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Welcome back to The Orbit, where we collect the best internet oddities, design disasters, and ad stunts that made us say: who approved this? From denim drama to minimalism mania, September served us plenty of strange, shiny things to obsess over.
đ Fresh Orbit: Creative News & Quick Takes
On September 30, leaders across publishing met for a webinar on âAI and Ethics in the Book Industry,â exploring how to use AI without giving up creative integrity or reader trust. A new Dentsu Creative report lands in the same place: as AI moves to the center, human creativity, empathy and cultural intelligence matter more than ever.
On September 9, Monotype announced its âHuman Types and AIâ exploration project. Meanwhile, image-generation models like GPT-4o, Reve and Imagen 3 drew attention for their advanced capabilities and growing accessibility.
On September 22, Singapore-based Animeta launched an AI Film Studio to scale AI-driven film and animation production. Hollywood labor unions pushed back, warning of potential job losses. Meanwhile, at the Busan Asian Contents & Film Market, an AI Film Boot Camp drew 90+ directors and producers exploring this new toolkit.
On September 15, Bluemercury launched âUp Next,â a campaign reframing aging and beauty. Brands also went back to school to reach Gen Z by sponsoring high school sports and rolling out services like Urban Outfittersâ door-to-door college move-ins with U-Haul.
Collaborations drove cultural buzz this month. LEGO teased its first-ever Star Trek sets on Star Trek Day (Sept 8). On Sept 9, RosalĂa fronted Calvin Kleinâs Fall 2025 underwear campaign. Mattel and Hasbro crossed streams, uniting Masters of the Universe with Transformers. Tim Hortons, the PWHL and Mattel teamed up on Barbie Tim Hortons PWHL dolls celebrating womenâs hockey. And in F&B, Smoothie King debuted a tangy-sweet Heinz Tomato Ketchup Smoothie.
Sequels and reboots led the slate, with The Conjuring: Last Rites (Sept 5) and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (Sept 12) among the headliners. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale also bowed on Sept 12, while a Toy Story re-release returned to theaters. At the box office, Mirai opened to âglowing reviewsâ on Sept 12 and drew crowds across multiple languages, topping âš65.1 crore in its first week in India.
Studios leaned into âSurrealism Collageâ for mind-bending compositions. In type, Futura 100 arrived â a modernized take on the classic sans built for global communications, spanning 23 writing systems. Foundry Ăterna also debuted, pitched as an antidote to the overuse of Neo-Grotesks.
The 35th Ig Nobel Prizes spotlighted research that makes you âlaugh, then thinkâ, from painting cows with stripes to halve fly bites to engineering a clump-free cacio e pepe. Elsewhere, scientists challenged the old idea that ice is slippery mainly due to pressure and friction. And a history gem: on Sept 23, 1944, FDR famously used a campaign speech to defend his dog, Fala.
Hollywoodâs newest A-lister is⌠an algorithm. Dubaiâs new AI Film Award dangles $1M for shorts that are 70% Gemini-made - think Veo for video, Imagen for stills, Flow for animation all under big-canvas themes like âRewrite Tomorrowâ and âThe Secret Life Of.â
Meanwhile, iQIYI + Oscar-winning DP Peter Pau opened an AI Storytelling Lab where the real test isnât flashy prompts, itâs how seamlessly the tech melts into the craft.
On the indie end, the Experimental Film Fest (New Bern, NC) now has a Best AI Film; proof the niche art crowd is taking roll call. And designers arenât left out: the AI Design Awards 2025 is rallying image/motion entries (deadline: Sept 30). The vibe? Two lanes, one highway: democratize the tools, elevate the art & make the machine sing.
đ Curated Links: Oddities & Inspirations
Someone Taped 30 Years of TV â Now You Can Watch It All
Before âfake newsâ Marion Stokes was fighting to protect the truth by archiving everything that was said and shown on television. For 30 years, Marion Stokes secretly recorded TV 24/7 hours, filling 70,000 VHS tapes with revolutions, lies, commercials and bloopers.
German âPudding with Forkâ Trend is inspiring IRL Meetups
From meme to meetups: Germanyâs âpudding with a forkâ trend shows how the internetâs strangest jokes can can bring people together.
This Website Turns Your Typing Into Music
The act of writing has always been an art. Now, it can also be an act of music. Each letter you type corresponds to a specific note, turning your next email into an accidental composition.
Netflix and Stranger Things Are Turning Target Stores Upside Down
Netflix is teaming up with Target for a massive Stranger Things collab featuring over 150 items plus in-store 80s-style experiences. Retail nostalgia straight out of Hawkins, just in time for the showâs final season.
Ten Years of Indie Music, Rebuilt as an Interactive Museum
Ten years of Because Music, reimagined as an interactive sound museum. 20 iconic tracks, 20 classic artworks, one trippy time machine that lets you wander through a decade of indie soundscapes.
đ¸ Visual Inspiration & Oddities
Weird Fonts that are Oddly Satisfying
Melting letters, alien-inspired characters, physics-defying letterforms; basically everything that makes you feel like you just woke up from a very strange dream at 5pm.
