Lella Vignelli, John Berger, Second Avenue Subway, Jackie, La La Land

Episode 48: Lella and La La

Peter York on autocrat chic, Sunday in the Park with George, BBC interview with Robert Kelly, Jessica Dimmock’s The Convention

Episode 52: Dictator Style

#trypod, Dan Brown cover contest, Design in Tech, writing for designers, The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, Wes Anderson’s Bar Luce

Episode 53: On Writing Well

Twitter’s default avatar, border wall submissions, Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad, School for Justice, the Uline catalog

Episode 54: Egos, Eggs, and Half an Onion

Egregious email signatures, circular Twitter avatars, Wonder Woman, Demetri Martin’s Dean

Episode 59: Signatures and Circles

Adam Moss, Tina Brown, and the future of print magazines; Rookie, Design Sponge, and the future of online magazines; Karen Green’s Frail Sister; Anni Albers at the Tate

The Observatory

Episode 96: Wither the Magazine

Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, Malta, The West Wing Weekly podcast, branded empathy, Chernobyl, Caravaggio’s Beheading of St. John the Baptist

Episode 105: Malta, Marketing, Make-Believe

Science poster redesign, Eli Baden-Lasar’s portraits of his sperm-donor siblings, Jony Ive parodies, a ridiculous commercial.

Episode 107: Scientific Advances

Television: HBO’s Succession, The Deuce, The Politician, Face Values at Cooper Hewitt, Jessica Wynne photographs mathematician blackboards

Episode 112: The Sweet Smell of Succession

Kate Crawford | Trevor Paglen: Training Humans, Derren Brown, MoMA expands again, slime mold, Gordon Salchow

Episode 113: Facing the Future

Painting on photographs, artists v. designers, the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, Richard Hollis designs for the Whitechapel

Episode 114: Kids Today

Donald Trump’s handwriting; Michael Bloomberg, design patron; Jessica Helfand’s Face: A Visual Odyssey; Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World; Heather Dewey-Halborg’s DNA portraits; Bulgarian socialist graphics

Episode 115: Thick and Blunt

Making art and design during the COVID-19 pandemic; Christoph Niemann and Daniella Zalcman; Adam Schlesinger; spec scripts for Larry David

Episode 124: That Thing You Do

Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Episode 126: Screens and Dreams

Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters; Hrishi Hirway and Mike Errico; The Quiz Broadcast; Shakespeare and Co. Project

Episode 127: Fear and Longing

Guest host Avery Trufelman talks about Articles of Interest, clothing, luxury; Larry Rosenberg’s Breath by Breath; Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu

Episode 128: Decoding Luxury

A conversation with De Nichols about cities, monuments, and designing for community.

Episode 129: Spatial Justice

With Bobby C. Martin, Jr.: rebranding Champions Design; football in Washington; demands for change at design schools; cooking during quarantine.

Episode 130: Tackling History

With Hrishikesh Hirway: games and puzzles, The West Wing Weekly, soap operas, Home Cooking

Episode 131: Word by Word

With Lee Moreau: How to teach during the pandemic, robust design, jigsaw puzzles, The New York Times Spelling Bee

Episode 132: Back to School?

With Allison Arieff: The Magic of Empty Spaces, cities during COVID-19, Solving All The Wrong Problems, harvesting honey, The Good Fight

Episode 133: Urban Reckoning

With Gail Bichler: Remote creative direction for the New York Times Magazine, editorial design fine art, and motherhood; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Fast and the Furious, Yale Mental Health Symposium

Episode 134: Fast and Furious

2020: dinner at home, Zoom fatigue, new rules of design, watching television

Episode 135: Home for the Holidays

Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand of @designobserver discuss, design, current events, and current enthusiasms.

The Observatory

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