Last fall, Kate Ahearn from Haverhill, Massachusetts, wrote in begging us to redesign the image of teachers. "I have been teaching for 15-plus years and have enough of what I deem 'apple crapple' to last me a lifetime." So we recruited the New York design firm Hyperakt to give teachers a ...

Video: Inside the design process

To rebrand educators for the 21st century, Studio 360 selected Hyperakt, a New York design firm that’s done projects for UNICEF and GOOD magazine, among others. At a recent brainstorming session, former public school teacher Jenna Shapiro summed up the concern of her colleagues ...

For our next redesign project, Studio 360 is giving schoolteachers a makeover. Turns out a lot of teachers hate the treacly, old-fashioned visual imagery that gets dumped on them (ABCs, 123s, chalkboards, rulers, apples). One teacher told us she calls this iconography "apple crapple." ...

Five years ago, Studio 360 redesigned Christmas. We commissioned the design firm Pentagram to come up with a fresh, 21st century concept for the holiday that could be used — and loved — universally. Since then we've done several other redesigns, including of the rainbow Gay Flag, Valentine's Day, and the Monopoly boardgame.

What do you think we should redesign next?

Five years ago on the show we redesigned Christmas. The whole holiday. We hired the graphic designer Michael Beirut, of the firm Pentagram, to come up with a fresh, 21st century concept that could be used — and loved — universally. Since then we've done all kinds of redesigns of symbols and holidays ...

What should Studio 360 redesign next?  Tell us!

Last month, Studio 360 announced plans to redesign the board game Monopoly. Capitalism and real estate have changed a lot since the Monopoly was first sold by Parker Brothers in the 1930s, and we decided the game needed a major overhaul. We collected dozens of inspired suggestions from listeners, and delivered them to...

Studio 360 is redesigning Monopoly, and to help us decide what to toss and what to keep, we’ve gotten advice from an all-star team.  The former investment banker William Cohan suggested we let players leverage their holdings and create a bank with vested interests, but former ...

Since the board game Monopoly first came out in the 1930s, capitalism and tycooning have changed a lot. Someone who knows that better than most is former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who now hosts a public affairs program on CNN. Spitzer told Kurt Andersen his first lesson ...

The Scottie dog has all the fun. Along with the battleship, the race car, and the top hat, it’s always part of the in-crowd of Monopoly game pieces. Consistently among the first to be selected, the Scottie dog confidently strolls down Boardwalk and turns heads as it passes Go in ...

We're assembling a top-notch team of advisers for our Monopoly redesign. This week Kurt Andersen called finance expert William Cohan to find out how to make the rules of the game more representative of capitalism in the 21st century. Cohan is a former investment banker and the author of Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World ...

Bonus Track: Kurt Andersen's full conversation with William Cohan

Later this year, Hasbro will unveil a partly-electronic version of one of the classic board games.  But Studio 360 thinks Monopoly needs more of a makeover to bring it into the 21st century.  Game designer Brenda Brathwaite says Monopoly is practically designed to be boring: it’s "literally just about waiting for people to run out of money...

Slideshow: Monopoly Through the Years

Thanks to all the listeners who heeded our call to redesign Uncle Sam and made videos of their new National Anthems. We were impressed and honored.

See and hear all the entries

I’m as patriotic as the next guy.  But this morning on the subway, I couldn’t help but feel a bit deflated by the sight of our national mascot peddling fast cash. Uncle Sam, how could you?  Playing into our all-American desires to get rich quick and bling ourselves silly. That’s why Studio 360 proposed ...

Across the land listeners answered our call to rethink these American symbols. Pop music critic Will Hermes suggests replacements for the national anthem. Kate Bingaman-Burt enlists her design students to take part in our Uncle Sam Redesign Challenge. And design writer Alissa Walker picks a winner.

This Sunday is the 234th birthday of the United States of America, and across the nation people will be watching baseball, illegally shooting off fireworks, eating apple pie, and generally swelling with patriotic pride.  And on radio stations across the land, Studio 360 will modestly proffer a new national anthem ...

Sometimes we cling tightly to things we deem 'traditional' without realizing they're not as deeply entrenched in our history as we thought. Take Uncle Sam: he hasn't changed much since J. M. Flagg's iconic World War I recruitment poster, in which he appeared as an older white man wearing a snazzy ...

Studio 360 has a summer project in the works and we need your help: we're redesigning the Fourth of July. Don't worry, it's not a complete gutting.  We're keeping the red, white, and blue, the cookouts, and the fireworks.  But there are a couple of elements that we think can use some sprucing up.

Our Valentine Redesign Challenge elicited many great entries to our Flickr page.  And we received mailed-in submissions too.  They ranged from a set of miniature cards 'inspired by a muse and faces of love' to my favorite, a three-foot tall by two-foot wide poster from Victor Stabin.  He ...

We got nearly 200 great entries to our redesign Valentine challenge. And on last week's show, Elizabeth Gilbert picked the winning entry: a bouquet of rolled bacon strips that look like roses (only yummier!) by Sarah Tisdale. As Gilbert said so aptly, 'Nothing can compete ...

The professional graphic designers at the Austin-based firm, Under Consideration, take a stab at rebranding Valentine's Day. The husband-and-wife team, Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio, tell Kurt about their ideas: a new valentine icon, better colors, and a transformed Cupid.