Scratching The Surface

Brian LaRossa is a designer, illustrator, writer, and reader. He's the design director at Scholastic, writer for Design Observer, and on the adjunct faculty at CUNY. In this episode, Brian and Jarrett talk about his early resistance to the design world and how discovering its history and culture opened up a new love for the discipline. They also talk about how he started writing, his love of reading, and the similarities between his writing process and design process. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Robin Sloan is a writer and media inventor based in Oakland. He's the author of two novels, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough. He's also written a variety of short stories and internet projects, dabbles in programming and machine learning, and makes extra virgin olive oil with his partner Kathryn Tomajan. In this conversation, Robin and I talk about what it means to be a media inventor and how this is similar to being a designer, his early career working at Twitter and Current TV, and the value of pursuing diverse creative projects. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Mimi Zeiger is a writer, critic, curator and editor. She's written for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Dwell, Domus, and The Architectural Review and is the founder of Loud Paper, a zine and digital publication that sought to increase the output of architectural discourse. She was also the co-curator for the US Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennalle, which had the theme "Dimensions of Citizenship". In this episode, Mimi and I talk about how she started writing after beginning a career as an architect, the role of the critic, and why we need architecture and design critics in today's political climate. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Dan Hill is a designer, educator, and writer. He's currently a director at Arup, a visiting professor at The Bartlett School, and Adjunct professor at RMIT. He's also the author of Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary, and the long-running blog City of Sound. He previously worked at the Helsinki Design Lab and as director of Fabrica. In this episode, Dan and I talk about the evolution of his career, his vision for a new type of design education, and the role of writing in his work. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Emmett Zeifman is an architect, educator, and writer. He's the cofounder with Alfie Koetter of Medium Office, a design practice based in Los Angeles and New York, and *Project*, an independent publication that investigates the possibilities for developing a critical position in contemporary architecture. He also teaches architecture at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In this episode, Emmett and I talk about the relationship between the classroom and the studio, the role of writing in his design practice, and what he learned studying literature. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Anab Jain is a designer, futurist, filmmaker and educator. As Co-founder and Director of Superflux, she hopes to realize the vision of the Studio as a new kind of design practice, responsive to the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. She also teaches at the University Applied Arts in Vienna and gave a TED Talk last year on design's role in imagining new futures. In this episode, Anab and I talk about Superflux's blend of client and speculative work, her background in filmmaking, and pushing up against disciplinary boundaries. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Mindy Seu is a designer, educator, and researcher. She is currently a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was previously a designer at 2x4 and MoMA. She's also designed and produced archival sites for Ralph Ginzburg and Herb Lubalin’s Eros and Avant Garde magazines. In this episode, Mindy and I talk about her early career and why she decided to go to graduate school, the role of research and archives in her work, and how graphic design is just one pillar of her practice.

Jessica Barness is a design theorist, educator, and writer whose research interests include interactive environments, sound, and critical practices. She's currently an associate professor in the School of Visual Communication Design at Kent State University and her writing has appeared in Design and Culture, Visual Communication, Dialectic, and more. In this episode, Jessica and I talk about her career as a practicing designer before making the shift to academia, the state of design discourse, and the differences between critical design, critical making, and design research. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Keller Easterling is an architect, writer, and professor at Yale University. Her most recent book, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space examines global infrastructure networks as a medium of polity, and she's written about architecture, design, and building for various publications. In this conversation, Keller and I talk about studying theater, how she ended up in architecture and her desire to move away from it, and the role of criticism in the discourse. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Alissa Walker is the urbanism editor at Curbed where she writes about cities, infrastructure, transportation, and policy. Before that, she was the urbanism editor at Gizmodo and has written extensively about design, cities, and architecture for places like Design Observer, Dwell, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. In this episode, Alissa and I talk about the differences between writing about designed objects and writing about the city, the role of the critic, and how she writes about government, policy, and transportation through the lens of design.

