Scratching The Surface

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.

Bryan Boyer is a partner at Dash Marshall, an architecture and strategic design studio based in New York and Detroit, where he leads their Civic Futures practice. Bryan studied architecture and interior renovation before heading to Finland to help start the Helsinki Design Lab, where he worked on a team that helped improve public institutions through design. In this episode, Bryan and I talk about the value of an architecture degree, the ideas behind strategic design, and the limits of design thinking. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Joe Potts is a graphic designer, educator, artist, and writer working with found and synthesized images, sound, typography, and language. He teaches typography and graphic design at Otis College of Art and Design and the University of Southern California, and is the founding director of the Southland Institute (for critical, durational, and typographic post-studio practices). In this episode, Joe and I talk about the Southland Institute, both why it exists and what it's trying to do, the economic burdens of design education, and the value of building an interdisciplinary practice. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

John L. Walters is the editor of Eye Magazine. Before becoming the editor in 1999, John worked as a writer and editor on a variety of publications and newspapers, including The Architectural Review and The Guardian, and previously was a musician, touring England with his band, Landscape. In this episode, John and I talk about the transition of music to writing, how he started writing about graphic design, and how the design discourse has changed over his nearly twenty years of editing Eye and how the magazine has to both evolve and stay true to its identity. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Rob Walker is a writer and journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. His writing on design has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Design Observer, and The Atlantic and was featured in Gary Hustwit's film Objectified. He currently writes the Workologist column for The New York Times and is writing a book about attention. In this episode, Rob and I talk about how brought design into his writing beat, wrestling with the consequences of design in the world, and why he doesn't like calling himself a critic.

Justin McGuirk is a writer, critic and curator. He is currently the chief curator at the Design Museum in London and a faculty member in the Design Curating & Writing program at Design Academy Eindhoven. Previously, he was director of Strelka Press, design critic for The Guardian, and the editor of Icon magazine. In 2014, he published Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture. In this episode, Justin and I talk about the similarities between writing and curating, modes of criticism, and design's troubled relationship to problem solving. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

James Langdon is a designer, writer, and curator. He is one of six directors of Eastside Projects, an artist-run exhibition space in Birmingham, England, runs an independent design practice, and has written for publications like The Serving Library and Bricks from the Kiln. He's a professor in the communication design department at HfG Karlsruhe and in 2013, he founded the itinerant School for Design Fiction, working with students to investigate the storytelling inherent in the design process. He's also written and researched extensively on the work of Norman Potter. In this episode, we talk about how Dot Dot Dot sparked his interest in design, what he's learned from studying Norman Potter, and how artifacts can be forms of critique. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey is a designer, writer, editor, and publisher. He co-founded Dot Dot Dot with Peter Bil'ak in 2000 and began working with David Reinfurt, under the name Dexter Sinister, in 2006. Along with Reinfurt and Angie Keefer, he's the co-founder and publisher of The Serving Library. Late last year, he was appointed Head of Design at the ICA in London. In this conversation, Stuart and I talk about his early design career and working with Richard Hollis, the relationships he sees between design and writing, and how his career is influencing his approach to his new job. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Paul Ford is a writer, programmer, educator, and technologist. He is currently the co-founder of Postlight, a digital product studio in New York and teaches at the School of Visual Arts. He's written for publications like Harper's, New York, Medium, and The Morning News and is a frequent commentator on technology and the internet. In 2015, he published "What is Code?" for Bloomberg Businessweek, an issue-length essay explaining programming to a mass audience. In this episode, Paul and I talk about his childhood interest in computers and books, the early days of the web and building his own blogging software, as well as how the internet effects the form of content and the issues surrounding digital product design. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Dmitri Siegel is a creative director, designer, and writer. He's currently the Vice President of Global Brand for Sonos and was previously Executive Creative Director at Patagonia. He also was one of my favorite writers of the Emigre-era, where his writing appeared in Emigre, Design Observer, and Dot Dot Dot. In this episode, Dmitri and I talk about his interest in writing about design, going from writing for Emigre to leading design at Sonos, and how design criticism has changed over the course of his career. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Mitch Goldstein is a designer, artist, and educator based in Rochester, NY. He is an Assistant Professor the School of Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology, works in collaboration with his wife Anne Jordan on client projects, and maintains an ongoing art practice focusing on experimental darkroom photography. He also co-hosted the design podcast Though Process and has written and lectured extensively on design and design education. In this episode, Mitch and I talk about our evolving definitions of the words 'graphic design', critique methods in the classroom, and the problems with contemporary design discourse. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Paul Soulellis is a designer, writer, and educator. After spending twenty years working as a designer, fifteen of those years under his own studio, Soulellis Studios, Paul recently has shifted his work into a more expanded and experimental practice. In 2014, while part of the New Museum's incubator, he started Counterpractice, his new design studio, and began publishing his now-ongoing project Library of the Printed Web. He also recently joined the faculty at RISD in their graphic design department. In this episode, Paul and I talk about the significance of blogging to his work, building new types of graphic design practices, and how the classroom can be a nucleus for the intersection of theory and practice. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.

Rory Hyde is an architect, curator and writer based in London. His work is focuses on new forms of design practice, and redefining the role of the designer today. Currently, he's Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism at the Victoria and Albert Museum and is the author of the book, Future Practice, a collection of interviews about the edge of architecture. In this wide-ranging conversation, Rory and I talk about his early career as an architect and interning at Volume magazine, the differences between practice and curation, and the types of design criticism he's drawn to and wants to see more of. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.