Dread for dinner

Spilled milk, an untimely confession, vegetables intercepted on their way to the dog. There’s something about the confines of a dinner table that makes kids — or anyone — want to snap.

Week two of Design Observer’s Horror Month features a “Big Think” from Madison Jamar covering even more horrifying tales around the dinner table — a long-time fixture of upwardly mobile and wealthy family homes that can be claustrophobic, both physically and socially. 

The dinner table “can be a place where guests are held captive — restricted in the ways they are expected to behave,” she told the DO team. “It’s unsurprising, then, that in film, the dinner table often serves as a site to accentuate tension and build suspense, particularly in horror.”

Jamar covers the famed “nobody admits anything they’ve done” speech from Hereditary, marital misery in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and paranoia that nullifies the dinner-party social contract in The Invitation.

In each story, all aim to maintain the sacred status quo and, instead, ratchet up the terror.

Jamar’s analysis is so poignant and fascinating that it made a horror-avoider like me want to watch Hereditary. But Delaney, Design Observer’s in-house horror fanatic, quickly warned me that I would never be able to sleep again.

I hope none of your weeks warrant a Hereditary-style meltdown at the dinner table.

Rachel Paese
[email protected]
LinkedIn

This edition of The Observatory was edited by Delaney Rebernik. 

This is the web version of The Observatory, our (now weekly) dispatch from the editors and contributors at Design Observer. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here. While you’re at it, come say hi on YouTube, Reddit, or Bluesky — and don’t miss the latest gigs on our Job Board.

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Big Think

Dread for dinner: class anxiety is best served at the formal dining table

Even the strictest adherence to social norms can’t save the fractured families in ‘Hereditary,’ ‘The Invitation,’ and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ from the perils that abound around the table.

When I was a child, my mother often mused about sending my older sister and me to finishing school, hoping to instill in us the etiquette of higher classes. We never ended up enrolling, but the notion that there were unfamiliar societal rules stuck with me, especially around mealtimes. My family usually ate in front of the TV because it was the best, and sometimes only, sitting place, so as a guest in friends’ homes, I encountered the dinner table with trepidation. I’d look nervously onward as my peers set it just so, and then dutifully briefed their parents about their days. I’d rarely contribute to the conversation for fear of committing an innominate faux pas.

Out of the mouths of babes, as they say: In A Date with Your Family, a 1950s instructional film on proper dining etiquette within the nuclear family unit, “mother and daughter switch into nice attire for the meal, because, the narrator tells us, ‘the women of this family seem to feel that they owe it to the men of the family to look relaxed, rested and attractive,’” NPR reports. “To avoid any distress, one must stick to his or her assigned role, which of course requires a lot of suppression. As the narrator states, ‘the table is no place for discontent.’” Read on.

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Design As Short | Design As Long

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Some fine print

Mirror, mirror: The rise of ‘beauty horror’ amid today’s antifeminist backlash. With knockouts like “The Substance” and this year’s “The Ugly Stepsister,” the growing, woman-helmed subgenre stands 10 toes (give or take) down on its critiques of gender norms. Article by Delaney Rebernik.

The compound interest of design: what not to build. Two and a half decades in, Dave Snyder argues that the smartest design move isn’t chasing trends, it’s planting the tree and letting time do the work. Opinion by Dave Snyder.

A new chapter of human ingenuity in the age of AI. AI may mark a turning point in how we create, but as TK Tennakoon writes, the hand that guides the brush, human ingenuity, remains irreplaceable. Opinion by Taraka ‘TK’ Tennakoon.

What’s money for? Insurance. In the calculus for risk, we can control for vulnerability by practicing collective care. Column by Tom Haslett.

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Observed

What are you observing? Tell us.

Apple is working with Design Miami to highlight the work of four as-yet-unnamed designers as part of the Fair’s Paris exhibition. “Designers of Tomorrow” has been curated by a jury that includes Apple’s human interface design Alan Dye and VP of industrial design Molly Anderson.

