Source: Art Basel.
Art Basel highlights that despite the digital age, Gen Z still values in-person experiences when purchasing art. The article discusses how platforms like Instagram facilitate direct connections between artists and collectors.
Inclusive design, as highlighted in Regine Gilbert’s Inclusive Design for a Digital World, goes beyond physical accessibility to encompass digital spaces, ensuring that apps, web pages, and other tech products are accessible to the widest possible range of users. The book confronts crucial aspects of technological accessibility, offering step-by-step solutions for designers to consider diverse user needs, from visual and motor impairments to hearing loss, while addressing web accessibility issues that may inadvertently exclude entire populations, and ultimately guiding designers to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and navigate emerging technologies like VR and AR.
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Design Meets Disability by Graham Pullin argues that design for disabled people and mainstream design can mutually inspire radical change. Pullin illustrates how eyeglasses, once medical necessities, became fashion accessories through embracing design sensibilities. He suggests applying this approach to other assistive devices like hearing aids and prosthetic limbs, while highlighting how disability can, in turn, inspire mainstream design, citing Charles and Ray Eames’s furniture inspired by a leg splint. Through examples of innovative disability design and interviews with leading designers, Pullin explores how fashionable assistive devices, inclusive signage, simplified designs, and emerging design methods can enrich both fields, fostering a diverse and complementary approach to design.
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Tania Calvo, a rising visual artist from Vanuatu, has been selected as BE OPEN Art’s Regional Artist of the Month for May in the Oceania stage of the 2025 competition. Deeply inspired by her multicultural heritage and Vanuatu’s vibrant artistic traditions, Tania’s work is a celebration of identity, self-expression, and cultural continuity.