When someone asks me what I like most about my job, I often reply that I get to write about people who do real things. Being Monocle’s design correspondent means that I spend much of my time on assignment talking to architects, builders, hotel owners, shopkeepers, glassblowers, jewellers, carpenters and factory workers. At a time when many “high-skilled” jobs (management consultants, creative strategists) condemn people to sit at home making slide decks, it’s a genuine privilege to deal with tactile trades.

The year started with publisher Lars Müller in the tiny town of Glarus, Switzerland, where graphic designer Dafi Kühne works with more than 30 tonnes of letterpress equipment that he rescued from being sent to the scrapyard. I was then treated to a sneak peek of Warsaw’s under-construction Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej, where 300 builders were busy putting the finishing touches to the Thomas Phifer-designed museum of modern art. Next there was a tour of a Berlin workshop where taciturn German engineers make the world’s fastest bicycles (pictured) and a week in a modernist neighbourhood of Los Angeles that has been preserved thanks to community organising. The year wrapped with a story reported across two continents about the scientists and engineers revolutionising prosthetics. These are only a few of the standout encounters from a travel-packed year.

At around this point in the calendar, we design journalists are tempted to sum up the past year’s trends and make prescient predictions for the future. But the rewarding part of the job is not to declare that stainless steel will soon be passé or that the 1980s are back in vogue. The fad-resistant aim of Monocle’s design coverage is simply to celebrate well-made things and the people who make them. The reporting just happens to be heaps of fun too. It’s all made possible by readers who pick up the magazine, tune in to Monocle Radio and engage with our journalism. Here’s to an even more productive year in 2025.

Stella Roos is Monocle’s design correspondent. For a peek at the design industry’s 2025 outlook, pick up a copy of Monocle’s ‘The Forecast’.