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Design Matters

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Design Matters (New Episodes)

Marc Newson Interview Part 1 - Canvas on FBi Radio

Marc Newson Interview Part 2 - Canvas on FBi Radio

What happens when a woman sends a stocky blond stranger to tell her ex she loves him. 

#1 A Stranger Says I Love You

An app called Figure One wants to be Instagram, but for doctors. Why would doctors need their own Instagram? We spy on the secret & disgusting medical internet, plus we speak to one of its residents. 

#2 The Secret, Gruesome Internet For Doctors

Twenty years ago, Ethan Zuckerman did something terrible on the internet. And he's still living with the consequences.

#3 We Know What You Did

Louise Sandhaus is a graphic designer and educator. She is currently on faculty in the Graphic Design Program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Her design office, LSD (Louise Sandhaus Design), partners with multiple disciplines to realize interpretive projects from the simple to the complex, regardless of media. Clients include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, Los Angeles World Airports (LAX), and Association of Children’s Museums.

Louise's work, writing, and writing about her work, have appeared in numerous publications, including The Women of Design, Information Design Handbook, and Metropolis magazine, as well as SEGD journal, Eye, and I.D. Her work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Louise recently completed her term on the AIGA board and as Chair of the AIGA Design Educators Community steering committee. She received an MFA in Graphic Design from California Institute of the Arts and a Graduate Laureate from the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in The Netherlands.

Her book, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936–1986, was published last year by Metropolis Books and excerpted here.

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Louise Sandhaus

On this episode of Design Matters, Debbie Millman talks to Steven Heller about his new book "Graphic Style Lab".

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Steven Heller

Debbie Millman talks to Elle Luna about why she walked away from great design jobs with IDEO, Uber, and Mailbox.

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Elle Luna

Debbie Millman talks to author, columnist, and speaker Virginia Postrel about the power of glamorous objects and glamorous people.

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Virginia Postrel

In this audio interview with Debbie Millman, Tina Roth Eisenberg discusses her blog, sharing her life with her readers, things that make her smile, four-letter names, crowd sourcing, living and working in Brooklyn, Creative Mornings and the beauty found in ordinary things.

Design Matters From The Archive: Tina Roth Eisenberg

On this episode, Debbie talks with Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey about their qualifications to run Heath Ceramics. "I threw a pot in high school … it was pretty good;" why they don't advertise: "It's better to be interesting than to hire someone to make you sound interesting when you're not;" and their aim to build a holistic business model, one that integrates designing, making, and selling.

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Robin Petravic + Catherine Bailey

Debbie Millman talks to Simon about the fruits of good leadership: "To see your team achieve more than they thought they were capable of, that they will advance the organization further than you even imagined — because they believe, and they are greatful, and they're inspired — it's all worth it. All the sacrifices. It always is."

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Simon Sinek

On this episode Debbie talks to type designer Tobias Frere-Jones about his career and why typefaces are like the air we breathe. "The stretch of time between when you wake up, and when you first interact with some piece of type that someone has drawn, is probably only a couple of seconds."

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Tobias Frere-Jones

On this episode, Debbie talks to editor and digital novelist Eli Horowitz about the virtues of collaboration. "On all these projects you get to the middle where you're saying 'What's the point?' and it's great to have someone else who will mind if this things doesn't happen."

Design Matters With Debbie Millman: Eli Horowitz

In this podcast interview with Debbie Millman, legendary graphic designer Massimo Vignelli, best-known for creating the iconic New York City subway map, discusses intellectual elegance, education, love, the pitfalls of marketing, and his long career in design.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Image: Painting of Massimo Vignelli by Jessica Helfand after a photograph by Beatriz Cifuentes.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Massimo Vignelli

Jake Barton is founder and principal of Local Projects, an award-winning media design studio for museums and public spaces. In this interview with Debbie Millman, Barton discusses his work on the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, the intricacies of designing experiences for public space, and the magic of collaborative storytelling.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Jake Barton

