Podcasts about Design Observer

When our guest today traveled across the country speaking to diverse people, she learned that curiosity is our key to progress. Ellen McGirt is the  editor-in-chief of Design Observer, a media platform about design and culture. Today, Ellen tells us how being truly curious about our differences can help us come together as a nation.Resources mentioned in this episode:The Design Observer Angela Glover Blackwell's Say More EpisodeEllen McGirt's podcast, The Design of BusinessWhat Now with Trevor Noah podcast episode with Dr. Ruha BenjaminFollow Tulaine on:InstagramLinkedinXProduced by the New Profit and Hueman Group Media.Views and opinions expressed during the podcast are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of New Profit or Hueman Group Media Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based in Los Angeles, California, F. Ron Miller has designed numerous movie posters and title sequences, as well as an impressive number of covers for The Criterion Collection, who releases important classic and contemporary films. Ron's always been a big fan of The Bad and the Beautiful, starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, and Elaine Stewart. It tells the story of a ruthless producer played by Kirk Douglas, who works tirelessly to reach the top of the Hollywood system with no care for how others get left in the dust. We also talk about movies that are about making movies, David Lynch, Citizen Kane, as well as imposter syndrome, how designers work, design magazines, design culture, and design history.-F. Ron Miller received his bachelor's degree from California Institute of the Arts, where he was a student of Lou Danziger, and his master's degree from London's Royal College of Art. His work has appeared in Communication Arts, The Paris Review, and The Design Observer. He's prominently featured in the Criterion Designs monograph.https://www.fronmiller.com/https://www.amazon.com/Criterion-Designs-Collection/dp/160465936Xhttps://criterioncast.com/column/covering-the-collection/covering-the-collection-an-interview-with-f-ron-millerhttps://www.criterion.com/faq https://www.artcenter.edu/about/alumni/alumni-stories/lou-danziger-leaving-a-well-designed-legacy.htmlhttps://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-lou-danziger-at-100-and-beyond/ -The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044391/ https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/apr/22/bad-and-the-beautiful-reviewhttps://www.nytimes.com/1953/01/16/archives/the-bad-and-the-beautiful-with-kirk-douglas-playing-a-scoundrel-at.html-Movie history from Scorsesehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Personal_Journey_with_Martin_Scorsese_Through_American_Movieshttps://www.kanopy.com/en/watch/video/5878649/5878651 -Other movies and shows discussed, alphabetical listAce In the Hole (1951)Boogie Nights (1997)Bowfinger (1999)Cat People (1942)Chaplin (1992)Citizen Kane (1941)CQ (2001)Dolemite Is My Name (2019)Ed Wood (1994)Hollywood Shuffle (1987)Maxxxine (2024)Once Upon a Time In… Hollywood (2019)A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies (1995)The Player (1992)Playtime (1967)The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)The Professional (1994)The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Design As Humanity features Lee Moreau in conversation with Susan Fabry, Laura Forlano, Mahsa Ershadi, and Sheng-Hung Lee. Follow Design Observer on Instagram to keep up and see even more Design As content. A full transcript of the show can be found hereCheck out the Design Observer hosted job board.Season two of Design As draws from recordings taken at the Design Research Society 2024 Conference hosted in Boston in June 2024.

Design As Discipline features Lee Moreau in conversation with Mariana Amatullo, Elizabeth Christoforetti, and Maria Risueño. Follow Design Observer on Instagram to keep up and see even more Design As content. A full transcript of the show can be found hereCheck out another show from Design Observer, The Design of Business | The Business of Design,  soon launching its 12th season! Season two of Design As draws from recordings taken at the Design Research Society 2024 Conference hosted in Boston in June 2024.

Design As Care features Lee Moreau in conversation with Jadalia Britto, Rachael Dietkus, Sofie Hodara, and Giorgia Lupi.Follow Design Observer on Instagram to keep up and see even more Design As content. Subscribe to Design Observer's newsletters The Observatory and Equity Observer here. Click here for a full transcript of the show plus even more content on Design Observer's website. Season two of Design As draws from recordings taken at the Design Research Society 2024 Conference hosted in Boston in June 2024.

Explore the life and legacy of graphic design pioneer Jacqueline Casey, whose bold, modernist posters defined MIT's visual identity for decades — with insights from designer Michael Bierut, we uncover how Casey infused Swiss design principles with American ingenuity, led campus-wide design efforts, and created work that remains timeless and influential._______Support this podcast with a small donation: Buy Me A CoffeeThis show is powered by Nice PeopleJoin this podcast and the Patreon community: patreon.com/womendesignersyoushouldknowHave a 1:1 mentor call with Amber Asay: intro.co/amberasay_______Sources:Article: Eye Magazine Feature "Jacqueline Casey. Science and design"Article on Thérèse MollAbout Jacqueline (Jackie)Jacqueline Casey was a pioneering graphic designer whose work defined the visual identity of MIT for over three decades. Born in 1927 in Quincy, Massachusetts, she studied fashion design and illustration at MassArt before finding her way into graphic design. In 1955, her lifelong friend Muriel Cooper recruited her to the MIT Office of Publications, where Casey absorbed the principles of Swiss modernism and gave them her own twist—infusing wit, visual metaphors, and bold typography into her work.As Director of MIT's Design Services Office, she led campus-wide design efforts, creating posters and materials for scientific conferences, exhibitions, and cultural events. Her ability to simplify complex ideas with elegance and playfulness made her work timeless and celebrated globally. Today, her posters are held in the collections of MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt, and the MIT Museum, solidifying her as a quiet yet powerful force in modernist design history. About MichaelMichael Bierut is one of the most influential graphic designers of our time. A partner at Pentagram since 1990, his work spans iconic logos, brand identities, and campaigns for clients like The New York Times, Mastercard, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Bierut has been a longtime educator at Yale, co-founded Design Observer, and authored celebrated books, including How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things. His work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt, and his thought leadership continues to shape the design world.Follow Michael:Instagram: @mbierutWebsite: Pentragram.comThreads: @mbierut ____View all the visually rich 1-min reels of each woman on IG below:Instagram: Amber AsayInstagram: Women Designers Pod

After a quick update about the future of TBAS with Zak, he welcomes back Rob Walker, who shares intriguing advice on embracing ridiculousness in minute ways. The conversation explores how such absurd activities can bring joy and creativity to daily life. Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. He was last on TBAS walking and talking about Looking Up. He writes the BRANDED column for Fast Company and has contributed to The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, NewYorker.Com, Design Observer, The Organist, and many others. His latest book is The Art of Noticing (Knopf). He is on the faculty of the Products of Design MFA program at the School of Visual Arts.Read Rob's piece about the Squirrel Census on his Substack. - https://robwalker.substack.com/The Vox piece which inspired Rob, The unexpected joy of the Squirrel Census.https://www.thesquirrelcensus.com/---Call Zak and describe the ways in which you embrace ridiculousness in your life @ 844-935-BEST Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

In this episode, Hannah Carlson, author of “Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close,” discusses the historical and social significance of pockets. Inspired by a personal experience where she had no pockets during an emergency, Carlson explores how pockets have evolved from medieval times to modern days, highlighting their gender disparity. She delves into how pockets in women's clothing were often inadequate or non-existent, contrasting with men's standardized pocketed garments. Carlson also examines pockets in historical contexts, like women's sports and military uniforms, and how pockets have influenced and reflected societal norms and gender roles.Key PointsHistorical Evolution: Pockets have evolved from medieval pocket slits to modern integral pockets in clothing, with men often having more practical pockets than women.Gender Disparity: Women's clothing historically lacked pockets, reflecting societal views on femininity and practicality, and influencing how women carried their belongings.Pockets and Society: Pockets were banned in some eras due to their association with concealed weapons, and they influenced how people moved and interacted with the world.Modern Pockets: Despite advancements, women today still face issues with inadequate pockets, often expressed through social media and fashion movements. Related Episodes:Episode 220: Dress Codes and Fashion Rule Through History with Richard Thompson FordEpisode 215: The Story Behind Twentieth Century Skirts with Dr. Kimblerly Chrisman CampbellLinks:Sign up for my newsletter.Need help preserving your photos? Check out Maureen's Preserving Family Photographs ebook Need help identifying family photos? Check out The Family Photo Detective ebook.About My Guest:Hannah Carlson teaches dress history and material culture at the Rhode Island School of Design. After training as a conservator of costume and textiles at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she received a PhD in material culture from Boston University. She is the author of Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close and has contributed articles to Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life; Dress: The Journal of the Costume Institute of America; Design Observer; and MacGuffin: The Life of Things.About Maureen Taylor:Maureen Taylor, The Photo DetectiveTM helps clients with photo related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation's foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. Support the show

Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer prize winning poet, professor and librettist who served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2017-2019. She's published five poetry collections, two librettos and one memoir-manifesto. She is also a Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard. Her most recent Libretto for the opera The Righteous is currently running at the Santa Fe Opera house through August 13th.Pulsing through Tracy's long list of accomplishments is her belief that language, and specifically poetry, is a pathway to the fullest versions of ourselves- selves that today's world often doesn't allow us to be.In this episode of DB|BD, hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt sit down with Tracy to talk through the writing process of two of her most recent works: the libretto for The Righteous and her 2024 memoir-manifesto To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. Tracy also candidly engages in conversation about how she finds faith when you otherwise feel empty, how she uses history to inform her analysis of the current moment and how her employer and alma mater, Harvard, can emerge from this period of institutional struggle.And stick around to the end of the episode to hear Tracy read one of her poems live on air!On this season of DB|BD, co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.Tracy K. Smith's website.Full text of “An Old Story”.More on Nada Hafez Fencing While PregnantAllyson Felix on Setting Up the First Olympic NurseryIlona Maher on TikTokFollow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

In this episode of DB|BD Ellen McGirt and Jessica Helfand talk with two extraordinary women from two seemingly different corners of the design world: Dionna Dorsey and Olivia Peebles. We say “seemingly” because, while they occupy different design disciplines, they approach their work in similar ways. They are both multidisciplinary designers with the hearts and souls of artists whose visuals bring to life what they and their collaborators know to be true about the world.First up, we hear from Dionna Dorsey, who is running three design businesses at the same time! She has her own design firm called Dionna Dorsey Design, where she designs imagery and apparel for powerhouse organizations like Planned Parenthood. She is also the founder of District of Clothing, which is probably best known for those ubiquitous “Trust Black Women” t-shirts. She is also the CEO of Creative Ladder, an organization she co-founded with Ryan Reynolds and David Griner in 2022, that makes creative careers accessible to people from historically marginalized communities.Dionna shares why her values take front and center in her work, how she is making design careers accessible to everyone, and why eating cereal and watching Arthur is one of her favorite creative rituals.Next up, Ellen and Jessica talk with Production Designer Olivia Peebles. Olivia has worked as a set decorator on some of the biggest films of the past few years, including Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer. Her first film as lead production designer, Exhibiting Forgiveness, premiered at Sundance this year. Exhibiting Forgiveness is written and directed by iconic American painter Titus Kaphar.Olivia discusses how she, as a white woman, brings to life worlds and stories that are not her own. She also shares how her training as a painter meshes with her career as a production designer and the opportunities and limitations A.I. poses to artists.On this season of DB|BD, co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.Titus Kaphar's Ted TalkClimate Central's Urban Heat Hot Spots StudyFollow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

Twenty years ago, Shamina Singh took what might seem like an unlikely leap from a decade-long career as a labor and political organizer into an executive position at one of the world's biggest financial institutions. To Singh, this leap was a logical next step in her fight for equity and inclusion. She is now the co-founder and president of Mastercard's Center for Inclusive Growth. The Center, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this spring, is the credit card giant's social impact hub that leverages Mastercard's extensive business assets in service of people and the planet. As of 2023, the Center has brought 48 million small businesses worldwide into the digital economy, over half of which are led by women. In this episode of DB|BD, hosts Ellen McGirt and Jessica Helfand sit down with Singh to discuss why the creation of an inclusive global economy is a redesign project that transcends sectors. Singh also talks about why supporting small businesses is essential to global financial inclusion and championing A.I. solutions that have some equity intention in mind. She also shares the advice she received from iconic Texas governor Ann Richards that changed her career trajectory forever. On this season of DB|BD, co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.To learn more about Mastercard's Center for Inclusive Growth, visit their website.Click here to learn more about and to enter  the Center's A.I. challenge, in partnership with data.org.For more information on What's Around Design's 2024 Conference in Portugal, click here.Watch Design Observer's video editor Daniel Paese's award winning short Spots.Follow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

