Industrial designer Cory Grosser grew up quintessentially all-American, lettering in football and winning trophies for his Halloween costumes. He studied architecture, but realized most buildings are built by “old” men, decided he was too impatient and shifted to product design. After years of pushing himself too hard, he is learning to find balance. Now he runs a holistic design studio, focuses on being a good dad, and teaches his students to unlock their creative potential, not strive for perf...
Oct 31, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 72
After our last episode with Madeline Weinrib we had a lot more to say. This mini-episode is an extension of our usual Amy & Jaime post-interview debrief and a venture into the murky waters of social media. It’s also an invitation to you, our listeners, to engage with us in the grander dialogue about what it means to be a creative in the modern world. This conversation is just a starting point, we’d love to hear your thoughts. More at cleverpodcast.com . Clever is created, hosted and produced...
Oct 23, 2018•17 min•Ep. 71
Textile designer Madeline Weinrib wasn’t a very good student until an art teacher recognized and supported her talent. After a successful stint as a fine artist, she transitioned to textiles. Known for her painterly sensibility, her textiles quickly became sought after and she cultivated collaborative relationships with artisans around the world. Unfortunately, a victim of knock-offs, her designs were stolen and copied so pervasively that her business of 20 years became unsustainable. Heartbreak...
Oct 16, 2018•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 70
Architect Dan Brunn was born in Tel Aviv and moved to Los Angeles at age 7. The architectural contrast between the two cities made a deep impression and informed his life’s direction. Despite a language barrier, he made friends though the universal language of drawing cars and sharing new, exotic snacks. A guidance counselor once tried to convince him that he wouldn’t amount to anything. He’s proved that wrong by 1000%. Now, when he’s not staring down a mountain lion, he’s choreographing exquisi...
Oct 02, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 69
Woodworker and furniture designer Kate Duncan grew up feeling like a square peg in a family of pragmatic accountants. She indulged in sewing lessons and endured charm school until she found woodshop class and fit right in. After years as a shop teacher, a motorcycle accident catalyzed the launch of her namesake brand. Shortly thereafter she also founded Address, an annual exhibit of designer / makers in her hometown of Vancouver, which dovetails nicely with another one of her talents: throwing a...
Sep 18, 2018•54 min•Ep. 68
Interior designer & social media influencer Orlando Soria grew up in a tiny community in Yosemite National Park with a view of the falls from his bedroom window. Despite the majestic scenery, his head was buried in magazines, dreaming of city life. Always creative, he meandered through school, PR, and PA jobs before landing a role on a TV show, starting a blog, and building up his social media following. He’s been through some ups and downs, but now he’s got a new book out and a bright outlo...
Sep 04, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 67
Graphic designer Lawrence Azerrad, a native of Los Angeles, grew up drawing pictures and fighting the inferiority complex that comes with being a “normal” in the city of stars. Since then he’s designed iconic album covers like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, won a Grammy for the Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition box set, and authored & designed a book, Supersonic, about the fabulous style of Concorde. Turns out having his head in the clouds, playing amongst the stars, is right wh...
Aug 21, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 66
Architect and founding partner of experimental design studio The Principals, Drew Seskunas grew up surfing, getting arrested for skateboarding and navigating the social divide between jocks and artists. In high school, a documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright piqued his interest and set him on course to architecture school. Within a decade, he was building a large public project in Berlin while struggling to argue in German. Now, he’s creating interactive and mind-bending environments that shift pers...
Aug 07, 2018•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 65
Designer, artist, author & influencer Justina Blakeney spent her youth teaching art to abused/neglected teenage girls at a residential treatment program run by her parents, where she witnessed the healing power of art & kindness. After formative years in Switzerland and Italy, she settled in Los Angeles and harnessed the Internet to build Jungalow, an immensely popular lifestyle brand inspired by her travels & her multicultural background, fueled by a deep belief in the empowering ma...
