Duolingo Acquires London Animation Studio Animade

Language learning platform Duolingo has acquired award-winning London animation and motion design studio Animade. Renowned for its character animation, expressive motion systems, and product storytelling for tech brands since 2010, Animade joins Duolingo’s in-house Design Studio. The acquisition expands Duolingo’s UK creative footprint and reinforces its commitment to human craft, character-driven engagement, and gamified learning experiences across its global product ecosystem.

Forever Expands Global Network with Addition of Onesal

Premium motion design collective Forever has added Tokyo-based 3D art and motion studio Onesal to its global group.

▶ Vimeo

Joining FutureDeluxe, Tendril, Builders Club, Found, and Trizz, Onesal becomes Forever’s sixth studio and establishes a dedicated APAC anchor across its operating platform. The acquisition marks the first major strategic move under newly appointed CEO Chris Bahry, granting global clients direct access to Onesal’s distinctive aesthetic, Tokyo design DNA, and regional cultural intelligence.

Appointments

Brandon Appoints Tim Perkins as Chairman
Three smiling colleagues standing together in a brightly lit industrial studio space featuring exposed brick walls, wooden bleacher seating, and tall grid windows.
L-R: Richard Taylor, Tim Perkins and Abi Taylor

Independent branding agency Brandon has named Tim Perkins as its first Chairman. Perkins brings over 30 years of leadership experience from Design Bridge & Partners, where he helped guide its transformation from an independent London studio into a global agency. Working alongside Brandon founders Richard and Abi Taylor across their London and Manchester studios, Perkins will help steer the 40-strong agency’s next phase of growth and client partnerships.

Design Team Sought to Restore Peter Womersley’s Bernat Klein Studio
High-angle aerial photograph of the modernist concrete and glass Bernat Klein Studio building nestled in a lush, wooded forest environment.
Photo: Mike Bolam

The Scottish Historic Buildings Trust, alongside the National Trust for Scotland and the Bernat Klein Foundation, has launched a competitive tender supported by RIAS to select a conservation design team for the Category A-listed Bernat Klein Studio near Selkirk. Designed in 1972 by modernist architect Peter Womersley, the iconic studio was saved from neglect through a 2025 public crowdfunding campaign. The appointed team will formulate a full restoration strategy to convert the building into an active creative hub and permanent home for the foundation.

Design Bits

Gordon Murray Special Vehicles Debuts New Supercar
A dark blue twilight silhouette of a woman in a long, flowing gown standing beside delicate sheer drapes, with a sleek dark supercar parked in front of an open ocean view.
Image courtesy of Gordon Murray

Automotive company Gordon Murray Special Vehicles unveiled its latest lightweight supercar at The Quail during Monterey Car Week on 14 August 2026. Hosted by Professor Gordon Murray CBE and Dario Franchitti MBE, the global reveal highlighted the division’s driver-focused engineering philosophy. The new model forms the centrepiece of a lawn display that also features the operational Le Mans GTR ‘XP1’ experimental prototype and several customer-owned T.50 V12 supercars.

Kinetic Singapore Packages Lien Foundation Report as a First Aid Kit

Creative agency Kinetic Singapore and philanthropic house Lien Foundation have created Radical Remedies, an unconventional 2024/2025 biennial report packaged as a physical First Aid Kit.

Top-down view of the second tray in a red plastic first-aid kit displaying items such as StaySteady ankle sleeve, Kid-Aid, Loquacious Syrup, and EMO sachets. An ornate, traditional medicine-style box and open comic paper insert titled "Loquacious Syrup - Clear Your Throat and Speak Up." A navy blue book titled "Manual of Radical Remedies" featuring a prominent bold red cross on the front cover, standing upright against a clean white background. A red and yellow box labeled "RehabPlus Pain Relieving Patch" leaning against another product box on a vibrant red backdrop. A red, white, and blue medicine box titled "Gym Tonic - Muscle Ache And Stiffness Begone!" displayed on a dark black background A white and red box titled "Kid-Aid for Children" with colorful, illustrated bandage strips featuring encouraging slogans like "Chill, I'm Tough!" spread out on a white surface. Two light blue and red medication boxes titled "Palliacetamol" resting on a bright red surface, with one box open to reveal a blister pack of white caplets. Three bright yellow and magenta boxes labeled "EMO - Effervescent Relief for Heavy Hearts" lined up in a row on a black surface. Two small hexagonal blue and pink ointment boxes stacked vertically against a white background, labeled "Lion Balm - Lion Dance for Seniors."