The WNBA is both the moment and a movement.  Approximately 400,000 fans attended WNBA games during the first month of the 2024 season, the highest first month attendance in 26 years. An average of 1.32 million viewers are tuning into each game. A historic rookie class that includes Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark are bringing new eyeballs to a game that has some of the most dedicated fan bases in professional sports. The league also saw a 200% increase in revenue in 2023 from the year prior and they are currently negotiating a TV deal independently of the NBA for the very first time.  And don't forget the women of this league are staunch social activists who helped flip a U.S. Senate seat in 2021.In this episode of DB|BD, hosts Ellen McGirt and Jessica Helfand sit down with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. Engelbert stepped in as the league's very first commissioner in 2019 after spending 33 years at Deloitte. Engelbert shares how she transformed an almost non-existent marketing department to revive the 30 year old league, what the league is doing to support player wellness and why she considers the WNBA a “growth stock.”Later in the episode we will hear from Lindsay Gibbs a sports reporter and author of the feminist sports newsletter Power Plays. Gibbs explains how this moment in the W fits into three decades of league history, why the long running record of WNBA player activism can't be ignored and what mainstream sports media is getting wrong in their coverage of the league.On this season of DB|BD, co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.To check out the WNBA's upcoming schedule and how to watch,  visit their website. To read more of Lindsay Gibbs' reporting, including her piece on Candace Parker's rookie season, and listen to her podcast, visit her website. Watch Bruhat Soma win the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee.Read more about the integration of Negro League baseball stats into the MLB records.Follow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

Richard Buery is the CEO of Robin Hood, New York City's largest poverty fighting organization. It supports high-impact community organizations and partners with state and local governments to elevate New Yorkers out of poverty. In 2023 alone, Robin Hood invested $129 million in 200 carefully selected poverty fighting organizations. And New Yorkers need this support more than ever before. Robin Hood's 2024 Poverty Tracker, released in February, found that nearly 500,000 more New Yorkers lived in poverty in 2022 than in the year prior. But Richard and his team don't see that statistic as a foregone conclusion. It is an urgent call to action to make New York better for all New Yorkers In this episode of DB|BD, Buery discusses the most pressing issues New York City is currently facing, including the migrant crisis and growth in post-pandemic poverty. He also shares why coalition building is the foundation of Robin Hood's work and why the organization is investing in A.I. as a poverty fighting tool. Later in the episode we will hear from Cara Eckholm, a fellow at Cornell's Urban Tech Hub. She'll share her thoughts on why urban innovation must include technology and how A.I. fits into the urban renewal puzzle.On this season of DB|BD, co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.To learn more about Robin Hood, visit their website. Robinhood's 2024 Poverty TrackerLearn more about Robin Hood's A.I. ChallengeTo explore Daniella Zalcman's photography, visit her website and revisit this 2019 DB|BD episode.Women Photograph DatabaseFollow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

 In 2015, interior designer Jonsara Ruth and architect Alison Mears received a grant to study the use of building materials in affordable housing. This grant led to the creation of the Healthy Materials Lab, a design-led research lab based out of the Parsons School of Design that raises awareness about toxins in building materials and draws attention to healthier alternatives. Almost a decade later, they're still asking big and necessary questions: What if we could make building materials a little more slowly with an eye towards health and sustainability? And what if these materials were accessible by everyone? What would that mean to the health of the world? In this episode of DB|BD, Ruth and Mears discuss why the Lab continues to focus on  affordable housing, what harms typical materials in our built environment cause, what healthy alternatives exist,  and how these healthy materials can become accessible and affordable at scale.On this season of DB|BD,  co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.To learn more about the Healthy Materials Lab, visit their website. Material Health: Design Frontiers, a book by the Healthy Materials LabFollow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

Franklin Leonard is the founder and CEO of The Black List, a platform that nurtures emerging screenwriters and gives screenplays that aren't attached to a big producer, actor or studio a chance to be produced. Since The Black List's founding in 2005, 440 scripts from its annual survey have been produced as feature films, grossing $30 billion in box office worldwide. These films have earned 267 Academy Award nominations and 54 wins, including four Best Picture Oscars (Spotlight, Slumdog Millionaire, The King's Speech, Argo). In this episode of DB|BD, Leonard talks about the most pressing issues Hollywood faces, the business case for giving more diverse screenwriters a shot, and why he believes making the film industry a true meritocracy will naturally lead to more diverse filmmaking.On this season of DB|BD,  co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.To learn more about The Black List, visit their website. Franklin Leonard's Ted Talk: How I Accidentally Changed the Way Movies Get MadeThe Black Film ArchiveFollow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

Carrie Mae Weems is a multidisciplinary artist. Her body of work stretches over four decades and across many mediums, but with a singular focus—  depicting the reality of Black life.  Weems talks about her work, her role in public life, the intersecting crises in the world, and the power of convening people through art to confront big truths.On this season of DB|BD,  co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt are observing equity by highlighting the “redesigners” — people who are addressing urgent problems by challenging big assumptions about how the world can and should work — and who it should work for. This season of DB|BD is powered by Deloitte. Visit our site for more on this episode and to view a transcript.To learn more about Carrie Mae Weems' work, visit her website.  A write up of Carrie's Cyclorama in the New York Times.Varying Shades of Brown was a project featuring major installations and programs by Carrie Mae Weems across Brown University.If you enjoyed this conversation with Carrie, check out Jessica and Ellen's conversation with Avery Willis Hoffman, the artistic director of the Brown Arts Institute.Follow The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Episodes are produced by Design Observer's editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.

The Season 8 Premiere of Meet the Creatives with Michael Beirut, Partner at Pentagram. Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. He worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates before joining Pentagram as a partner in 1990. His clients at Pentagram have included The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Robin Hood Foundation, MIT Media Lab, Mastercard, Bobby Flay Bold Foods, Princeton University, the New York Jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Playwrights Horizons. As a volunteer to Hillary Clinton's communications team, he designed the H logo that was ubiquitous throughout her 2016 presidential campaign. Bierut served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He also serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York and the Library of America. Bierut was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1989, to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 2003, and was awarded the profession's highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in 2006. He was winner in the Design Mind category at the 2008 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. In 2016, he was the Henry Wolf Resident in Graphic Design at the American Academy in Rome. Bierut is a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art and a lecturer in the practice of design and management at the Yale School of Management. He is a cofounder of the website Design Observer and is the co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design published by Allworth Press. Michael's book 79 Short Essays on Design was published in 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press. A monograph on his work, How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry and (every once in a while) change the world was published in 2015 by Harper Collins. His collection of new essays, Now You See It, was published in fall 2017.

Get set for an enlightening conversation with the incredibly talented Ellen McGirt, editor-in-chief of Design Observer. From selling Avon products at a tender age of eleven to pioneering the race and inclusive leadership beat at Fortune, Ellen's journey is nothing short of inspiring. We draw from her well of wisdom as she shares her relentless efforts to amplify diverse voices in the design industry and her latest venture, the Equity Observer. We decode her extraordinary journey that beautifully blends perseverance, resilience, and a deep-rooted desire to drive change.Transitioning from the art world to journalism is no easy feat, but Ellen McGirt has navigated her way with aplomb. Ellen's cross-country expedition to understand the multifaceted diversity of America has served as a cornerstone in her writing, and we dive into this transformative experience. As a closing note, we engage in a thought-provoking discussion with Ellen on the impact of AI on journalism. From potential repercussions to the futuristic vision of technology-dominated workspaces, this conversation is an eye-opener. 

As Season 6 draws to a close, and they guys prepare to celebrate a podcasting milestone, Mark Lamster joins the show.Mark Lamster is the architecture critic for The Dallas Morning News and Loeb Fellow of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His 2018 biography, The Man in the Glass House, about the late architect Philip Johnson, whose memorial to President Kennedy is located in downtown Dallas, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.He is the author of several books and has been a contributing editor to Architectural Review, Design Observer, and ID and writes often for Architect, Architectural Record, and Metropolis, among other design titles. His work has appeared frequently in national publications and magazines, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Lamster is a native of New York City and holds degrees from Johns Hopkins (BA), and Tufts (MA).World Series talk ensues, as Shawn and Ryan don't know what we now know. (no spoilers).@marklamsterwww.marklamster.com/

How can the simple act of paying attention make you more creative and spark joy in your every day life?Rob Walker, the acclaimed author of "The Art of Noticing," is here to show you how to use your attention to sharpen your senses, attune to your inner creator, and uncover hidden beauty and meaning in everyday moments.During the interview, we discuss one of my favorite exercises for honing your observational skills, The Color Walk, and how you can begin to use it to engage your own Art of Noticing. Rob emphasizes how this simple (and fun!) challenge can help us slow down, pay attention, and savor the richness of the present moment.Rob also shares his passion for demystifying mindfulness practices, highlighting how accessing the benefits of presence does NOT require you to be a perfect yogi or a meditation guru (or even a breathworker!) Though I am a breathwork facilitator and teach some of the more "intensive" mindfulness practices, I am in complete agreement with him on this and a big advocate for incorporating mindfulness in the ways that feel great to you! One of the most practice applications of The Art of Noticing that I use in my coaching is supporting people in discerning what is meaningful to them – which is an underlying theme Rob mentions in the episode.Whether you're an artist, a business professional, or simply someone seeking a more meaningful existence, this conversation will help you untether the creative inside of you. Listen to this episode to hear:Why paying attention pays off.How simple creative exercises can train your brain in mindfulness.How noticing the world around you can support you in becoming more creative.Why the things that only you notice are where you should be paying the most attention.After listening to this episode:Take yourself on a Color Walk!Use the Art of Noticing to start noticing things that bring you joy.The big, important question from this episode:Is chili a soup?  (What do you think?) MEET ROB WALKERRob Walker is a columnist and journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, The Atlantic, NewYorker.com, Design Observer, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Lifeacker. He is the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, Letters from New Orleans, and The Art of Noticing. He lives in New Orleans.Buy Rob's book,  The Art of NoticingSign up for Rob's awesome newsletterSupport the showGet on the waitlist to join Jen's upcoming membership Brilliant Breathwork! Other ways you can support: Become an Untethered Unicorn Share an episode and tag Jen on Instagram @untetheredjen Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes Leave a review! Connect with Jen JenLiss.com @untetheredjen Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

How can the simple act of paying attention make you more creative and spark joy in your every day life?Rob Walker, the acclaimed author of "The Art of Noticing," is here to show you how to use your attention to sharpen your senses, attune to your inner creator, and uncover hidden beauty and meaning in everyday moments.During the interview, we discuss one of my favorite exercises for honing your observational skills, The Color Walk, and how you can begin to use it to engage your own Art of Noticing. Rob emphasizes how this simple (and fun!) challenge can help us slow down, pay attention, and savor the richness of the present moment.Rob also shares his passion for demystifying mindfulness practices, highlighting how accessing the benefits of presence does NOT require you to be a perfect yogi or a meditation guru (or even a breathworker!) Though I am a breathwork facilitator and teach some of the more "intensive" mindfulness practices, I am in complete agreement with him on this and a big advocate for incorporating mindfulness in the ways that feel great to you! One of the most practice applications of The Art of Noticing that I use in my coaching is supporting people in discerning what is meaningful to them – which is an underlying theme Rob mentions in the episode.Whether you're an artist, a business professional, or simply someone seeking a more meaningful existence, this conversation will help you untether the creative inside of you. Listen to this episode to hear:Why paying attention pays off.How simple creative exercises can train your brain in mindfulness.How noticing the world around you can support you in becoming more creative.Why the things that only you notice are where you should be paying the most attention.After listening to this episode:Take yourself on a Color Walk!Use the Art of Noticing to start noticing things that bring you joy.The big, important question from this episode:Is chili a soup?  (What do you think?) MEET ROB WALKERRob Walker is a columnist and journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, The Atlantic, NewYorker.com, Design Observer, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Lifeacker. He is the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, Letters from New Orleans, and The Art of Noticing. He lives in New Orleans.Buy Rob's book,  The Art of NoticingSupport the showJoin Jen's Awaken Your Brilliance Virtual Retreat happening on Friday, December 1Join Brilliant Breathwork before November 30 to become a Founding Member AND get a free ticket to the retreat ($197 value!) using code SPARKLE Other ways you can support: Share an episode and tag Jen on Instagram @untetheredjen Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes Leave a review! Connect with Jen JenLiss.com @untetheredjen Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

James Jones is an award-winning art director, designer and illustrator who freelances for publishers all over the world. James has worked at Orion Publishing Group, Vintage Books, and as Art Director at both Oneworld Publications and Head of Zeus. His work has been recognised by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Type Directors Club, Design Observer, The Academy of British Cover Design and the World Illustration Awards. James is also the illustrator of several picture books including The Perfect Fit, One More Try and The Odd Fish. To see James' work head to his website at jamesjonesbookdesign.com, or follow him on twitter and instagram. To follow James and his wife Naomi's picture book work be sure to follow @naomiandjamesjones on Instagram where there's regular updates on their work together. For something a bit different, we spoke in passing about James' latest project Wildsole sandals – a newly formed barefoot adventure sandal company. If you'd like to find out more, visit wildsolesandals.com where you can also get 10% off any purchases using the discount code COVERMEETING. Links and details are in the show notes. Follow Cover Meeting on Twitter, Instagram and now Threads @CoverMeetingPod for news about upcoming episodes. Cover Meeting was hosted by Steve Leard and produced by James Ede of beheard.org.uk.

