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An Olympic torch is a small, flaming time capsule. Since the start of the modern Games in 1936, the torch has been passed by thousands of runners in a relay that goes from Olympia, Greece to the host city’s stadium. It’s a feat of engineering, since it needs to be durable enough to resist wind and rain, while keeping the Olympic flame arrive. But torch designers also imbue them with symbolic meaning. 1936 Berlin [Photo: IOC] The Berlin 1936 torch was engraved with the Nazi iconography of an eagle. The Sapporo 1972 torch was a thin, cylindrical combustion tube that was a marvel of Japanese engineering. The Rio 2016 torch featured rippling blue waves celebrating the country’s natural beauty. 1972 Sapporo [Photo: IOC] What kind of torch represents the world we now live in? Carlo Ratti, the Italian architect and designer tasked with creating the torch for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, pondered this question for a long time. Ratti’s work largely explores the future of cities, particularly as global warming looms. For him, the biggest issues of our time are climate change and political polarization. Three years ago, he began the process of making a torch that captured these big ideas. 2026 Milan Cortina [Photo: IOC] His torch is perhaps the most sustainable one we’ve seen. It is made of recycled materials and it is designed to be refilled, so it can be used up to 10 times. It is minimalist to a fault, meant to fade into the background so that the world focuses on the flame within it. The flame, he says, is a powerful symbol of our joint humanity. At this time of deep polarization and divisions, he says, we tried to strip down most of the things from the torch and really let the fire speak. Fire, after all, predates every nation that now passes it along. Its one of the first technologies of mankind, Ratti notessomething ancient, sacred, and shared long before borders existed.” A Lineage of Torch Makers Before sketching a single form, Ratti traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland, where every Olympic torch is preserved at the Olympic Museum. Seeing them in person, rather than online, made the pattern unmistakable. Everybody somehow tried to capture the moment of their time, Ratti says. Each torch, he observed, follows the same basic logic: a burner at the core, wrapped in a designed shell meant to convey meaning. Like car design, he explains, the engine is hidden beneath an eye-catching exterior. And then the second thing is capturing the momentconnecting with local motifs. 1992 Albertville [Photo: IOC] Early torches, beginning with the relay introduced at the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics, leaned heavily on classical references. The London 1948 torch resembled a chalice, while the Rome 1960 torch was designed to look like a column. 1994 Lillehammer [Photo: IOC] Toward the end of the 20th century designs were more sculptural and declarative, often mirroring national ambition. The 1992 Albertville torch, designed by Philippe Starck, was in the shape of an elegant curve and was meant to reflect French modernism. The 1994 Lillehammer torch had a distinct Viking aesthetic. 2000 Sydney [Photo: IOC] In the 21st century, the emphasis shifted again to focus on technological innovation. The torch for Sydney 2000 famously combined fire and water. Beijing 2008 engineered its torch to survive the winds of Mount Everest. 2008 Beijing [Photo: IOC] A Radical Shift Against that backdrop, Rattis instinct was to do something quietly radical: design the flame, not the torch. That idea led to an inversion of the usual process. Rather than starting with an expressive exterior, Ratti and his team began with the burner itself, shaping only the minimum structure needed to hold and protect it. The result is the lightest Olympic torch ever producedsmall, slender, and almost an afterthought in the runners hand. We just start from the inside, Ratti says, and we do the minimal shape around the burner. [Photo: IOC] The effect is intentional disappearance. In photographs, the torch nearly dissolves into its surroundings, reflecting sky, snow, or cityscape depending on where its carried. The runner and the flame take precedence; the object recedes. Ratti describes the earliest sketch as a runner with a flame in her or his hand instead of the torch itself. 1964 Tokyo [Photo: IOC] There are a few earlier torch designers who had similar instincts. Ratti points to the torches designed by Japanese industrial designer Sori Yanagi for Tokyo 1964 Summer Olympics and Sapporo 1972 Winter Olympics as key inspirationsboth exercises in restraint. What has changed, he argues, is technology. Today, advances in aerodynamics, materials science, and fuel systems make it possible to minimize the object without compromising the flame. That same logic extends to sustainability. Milano Cortinas torch is not only smaller but engineered to be refilled and made largely from recycled aluminum. For Ratti, this approach is part of his broader philosophy. He argues that any designer working today must consider the environmental impact of their work. This applies to his work as an architect, creating a floating plaza in the Amazon River where people can experience the impact of climate change to turning a former railyard in Italy into a logistics hub featuring a renewable energy plant. The first step in order to adapt is to use less, to use less stuff, he says. [Photo: Andrea Amato/NurPhoto/Getty Images] Looking back at Olympic history is bittersweet. Earlier generations didn’t have to focus as much on sustainability because the climate hadn’t yet been so damaged. But today, it is impossible to design a torch without thinking of its environmental impact. For Ratti, it was important to imbue the torch with a clear message because the passing of the torch is seen by millionspossibly billionsof viewers around the world. By designing a torch that fades into the background, Ratti is making the case that we should pull back on overconsumption and excess, and focus our energies instead how we can work together to keep thriving as a species. Maybe humanity will lose interest in oversized ballrooms and gilded pastiche, he says.
