This issue includes, among other wonderful things, our annual curation and celebration of new graduate talent in architecture, design, fashion, photography, visual communication and more. These are no wild punts or ill-judged speculations. Time, effort and occasional cross words have gone into this massive trawl and painful winnowing of international smart young things. And to prove just how convinced we are of their talent and potential, we have put some of these early bloomers to work – designing the spectacular, articulated typeface on our cover, illustrating our contributors’ page and shooting elements of our Newspaper section and our graduate fashion showcase. The winner of our inaugural Wallpaper* New Generation photography prize, plucked and anointed at the latest Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography, has shot our main fashion story, a tale of romantic intrigue among sharply stylish roomies. All have more than risen to the challenge.

They are all part of a generation – and I don’t want to use the ‘M’ word – that has had a bad press. Some folks, wizened old Xers like me mostly, have accused their age group of an outsized sense of entitlement, of a resistance to paying their professional dues, in the old-fashioned way. That’s not what we hear in our conversations with this next wave of graduate talent. Sure, there is high ambition. Nothing wrong with that. And often that ambition stretches well beyond personal glory and advancement. They are thinking big picture. Their work tackles ideas around community and identity, belonging and isolation, gender roles and social responsibility. They also understand that the media they work in are shifting and uncertain. That the things they do and the tools they use today may become redundant or be reimagined almost instantly. They understand that there will be the constant need for improvisation and experimentation, rethinking and retraining in the most fundamental sense. Career paths and game plans won’t survive their first interrogation. They will need entrepreneurial nous and hustle-muscles, sharp elbows and thick skins in ways not required of previous generations. They will do things differently. And that is really something worth celebrating.

Nick Compton, Acting Editor