While The Futures Archive is between seasons, we wanted to share with you a recent conversation between TFA host Lee Moreau, Design Observer founder Jessica Helfand, Cindy Chastain leader of customer experience and design at Mastercard, and Ellen McGirt from Fortune.For three days in March, Design Observer and Mastercard leaders gathered with some sixty people—designers and scholars, social entrepreneurs and independent consultants, creative leaders and senior practitioners from across a range of industries—to discuss the current state of everything from collaboration and craft to cultural transformation, technological innovation, and the social and systemic changes impacting the ways we live and work.  The Futures Archive will be back soon with season three! In the meantime check out our back catalogue here, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or however you listen, and make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

While The Design of Business | The Business of Design is between seasons, we wanted to share with you a recent conversation we think you will find valuable. Previous DB|BD co-hosts Jessica Helfand and Ellen McGirt sat down with Design Observer podcast host and founder of Other Tomorrows, Lee Moreau and Cindy Chastain who leads customer experience and design at Mastercard.For three days in March, Design Observer and Mastercard leaders gathered with some sixty people—designers and scholars, social entrepreneurs and independent consultants, creative leaders and senior practitioners from across a range of industries—to discuss the current state of everything from collaboration and craft to cultural transformation, technological innovation, and the social and systemic changes impacting the ways we live and work.The Design of Business | The Business of Design will be back soon with season eleven! To hear more from our archive, find us on Apple podcasts, or your favorite podcast app!

Jessica Helfand (b. 1960) is an artist, designer, and writer. She grew up in Paris and New York City, and received her BA and MFA from Yale University where she taught for more than two decades. A founding editor of Design Observer, she is the author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism. The first-ever recipient, in 2010, of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome, Jessica Helfand has been a Director's Guest at Civitella Ranieri, a fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, and the Artist in Residence at Caltech. She lives in Providence.

Across his four-decade-long career in graphic design, Michael Bierut has amassed an impressively robust tally of bold-faced clients. From The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the Robin Hood Foundation to Mastercard, the New York Jets, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bierut and his team at the multidisciplinary design firm Pentagram—which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a two-volume book from the publisher Unit Editions, and where he has been a partner since 1990—have crafted some of the most unforgettable, standout identities and graphics around. Perhaps most notable in recent years, Bierut devised the unequivocal “H” logo used throughout Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Consistently fueled by the sheer delight he finds in design, Bierut is also a co-founder of the website Design Observer, launched in 2003 and among the first online platforms dedicated entirely to design. With everything he creates, Bierut whittles each of his concepts down to its most essential core, ultimately arriving at something that feels both rigorously thought through and inevitable in its simplicity.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Bierut talks with Andrew about the integral practice of keeping notebooks throughout his life; the deep groundedness of his nearly lifelong relationship with his wife and high-school sweetheart, Dorothy Kresz; and why the “why” of design is far more important to him than the “how.”Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L'ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Michael Bierut01:13:57 Pentagram00:23:28 Design Observer01:23:40 Mastercard logo01:30:44 The Library Initiative01:39:26 How To01:39:59 Pentagram: Living by Design 

Bruce Willen is a multidisciplinary designer, artist, and the founder of Public Mechanics — a design and art studio working in public and cultural spaces. Prior to Public Mechanics, Bruce co-founded acclaimed design agency Post Typography where he led high-profile projects that have shaped the visual language of Baltimore and beyond. His work has appeared on the covers of Time Magazine, The New York Times, and ESPN and in dozens of design books and periodicals, including a Post Typography monograph. He is the co-author of the book Lettering & Type and has written for the Washington Post, Design Observer, and other publications. As a musician, Bruce has composed new scores for silent films, performed on multiple continents, and released dozens of recordings with the groups Peals and Double Dagger — the latter subject of the 2013 documentary film If We Shout Loud Enough.About Public MechanicsPublic Mechanics Experiential design / Placemaking / Public art / Creative strategy / Community branding A design studio led by Bruce Willen, collaborating on projects for public and cultural spaces.The Truth In This ArtThe Truth In This Art is a podcast interview series supporting vibrancy and development of Baltimore & beyond's arts and culture. Mentioned in this episode:Public MechanicsTo find more amazing stories from the artist and entrepreneurial scenes in & around Baltimore, check out my episode directory. Stay in TouchNewsletter sign-upSupport my podcastShareable link to episode ★ Support this podcast ★

AIGA has just wrapped our season of Design Adjacent. In the meantime, we will be posting some bonus materials to our feed while we figure out the future format of our shows. Our first feed swap is with The Futures Archive. The Futures Archive is a podcast from Design Observer that looks at the history of human-centered design with a critical eye to its future. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. On this episode, host Lee Moreau and co-host Sloan Leo discuss the automatic door, and how we can design thresholds of all kinds to be inviting to all people with additional insights from Laurent Stalder, Bess Williamson, Wendy Ju, and David Gissen. You can view a complete transcript and find more information about this episode here. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/aigadesign/message

While The Futures Archive is between seasons, we wanted to share with you another show from Design Observer's library, The Design of Business | The Business of Design.On this episode — Perrin Drumm is a writer, editor, and head of publishing at A24.

The Design of Business | The Business of Design is taking a mid season hiatus, but new episodes will be dropping in September. In the meantime, we wanted to share a different show from Design Observer, The Futures Archive. The season finale of its second season will drop this coming Thursday, August 18th.

Our guest this week is Alexandra Lange, famed architecture and design critic, and author of the brand new best-seller Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. In a wide-ranging interview we get Alexandra's perspectives on the history and cultural significant of shopping malls. We dig into the fascinating story of Victor Gruen and how his design ideas shaped the evolution of regional malls for decades. Then we explore how malls began to lose their relevance, particularly as department stores increasingly found themselves stuck in the boring middle. Lastly wonder what's next for malls and what it might take for them to have a remarkable future.But first we give our hot-takes on the latest retail news, including shaky earnings reports from several wobbly unicorns: Warby Parker, Allbirds and The Real Real, contrasting their performance with Yeti's wholesale first growth strategy. We also discuss Signet's fire sale priced acquisition of one of the OG's of DTC, Blue Nile, before wrapping up with Bed, Bath & Beyond's decision to bail on one of its new private brands ("Wild Sage") after its rookie season.GroceryShop discount offer:Valid for Retailers and Brands only, use code RBR1950  to access our special rate / ticket price is $US1950.  Offer code  expires 9/22/22.Past podcast episodes of note:Understanding Warby Parker and Customer-Based Valuation with Dan McCarthyThe Great Wholesale v. DTC Debate with Simeon Siegel About AlexandraAlexandra Lange is a design critic. Her essays, reviews and profiles have appeared in numerous design publications including Architect, Harvard Design Magazine, and Metropolis, as well as in The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. She is a columnist for Bloomberg CityLab, and has been a featured writer at Design Observer, an opinion columnist at Dezeen, and the architecture critic for Curbed.Her latest book, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, was published by Bloomsbury USA in June 2022.Her previous book, The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids was published by Bloomsbury USA in 2018. Research for the book was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Design of Childhood was named one of Planetizen's Top 10 Urban Planning Books of 2018 and has been an assigned text in art and architecture studios at ASU, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, UPenn, VCU and Yale.Alexandra is also the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), a primer on how to read and write architecture criticism, as well as the e-book The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism (Strelka, 2012), which considers the message of the physical spaces of Facebook, Google, and Apple.In 2021, Alexandra became editorial advisor to the podcast New Angle: Voice, produced by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. The podcast showcases the work of pioneering women of American architecture, and the first five-episode season featured Julia Morgan, Natalie de Blois, Helen Fong, Norma Sklarek and Florence Knoll. Several episodes were broadcast on 99 Percent Invisible.Alexandra co-wrote and co-produced “Masters of Modern Design: The Art of the Japanese American Experience,” a 2019 KCET Artbound documentary on Japanese American designers in the postwar era, which was based on one of her Curbed columns. “Masters of Modern Design” won a 2020 LA Area Emmy Award.Radio and podcast appearances include NPR Weekend Edition and Marketplace, as well as Studio 360, 99 Percent Invisible, Decoder Ring, The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC and Think on KERA. Alexandra has lectured widely at universities, museums and design conferences on topics ranging from the history of women architecture critics to the opulent modernism of Alexander Girard to the best use of social media by architects. She has also taught design criticism at New York University and the School of Visual Arts.Alexandra was a 2014 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She won a 2018 New York Press Club Award for Feature Reporting – Internet for her Curbed story, “No Loitering, No Skateboarding, No Baggy Pants,” on teens and public space. In 2019, she was awarded a Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary by AIGA. In 2020, Alexandra was the recipient of the Stephen A. Kliment Oculus Award from AIA New York, given to architectural journalists. She was also awarded the 2020 BRIO Prize by the eponymous Swedish toy company, which honors researchers and non-profits focused on creating a better world through play.Alexandra has long been interested in the creation of modern domestic life, a theme running through Design Research: The Store that Brought Modern Living to American Homes (Chronicle, 2010), which she co-authored with Jane Thompson, as well as her contributions to Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America (Yale, 2018), Alexander Girard: A Designer's Universe (Vitra, 2016), Formica Forever (Metropolis, 2013), and Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale, 2006). Her latest contributions on the topic include a chapter on design for children in Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890 – 1980 (Prestel, 2020) and the foreword to Designing Motherhood (MIT Press, 2021). Her 2005 dissertation, “Tower Typewriter and Trademark: Architects, Designers and the Corporate Utopia, 1956-1964,” discussed the design programs and design networks at postwar American corporations. About UsSteve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus  Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  ,      The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and now in its second season, Conversations with CommerceNext!  You can learn more about Michael   here  or on     LinkedIn. Be sure and check out Michael's latest venture for fun and influencer riches - Last Request Barbecue,  his YouTube BBQ cooking channel!

Rob Walker notices things. Everything in fact. How? He wrote the book on it. ‘The Art of Noticing' is a practical guide to getting more from…everything. We'll be talking about his NYT column which discusses working trends, life and a lot more besides. ABOUT ROB (@notrobwalker)Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. He has contributed to The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, NewYorker.Com, Design Observer, The Organist, and many others. His latest book is The Art of Noticing (Knopf). He is on the faculty of the Products of Design MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. Find out more about Rob here and get on the ‘Art of Noticing' newsletter here. SPONSOR: Season 4 of Mouthwash is proudly sponsored by Workplace from Meta. To make your place of work a great place to work, visit workplace.com/human Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Highlights from the conversationMy lack of conviction about branding may be [because] everything is being presented as a brand nowadaysBranding was this shorthand for authorityDesigners are taught form follows function. What really makes design contribute to culture are those 'other things' that come into playBrands provide visual and experiential cues that help us work through a complicated environmentMy [interest] in the subject matter has a direct relationship to how good the work for it isEverything is being presented as a brand nowadays More about Michael BierutMichael Bierut has worked as a graphic designer for over five decades. His first job after graduating from the University of Cincinnati was for Massimo Vignelli where he worked for 10 years. He then became a partner in the New York office of Pentagram, where he's worked for 32 years and counting. Along the way, he was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale (1989), to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame (2003), and was awarded the profession's highest honor, the AIGA Medal (2006). In 2008, he was named winner in the Design Mind category of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. He's been a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art and a lecturer at the Yale School of Management.Michael writes frequently about design, is the co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, and co-founder of Design Observer, a blog of design and cultural criticism which now features podcasts on design, popular culture, and business. His books include 79 Short Essays on Design (2007), How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry and (every once in a while) change the world (2015) and Now You See It and Other Essays on Design (2018). He is still married to the first girl he ever kissed and has three children and two grandchildren.Find Michael here: LinkedIn | Instagram Show NotesPeople:John BergMassimo VignelliCompanies and organisations:Columbia RecordsNew York Public LibraryBrooklyn Academy of MusicMiscellaneous:Letraset How you can helpThere are four ways you can help us out.Give us your thoughts. Rate the podcast and leave a comment.Share this as far and wide as you can - tell your friends, family and colleagues about us (caveat: if you own a family business, these may all be the same people)Tell us how we can create a better podcast - tell us what you liked, didn't like, or what you'd like to hear more (or less) ofTell us who you'd like to hear on the podcast. Suggest someone that you think we should interview.One More Question is a podcast by Nicework, a purpose-driven company helping people who want to make a dent in the world by building brands people give a shit about.One of the things we do best is ask our clients the right questions. This podcast came about because we want to share some of the best answers we have heard over the last 13 years. We talk to significant creators, experts and communicators we encounter and share useful insights, inspiration, and facts that make us stop and take note as we go about our work.Hosted by our founder Ross Drakes.Subscribe iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google PodcastsMusic by: @dcuttermusic / http://www.davidcuttermusic.com