Designed to reflect the foundation’s work in health and social care, the kit contains 14 reimagined medical items, packaging, and product leaflets featuring witty, pun-filled product names that communicate complex social issues with human warmth and clarity.

Studiomade Logos Featured in New Offcuts Logo Archive
Minimalist branding page featuring the black "Motics" logo with a blocky, layered geometric icon next to clean sans-serif typography on off-white paper.

Strategic design agency Studiomade has had three of its brand marks selected for inclusion in Patch:Work (1) Logo Archive, a new book published by Offcuts.

Celebrating notable UK logo design across the FinTech, HealthTech, and investment sectors, the publication takes creative inspiration from community patchwork quilts, bringing together individual graphic “offcuts” from independent studios into a collective showcase of contemporary British visual identity.

Architect Deniz Beck Debuts ‘The Shape of Memory’ at Material Matters
Close-up of an artist's hands flipping through a sketchbook of black-and-white architectural prints on a workbench alongside rusty iron nails and a piece of stone.
Artist Sally Tyrie and Deniz Beck examining visual studies and material fragments collected during research visits to Fort Gilkicker

Portsmouth-based conservation architect Deniz Beck will make her London Design Festival debut at Material Matters this September with The Shape of Memory. Born from a year-long R&D project at historic Fort Gilkicker in Hampshire, the installation transforms found masonry debris, LiDAR scans, and site debris into a contemporary, NFC-tagged light fitting. Created alongside fine artists Sally Tyrie and Pippa Charlesworth with metal spinner Spin 360, the project establishes a new ethical framework for heritage-led design reuse.

Desk Curiosities

Campaign to Turn V&A Dundee into Official LEGO Set Gathers Pace

A campaign created by Brian McNicoll of Dundee-based studio 532 Design to transform Kengo Kuma’s V&A Dundee into an official LEGO Architecture set is closing in on its 10,000-vote target on LEGO Ideas.

A glass display case housing a small LEGO model of the V&A Dundee building on a light wood stand in an open, brightly lit museum lobby. Overhead bird's-eye view of the V&A Dundee LEGO architecture model on a white background, displaying its angular roof layout and twin joined volumes. Elevated three-quarter view of a LEGO brick replica of the V&A Dundee museum, highlighting its layered grey facade and geometric roofs on a white background. Eye-level front view of a custom LEGO model of V&A Dundee featuring a white V&A logo set over a blue water base.

Backed by Kuma and V&A Dundee, the 3D-modelled replica translates the museum’s 2,500 layered concrete panels into brick form. If successful, the design will become the first official LEGO set depicting a Scottish building.

Art Car Boot Fair Returns for 2026 ‘PLAY FREE’ Edition

London’s Art Car Boot Fair will return to Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross on 5 September 2026 with its ‘PLAY FREE’ edition. Featuring over 100 artists selling work directly from car boots, the 2026 roster includes comedy icon Vic Reeves (Jim Moir) with avian paintings, portrait photographer Rankin offering live portrait sessions, GG the Illustrator, and Margo in Margate. The fair will also feature 100 original works, each available for £100.

Federico Galavis Launches Kickstarter for ‘The Uber Diary’ Art Book

Artist Federico Galavis has launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish The Uber Diary, an art book and exhibition project based on an archive collected in 2019.

Open spread of an art book featuring handwritten personal text on the left page and a colorful, layered collage of abstracted faces on the right page. Open art book page showing handwritten tribute notes to Kobe, Gianna, and Nipsey Hussle on the left, alongside a vibrant purple and orange figurative illustration on the right. Framed vertical art print hanging on a clean white gallery wall, depicting colorful, stylized abstract figures rendered with geometric accents. Studio portrait of a man with shoulder-length hair and a goatee, wearing a black fedora, black t-shirt, gold necklaces, and a watch, sitting with crossed arms against a plain white background.

While driving for Uber in Los Angeles, Galavis invited passengers to write anonymous handwritten reflections in a backseat journal. The upcoming publication pairs these raw personal testimonies with Galavis’s visual artwork created using early GAN tools, preserving human vulnerability and pre-pandemic intimacy.

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What to read next: The Outline – Typography, reports, and mutts – 26/06/26 | The Outline – film, audio, games, cars, and soap – 19/06/2026 | The Outline – Bell, Chromatic States, and Tokyo Drift – 17/07/2026 | The Outline – IMAX, Alan Cumming, and a coffee table – 10/07/2026

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