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E-Commerce
The news cycle is seemingly always full of OpenAI stories. The state of various investments from fellow tech giants like Nvidia and Microsoft, the competitive landscape between other big AI players like Google and Anthropic, and, of course, the more existential questions surrounding the direction of artificial intelligence and its impacts on society. For its new Super Bowl campaign, OpenAI is focusing on a simpler narrative: how ChatGPT helps people build things that have real-world impact. The company will roll out a 60-second national spot during the big game, but it has also made three regional ads, which are debuting exclusively on Fast Company. The regional spots (with both 30-second and long-form versions) profile three different American small businessesa seed farm, a metal salvage yard, and a family-run tamale shopthat are utilizing ChatGPT to grow and thrive. According to OpenAI CMO Kate Rouch, more than half of ChatGPT users in the U.S. say it has helped them do something they previously thought was impossible. The company’s Super Bowl strategy aims to tell those stories. Our core brand belief is that free access to these tools unlocks possibilities for people, and that anyone can build, Rouch says. We are for that person with an idea that doesn’t know how to make their idea real. Now they can, and that’s so much more important to us than any other thing we could use the Super Bowl for. ChatGPT Stories For Rouch, these ads are personal. In fact, the guy who runs the salvage yard in one spot is actually her neighbor. That’s how this series started, she says. He was showing me how he was using [ChatGPT]. That’s real. That’s cool. So the truth of this is how people are using the product. The creative approach here is essentially a small-business extension of the vibe the brand unveiled back in September, showing individuals using ChatGPT for everyday things like finding recipes, sourcing exercise tips, and planning a road trip. Its not the first time Rouch has used hyper-specific personal stories to illustrate the power of technology. When she was CMO at Coinbase, the brand used a similar approach to show that the crypto exchange and payments platform is a utility for everyday people, and a safe, dependable, and sensible option for modern commerce far away from Silicon Valley or Wall Street. The opportunity for Coinbase was to leverage its position to help give regular people a voice, she told me at the time. This is not crypto bros and Lambos. OpenAI faces a similar challenge of convincing people its tools are for more than asking simple questions. These ads, Rouch says, are a way to platform the very real stuff people are building with the technology. Millions of people are using ChaGPT every day to do meaningful things in their lives that extend their sense of what’s possible and help them in real ways: running businesses, caretaking for their children and parents health, exploring their own health, she says. This is happening and it matters. Thankfully, OpenAI takes its brand challenges seriously enough not to jump on the Super Bowl AI gimmick bandwagon (see Svedka Vodka’s big game fever dream), instead emphasizing how many human minds and hands went into creating this campaign. OpenAI needs to be telling more stories like these. For as much enthusiasm as there is around AI from brands, many people are currently feeling existential dread over the technology. The good news for a company like OpenAI is that it’s liberated from selling capital “T” transformation in its ad work. Now the onus is on them to make it more human. Check out the long-form versions of each ad below.
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E-Commerce
Federal immigration enforcement officers operating in New York will soon be met by legal observers in purple vests. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on February 3 that her office is launching an initiative called the Legal Observation Project. Trained legal observers from her officeincluding lawyers and other state employeeswill serve as “neutral witnesses” of the federal government’s immigration enforcement activity on the ground in the state, James’s office said. By observing and recording the actions of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal agencies, which the public has a right to do, the observers will provide the attorney general’s office with information that could one day be used in future legal action if any laws are broken. By having a uniform, they are standing out and identifying themselves. “We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability,” James said in a statement. “My office is launching the Legal Observation Project to examine federal enforcement activity in New York and whether it remains within the bounds of the law.” James’s office says specifically that observers from the initiative won’t interfere with enforcement activity and that their job is to merely document federal conduct safely and legally. Her office did not respond to a request for comment. The purple vests these observers wear will bear the insignia of the attorney generals office. They’re the latest example of state-level officials turning to colored vests amid President Donald Trump’s escalation of federal immigration enforcement. In Minneapolis, the Minnesota National Guard last month began wearing yellow safety vests so people could tell them apart from federal agents. In the absence of a single dress code, mostly masked federal officers from multiple agencies have worn a range of clothing, from jeans to fatigues and tactical vests in the Minneapolis area. The yellow vests are bright signifiers “to distinguish our members from those of other agencies, due to similar uniforms being worn,” as Minnesota National Guard spokeswoman Army Major Andrea Tsuchiya put it. A safety vest signals that the wearer wants to stand out and actually be recognized. In New York, the vests color “will aid in the ability of the trained legal observers to stand out in a crowd of bystanders and federal agents,” University of Minnesota College of Design faculty lecturer Kathryn Reiley tells Fast Company. “The federal agents tend to wear uniforms that are black, navy blue, or army green. The purple vests will produce the intended result of making the trained legal observers identifiable as a separate group of government employees that are not federal agents.” The ramping up of New York’s Legal Observation Project comes as the Trump administration is scaling down its enforcement efforts in Minnesota. On February 4, the administration said its withdrawing 700 officers immediately, about a 25% reduction. The reduction in force in Minnesota only came following public pressure made possible thanks to citizen footage that showed the reality on the ground in Minneapolis and galvanized the public against ICE. A 56% majority of U.S. adults have little or no confidence in the agency, according to the latest American Values Survey released this week by the nonpartisan research nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, including 85% of Democrats, nearly two-thirds of independents, and more than one in five Republicans.
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E-Commerce
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