Tina Roth Eisenberg is the "Swiss designer gone NYC" behind the popular design blog Swiss Miss (http://swiss-miss.com), as well as the founder of the global free breakfast lecture series CreativeMornings (http://creativemornings.com)

In this interview with Debbie Millman, Eisenberg discusses her blog, sharing her life with her readers, things that make her smile, four-letter names, crowdsourcing, living and working in Brooklyn, CreativeMornings and the beauty found in ordinary things.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Tina Roth Eisenberg

Marian Bantjes is a typographer, designer, artist and writer. Working from a small island off the west coast of Canada, her personal and obsessive work has brought her international recognition. Her work has been published in books and magazines around the world and is included in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

In this interview with Debbie Millman, Bantjes discusses her most recent book, <i>I Wonder</i> (Monicelli and Thames & Hudson), her shift from typesetter to famous designer, ornament, secrets, cipher, coded text, causing pain to type purists and the importance of putting good work into the public sphere. 

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Marian Bantjes

Chris Ware is a cartoonist and the author of the extraordinary new "book" Building Stories (http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/05/building-stories-chris-ware/)

In this interview with Debbie Millman, Ware discusses the relationship between storytelling and empathy, the challenges of giving shape to the human experience, the subtle commentary on sexuality in his work, and the role of sadness in writing.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Chris Ware

Aaron Draplin is the force powering Draplin Design Compay (http://draplin.com) in Portland, Oregon. Having made a name for himself with stand-out work for snowboarding companies and their like, he’s now courting more mainstream clients including Coal Headwear, Union Binding Co., Richmond Fontaine, Field Notes, Esquire, Nike, Wired, Timberline, Chunklet, Red Wing, Incase, Giro, Cobra Dogs, Megafaun, Ford Motor Co., Hughes Entertainment, Chuck Prophet, and even the Obama Administration. Born in the Midwest, and a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art, Draplin has become an important voice in the world of graphic design while maintaining a sense of humor.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Aaron Draplin

Karl Heiselman is the CEO of Wolff Olins (http://www.wolffolins.com) and the driving force behind the company’s ambition for clients and optimism for the world. He leads the global business by shaping its strategy for growth and encouraging excellence in its creative work. With over 20 years of branding and design experience, Heiselman has helped create game-changing work for Wolff Olins’s clients including (RED), Skype, GE, PwC, Unicef, Current TV, New York City and Mercedes-Benz. He has expanded the company’s capabilities to include product development, brand-centric innovation and creatively led business strategy. Trained as a designer, Heiselman firmly believes in the value of creativity to drive positive business and social impact. Prior to joining Wolff Olins, Heiselman founded the San Francisco–based design studio The Farm, where his clients included Apple, American Express, FedEx, Swatch and HP. Heiselman attended the Rhode Island School of Design and studied graphic and industrial design.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Karl Heiselman

Michael Arad is an architect who moved to New York City from Israel in 1999. At 34, Arad was selected from 5,201 competitors as the winning designer of the World Trade Center Memorial. After a behind-the-scenes war of wills, we now celebrate his vision with a with "Reflecting Absence", a pair of pools set 30 feet deep in the footprints of the downed towers, with cascading waterfalls surrounded by the names of the dead and a "living park" at ground level meant to symbolize life and rebirth.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Michael Arad

Roman Mars is the host of 99% Invisible (http://99percentinvisible.org), a radio show exploring the 99% invisible activity all around us that shapes the design of our world. Produced with support from LUNAR, this is a project of KALW, the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco and the Center for Architecture and Design.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Roman Mars

Jessica Hische (http://jessicahische.is/awesome) is a letterer, illustrator and self-described “avid internetter,” best known for her personal projects Daily Drop Cap (http://www.dailydropcap.com) and the Should I Work for Free flowchart (http://shouldiworkforfree.com). Just five years out of college, she currently serves on the TDC board of Directors and is one of the more accomplished young "designistrators" working today. Her work has been featured in most major American design and illustration publications as well as a few overseas and she’s been named one of Print Magazine’s New Visual Artist (20 under 30) an ADC Young Guns and a GDUSA Person to Watch.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Jessica Hische

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings (http://www.brainpickings.org), an inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness and curiosity, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are. She has also written for Wired UK, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Nieman Journalism Lab, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. 

