design matters

Designer, author, critic, co-chair of SVA’s MFA program in design and National Design Award recipient Steven Heller talks to Debbie Millman about ideas from his new ebook, Design Cult: 25 Essays on Design Culture — the first of a series of three titles published exclusively as e-books through the DesignFile consortium from the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. In Design Cult Heller expounds on such disparate topics as Milton Glaser, Japanese masks, velvet touch lettering, anthropomorphism and people in glass apartments. In this podcast, Steven and Debbie discuss how design is both a cult and culture, the dirty decade, the death of a trend and what designers have in common with Harvey Weinstien.

On Design Observer: observermedia.designobserver.com/audio/steven-heller/37737/

On iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/desig…lman/id328074695

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Steven Heller

Sara Blake, aka “ZSO”, is an NYC based illustrator, artist, and designer. She graduted from NYU’s Galllatin School of Individualized Study in Graphic Art and Postmodern Studies. Her commercial clients have ranged from Condé Nast to Kobe Bryant to Marc Jacobs, as well as projects for charities. Her work, a combination of hand-drawn illustration and digital enhancements, is a dizzying array of swirling inks and vibrant colors. Based out of the West Village, she is also a freelance art director, currently working for IBM and owner and manager of ZSO-NYC, a small textile company. She currently has two pieces in the ON! exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Debbie Millman spoke to her in the member's lounge of the museum.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Sara Blake

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

Mikencharlotte Cobb