SF Art Book Fair Edition This week we take a trip to the SF Art Book Fair, a three-and-a-half day book party in a tent—and in the Minnesota St Project. The fair brought out like, hundreds of publishers? Basically it was overwhelming. In this episode we talk SF Art Book Fair, fairs in general, the riso-coil industrial complex, micro-capitalism— and we accost a small number of fair participants with an even smaller microphone in a very busy room. Thanks to everyone we talked with at the fair: Kami...
Jul 30, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 21
NEW EPISODE ALERT This week we take a work vacation at SF Design Week—a five day series of events and gatherings put on by AIGA/SF. We went to a mixed bag of panels, “mixers,” Adobe shit, rooftop captive butterfly zen-office zoos, studio cheese tables, and a confusing party. AND We have our own first merch! We got so excited about Acquaintance Cards (If you don’t know what an acquaintance card IS—check out our last episode) and we decided to make some of our own. Visit our website at designfreak...
Jul 01, 2022•29 min•Season 2Ep. 20
In this week's episode, we jack into the surreal muppet matrix of AI generated image grids—and we take a lo-fi time-trip to the 19th century creation of the world’s first dating app, the acquaintance card. Thanks for listening!
Jun 17, 2022•43 min•Season 2Ep. 17
What's up! This week, we're excited to be joined by our first ever guest designer/host, Helen Shewolfe Tseng! Helen is an artist, designer, and witch. Her art practice centers inquiry, obsession, and non-linear experience, often in conversation with the ancestral, diasporic, ecological, interspecies, speculative, and cosmic. You can find her work at helentseng.com . We talk with Helen about ancient cursed stones, plagues of spiders, nine tailed fox spirits, youtube brain, cough drops' new look, ...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Welcome to another episode of 40 Trillion DPI! This week, we warm the bench for the social design competition, 36 Days of Type, we dust off our tube tops for the arrival of peak bimbo, we get real at the same time every day for exactly two minutes with the new social app, BReal—and we summon the Sagmeister Tamogotchi from behind a rack of weird infographic Target clothes. Thanks for listening!
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Help the people of Ukraine! Donate to our friend, Anna Sergeeva—a Ukraine-born artist living in NYC, who is sending $$$ for mutual aid projects organized by people in Ukraine. Anna is great and anything you send her way will go to a good place. Find Anna at: https://www.stopallwar.org/ Anything/everything helps! In other news: Web3 goons are attempting to monetize the very concept of color; Beeple has mounted a physical painted art show for some reason; we talk Ukraine and instant mythologies; a...
Mar 12, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 15
What does 2022 hold for design? On today's episode, we take a look at trend forecasts from around the internet. Is the 90s revival going strong, or going away? Will the much-hyped Metaverse honestly have any impact on anything? How do designers and so-called amateur content creators affect one another's aesthetics? And, what exactly is "Frasurbane?" Plus! We try and make some predictions of our own. Visit designfreaks.cafe for more episodes, and/or follow us on Instagram at @40000000000000dpi or...
Feb 12, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 14
CCA is going on strike! And we are so fired up about it!!! We caught up with CCA adjunct professor, Ana Llorente about what's going on with the strike, why it's important, and what you as a community member can do to support it! The strike starts Tuesday morning at the SF campus, with rallies and events throughout the week. Hope to see you there! MORE INFO Follow and support CCA Staff and Adjunct Instagram Accounts @cca_adjunctunion @cca_staff_union Send emails demanding fair contracts for CCA s...
Feb 07, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Hello! This week, we pay tribute to the majesty of nature with Jony Ive, we stare blankly into block.xyz’s liquid chrome abyss, we go through Spotify’s uncanny copy valley, and we track down Microsoft’s insta-fascist AI twitter bot, Tay. It's a such a journey! Thank you for joining us! ––– ALSO: The California College of the Arts union is in the midst of a labor dispute with management and potentially may go on strike very soon. If CCA employees do strike, it will be the first time this has happ...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Hello friends! This week, we wander Costco with Chinese influencers flexing their institutional-size muffin hauls; we explore the strange, crumbling metaverse of Neopets; and we gaze deeply into the MLM/DAO, Mirror.xyz. It's a wild ride as usual! Thanks for listening! Find us on instagram at: @40000000000000dpi Or on Twitter @40TrillionDPI Articles mentioned in this episode: CHINESE INFLUENCERS https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypzny/pose-costco-influencer-photos-china NEOPETS https://www.nytimes...
Nov 14, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Episode 10: (Pink/Green): This episode is actually two episodes! One is pink, one is green. Listen to one, listen to both. Episode 10 (Pink): We follow small people into big interfaces trying to find the fabled location of Corporate Memphis. Thanks for listening! Visit designfreaks.cafe for more info! Some of the articles we mention or reference in this episode https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-look-so-similar-these-day...