In this audio interview with Debbie Millman, Maria discusses curation, creativity as pattern-recognition, growing up in Bulgaria, and her grandmother following her Google Alerts.

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes for more great interviews with celebrated designers and creative minds: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Maria Popova

Christopher Simmons is a designer, writer, educator, design advocate and principal of the noted San Francisco design office MINE™. He is the author of four books, the most recent being Just Design: Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes. His work has been exhibited at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art (Japan), the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design and the Smithsonian Institution and is part of the permanent design archives at the Denver Art Museum. Simmons is an adjunct professor of design at the California College of the Arts. He is an active advisor and mentor to Project M and a past president of AIGA San Francisco.

On Design Observer: http://observermedia.designobserver.com/

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Christopher Simmons

Cliff Sloan borrowed $10,000 from his parents in 1993 and started The Sloan Group, a six-person creative marketing shop specializing in youth, entertainment and technology marketing. By 1999, The Sloan Group was 60 people strong, had garnered over 100 awards for creative excellence and boasted a blue-chip client roster that included Nickelodeon, MTV, Turner, MasterCard, AT&T, Disney, HBO and Pepsi. In 2000, The Sloan Group was acquired by The Interpublic Group of Companies, the world’s third largest advertising, marketing and communications organization. The Sloan Group enjoyed Agency of Record status for a diverse roster of clients ranging from entertainment and sports to financial services and government. As President and Chief Creative Officer, Cliff oversaw all agency operations while leading the agency’s strategic marketing, brand engineering, creative and business development divisions. In 2008, along with partner Gary Zarr, Cliff started Phil & Co., an agency dedicated to contemporary marketing for philanthropies and companies “doing good”. He teaches Cause Branding and Marketing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is a judge of the 2013 Cause Marketing Forum Halo Awards. 

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Cliff Sloan

Amy Webb is the head of of Webbmedia Group, a digital strategy agency that solves complex strategic and operational problems related to disruptive technologies and emerging digital trends that are catalyzing great change across many industries. Recently, she worked with the City of Chicago to redesign, in every aspect, a modern library system for the 21st century. She co-founded Spark Camp, a 501(c)(3) invite-only working group that brings together the brightest minds in media and technology once each quarter. Prior to starting Webbmedia Group, Amy was a reporter/ writer with Newsweek (Tokyo) and the Wall Street Journal (Hong Kong) where she covered emerging technology, media and cultural trends. She has contributed to the New York Times, NPR, Economist and many publications and appears regularly as a commentator on numerous broadcast shows.

Amy originally attended the Jacobs School of Music to study classical clarinet, and she later graduated with a B.A. in political science. She also has an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Amy has served on the adjunct faculty at University of Maryland, Temple University, Tokyo University and University of the Arts.
Her new book, DATA: A LOVE STORY: How I Gamed Online Dating To Meet My Match was published in January 2013 and has been featured in People, Good Morning America, The View, Marketplace, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, The Guardian, Wired, Elle Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine and elsewhere. DATA chronicles how Amy used data analytics and smart digital marketing strategies to land her online dating profile at the top, and then built a framework to exploit the algorithms to her own benefit (finding a husband).


Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Amy Webb

Jennifer Sterling is a designer, artist, typographer and book publisher based in New York and the rincipal of Sterling Design. Her work has been exhibited and resides in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Library of Congress. In 2000 she was inducted into Alliance Graphique Internationale and Who’s Who in America. Graphis included her in their “Top Ten Designers in the World” list and USA GD named her as one of “Twelve Designers to change Design into the Millennium.” Additionally she has served on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Design and Accessions Board.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Jennifer Sterling

Emily Oberman studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She began her career working with Tibor Kalman at his legendary studio M&Co., where from 1987 to 1993 she collaborated with Kalman to create groundbreaking work for Knoll, Wieden & Kennedy, Talking Heads, and Bennetton’s Colors magazine. In 1993, she co-founded the design studio Number Seventeen with her partner Bonnie Siegler. She joined Pentagram’s New York office as partner in April 2012. Her clients have included NBC Universal (logos for “30 Rock,” “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and “Saturday Night Live,” including the opening title sequence for 15 years), Herman Miller, Air America and the creation of Lucky magazine for Condé Nast. Oberman’s book design has included work for the Type Directors Club, HBO’s “Sex and the City,” Glamour magazine, and the deluxe illustrated edition of Stephen Dubner’s Superfreakonomics. Her work has been recognized by the AIGA, the Type Directors Club, and the Art Directors Club, among others. In 2004, she was awarded the prestigious Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award for distinguished alumni from her alma mater Cooper Union. She has served on the national board of AIGA and as president of its New York chapter.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Emily Oberman

Wendy MacNaughton and Caroline Paul are the illustrator and author, respectively, of the new book Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Wendy MacNaughton is an illustrator and a graphic journalist based in San Francisco. Her documentary series Meanwhile tells the stories of communities through drawings and the subject's own words, and is being published as an anthology by Chronicle Books in 2014. She's also illustrated the forthcoming book The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Wine, by Richard Betts (Houghton Mifflin, 2013). She has degrees in fine art/advertising and social work from Art Center College of Design and Columbia University. When they let her, she likes to talk with students at Art Center College of Design, and she is an artist in residence at Intersection for the Arts.

Caroline Paul is an author based in San Francisco. Paul grew up in New England, with an identical twin, a younger brother, and a menagerie of animals. She graduated from Stanford University, where she studied Communications. In 1989, she became a San Francisco firefighter. She is the author of Fighting Fire (Skywriter Books, 2011), about her thirteen years as a firefghter, and East Wind, Rain (2006) which has been optioned for a movie.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton

The internet illuminati tells us how to think about Wikileaks. For <a href="http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/">Ethan Zuckerman</a> and <a href="http://www.rushkoff.com/">Douglas Rushkoff</a>, it's kind of an "I Told You So" moment. <a href="http://www.ellsberg.net/">Daniel Ellsberg</a> explains why Bradley Manning is a better comparison than Julian Assange while <a href="http://jilliancyork.com/">Jillian York</a> says FAIL to Time Magazine's choice for person of the year. Cartoonist <a href="http://joealterio.com/">Joe Alterio</a> draws the cables and <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/trailhead.html">Christopher Beam</a> celebrates the diplomatic 'talent' pool. Plus <a href="http://gabriellacoleman.org/">Gabriella Coleman</a> on Anonymous, <a href="http://www.evgenymorozov.com/">Evgeny Morozov</a> on DDOS, and your host asks "What Would China Do?"

All You Have to do is Ask (TMI Wikileaks Special)

<a href="http://icarusfilms.com/new2010/disco.html">Jaak Kilmi</a> talks about his childhood watching Finnish TV in Soviet Estonia and <a href="http://www.anasqtiesh.com/">Anas Qtiesh</a> talks about how Facebook is both banned and popular in Syria. Your host talks with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/1565846648">Frances Stonor Saunders</a> who wrote the seminal book on the CIA and Abstract Expressionism and we learn about <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Edward-Hopper-Biography-Gail-Levin/dp/0520214757">Edward Hopper's</a> love of Reality. Plus a deep look at the CIA's Operation Real World.

Cultural Freedom

Design Matters by Debbie Millman features interviews with designers, artists and cultural leaders, including Lawrence Weiner, Barbara Kruger, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Kandel, Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Michael Arad, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Paula Scher, Steven Heller, Jonah Lehrer, among others.

In 2011, Design Matters received the People’s Design Award from the prestigious Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards.

Subscribe to Design Matters for free on iTunes, where new episodes are uploaded weekly: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695