Cameron Tonkinwise is a design theorist, educator, and writer based in Australia. He's written on subjects ranging from sustainability to interaction design, design thinking to systems design and has taught in design institutions around the world. In this conversation, Cameron and I talk about his early interest in philosophy and politics and how design became a way he could bridge the gap between those, the challenges with design's newfound cultural currency, and how designers need to reconsider how their work lives in the world in this current cultural and political moment. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Francisca Monteiro is a typographer and book designer based in the United Kingdom. While I was working on my MFA thesis on design criticism in Baltimore, Francisca was also working on a thesis, at the University of Reading, on Emigre and the relationship between design and writing. I was struck by the similarities in our projects which we use to frame a discussion about the history of design criticism, the role of magazines in creating a discourse, and how the design writing has changed over the years. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Tim Belonax is a designer and educator in San Francisco. He currently works as a brand designer at Pinterest and teaches at the California College of Arts. He previously worked as a designer at Airbnb, Mine, and was a principle designer in Facebook's Analog Research Lab. In this episode, Tim and I talk about institutional critique and how to encourage reflexivity while working in house, how teaching has influenced his work in the tech industry and vice versa, and why he left grad school to work at Facebook. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Silas Munro is a designer, educator, and writer based in Los Angeles. He's currently an Assistant Professor in Communication Arts and MFA in Graphic Design at Otis College of Art and Design, Advisor, Chair Emeritus in the MFA program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and his work and writing has been published in many forms around the world. In this episode, Silas and I talk about what it means to be a 'design nomad' and how this applies to ideas around expanded practices and cross disciplinary work, how teaching influences his design practice, and how to think about decolonizing graphic design history. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Jonathan Hanahan is a an artist and designer whose practice explores the cultural and social ramifications of experiences which transcend physical and digital occupations and the role technology plays in shaping, mediating, and disrupting our everyday realities. He's also an Assistant Professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and an artist in residence at California College of the Arts. In this episode, Jonathan and I talk about his background in architecture and writing and how he found himself studying design, the importance of digital design criticism, and how he encourages his students to bring a critical perspective to their work and the design profession at large.

Rudy VanderLans is a graphic design, type designer, and co-founder of Emigre, the type foundry and magazine he created with his wife Zuzana Licko. In the 1990s, Emigre Magazine became the place to read and discuss issues of graphic design, design criticism, and theory and gave a platform for some of the best design writers like Randy Nakamura, Mr. Keedy, Anne Burdick, and Kenneth FitzGerald. In this episode, Rudy and I talk about Emigre and his own relationship to graphic design and design theory, his interest in photography, and why the 1990s were such a golden era for design writing. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Andrew Lister and Matthew Stuart are designers, editors, educators, and publishers. Together, they edit and design Bricks from the Kiln, a new journal that 'centers in and around graphic design.' In this episode, Matthew, Andrew, and I talk about Bricks from the Kiln and how they started it and what their goals are, how publishing and editing has influenced their design practice, and the overlap between editing, teaching, and writing. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Peter Mendelsund is a graphic designer, writer, musician. Until recently he was the associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf where he designed book covers for everyone from James Joyce to Franz Kafka, Stieg Larsson and Simone De Beauvoir. In 2014, he published What We See When We Read and Cover and will publish his first novel, Same Same next year. In this conversation, Peter and I talk about his relationship to graphic design, working across mediums and disciplines, and the differences between writing fiction and nonfiction. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Aggie Toppins is a graphic designer and educator whose work centers around active citizenship and intellectual pursuit. She's currently teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and maintains an independent studio practice publishing zines, collages, and a fun series called Critical Theory Cocktails. In this episode, Aggie and I talk about her introduction to critical theory and how she introduces challenging texts to her students, how her time at MICA inspired her to start teaching, and why it's important to decolonize the design discourse. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Shannon Mattern is Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School in New York. Her writing and teaching focuses on archives, libraries, and other media spaces; media infrastructures; spatial epistemologies; and mediated sensation and exhibition. She's the author of multiple books and writes a regular column for Places. In this episode, Shannon and I talk about what media studies is and she got interested in it, how to connect theory and artifact — in both teaching and writing — and relationships between the built environment and the digital world. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.