Oct 08, 2021•32 min
Episode 10: (Pink/Green): This episode is actually two episodes! One is pink, one is green. Listen to one, listen to both. Episode 10 (Green): We are made to experience bad dad art with Kanye, Drake and... Damien Hirst (for some reason!) and we follow Gabby Petito’s sad story into the strange world of the TikTok Tabloids. Thanks for listening! Visit designfreaks.cafe for more info! Some of the articles we mention or reference in this episode https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis ht...
Oct 08, 2021•40 min
SOUND BATH EDITION! This week's episode is so special. We are so excited to share it with y'all. A few weeks ago, we went out to Good Hot Sauna pop up and talked (and sweated) with architects Amy Louie and Cooper Rogers, the founders of Waters Bathing Collective . We had an amazing time roasting and talking with them about maintenance and accessibility and leisure and work. You can read an excerpt of our conversation here . After our interview, we sent them a couple of trippy questions, which tu...
Sep 17, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Hello! On today's episode, we visit US Government websites in search of pharma-bro Martin Shkrelli's one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang IRL NFT, we think about how design can align or misalign incentives—and we somehow travel through the holes in the giant letters nailed on the side of a suburban house/barn into some kind of utopian/dystopian beige metaverse. It's kind of a Magic (design) School Bus situation. Also, it is a JOURNEY. Thanks for tuning in! ARTICLES WE TALK ABOUT / REFERENCE https://www.reuters...
Aug 30, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 8
We hope this podcast finds you well! On today’s episode we talk about the sharing economy’s attempt to commodify accessibility, Tim Berners Lee selling out the world (wide web), the Lesbian Avengers re-avenging themselves against corporate greed, and we apply for barista positions at Bumble’s brick and mortar cafe. Wish. Us. Luck. Shout out to Sarah Schulman, author of (most recently) Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 , for her article on design and protest: ...
Jul 22, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Yes! What's up everyone! This week, we're looking at the history of the Parental Advisory sticker design (via Olivia Rodrigo's Sour ), we're putting our names into the hat to win the California vaccine lottery, we're thinking about perverse incentives, and we're tripping out on how to create a better, more closely knit social reality. As usual, it's a whole thing! Thank you, thank you, thank you, as always for joining us!
Jun 23, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 6
This week, Helen + Justin spend the entire 42 minutes trying to figure out what's going on with Microsoft's quest for a new default font. Along the way, we talk about obsolescence, the extreme skill of type foundries (respect!), the weirdness of corporate PR, and the totally un-neutral process of constructing various neutralities. It. Is. A. Journey. We hope you actively enjoy it (and are not just having it on as a sort of default noise)! Thanks for listening!
May 26, 2021•43 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Hello friends! This episode is a little different in format from our last ones. Instead of talking about recent design news, we're talking to each other about some exciting recent things we have going on. In this episode: Helen is prepping for a guest facilitator role building a wild balloon palace in Lexington, Kentucky; Justin is over-doing it on balance; and we dream about what it might mean to break out of our COVID-cocoons. Thanks for tuning in! We literally love you all!
Apr 23, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In this week's episode—we are so exhausted! And so angry! We are really just contending with a lot of grief and injustice and fear and disappointment on, honestly—a massive scale. We talk about Prince Harry's new job (and the limits of privilege), Anti-Asian violence in Atlanta (and beyond), the soul-crushing process of "redesigning" "gun control"—and we dig into the mysteries of California's new privacy icon design. Thanks for hanging with us while we work through it all. We love you! If you're...
Apr 02, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In this episode, we talk about Amazon's ridiculous app icon redesign (and the redesign of the redesign); we try and figure out why NFTs—just... why; we imagine some jobs for micro surgeon-bugs on their days off (think, nano-cloud-defense/dot-matrix tattoo) and we talk about the goddamn city of Minneapolis trying to PAY social media influencers to spread city-approved messaging about the trial of Derek Chauvin. It's shady! In fact—all of this is shady this week! Except for the bug doctors. Maybe?...
Mar 17, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Welcome to the first episode of the 40,000,000,000,000 DPI podcast! We are so excited for you to join us! 40 Trillion DPI is a show about all the ways design manifests. It's about design both as a discipline and a cultural product. Each episode, Helen Ip and Justin Carder (two designers/weirdos/friends) get together to talk about the world through the lens of design. Thanks for hanging out with us! If you have any questions about anything, email us at 40trilliondpi@gmail.com or visit our website...
Mar 11, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 1