Jul 24, 2018•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 64
Artist and designer, Chris Schanck, moved upwards of 22 times in his youth. He credits Uncle Rocco with firing up his creative engine at an early age, and an arts magnet school in adolescence with “saving his life.” That’s not an overstatement. Fast forward a few years and he’s developed a distinct visual language, has a solo show at a prestigious gallery under his belt, and critically successful body of work. Now, he’s built a life and studio in Detroit, where he is attempting to put down some ...
Jul 10, 2018•59 min•Ep. 63
Ingrid LaFleur is an artist, curator, pleasure activist, cannabis advocate and founder of Afrotopia, a creative platform that looks for ways to implement afrofuturist principles. She is also a very emphatic and supportive native of Detroit. In fact, in 2017 she ran for Mayor and created a plan of action that included radical thought, innovative ideas and solid brilliant logic. She’s doing the work, gently and joyfully crafting a future of conscious co-liberators, decentralized power and decoloni...
Jun 26, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 62
We teamed up with COS for this Clever Extra to celebrate the exquisite art of Dorothea Rockburne. Courtney J. Martin, Chief Curator of Dia Art Foundation, elaborates on Rockburne’s conceptual approaches and techniques while offering us a view of her curatorial methods in mounting a long-term exhibition of her work. Karin Gustafsson, Creative Director for COS, reveals how her admiration for Rockburne’s work - the lines, textures and simplicity of materials, inspired the direction of the current c...
Jun 19, 2018•28 min•Ep. 61
Furniture designer Maximilian Eicke grew up being schlepped around the world to galleries and and antiques shops by his art dealer father. All that input served to make him feel at home anywhere in the world and yet, in a quasi-rebellious sort of way, instilled in him the desire to create something original. His childhood was both blessed by love and privilege and cursed by bullying and attempts to invalidate his creativity—a recipe for gratitude, perspective, and turbo drive to disprove the nay...
Jun 12, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 60
Architect Barbara Bestor’s childhood memories involve Brutalist architecture and purple carpeted stairs. She divided her youth between the East Coast, Germany and the Midwest, before venturing to Los Angeles, the land of sunshine and smog, to make her mark. Over twenty years later, her studio is responsible for some of the most culturally relevant workplaces, hospitality venues and experimental residences in the greater Los Angeles area. Now she’s thinking a lot about urban density and the 2028 ...
May 29, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 59
Industrial designer Ti Chang is co-founder and creative director of Crave, a start-up dedicated to innovative and elevated sex toys. Originally from Taiwan, as a child Ti moved with her family to the U.S. and grew up feeling out of place in small-town Georgia. Loneliness had its upside though; less friends, more creative time! An independent thinker and brave warrior for female empowerment, she’s on a mission to eradicate shame and guilt, and believes all women should own their pleasure. Amen, s...
May 15, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 58
We teamed up with Tarkett for this Clever Extra to take a deep dive into Neoculture - a term coined to describe the way diverse cultures are coming together as never before to create entirely new cultures with new values. Suzanne Tick, a product and textile designer, and Chris Stulpin, Chief Creative Officer for Tarkett have done extensive research into the attitudinal shifts and megatrends that inform Neoculture, how it impacts the future of the built world, and why it matters to the design com...
May 08, 2018•53 min•Ep. 57
President and Creative Director of Bernhardt Design, Jerry Helling, grew up on a ranch in a remote town with 11 people in his graduating class before venturing to USC and a potential career in Hollywood. A personal epiphany combined with serendipity rerouted him into the furniture business, resulting in a long and distinguished career as a keen mentor of talent, a champion of originality, a risk-taking, needle-moving industry voice, and a major benefactor of international design. Plus, he’s real...
May 01, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 56
Fashion journalist and design retailer Rose Apodaca wears many professional hats. She spent her youth immersed in the lively Los Angeles music and skateboarding scenes, then became a journalist covering city politics, gang detail and street tribes. After a stint as the west coast bureau chief of Women’s Wear Daily, she started A+R, a design retail business, with her partner Andy. Along the way she’s owned a few bars, written a few books, adopted a child and lived every day with an enviably styli...