CAA issues statement slamming OpenAI’s Sora. “It is clear that Open AI/Sora exposes our clients and their intellectual property to significant risk.”

“DC Comics will not support AI-generated storytelling or art.” DC chief Jim Lee told the audience at Comic Con. “It’s that fragile, beautiful connection between imagination and emotion that fuels our media, the stuff that makes our universe come alive. It’s the imperfect mind, the creative risk, the hand-drawn gesture that no algorithm can replicate.”

AI is capable of designing new viruses. AI-created bioweapons! (I think the familiar “what can go wrong?” quip just isn’t going to cut it for this one.)

A team of PhD students from a network of universities is collaborating to help manufacturers rethink, via software, how smart design choices can streamline remanufacturing and boost the circular economy. More about remanufacturing at the REMADE Institute.

Midtown Manhattan is getting its tallest-ever skyscraper. The City Council approved the project in a unanimous vote for the new 350 Park Avenue. Behind the plans are mega-billionaire Ken Griffin and the developers Rudin and Vornado Realty Trust.

Enter for the gift shop. MoMA’s gift shop has its own brand allure and a recognition factor that in some cases outpaces the museum’s own, says Diana Budds in Fast Company.

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Happenings

Jessica Helfand’s Austen Portraits opens tomorrow, October 15, at Henry’s Townhouse in Marylebone, London. Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, reimagines Austen’s most beloved and lesser known characters, bringing literary history vividly to life in the very townhouse once owned by Henry Austen, Jane’s cherished brother. The show runs through October 17. RSVP here.

Dutch Design Week 2025 is one of the world’s leading design festivals, bringing together over 2,600 designers across 120+ locations in Eindhoven, Netherlands. This year’s theme explores the future of design guided by five key missions: Living Environment, Thriving Planet, Digital Futures, Health & Well-being, and Equal Society. The festival introduces new “Coalitions & Co/Labs” platforms for collaborative problem-solving and features Daily Mission Days diving into each theme. October 18-26. Register here.

Adobe MAX 2025 — The Creativity Conference is Adobe’s flagship creativity conference featuring keynotes, workshops, photowalks, and free Adobe certification testing. The event includes “Sneaks,” where product teams reveal upcoming features. You can meet your creative heroes — including Aaron Draplin, Serwah Attafuah, and James Gunn. Attend in person in Los Angeles or join online for free. October 28-30.

The 2025 AICAD Symposium, “Engaging Values,” will be held on November 12–14 at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. This year’s convening focuses on the intersection of values with art, design education, and practice. Registration and information here.

Marketing AI Institute is holding a virtual AI Agencies Summit on November 20, from 12 to 5pm ET. Everything you need to know, here.

The JournalismAI Festival, supported by the Google News Initiative, will be held November 11–12. It’s a free, in-person and online convening of journalists, editors, and media leaders designed to explore the practical applications and future of AI in journalism. More here. (JournalismAI is a project of Polis, the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science.)

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Job Board

Senior Industrial Designer at Production Partners, Shenzhen, China.

Experiential Graphic Designer 2 at MHTN Architects, Salt Lake City, UT.

Creative Design Specialist at University of Georgia, Athens, GA.

BIM Technician at Pico Play Sdn Bhd, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Experienced Architectural Brand and Graphic Designer at A+I (Architecture Plus Information) / Perkins&Will, New York, NY.

See more jobs.

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Yesterday and today

In his 2014 article for Design Observer, design critic Rick Poynor revisits The Mysteries of France (1964), a thousand-page compendium of eerie landmarks and macabre folklore. For its divider pages, Polish graphic artist Roman Cieslewicz created a fantastical Gothic alphabet. Each letter is alive with mystery, collaged from fragments of old engravings. Explore this typographic curiosity.

— Sheena Medina, Managing Editor

This is the web version of The Observatory, our (now weekly) dispatch from the editors and contributors at Design Observer. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here. While you’re at it, come say hi on YouTube, Reddit, or Bluesky — and don’t miss the latest gigs on our Job Board.