LinYee Yuan is the founder and editor of MOLD, a print and digital magazine about designing the future of food. She previously was an editor for Core77, the entrepreneur in residence at Quartz, and has written about design, art, and food for Food52, Design Observer, Cool Hunting, and Elle Decor. In this conversation, Jarrett and LinYee talk about the intersection of design and food, the decision to make a print magazine, and what designers can learn from food systems. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/209-linyee-yuan. — If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting us on Patreon and get bonus content, transcripts, and our monthly newsletter! www.patreon.com/surfacepodcast

About Maurice Cherry Maurice is a designer, strategist and podcaster located in Atlanta, GA. He is principal and creative director at Lunch, an award-winning multidisciplinary studio he created in 2008 that helps creative brands craft messages and tell stories for their targeted audiences, including fostering relationships with underrepresented communities. Maurice is also a pioneering digital creator who is most well-known for Revision Path, an award-winning podcast which is the first podcast to be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Maurice's projects and overall design work and advocacy have been recognized by Apple, Adobe, Blavity, NPR, Lifehacker, Design Observer, Entrepreneur, PRINT Magazine, AIGA, the Columbia Journalism Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and many other print and digital outlets. Additionally, Maurice is an educator, and has built curricula and taught courses on web design, web development, email marketing, WordPress, and podcasting for thousands of students over the past ten years. Maurice is a Maryland Institute College of Art 2021 William O. Steinmetz designer in residence, the 2018 recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA. Maurice holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Morehouse College and a Masters degree in telecommunications management from Keller Graduate School of Management. About AIGA Design Adjacent AIGA Design Adjacent is a monthly podcast series with AIGA's Executive Director, Bennie F. Johnson, in conversation with industry leaders who are innovating and designing the future. These conversations expand beyond the design community, encompassing industries and areas that intersect with design and shift the ways in which we think about and interact with each other and the world around us. About Bennie F. Johnson Bennie F. Johnson is the Executive Director of AIGA, the professional association for design. Bennie thrives on the connections between marketing, technology, education, and innovation. With experience in strategic and consumer marketing, brand management, and innovation management, he is drawn to opportunities that allow him to lead and create new modes for business engagement. He has broad experience growing brands, businesses, and organizations with a special focus on venture launch and brand relaunch business environments. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/aigadesign/message

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Tom Vanderbilt, the author of “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning”. Tom Vanderbilt is a bestselling author who writes on design, technology, science, and culture, among other subjects, for many publications, including Wired, Outside, The London Review of Books, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Wilson Quarterly, Artforum, The Wilson Quarterly, Travel and Leisure, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Cabinet, Metropolis, and Popular Science. He is contributing editor to Artforum and the design magazine Print and I.D., contributing writer of the popular blog Design Observer, and columnist for Slate magazine. Visit our website: https://lithub.com/story-type/keen-on/ Email Andrew: a.keen@me.com Watch the show live on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajkeen Watch the show live on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankeen/ Watch the show live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lithub Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiteraryHub/videos Subscribe to Andrew's newsletter: https://andrew2ec.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode, I speak with Jessica Helfand. Jessica is the  founding editor of Design Observer and author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism including her new book aptly called Self-Reliance. She is an artist, designer, writer and educator and has taught in Paris, Porto, London, Malta, the Netherlands, and across the United States. Jessica is the first-ever recipient of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome and has been a Director's Guest at Civitella Ranieri, a fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, and an Artist in Residence at Caltech.We dive into ways of illustrating what it means to be self-reliant by leaning on yourself for inspiration, finding ways to challenge your creativity and imagination, and how designing for emotion and keeping a daily practice can weave more meaning into your journey as a self-reliant designer.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. He has contributed to The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, NewYorker.Com, Design Observer, The Organist, and many others. His latest book is The Art of Noticing (Knopf). He is on the faculty of the Products of Design MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. Find his Art of Noticing newsletter at robwalker.substack.com

Check out the first episode of Connect 4: Design Bridges, a new show about mentorship from Design Observer and Connect 4: Networking for Equality in Design. On this episode, creative director Jonathan Jackson talks with Avalon Garrick, a design student at Mercy College. If you like what you hear, subscribe to the Connect 4: Design Bridges feed wherever you get your podcasts or check them out at https://designobserver.com/podcast-connect4.php The Design of Business | The Business of Design will be back soon. Connect 4: Design Bridges was produced by Hawk and Paw Productions in collaboration with Mercy College, Pentagram, and Design Observer. The theme music was composed by Isabel Sanchez.

Scott Boylston is co-author and graduate coordinator of the Design for Sustainability program at Savannah College of Art and Design, a transdisciplinary design program focused on facilitation change through systems thinking, design strategy, and behavior change.He's the author of four books including one on sustainable package design, and his latest, “Designing with Society: A Capabilities Approach to Design, Systems Thinking and Social Innovation.”In this episode, he describes an innovation framework to achieve triple impact when it comes to designing sustainable packaging. He also tells me why he thinks the new generations will drive a paradigm shift in consumption.Scott is the founder and president emeritus of Emergent Structures (and its offshoot Re:Purpose Savannah), an award-winning non-profit organization that facilitates the deconstruction of unwanted housing stock and the innova­tive repurposing of the resulting materials into community-based resources through multi-stakeholder engagement. He is principal at BC+D, a sustainable innovation consultancy, and partner in two regenerative food equity start-ups focused on creating closed-loop, regionalized food system innovations.Scott's design writing has been featured in design journals such as Design Observer, Print Magazine, Communication Arts, Sustainable Brands, and Core 77. He speaks internationally on design and sustainability, including a Design for Sustainability course on LinkedIn Learning.Scott is on the Board of Directors of Catapult Design, a National Design Award-winning non-profit design agency, and a member of the Founders Circle of the Winterhouse Institute. He has served on the state board of directors for USGBC-Georgia and the Governing Council of the National Academy of Environmental Design. Resources:Scott Boylston LinkedInScott Boylston TwitterSCAD Design for SustainabilitySCAD Designers for Sustainability Facebook GroupLinkedIn Learning on Design and SustainabilityLinkedIn Learning on Design and Social InnovationDesigning with Society bookFollow us:BRANDERMAN websiteBRANDERMAN InstagramHernán Braberman LinkedInMy packaging design agency TRIDIMAGEPACKNEW BlogSubscribe:Follow BRANDERMAN on your favorite Podcast App so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsOvercastIvoox

BGBS 071: Maurice Cherry | Creative Strategist | The Restorative Power of Play Maurice Cherry is the creative strategist for CodeSandbox, an online code editor tailored for web applications. Prior to this, he served principal and creative director at Lunch, an award-winning multidisciplinary studio he created in 2008 that helps creative brands craft messages and tell stories for their targeted audiences, including fostering relationships with underrepresented communities. Past clients and collaborators included Facebook, Mailchimp, Vox Media, NIKE, Mediabistro, Site5, SitePoint, and The City of Atlanta. Maurice is a pioneering digital creator who is most well-known for Revision Path™, an award-winning podcast which is the first podcast to be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Other projects of Maurice's include the Black Weblog Awards, 28 Days of the Web, The Year of Tea, and the design anthology RECOGNIZE. Maurice's projects and overall design work and advocacy have been recognized by Apple, Adobe, NPR, Lifehacker, Design Observer, Entrepreneur, AIGA, the Columbia Journalism Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and many other print and digital outlets. Maurice is also an educator, and has built curricula and taught courses on web design, web development, email marketing, WordPress, and podcasting for thousands of students over the past ten years. Maurice is the 2018 recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, Creative Loafing Atlanta's 2018 Influentials in the fields of business and technology, was named as one of GDUSA's “People to Watch” in 2018, and was included in the 2018 edition of The Root 100 (#60), their annual list of the most influential African-Americans ages 25 to 45. In previous years, Maurice was awarded as one of Atlanta's “Power 30 Under 30″ in the field of Science and Technology by the Apex Society. He was also selected as one of HP's “50 Tech Tastemakers” in conjunction with Black Web 2.0, and was profiled by Atlanta Tribune as one of 2014's Young Professionals. He is also a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Maurice holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Morehouse College and a Master's degree in telecommunications management from Keller Graduate School of Management. In this episode, you'll learn... As a creative on the web, it's beneficial to stay fluid and agile enough to go where the market goes. It's detrimental to focus on only one specialty because the industry changes so quickly that it may become obsolete. When done correctly, brands can put forth an image that is discordant with people's initial perception of them, through storytelling in marketing. This can draw in an entirely new audience based on the brand's "personality." Podcasting is not as easy as it looks. Everything is deliberate, and a lot of care goes into each episode. Quotes [8:10] It almost is a detriment to be kind of a specialist, because your specialty may end up getting absorbed or may become obsolescent or something like that. So you kind of have to stay fluid and kind of see where different trends are going and see how you can fit in there. [12:45] Brands may try to put forth an image of who they are or who they want to be. And that may not even mesh with how people are thinking about them…but it makes people remember them in a way that perhaps people may not think of, and so they may gain a whole new level of audience just based off of that kind of storytelling and interaction that draws them in to who they are as a brand and what they sort of represent in terms of company values. [1:00:43] I think people will look at the 400 episodes of revision path and just see a monolithic set of people. But I mean, there's so much diversity within the people that I have interviewed, whether it's age diversity, whether it's what they do in the industry, years of experience, there's men, there's women, there's trans folk, there's folks in the US and the Caribbean, throughout Europe, throughout Africa, throughout Asia and Australia. They're everywhere. The thing that sort of ties them all together is they're practicing designers, or they're practicing techies, or they're doing something creative on the web that is worthy of kind of falling into line with everything that I'm doing with revision paths. [1:04:53] I just turned 40 this year. And there's still a lot of things about myself that I feel like I've managed to still keep a very playful spirit and still be able to kind of tap into the restorative power of play, even into the work that I do. I mean, even what I'm doing with creative strategy, it's kind of playing at work a little bit. I get to really dive into myself and come up with inspiring things that we can do and fantastic campaigns that we can execute. Resources Podcast: Revision Path LinkedIn: Maurice Cherry Twitter: @mauricecherry Have a Brand Problem? We can help. Book your no-obligation, 15-minute Wildstory Brand Clarity Call now.  Learn about our Brand Audit and Strategy process Identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh Determine if your business has a branding problem See examples of our work and get relevant case studies See if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level Book Your FREE Brand Clarity Call   Podcast Transcript Maurice Cherry 0:02 And I started doing these long form interviews, maybe about 1500 to 2000 words or so. But it just took so long to put together. I was doing it by myself. And it was someone that actually was a reader of revision path, who one day wrote me and said that she was a fan of revision path as you would really like to be on revision path, but wanted to record a podcast because she had a podcast that she was doing in Chicago. At the time. I'm like, yeah, we can record that's fine. thinking to myself, I have no recording equipment. So we ended up recording our interview, the very first episode of revision path on my mobile phone in a restaurant. Terrible quality. I still keep the episode out. I mean, it's somewhat listable, I guess, I don't know. But that was kind of where the genesis of the podcast started. Marc Gutman 0:54 podcasting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Back story Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like backstories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory, we are talking with Maurice cherry, the award winning podcaster, creative strategist, and designer. And before we get into this episode, I feel so lucky that I get to talk to people. And I get to talk to people on this show. And I get to talk to people on this show, and share it with you, the audience. I truly, truly, truly thank you and appreciate you. If you like this show, and want to show your like an appreciation for me or the show, please head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give us a five star review and rating. Ratings really do matter. Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on third charts. And we're human. We like likes and follows and ratings too. So thank you for your reviews. I do appreciate it. Today's guest is Maurice cherri, creative strategist, designer and host of the award winning podcast revision path. past clients and collaborators included Facebook, MailChimp, Vox media nyck Media Bistro site five sitepoint in the city of Atlanta. Maria is a pioneering digital creator, who is most well known for revision path and award winning podcast, which is the first podcast to be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Other projects of maurices include the black weblog awards 28 days of the web, the year of t in the design anthology recognize Murray says projects and overall design work and advocacy have been recognized by Apple, Adobe NPR, life hacker design observer entrepreneur, the AI GA, the Columbia Journalism Review, Forbes Fast Company in many other print and digital outlets. He says the 2018 recipient of the Steven Heller prize for cultural commentary from the AI GA, creative loafing Atlanta's 2018 influentials in the fields of business and technology was named one of GED USA people to watch in 2018. It was included in the 2018 edition of the route 100. He was number 60 and their annual list of the most influential African Americans ages 25 to 45. In previous years, Maurice was awarded one of Atlanta's power 30 under 30 in the field of science and technology by the apex society. He was also selected as one of HPS 50 tech tastemakers in conjunction with black web to Dotto. It was profiled by Atlanta Tribune is one of 2014 young professionals. He is also a member of the International Academy of digital arts and sciences. And this is his story. I am here with Maurice cherry who is a creative strategist, designer and podcaster. You may know him from his very popular podcast revision path, and that's because they just recorded their 400th episode which is a major, major milestone Marie's Welcome to the baby. Got back History podcast. Maurice Cherry 5:01 Thank you so much for having me, Mark, this is great. Marc Gutman 5:04 That's so great to have you here. Why don't we just hop right into it? I mean, you, you have this varied what I'd call a hybrid background of creative strategist designer podcaster. Like, how did that come to be like, like, how do you make that all work in today's environment? Maurice Cherry 5:24 You know, I'm kind of still trying to figure that out myself. I'm lucky to be able to kind of remain a bit fluid and hybrid in some sorts as it relates to my skill set, which allows me to kind of go where the market goes, but I mean, my background, I have a undergraduate degree in mathematics. my graduate degree is in telecommunications, management's. I've worked in media, I've worked in web, I've worked with nonprofits, I've worked with tech startups, I've had my own business for nine years. So I've done a little bit of everything and a lot of different places. And I've had the opportunity to work with everyone from, you know, startup founders and entrepreneurs to like, captains of industry at fortune 100 companies. So I've kind of been a little all over the place. And like I said, being able to remain fluid has helped me as things have changed in the market. I mean, I started off working for companies here, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, I started off working for companies here and then quit the last place I was working out, which was at&t and working as a senior web designer, started my own studio did that for nine years, sort of wound that down and then jump back into working for places design working for tech startups. And just kind of going from there. Yeah, and Marc Gutman 6:40 you use that word, fluid and fluidity. And you know, the old way of doing things used to be very specialized used to be very siloed not not bouncing between disciplines. Why do you think it's important to to be fluid in in your skill set in your career? What advantage is that given you, Maurice Cherry 7:01 um, for me, the advantage that it's given is being able to have the perspective to see where commonalities lie, as the market, or as you really the industry sort of changes. I mean, when I first came about on the web, you were either a web designer, a web developer, or a webmaster, like those are kind of the three particular titles that you had. And now you've got all different types of product designers and UX designers and things like that, despite the fact that there are new titles and the way that things have changed. There's still some sort of common threads between a lot of these different types of titles. And even as companies have come along and introduced new types of technology into the world, which therefore mean that there are new types of people that work on these things. Like, there's conversation designers, there's mixed reality designers like you know, a couple of weeks ago, I was first introduced to the metaverse, which sounds like something you'd hear in like a 90s sci fi afternoon kids show her something. So there's so many Tell that to say that the market and the industry changes so much, it almost is a detriment to be kind of a specialist, because your specialty may end up getting, you know, absorbed or may become obsolescent or something like that. So you kind of have to stay fluid and kind of see where different trends are going and see how you can fit in there. Marc Gutman 8:29 Yeah, and I want to be a part of the metaverse like that sounds awesome. I don't even know what that is. But I want to like tell people that I am part of the metaverse or that I work in the metaverse, that'd be great. And it's really interesting because the person that introduced us, Douglas Davis, who is appeared on this show, he was talking about something really, really similar in his conversation, his interview, which was a lot of what we're doing today hasn't been invented yet. Right? And we're kind of in this next wave of, of that. And so he gave the example back when he was starting out, like no one had really invented, like how to build web pages and websites. And so it was real time, right? And then we started to grow up in no one had invented how to be an expert on Twitter when Twitter first came out, we all just kind of did it, you know. And now you know, what I'm hearing you say is that business is again, moving technology is moving so fast. And it's you know, they're intertwined, right Business and Technology and it's moving so quickly, that you have to be fluid that you have to be nimble, and you have to be kind of you can't be an expert at anything, if anything because it's moving so fast, but what you probably can be is a really good thinker and a really good strategist in order to bring all these disciplines together. Did I didn't get that right. Maurice Cherry 9:52 Yeah, that's pretty accurate. I mean, the the beauty of my particular title of being a creative strategist Is that no matter what business that I'm put in, I'm still able to kind of function because what I do, but one of the top one of the things that I'm sort of tasked to do is kind of be a company's in house creative experts. So I'm working across teams to discover opportunities for storytelling. I'm working maybe with a marketing team on campaigns, I'm working with a sales team on ways that they can reach new audiences. So I can kind of be very flexible, you know, no matter what sort of business that I'm putting in, which is pretty good. Marc Gutman 10:31 Yeah. And that sounds like awesome, like, I hear you talk. And I'm like, wow, I want to be a creative strategist, you know, how, you know? How does that show up in business? are more and more businesses recognizing the need for it? And what really is the the, the impetus for bringing on a creative strategist? Like why? Why do they say like, hey, Maria, we need you to come in and help us out. Maurice Cherry 10:55 In my experience has mostly been when it's boiled down to needing help with storytelling, or with some sort of brand awareness or brand campaign strategy tends to be tied. In my experience, that strategy has tended to be tied to branding fairly easily. So say, at the past few places that I've worked at, I've done a lot of sort of brand centric work with what they're doing in order to take the story of what their business is, and what it is that they're trying to sort of put forth to their customers. And then really kind of, I don't know, tell that in a way that their audience would find compelling or that potential audiences may find compelling. And that could be video, that could be a podcast, that could be a really well done marketing campaign. It could be a drip campaign of newsletters, it could be a series of white papers, it can really sort of manifest in a number of different ways, depending on who we're trying to reach and what the story is that we're trying to tell. Marc Gutman 11:51 Yeah. And so as I think about it, I mean, I get excited about this idea of creative strategist and working at a brand level across departments, because that's typically where we run into problems, right, is that this type of initiative is siloed, into the marketing department into the creative department. And so having that influence across departments is really, you know, what I see is the magic of this type of work. But when you were, in your experience, when you look at this, what do brands that get this right? Like, what do they do? What are you seeing them do to get this this type of work? Right? Maurice Cherry 12:31 One thing I'm seeing is that they're doing a lot of listening, they're listening to their audience there, whether that's through social media, or through any sort of, you know, other channel or back channel, they're listening to what their audience is telling them. Oftentimes, brands may try to put forth an image of who they are or who they want to be. And then that may not even mesh with how, you know, people are thinking about them. Sometimes that works to a brand's advantage. Sometimes it doesn't. I think we've mostly seen this on social media, where you see brands like, Oh, God, what's a good brand that that's kind of subversive stay comes. The stake of his brand, for example, is weirdly stoic and philosophic. On Twitter, which you would not associate with a brand of like frozen meat products, like, why are they so deep right now, I don't understand this. But it makes people remember them in a way that perhaps, you know, people may not think of steak gums. And so they may gain a whole new level of audience just based off of that kind of storytelling and interaction that draws them in to like, who they are as a brand, and what they sort of represent in terms of company values. And such, I certainly thinks that as social media has grown as that and and as more people have tapped into social media, they're kind of starting to hold brands accountable a lot for the causes that they find the people that they hire, a number of companies get taken the task for these sorts of things that have nothing to do with their actual product at all. But if you're hiring someone who might be unknown abuser, for example, that's going to look bad on the brand. Or if you know your your company is funding a politician that might be taken away, or might be funding voting rights or something well taken away voting rights or something like that. These are the kinds of things that people are now keyed into. And they're looking at brands to kind of be these while they're there. They're wanting to make sure that the brands that they support with their dollars are also kind of, you know, in accordance with their values as well. Marc Gutman 14:37 Absolutely. And it's, it's crazy and amazing at the same time to me, I mean, I love the amount of power that consumers have on brands at the same time. Everybody has a voice right? And so how can brands even navigate all this? pressure and criticism to be something Different, right? You can't You can't please everybody all of the time, like, where do you see the challenges for brands in this new landscape? Maurice Cherry 15:09 I mean, I think the biggest challenge that happens is just making sure that you are being consistent with your voice. Often times I've seen brands try to like adopt a certain kind of you know, cheeky haha Twitter voice or whatever, that may be completely discordant with how they treat employees or, or you know how they treat customers or something like that. This is particularly the case I've seen with a lot of tech startups that try to like get in on certain little you know, punny things that are happening. But then something hits the verge where they mistreated a number of employees or something like that. And it's like, oh, you can't be you can't be cheeky and sarcastic on Twitter, and then you're treating your employees like crap, you know, behind the scenes. So I think love just trying to be consistent throughout everything that you're doing is one thing that that companies should think about as they kind of navigate the space, I would, I would also say, you know, it helps to just be agile and nimble, because sometimes these you know, if a certain catastrophe befalls a brand, sometimes it happens completely out of the blue for something they don't even know about. So, for example, say, a company has a particular actor or actress as a spokesperson. And this actor or actress did something on Instagram. Well, the first thing people are going to do, yes, they're going to take that particular actor or actress to task, but then they're also going to take the company to task and think, Oh, well, is this the kind of person that you want speaking for your product? And now it's like, oh, now we have to kind of go into crisis mode, and figure out how do we either distance ourselves from this? Or say, Yes, we are a part of what it is that this actor actress is about, here's what we're doing, as a company or as a brand to support them. So it's, it's tricky, but you have to kind of be, you know, pretty nimble to these sorts of things, because they can happen really out of the blue. Marc Gutman 17:08 Yeah, and there's a lot going on. And so, you know, it really lays out the, you know, the the framework for why a company might need a creative strategist. Yeah, there. It's not just this omni directional unit, or is it? I mean, I guess it'd be one directional conversation. It's not a one way conversation, right, this massive dialogue, and there's comments and insights and, and opinions, ping pong all over from every direction, and to really have someone at a higher level thinking like, how are we going to manage this conversation