Comic Sans has turned 30, and it’s done being your punch line. For three whole decades, Comic Sans cowered at your reproaches and winced at your jokes. It barely flinched when Google’s practical joke made sure that searching for “Helvetica” would render all results in Comic Sans. Or when CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, made it the butt of an April Fool’s joke three years later. It even sat quietly while people gathered signatures for its demise. But Comic Sans has just...

In an industry notorious for chasing trends, true innovation is hard to come by. As I write this, designerati have just finished their annual schmoozefest in Milan, where they traipsed the halls of the world’s most prestigious furniture fair. But while Salone del Mobile was in full swing, on the other side of the Atlantic a new kind of armchair was taking shape. This armchair wasn’t dreamed up by a star designer, it isn’t made of white bouclé or velvet, and it isn’t launching on the world’s...