A Space Station Where Memes and Anime Characters Coexist
Floor796 is an animated scene showing the lives of characters from various works on the 796th floor of a huge space station. The animation is regularly expanded with new blocks (rooms) and characters from movies, TV series, games, anime, memes and more.
Designers Keeping Surrealism Alive Today
Zoom endlessly through surreal worlds in a seamless, collaborative artwork. A mesmerizing trip where every zoom reveals new wonders. Just keep scrolling and lose yourself in infinite imagination.
Psychedelic surrealist collages
Giant bugs meet human faces, futuristic machinery fuses with organic forms, rendered in dazzling colors and textures. These collages from German sci-fi covers by Atelier Heinrichs & Bachmann capture the fever dream of â70s sci-fi paperback art, a playground for the geeks & art lovers among us.
đ Pop-Culture Artifact of the Month
Q Virus
At a 1990s Star Trek con, John de Lancie, Q himself, showed up sick and sipping water. A super-fan paid $60 to chug the actorâs half-finished glass, then triumphantly yelled, âIâve got the Q Virus!â. This incident was reported at the time and later recounted in the 1999 documentary Trekkies, the episode quickly entered fandom lore as a case study in devotion, if not immunity. Public-health agencies did not issue an advisory; the âQ virusâ was merely a tongue-in-cheek label for whatever flu germs one very committed attendee chose to acquire in the name of canon. All hail the Prime Directive: finish Qâs water.
â Branding & Campaign Fails
Ayds Appetite Suppressant
For a few mid-century decades, self-control came wrapped in cellophane. Ayds - the âReducing Plan Candyâ - made dieting feel like dessert: chocolate, choco-mint, butterscotch, caramel, later peanut butter. Under the hood, the formula tracked the times: first benzocaine to numb taste, then â70s phenylpropanolamine (borrowed from cold meds) to blunt hunger. The marketing was pure Mad Men: glossy spreads, punchy promises, and celebrity shine from Bob Hope, Tyrone Power, even Hedy Lamarr, like Willy Wonka meets Weight Watchers. For years it sat in medicine cabinets and magazine back pages, selling the fantasy of discipline without denial - and, for a moment, making willpower taste like candy.
Then the ground shifted. In the early â80s, the AIDS crisis reshaped the culture, and accidentally doomed Ayds. The name sounded like the headline of the decade; late-night monologues and consumer recoil did the rest. Quick fixes (Aydslim, Diet Ayds) were Titanic-deck-chair moves. At the same time, PPA drew mounting scrutiny for cardiovascular risk, spooking regulators and retailers. Reputation + safety = no-buy. By the early â90s, Ayds was gone.
Bottom line: names carry weight. You canât predict headlines, so test names widely and be ready to change fast. Proof beats hype. Diet aids run on trust, if results are vague and safety looks shaky, no celebrity can save it. Ayds made willpower taste like candy until a global crisis and safety warnings killed it. Branding can sugarcoat, but the name and the formula decide.
đ¤ˇđźââď¸ Lost Media & Design Mysteries
Divine Rapture: The Greatest Irish Film Never Made
Hollywood has a long history of chaotic productions (looking at you, Apocalypse Now), but few crashed and burned quite as spectacularly as Divine Rapture, the ill-fated 1995 film that managed less than two weeks of shooting before collapsing in Ballycotton, Ireland. On paper, it shouldâve been iconic: Marlon Brando as a priest, Johnny Depp as a hotshot reporter, Debra Winger rising from her coffin in a miracle-gone-wrong, and John Hurt diagnosing the drama. Think The Exorcist meets Field of Dreams, with an Irish accent.
Instead, it became the Fyre Festival of cinema. Financing that was supposed to cover $40 million turned out to be Monopoly money, local vendors went unpaid, and by July 23, production was dead. Brando, of course, had already pocketed his $1 million. (Even in disaster, the man stayed legendary.) Only about 25 minutes of footage were ever shot, most of it locked away, with just a three-minute glimpse surfacing years later in a documentary aptly titled Ballybrando.
For the village of Ballycotton, the fiasco left such a mark that locals put up a mock gravestone for the movieâs âbirthâ and âdeath.â Itâs part tragedy, part legend, The Irishman without the de-aging tech, or maybe Justice Leagueâs Snyder Cut if the reel had just⌠stopped after the opening credits.
What makes Divine Rapture so fascinating isnât just the cast or the scandal, but the irony baked into its plot: a supposed miracle that turns out to be a mistake. The film promised transcendence, delivered chaos, and ended up a cautionary tale in both Hollywood and small-town Ireland.
Like Brandoâs priest staring at Wingerâs resurrected Mary, cinephiles are still left wondering: was this almost a miracle - or just one more Hollywood myth, buried but never forgotten?
đĄ Whatâs New in the Orbit:
Are you a creative with a story, project, or odd little obsession worth sharing? Weâre always on the lookout for designers, makers, writers, and internet explorers to feature in upcoming editions of The Orbit. If youâd like to be spotlighted, or know someone whose work deserves the stage - drop us a line: đŠ hello@theorbitstudio.com
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Thanks for reading!
Forward this newsletter to your favorite design-nerd friends, internet nostalgics, and lovers of all things odd. See you next month & stay curious!
đ¸ â The Orbit Team