as something that is no longer a luxury for brands, but really a necessity? Maurice Cherry 17:44 Yeah, there's a lot of thought that has to go into so many things, the imagery that you use the hashtags that you use, the colors that you're using, all of that ends up sort of falling under the purview, usually of creative strategist. And I will say, you know, a lot of advertising firms employ creative strategist as well. So they know fully kind of what it means to have someone that's really thinking about the brand from like this 360 view, but also from this bird's eye view of being able to zoom out and really see all parts of where a particular campaign or something may touch, and realize those sort of points where something may go wrong, or maybe misconstrued and try to figure out a way to kind of circumvent that or fix that issue, you know, so it doesn't occur. Marc Gutman 18:29 Yeah. And so switching gears a little bit, you mentioned that you're in Atlanta. Now. Is that where you grew up? Maurice Cherry 18:35 No, I grew up originally in Selma, Alabama. But I've been here in Atlanta now for a little over 20 years. Now. I came here in 1999. So I've been here for what that's 21 years or something like that. I've been here longer than I've been in Alabama. Marc Gutman 18:56 Well, looking back to Alabama, assuming that you were there when you know, Murray was a young Murray's, like eight years old and you're hanging out. And were you there in Selma when you were eight? Maurice Cherry 19:06 Yeah, yeah, I grew up there. went to elementary, middle and high school there. Cool. Cool. So Marc Gutman 19:11 eight year old Morrison, did he think he was going to be a creative strategist? Maurice Cherry 19:18 I'm pretty sure eight year old Mario had no idea what a creative strategist was. I think eight year old Mario is probably either wanted to be a firefighter. I have an uncle, that's a fire chief. Or probably a writer. Probably one of those two is when I probably wanted to be at that age. Marc Gutman 19:37 Then I was gonna ask, but a writer might fill in this answer. So did you have a tendency towards either creativity or strategy or both? or What were you into at that age and as you started to matriculate through through the years and sama Maurice Cherry 19:54 Oh my god, eight years old. I really was into writing. I mean, that sounds like such an old hobby for a kid but I had been writing probably since around, let's see eight years old. What's that like, second grade, second, third grade, something like that. I have been writing since first grade like stories and also drawing along with them. I have an older brother, he's four years older. And he's really like, the super visual creative in the family, he paints he draws he sculpts. I mean, he's, he's a fantastic artist. And I remember growing up wanting to be like him, but I could not draw, I could do like little stick figures or whatever. I would say my work was very abstract at that age when I look back on it now. But I would draw that I would write these stories that would correspond with the drawings. And I remember, my teachers would give us this sheet of paper where it's like, blank on top, and then there's ruled lines on the bottom. And so you draw whatever top the picture or what have you. And then you write your story. Down below, I remember doing a lot of those, I have a whole, like binder full of those in my storage unit from when I was a kid, like just doing a ton of writing and drawing and exploring, I guess, I mean, trying to explore my creativity in that rather limited space. I mean, Soma is a is a very small town in South Central Alabama, most people know about it from the civil rights movement. I can tell you growing up there as a kid, I mean, it's the country, it's not super fun. Like, there's not, there's no, you know, big amusement parks, or movie theaters and things like that, that you would, you know, kind of hang out and do stuff with as a kid. So it was very much, you having to kind of find your own entertainment, maybe you're hanging out with other kids, maybe you're at home. A lot of people would be in church, because almost a big church town is like 100 plus churches there. So that's usually kind of what you were doing. You were trying to find something to do. Maybe watch TV, let's see eight years old that I haven't intended. I probably had an intent though back then also. So I was most likely playing Super Mario Brothers or pro wrestling. Probably pro wrestling, I was probably star man in pro wrestling back then. Marc Gutman 22:17 Good, good hobby, good hobby. And you mentioned that you know, you were creative with words, your brother visually creative. Were your parents creative? Did they instill this in your Where'd that come from? Maurice Cherry 22:32 Um, no, they're not creative at all. Let me let me take them. I mean, I think you know, as I think parents have to be creative to some capacity, just dealing with children, but they weren't in particularly creative fields. My dad at the time, was an engineer at GE, working on plastics. And my mom was working at the local community college as a lab assistant in the biology department. So they were very much like in the sciences kind of feel. So not a lot of, you know, creativity there, I would imagine, but I did have the opportunity at times to maybe go like with my dad to work or maybe go up my mom to work and like, see where they work and like, see the machines and see the lab equipment and all that sort of stuff, at least get interested in it like, like, know that this is like a possibility for me, perhaps but no one say anything creative. Like we don't think like someone doesn't have any, at least not to my recollection, any art museums or, or anything like that, where you would go and like be overwhelmed with visual creative inspiration. At that age, maybe probably when I was a little older, I certainly remember getting a lot of visual and creative inspiration from magazines. So I think probably when I was maybe about 10, or 11 or so I remember us getting maybe I had to be old enough that maybe I was a teenager at this point. But we would get subscriptions to like zillions magazine, which was Consumer Reports. They had this like kids vertical that they called zillions. And I remember we would get vive magazine and source the source magazine and stuff like that. So I'm gonna get visual inspiration from magazines a lot. Growing up, Marc Gutman 24:18 what an awesome like, sub brand for kids zillions like Maurice Cherry 24:23 yeah, I don't know, if they do that anymore. It was it was like they were teaching kids how to be like, responsible consumers. So they would like for example, talk about fruit juice and say how most fruit juice is not made of actual juice. If you check the labels, it's actually more you know, it's actually water and sugar and all this sort of stuff. So they were kind of like teaching you how to, you know, be a good consumer as a kid. It was like, it was like a kid's magazine about money, which was very interesting. Marc Gutman 24:52 That's so cool. I love it. And as you got older and as you got into high school was this creative like writing And in this creative outlet, was that still coming out of you? Or what were your interests at that time? Maurice Cherry 25:06 It was, I mean, I was all over the place for people that knew me in high school, I was all over the place I was writing. Let's see, I think I was in eighth grade or so. And I started taking college English courses in writing. So I was like, always writing something writing poems and like, getting published and stuff. But also right around seventh or eighth grade, I discovered music. And I discovered why once I discovered music, we had a band in middle school. And I wanted to join the band because the band could get out of sixth and seventh period. And I'm like, Well, I want to get out of 67 period. How do I make that happen? And they had like this open session where you, you know, go to the band room and you choose the instrument like, I remember going in and the band director, Mr. Ruffin would say, like, you know, you choose the instrument and turn the instrument will choose you like you just pick the one that you think you'll do best on it. I really wanted to play trumpet. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna play trumpet, but the mouthpiece was just too small. I just couldn't get the right on the shore. And then my band director switched me over to trombone. And that was like a match made in heaven. That was perfect. So I played music, from seventh grade all the way through high school, all the way through college, all throughout my 20s. I played trombone, in marching bands, and jazz bands and like, house bands, at clubs and all sorts of stuff. So in high school, I was doing music, I was writing. Also just doing class, I was kept in the math club. I was sort of all over the place in high school, doing a lot of different things. I was really though getting more into music, because I'm with the marching band. My band director also allowed me to kind of try my hand at composing. So I would like listen to songs like mostly songs from video games, I would listen to songs like say the fanfare from Final Fantasy when you beat an enemy. And I would say, Okay, how can I turn this into like four parts for trombone. So that means me sitting down on my keyboard, and like, dissecting out each part, and then go into my section, and then we practice it. And then we take it to the game, and we play it at the game and stuff like that. So I got a chance to really sort of cut my teeth with doing a bit of like arranging and composing there. And then my band director also introduced me to so much good music, mostly, like Earth, Wind and Fire. And he was a big Earth Wind and Fire fan. So he introduced me to like their whole catalogue at the time. And we were also playing some popular songs from off the radio. See, this was 95. So we were playing. Like, this is how we do it. For montell Jordan, water runs dry boys to man that might have been 96. But like, we were playing like radio hits, but then also playing like these, you know, well known songs from like the 70s and 80s from Earth, Wind and Fire and stuff. So I was I was all over the place in high school. I really was like, I was always doing something different mostly with the band, though. I think most people knew me for that. But also, I was just like, in class and making A's and you know, it was I, I really enjoyed high school. I enjoy high school a lot. Marc Gutman 28:23 Yeah, and are you still skilled and playing the trombone. Maurice Cherry 28:29 I haven't played the trombone and over 10 years, so I don't know, I would imagine, it's probably just like picking up, you know, like riding a bike, I would suppose because the trombone, unlike other brass instruments has no keys. And so it's just one long, interconnected tube. And it's there's only seven positions to the trombone are not marked either. So you have to know them just by memory. And you have to get the note right really by ear. So like this a lot of like active listening as you're playing. And because you're sort of like varying the length of air in this long tube as you're playing. You don't have a lot of room for error. But you also have a lot of room for improvisation, because you can easily slide in between notes without having to exactly know, the right fingering to get there, you can just get there based on how it sounds. And so like even doing something as simple as the chromatic scale, which you know, takes into account all the flats and sharps, you're just going up and down the slide. And so if you hit an F, then you know, if I need to get down to a flat, I just keep sliding down until I get there. So you sort of in your mind, you know, kind of the connective tissue between the notes that you have to reach. So I say like trombone is easy to pick up but hard to master. Because you have to be thinking about all of that while you're playing. So sad. Marc Gutman 29:49 I thought you would be the first guest that we would have on the Baby Got Back story podcast that would break out the trombone and it doesn't sound like you have one within arm's reach right now. I'll give you I'll give you a pass on that. But Maurice Cherry 30:02 I saw I saw my trombone when I was 30. Because I was like, I'm gonna hang it up because I really wanted to focus on, like, at the time, like, focus on my career and on tech and stuff, and I couldn't be playing, you know, like pickup songs and stuff like that, like I was a session musician for a while about 20s. Like, it's it's fun until it's not, you know, like, it's just not stable. And I don't know, I wonder what I wonder who I would have been if I kept up with it, though. Yeah, I still have kind of in the back of my mind. Like when all this tech stuff is said and done. To start my own Afro Cuban jazz, big bands. That may still happen. Like when I turned 50 maybe I'll I'll make that happen. I don't know. But it's in the cards. Marc Gutman 30:49 The future vision and you know, who knows, maybe we can get a crowdfunding campaign going for Murray's here to get them a new trombone? It's Yeah, seems like you should, you should be playing the trumpet, trombone, and you shouldn't be, shouldn't be selling your trombone. But as you were growing up in so many getting into high school, what do you think you were going to do? I mean, I see that you went to Morehouse, and I'm sure your parents were very proud. Where are they? What were their hopes and dreams for you? And what did you think you were going to do with your life as you were starting to get a little older, and, you know, into high school and looking into college? Maurice Cherry 31:24 So I, this is so interesting, and I don't know if this will make your viewers angry or not, or jealous, I don't know. But like, I was not thinking about, the only thing I was really thinking about at that age was getting out of Selma. That was like, my number one. Main imperative is like, get out of this town. This is a small town, I mean, to kind of give you some context with this. I mean, I came about in the generation right after, like civil rights movement, Bloody Sunday, all that sort of stuff. And so the city itself already has this, like, deep, like, just ghost of history about it everywhere that you go. I mean, Selma itself is a very haunted town, like there's a number of haunted houses and things of that nature, but like to live that close to history, and then also be so detached from the rest of the world is a very eerie feeling. I think about that, in hindsight, you know, growing up, like I really did not know, much of the world outside of Selma, until I left. And I think about well, who would I have been if I stayed there? Like I probably would have, you know, I don't know that a pastor or something. I don't know, who knows. But it's such a small, insular type of community. And it's very easy to like stay in that and never change and never go anywhere and never experienced anything new. For me, the main thing I wanted to do was just get out of Selma. So the reason I say this is because I didn't really have a plan as to what I wanted to do. My plan was just how do I get out of here? What what way do I make that happen? I don't care what the way is, it just has to happen. And so in seventh grade, I remember being part of the, I think it was called the Duke talent identification program, or tip for short. And what they will do is they will take like, high achieving middle schoolers, and you would spend a weekend at Duke University. And then they would also give you an opportunity to take one of the like, standardized tests early being the LSAT, or the a CT. So seventh grade, I took the a CT, and I scored a 30 on it. Now, I think the AC T goes up to a 36. So 30 out of 36 was very good that I think that's like analog to maybe like a high 1400 or low 1500. On the SSAT like it's pretty good. So when I took that in seventh grade, that pretty much wrote my ticket to any school that I wanted to go to. I didn't think at all about like, Oh, I'm really want to go to these colleges, so I have to apply or I really wanted colleges were coming to me. I didn't have to do it. And I don't mean to sound like a bragging sort of way. But I mean, you know, my mom wanted she tell you to like colleges, were contacting us left and right, sending us all sorts of materials. And I was really for me to just think, Oh, well, where do I want to go. And I didn't want to stay in Alabama. Because again, my thing was like I wanted to get out of Selma, but really, I just wanted to get out of like the state and experience something new. But my mom was very much like you know, wherever you go, I'm not getting on a plane. So you have to go somewhere close. Like you have to be still in the south because I'm not getting on a plane. I'm not taking a bus anywhere. It has to be fairly close. And Morehouse ended up being the choice because they came to me on my senior awards day and presented me with two full scholarships, which was more than any other The school had presented me with at the time and I mean, like every major school in Alabama and presented it was like a full ride or something. But I didn't want to go to like, no, no shade to the University of Alabama. I don't want to go to the University of Alabama. I didn't want to go to Auburn. I didn't want to go to Alabama State, no snow shade. The Alabama State. I didn't want to go there. But Morehouse came and Morehouse has this big reputation. And people are like, Oh, well, Martin Luther King went to Morehouse. And, you know, I should go to Morehouse. And I'm like, you know what, I should go to Morehouse. I want to go to Morehouse. And part of the reason of going was one, I knew that was a quick ticket out of out of Selma, but that also, and I think anyone who grew up in the south, probably in the 80s, and 90s, that wasn't near a big city, came to Atlanta at some point, like, there was a field trip to Six Flags, it was all your your class, they were on sa t we're going to Six Flags like everything was going to Six Flags. So there were always all these trips to Atlanta. And Atlanta was always sort of the destination, I think for a lot of us because it was the nearest really big city. Plus around that time. I mean, Atlanta in the 90s was a magical place. I mean, yes, you have the Olympics, but you also had freakness. So you've got like this combination of all this electricity happening in the city. And it was just the place like Atlanta was just the place to be. And so I'm thinking, well, if I can go to Atlanta, and it's a free ride, and I don't have to pay it, my parents will have to pay. Yeah, we'll do it. Let's do Atlanta. And so Morehouse ended up being the choice for me. I didn't even apply to Morehouse, they came to me. And, and the rest is history. Marc Gutman 36:44 A common question I get all the time is Mark, can you help me with our brand? Yes, we help companies solve branding problems. And the first step would be to schedule a no obligation brand clarity call, we'll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wildstorm comm and send us an email, we'll get you booked right away. So whether you're just getting started with a new business, or whether you've done some work and need a refresh, or whether you're a brand that's high performing and wants to stay there, we can help. After you book, your brand clarity call, you'll learn about our brand audit strategy process will identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh, will determine if your business has a branding problem. And you'll see examples of our work and get relevant case studies. We'll also see if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level. So what are you waiting for, build the brand you've always dreamed of. Again, we'll link to that in the show notes. or head over to wildstorm comm and send us an email. Now back to the show. All I could think about when you were talking about music in Atlanta in the 90s was salt and pepper. So that's what it triggered for me. But so you went to Morehouse and sounds like you know, first and foremost, you're like a lot of young people. You're like, I just want to go someplace, I just want to change my life. I just want to start my life, you know, and kind of figure things out. When you got to Morehouse, what did you think you were going to do with with yourself? Maurice Cherry 38:30 Oh, my goodness, you know, I'm gonna be completely honest with you, Mark, I had no plans in college. I'm telling you that back then I didn't plan anything. I was such a easy going go with the flow kind of person to kind of give you a sense of that. I graduated from high school in late May of 1999. And then two weeks later, I packed up moved everything and went somewhere else because the the program that I was a part of for my scholarship, had a summer program is called project space. So I was at Morehouse in June of 99. Like, it was such a magical feeling. I'm like I'm in this big city, by myself. No one can tell me what to do. I could do whatever I want. But of course, it's still like within the confines of college and you have to kind of be, you know, aware of your surroundings. Morehouse is in that it's not in the best neighborhood. I mean, certainly back then it was it was not that great. It's probably better now. But back then it was a pretty rough neighborhood that the school was in so they really wanted to make sure that we stayed on campus where it was safe and not venture out into the neighborhood. But we could easily like catch a bus to the train station and like, go to all parts of the city where the train would go and so you know, the city kind of ended up being like our oyster but when I got there, I mean, I had no plans. I was in the summer program. And we were taking oh my goodness, we were taking like calculus two courses and we were taking care computer programming courses and Spelman, the program that we had on the head of cohort at Spelman College, which is the all female college that's across the street from Morehouse, which is all male college. And so we will take classes together with the girls from Spelman, we would hang out together. But mostly everything we did was kind of in and around. And on campus, like there wasn't a lot of off campus kind of stuff. Except for the people who were from Atlanta who could, you know, like, they could like get in their car, like take us somewhere, like take it to the grocery store or something like that. But they were they really highly discouraged us from going out and about in the city. And then once the school year started proper, I mean, I was just trying everything that I could like I was meeting new people that were into different things that was sort of my first real deep introduction to like anime, and trans music. Was that Morehouse, I was, like I mentioned, I was also still playing trombone. Just like discovering different things and different people, honestly, I mean, I'm just coming from Alabama, just being like this country bumpkin. Like now I'm all of a sudden, meeting all these people from the Caribbean, and from other parts of the country, and like, you know, them being really proud of where they're from, and their culture and everything like that. And so, just getting introduced to so many different things at once made it really, really hard to like, focus, like, I'll be honest, I almost almost flunked out. Freshman year, like first semester was, I was lost in the sauce. As I was going out to the clubs, I was hanging out late. I was getting back to the dorm room 234 in the morning for and then like sleeping for a few hours and then have an eight o'clock, Cal three class like I was reckless. I was so reckless freshman year, and it caught up to me to the point where I ended up getting evicted from my dorm. I was homeless for a slight bit like about a week or two, and then ended up getting placed into another dorm. And then that ended up being like a weird kind of situation, because the rd was kind of a creepy, like kind of a creepy guy, and got moved to another dorm. And then that was weird because my roommate in that dorm clearly had been suffering physical abuse from his roommate, and was very like, I don't know, very jumpy, like, anytime I will come around. And he's like, oh, like, don't you know, don't look at me that way, don't you know or something like that. So freshman year was a lot, at least the first half of freshman year was a lot. During that time. One thing I would say that was like, the stabilizing force outside of my classes was that I had joined a website and started working for them. So there was a website called college club calm. I don't know if people remember college club. And it was sort of like a precursor to Facebook. And basically, every college had their own campus on college club. And you could upload pictures. Every person had like a college club email, and they had this number that you could call that would read your email to you over the phone. There was live chat. I mean, comms club was lit. I mean, they ended up going bankrupt. for good reason. I think at one point, they were giving away like $10,000 a week to people, they were really just like that early, calm money was coming in. But I worked for college club as a campus representative first at Morehouse, and then for the entire Atlanta University Center. So I had three or four other people under me. And we had devised the system. Why am I telling this might be illegal actually know what comes out of the system? Well, that's fine. So we had devised a system where we basically would get paid from college club for every account that was created after every photo that we uploaded. So one of my good friends, good good friends, Chris wrote this macro that would allow us to basically just like dump a bunch of photos into a folder, and they would automatically get uploaded to college club. And so we would get, you know, money for that. And then he also came up with this other macro that will automatically create accounts. So we had these cameras, we have these huge Sony mavica cameras that actually were so big, you had to put a floppy disk in it for storage, like three and a quarter floppy disk. And we would go and take pictures and swap out the disk. And then at the end of the night, we would dump everything into this Network Folder. We run the macro, the macro would upload the stuff from the Network Folder, we would literally be making money while we slept. I mean I was making at that point. roughly about $4,000 a month. Marc Gutman 44:46 Pretty good for a college kid. Maurice Cherry 44:48 This is this is my This was my, like second half of freshman year and I mean, we did not know how to act with that with that much money we were just doing just spending money on just the dumbest stupid shit just like, go to Linux and like, you know, buy a whole bunch of people's stuff in the food court or just buying like extravagant clothes. And so I mean, in hindsight, just dumb, dumb stuff. But at the time, you know, you're 19 was 19 then trying to think now I was 18 and I was 18 then, and just like have money hand over fist. It was it was ridiculous. Um, eventually college club ended up going bankrupt. And so that job didn't last too long. But for the time that we had it, it was great. And so yeah, I didn't really have ambition. My freshman year, I was too busy having fun. Like, we would go out to the strip and take pictures and like, and then I mean, I guess I kind of have to set the scene here. I mean, so the Atlanta University Center is six colleges. It's Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark, Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, they entered the interdenominational theological center and Morehouse School of Medicine. So like six schools, all together and like this one huge meta campus. And now the schools kind of have their own like, sort of divisions like Spellman, for example, has a huge wall around and it's basically like fort Spellman. But the other colleges, you can easily walk between and through and everything like that. And so the connective kind of tissue between the main colleges is this long brick thoroughfare called the strip. And it's basically just for walking. So like, you know, cars were coming up and down, it was just, you could walk, there were benches, there were booths, all sort of stuff. So you could hang out all day on the strip, and like, people watch, then walk down to seagulls and like, get some wings and then go sit on the bench and listen to some music and then go to the bookstore, go to the library, like everything was just connected in this big, almost like a marketplace. And then on Fridays, at the very end of the strip at Spelman, they would open their gates and you could go into Spelman to their lower courtyard that they called lower manly, and they had market Friday, and they would be DJs. there and dance. I mean, it was so much fun, that you didn't think about class, like class was almost like, why would I go to class, but I could just hang out on the strip all day, you know. So that was very easy. That first year as a freshman and you have money to it was very easy to just get completely sidetracked. And I completely fell deep into all of that. Well, Marc Gutman 47:37 and as we know, Time marches on. And it sounds like you know, had a very similar experience. I went crazy my freshman year and pulled it together primarily because my parents told me I had no choice. It was gonna be big trouble if I didn't. But Time marches on, and you get through Morehouse and like, how did you start a career in creativity and strategy Maurice Cherry 48:00 that really kind of came about almost as a almost as circumstance. So and I'll try to fast forward through, like past like post college on but so I graduated from Morehouse, I didn't have anything lined up like I'm to be completely honest. When I graduated, I had no plans whatsoever, partially because our scholarship program, they pulled the funding from it in 2001, because of 911. So they pulled funding from that and funding went to which was then created the Homeland Security Department. So we didn't have funding to kind of continue out what we thought the end result of our internships and stuff was going to be so with my scholarship program, basically, I would intern for two years for NASA. And then after that, we would get placed at a NASA facility. So in my mind, I'm like, as long as I keep Baba 3.0 I got a job at NASA. So that's all I have to do. jr came along and completely dashed all of that. And so by the time I graduated, I had nothing lined up. I was working at the Woodruff Arts Center, selling tickets to the symphony, and to the art museum into the theater, just like you know, selling old patriots tickets and stuff like that. And they took away the calculator at my station because I had a math degree, which was kind of degrading but whatever. Did that for a little while, left that job, worked at autotrader. Like, as a dealer concierge is basically just like a glorified customer service rep. Did that for a while, quit that job. And then on a whim, I found in the back of our local weekly newspaper, creative loafing. I found a listing to become an electronic media specialist for the state of Georgia, applied for it on a whim, got the job. I worked for there for about a year and a half left went to at&t as a junior designer. What worked my way up to being a senior designer left there in 2008. After Obama got elected, I started my own studio. I did my studio for nine years. And I would say that was kind of the genesis of this whole creative strategy career. Because even though I had my studio where I was doing web design and graphic design and email marketing and stuff like that, I really was able to branch out and do a lot of other creative stuff like I was able to do. Like DNI consulting for tech companies, like I did that for Vox media. For a while I did that with Netflix for a short period of time, did a lot of writing still, like I was still writing during that time. So I wrote four sight points. And for psych five, and I wrote for media B's show for a while I taught classes at the Bri and at Savannah College of Art and Design, I did a lot of different stuff in the studio. And so because I was doing all these different things, like I was gaining all this knowledge and other parts of the, you know, the business and the really in other parts of the industry, and was able to really kind of bring it all together. So by the time I Wow, my studio down in 2017, I knew that there was more that I wanted to do that I couldn't accomplish and sort of the current state that the studio was in. Also the market was changing, like, bespoke web design was sort of going out as more people started to use kind of drag and drop options like a Squarespace or Wix or something like that. So it made more sense for me to kind of phase out of that market and get more into the actual like, strategy portion of it. Because now there are these tools that allow me that allow people to do the things they would pay a designer to do. But the tools don't really give you the strategy behind why you would use certain things or something like that. And so I tried to kind of brand myself more in this strategy route. As I wind my studio down, um, at the end of 2017, I started at a tech startup, or there's a tech company at that time called Fog Creek software as starting, they're just kind of doing content marketing and getting a sense of the business and what they were doing. As I stayed there, they switched over to become the startup called glitch. And then as they were growing, and they look, we're looking to me, as someone that sort of had this thought leadership that was built up to this point, I was able to then kind of come in on a strategy aspect, and then help out with, you know, bizdev opportunities or partnerships or, you know, things of that nature. And so that really kind of set the stage for me to take all of the cumulative knowledge that I gained throughout my studio time and even the time prior to that working for companies and use that to kind of be this this sort of creative thought leadership at a company that needed it at the time. Marc Gutman 52:44 And when did revision path come about? Like how did you get into podcasting? Because it 400 episodes, I'm guessing you were a bit of an early adopter? Maurice Cherry 52:55 Yeah. So I started podcasting, initially in 2005. So I have old shows that will never see the light of day. I have old old shows from back then. And Atlanta, to its credit actually had a very vibrant podcasting. Community back then we had this thing called the Georgia Podcast Network that was put on by this couple rusty and Amber. And I mean, that was big for maybe about five or six years, there were meetups and things of that nature. And it was mostly Georgia, but also included like South Carolina, Tennessee, kind of like that tri state area. So I have been doing podcasting for a while but never really looked at it as a viable thing, then it was sort of this first wave of podcasting. Because, really, it wasn't something that caught on then like people were more so starting to latch on to video. During that time, it wasn't about, oh, we're gonna listen to this podcast. And even then what podcast were normally was just stuff that was on the radio that they didn't put out as an mp3. So like, The New York Times, NPR, etc, would have these little shows. And that's how you sort of picked up on like maybe a radio show that you've missed, you can subscribe to the podcast, which is really just that day is episode that they downloaded and made into an mp3 or whatever. I first started doing revision path in 2013. And at that time, it wasn't a podcast, it was gonna be just an online magazine. I wanted to do something which showcased what black designers and developers were doing in the field like peers of mine, etc. to kind of counteract what I wasn't seeing in design media. And I started doing these long form interviews, maybe about 1500 to 2000 words or so. But it just took so long to put together I was doing it by myself. And it was someone that actually was a reader of revision path is woman named Raquel Rodriguez, who one day wrote me and said that she was a fan of revision paths. She would really like to be on revision path, but wanted to record a podcast. Because she had a podcast that she was doing in Chicago, and at the time, I'm like, yeah, we can record that's fine thinking to myself, I have no recording equipment. So we ended up recording our interview, the very first episode of revision path on my mobile phone, in a restaurant. Terrible quality. I still keep the episode out. I mean, it's somewhat listable, I guess, I don't know. But, uh, that was kind of where the genesis of the podcast started. And then as I continue to keep doing revision path throughout 2013, I would give guests the option to either record, or we could do like the long form interview. So I sort of alternated. And then when 2014 came around, and it was a full year of revision path, I just decided it's just easier to do the podcast, so switched over to becoming a podcast in March of 2014, officially, but when we launched, we still had about, I say, about 15 episodes prior that we had done. So we launched with a pretty big catalog already. So technically, we launched that like, Episode 16. But we have been recording since episode one. Back in June of 2013. Marc Gutman 56:11 Yeah, and as you mentioned, you just recorded your 400th episode, you've been doing this for a while. I'm terrible at math, but it sounds like about eight years or something like that, which is a long time. Like I'm, I think you're gonna be Episode 71 for the baby backstory podcast, and I can tell you, I mean, it's been difficult it you know, sometimes I hear, I hear 71. And I'm like, Ah, that's not that much. But there is a lot of energy, a lot of effort and a lot of time that's gone into it, like 400 episodes, do you ever think like, enough's enough? Are you just gonna keep keep recording? Maurice Cherry 56:48 I mean, at this point, I'm going to keep recording. As we're talking, I've already got episodes recorded through 405. And then I've got five more in the queue. So we're up to like, 409, I think, technically, I, you know, I'll be honest, there's really no shortage of people for me to have on the show, I've got a running potential guests list in the 1000s of people that I could have on the show. And then, of course, folks recommend others, I've started to bring back old guests on the show, just to kind of see what their, their updates have been since they first came on the show, you know, like, so it's been fun to kind of chart that journey, in some ways. And then honestly, as the industry has changed, what the show has really allowed me to do is keep up. Because I mean, at this point, I'm not really a practicing designer anymore. Like I'm not, you know, in Photoshop, or sketch or figma, or whatever. But being able to talk to so many practitioners still keeps me up to date with what's going on, and what are the new technologies? And what are folks talking about? What are folks passionate about? It keeps me up to date with, with that sort of stuff. And also just being able to introduce design still to a whole new generation of people that may not have known that there were people in design who looked like them. People who think like, Oh, I'm just alone in this by myself, and then they can look and see no, you're not, there's like 400 other people here that you're in this thing with? So I don't I personally don't see it stopping anytime soon. I mean, we're still, you know, you know, knock on wood, getting funding and able to keep things going. So I'll keep it going for as long as the industry will have me. Marc Gutman 58:34 Yeah, let's talk about that really quickly. You know, you mentioned that revision path is really this outlet to showcase those those folks who typically aren't showcased and to show people that, hey, there's other people like them out there. Like when you think about revision path, like what's the one thing you want people to know, like, really now about what you're doing with this podcast? Hmm, Maurice Cherry 59:00 that's a good question. I mean, I think, off the top of my head, I would want people to know that this is not easy. And I think people will look at what I'm doing and think that it's pretty easy. And it's not, I mean, I think that might be the case for most podcasters. But for me, in particular, like I've had to continually work and try new things to get to a system that I know works with me and my team, like and it's bulletproof. It's a time to get there, that wasn't just something that I was able to kind of pull out from, you know, from scratch, and it was something I had to build myself. I had to find the right tools to pull in to make sure all of this work. So it's really about that. I would say for any podcast, it's really about building systems that allow you to be able to do this work. I don't necessarily want to say at scale because I think honestly, the the production level that we're doing is not really changed that much over the years. But it's refined to the point where I can take long breaks between interviews and not get burned out from this. And I'd say yeah, like, it's not easy. People will look at me and will look at me and look at the show and think that it's easy like oh, is, it just seems so easy for you to get people to come on the show. I'm like, no, it's still, it. Honestly, it's still a challenge sometimes to get people to come on the show. Just making sure that everything sort of flows regularly. Like, even though we have our system down, that could still be one thing and that system that could cause it all to, you know, tumble like a house of cards or something. So definitely, that it's it's not easy that it's a lot of thought that goes into it. I think people will look at the 400 episodes of revision path and just see like a monolithic set of people. But I mean, there's so much diversity within the people that I have interviewed, whether it's age diversity, whether it's what they do in the industry, years of experience, as men, there's women, there's trans folk, there's folks in the US and the Caribbean, throughout Europe, throughout Africa, throughout Asia and Australia. Like they're, they're everywhere, the thing that sort of ties them all together, is you know, they're practicing designers, or they're practicing techies, or they're doing something creative on the web that is worthy of kind of falling into line with everything that I'm doing with revision paths. So yeah, I would say that's probably the the main thing I think now as the show has started to, I don't want to say become mainstream, I'd say the older that the show gets. I've seen the more people maybe not understand what it is. And I tell people right off the bat, that revision path is a design podcast granted, I do have developers on the show, I have had software engineers on the show. Just lately, like I was talking

Jessica Helfand. Jessica is internationally acclaimed in her area of work as a designer, writer, and educator. She received both her BA in graphic design and architectural theory in 1982 and her MFA in graphic design in 1989 from Yale University. With William Drenttel, she co-founded The Winterhouse Institute and with Michael Bierut, Design Observer. She has written for many national publications, including The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Aperture and The New Republic. She is the author of numerous books on design and cultural criticism, including Paul Rand: American Modernist (1998), Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media and Visual Culture (2001) and Reinventing the Wheel (2002). Her critically acclaimed Scrapbooks: An American History (Yale University Press, 2008) was named that year's best visual book by the New York Times. Her most recent publications include Design: The Invention of Desire (2016), Culture is not Always Popular: Fifteen Years of Design Observer and Face; A Visual Odyssey (2019).

Maria is the founder and editor of Brain Pickings; an inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, psychology, and more. She has written for Wired UK, The Atlantic, Nieman Journalism Lab, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and Design Observer, among others, and is an MIT Fellow.—Recorded live at the global event in California, USA in 2014.Watch Maria's full talk here: www.thedolectures.com/talks/maria-popova-build-pockets-of-stillness-into-your-life

Jessica Helfand – designer, educator, author, and speaker and Creative Director of The Design Observer Group – argues that design should be holistic; a collaborative project embracing ethics and aesthetics, and cognizant of human needs that will never change. She discusses the 'thrill of going viral', and that to be effective and lasting, innovation needs to be responsible.

On this episode of Meet the Creatives, I Skype with Jessica Helfand. We talk about her career, her and Michael Bierut joining Yale University School of Management as faculty and more!

Jessica Helfand resists taking center stage. If anything, she wants to give her place in spotlight to the audience. An author and Yale professor and co-founder of *Design Observer*, Helfand thinks that the time has come to stop gawking at the stars pontificating the podium and instead start conversations—meaningful ones—with each other. To this end, she recently prototyped something she calls The Next Stage, in our Boston studio. And the moment that experiment ended, our Lee Moreau jogged her over to a conference room to record a podcast reflecting on the experience. Listen closely, and you'll hear her say some bright, provocative, and deeply humane things, such as: • “Performance is fine if it's theatre. Performance is fine if it's sports. But why does performance have to happen in social engagement, in personal interaction?” • “Even failure has become a buzzword. Failure ™.” • “I love podcasting because just as I loved like this conversation this morning because, the minute you put other people in the mix, the vocabulary changes, and you get much more of a rich soup. There's more flavors.” • “The whole point is to spawn better, easier, more mindful, more consistent, more connected ideas in the world. That's civilization in progress.” • “Viral is not a word that's good if you're an epidemiologist or an immunologist.” • “Designers are really good at making stuff look cool. At making stuff look shiny. And I don't think that the world is a shiny place. And so, we would be doing ourselves and each other a disservice if we didn't ask some ruthlessly objective questions about what that means.” • “Why are we autodidacts in terms of technology and not of philosophy or ideas?” • “I write to figure out what I can't make in the studio. And I make things to figure out what I can't write. And I teach to keep myself inspired by the ideas of others—and it's just not enough to do it in the classroom.” Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

If you've paid attention to the world of design and advertising over the past 20 years, you have certainly seen Michael's work. You have undoubtedly read articles from him. You may have even watched a documentary that he was interviewed on. On this special episode of Obsessed With Design, Josh sits down with Michael to learn more about his life, his career, and his inspiration. You can follow him on Twitter here. In this episode, we discuss: How he got his start in the world of design. The founding of Pentagram, and what the world of Pentagram is like today. His favorite projects and stories from the last 30 years. Show notes are available at ObsessedShow.com.

Jude writes for Slate, Fast Company, Design Observer, and now she's doing some awesome work with the AIGA. Right now, she's working on a project that covers the best podcasts in the design world. This is a unique cast, because Jude actually interviews Josh! You can follow her on Twitter here. Show notes are available at ObsessedShow.com.

The Busy Creator Podcast, episode 30 with Designer, Educator & Writer Michael Bierut Michael Bierut (@MichaelBierut) is one of today's most renowned and respected graphic designers. Since 1990, he has been a Partner at Pentagram, where he works with clients like MIT Media Lab, The Yale School of Architecture, and the New York Jets. In addition to his work at Pentagram, he is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art and co-founded the online publication Design Observer, where he writes about design and creative culture. Together we discuss Michael's feelings in becoming a business owner, how he divides work duties with his team, the clunky process of learning business skills as a young designer, and the exhaustive routines which power his morning. We also learn the 19-syllable Starbucks order he buys each working day, and how long it takes him to run 3 miles. Read more about Michael via his lengthy biography on Pentagram's website. Show Notes & Links Pentagram's New York Office, and its library, where we recorded this episode Michael Bierut in the Pentagram Library. Image via The Architectural League of NY Michael [still] thinks of himself as a “working graphic designer” Michael's previous — and only — employers were Massimo & Lella Vignelli As a young designer, he “never spent a minute lying in bed wondering if a client was going to pay an overdue invoice.” Michael writes his own proposals; there is no “behemoth” behind the scenes “I thought I was ready to be a business owner, but I really didn't know much about it.” ← Click to tweet Pentagram Partners “really like to do the work.” Michael currently works with 6 designers, 2 project managers, and 2 interns. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” ← Click to tweet Teaching business skills to designers isn't “baked in” to Pentagram's ethos, but it happens through close collaboration Without cultural context, working as a designer can be a “long road to carpal tunnel syndrome.” Knopf Doubleday, publisher Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis New York Times “The world we live in was created by people no smarter than us.” —Prescott mis-quoting Steve Jobs ← Click to tweet “Designers are actors playing a part. We have to learn about X and show the world X.” ← Click to tweet Michael is a Lazy Designer “The time I invest [in proposals] is always intense and personal.” ← Click to tweet Michael's famous sketchbooks notebooks. Currently working with #104. Make It Bigger by Paula Scher Tools Marble composition notebooks Venti Triple Non-Fat Cappuccino from Starbucks Techniques Oversee a single designer, bring on a second only if you need it Keep your pitches/responses to briefs short but purposeful. Don't participate in theatrics. Ponder a problem during your morning run. Solve it during that time. Habits Wake up early (5:15a–5:35a) Jog 3 miles every morning Use vacations as a time to focus on a particular project Build writing into your routine. Chunk it down and don't give yourself a chance to escape.

The Busy Creator Podcast, episode 28 with Writer, Professor, and Filmmaker Adam Harrison Levy The Busy Creator Podcast, episode 28 with Writer, Professor, and Filmmaker Adam Harrison Levy Adam Harrison Levy (@AdamHLevy) is a Professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City as well as Wesleyan University in Connecticut. In addition, he writes for Design Observer and works as a freelance interviewer/filmmaker for the BBC. Our conversation meanders and gets slightly meta. We acknowledge the odd circumstances of a professional interviewer being interviewed by an amateur, and of two Americans discussing their love for the BBC. Read some of Mr. Levy's articles and learn more about his film work via Adam's profile on Design Observer. Show Notes & Links Video Filmmaking for the iPhone Co-teaching w/a NYT Culture Journalist on Research and Writing The MA in Design Criticism, aka “D-Crit”, is now more focused on research and writing South Sudan is developing a logo and flag Prescott did a Master's in Graphic Communication at the University for the Creative Arts (UK) Gobsmacked, a British term meaning “struck speechless” Mad Men George Lois Steve Heller Gay Talese Prescott is an internet nerd, watches overseas programming via grey market websites and techniques Country House Rescue (brilliant show on Britain's Channel4, not the BBC, but still) Zaha Hadid, British-Iraqi Architect Horizon and Panorama, recurring BBC series Imagine, another great series featuring such topics as “The Book” and The Chelsea Hotel Port-forwarding and VPNs to get access to the BBC iPlayer Selling the Sixties: How Madison Ave. Dreamed a Decade BBC has to be “fleet and maverick” regarding graphics; Don't overdue it Simple title graphics Cleatus, the dancing robot on FOX [American] Football Coverage Stiff Upper Lip The Scottish Referendum on Independence (spoiler alert: they voted “No”) Simon Schama, a History of Britain David Attenborough The Story of Science Isambard Kingdom Brunnel, 19th Century British Civil Engineer The Bombing of Hiroshima, re-enactments created with student actors Czechoslovakia (no longer a country) Adam is the “intellectual content research” guy, not the technical video and sound guy Chuck Close The Beauty of Maps, BBC Four George Elsey, worked in the Truman White House. Was standing next to President Truman on SS Atlantic when news of Hiroshima reached the Pres. The Map Room in the basement of the British Library The Domesday Book, 1086 Maps as political cartoons Great British Railway Journeys with Michael Portillo 700 Photographs of post-bomb Hiroshima found on a street corner in Mass., written about on Design Observer Don Levy (no relation) found the photos in a suitcase International Center for Photography The design of castle towers learned during The Crusades Nijū Hibakusha, (literally “double bomb-affected people”), the term for those in Japan who survived both atomic bombings The Writers' Room, NYC Email is bad for your brain, e.g. Phantom Blackberry “Getting in The Zone is a weird sort of meditation” ← Click to tweet Funions Mind Like Water, as mentioned in Getting Things Done Prescott and his friends were lifeguards as teenagers. They would use the time to ponder levels of Commandos Tools 18th Century French table, which Adam uses as a desk these 20 years Laptop Pens and pencils, paper (pretty old-school, actually) Totems (monkey holding a Mont-Blanc pen) Brass date-changer Techniques Be “Tight and Loose” as an interviewer (almost a Zen practice) Always have a point-of-view, which Adam calls “The Force of Will” Hit the books, hit the phone, and do a pre-interview before turning up with a camera crew Create a ritual with the passing of time, such as a physical calendar Batch your email, especially when it's from London and there's a time-shift Habits Wake up early; not quite as early as Steve Heller Meditate for 20-25 minutes; not quite the 5-hour Zen practice Tea, and coffee only when I need a shot Leverage “Creative Distraction” to free your brain