Apr 17, 2018•55 min•Ep. 55
Eric Quint, Chief Design Officer of 3M, incubated a lifelong habit of design thinking in youth at the family kitchen table. After studying engineering and industrial design he embarked on a distinguished career at Philips where he evolved from designer to design leader. Now, as the first CDO of 3M, he’s a champion of collaborative creativity and spends his energy in the exciting and painful job of pushing the front edge of progress. Oh, and he’s a jazz guy—find out how that influences his leader...
Apr 03, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 54
Product designer and installation artist, Nika Zupanc, has always had a strong emotional reaction to furniture, both positive and negative. Born and raised in former Yugoslavia, she was attracted at a young age to books, cinema and art and that sense of drama and narrative shows up in her work. Her path to design is a pretty straight line; determined, focused and passionate, punctuated by a rebellious use of pink, and a fierce protectiveness of her creativity through time spent in nature and the...
Mar 20, 2018•45 min•Ep. 53
Car designer Oliver Heilmer has known he wanted to go into auto design since he was a little kid fascinated by tractors on his grandmother’s farm. He grew up in Munich, Germany drawing machines and vehicles on any paper available, and then studied industrial and automobile design in school. Soon after graduation, he landed a job with BMW Group and has been there ever since. Now, as the head of MINI Design, he’s dedicated to designing for innovation and emotion. This is a long-term love affair, i...
Mar 06, 2018•38 min•Ep. 52
Metalworker and designer Meyghan Hill tells us how she opted to send herself to military boarding school and then stumbled into a modeling career before empowering herself after a bad break-up by learning to weld. She operates under the provocative and polarizing name of (wh)ORE HAüS Studios, and while it is a play on words, it is also a very powerful conversation-starter, which she then parlays into meaningful dialogue. This episode contains modeling and metal, yes, but no “blue steel” jokes, w...
Feb 20, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 51
Strategic designer Todd Bracher regales us with tales of a serendipitous ten-year journey, living, loving and learning through Europe, on the way to launching his namesake studio in Brooklyn. Plus, he walks us through what the hell “strategic design” even means, schools us on the concept of “irreducible complexity” and explains his creative approach which he refers to as “essentialism.” Early on, he showed up to a big pitch meeting way overdressed, and now he keeps a poet on standby. Images and ...
Feb 06, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 50
Collector and high-design advocate, Lisa Roberts, reflects on a childhood spent in an architecturally significant home that discomfited her because it made her feel different from her peers, and also ignited her passion for design because it seeped into her very being. Now, having collected more than 400 “Antiques of the Future,” she uses her collection to educate, author books, and advocate for the game changing power of design. Not too shabby for ol’ Curtains Roberts, eh? Mr. Waffles approves....
Jan 23, 2018•59 min•Ep. 49
Designer, illustrator and artist Timothy Goodman was labeled a “dead-end kid” in his youth until he did four years of hard labor with a mentor/father-figure in the home improvement industry, through which he found both discipline and a desire to study design. A degree and a few more mentors later he’s now known for his illustrations, viral social experiments, murals, books and even protests. Plus, he’s checking his white cis straight male privilege and championing inclusion in ways both meaningf...
Jan 09, 2018•52 min•Ep. 48
Entrepreneur and internet pioneer, Jen Bekman, tells the story of how she founded 20x200 with a mission of making art collecting accessible to everyone. On the leading edge of ecommerce, 20x200 achieved enormous initial success and grew very quickly. Jen tells her powerful story of adapting her business on-the-fly as the internet landscape shifted dramatically under her feet—her perseverance fed by a deep belief that living with art is good for you, and the creation of art itself is an act of br...
Dec 26, 2017•58 min•Ep. 47
Airbnb co-founder & CPO, Joe Gebbia, was known as the “art guy” in grade school when he started his first business selling illustrations of Ninja Turtles. Then, while pursuing dual design degrees, he founded his first legit startup with RISD’s basketball team, The Balls. Now as the leader of innovation and ideation at Airbnb he’s focused on exploring new attitudes of sharing and trust. Oh, and don’t tell him he can’t do something. He will go to extremes to prove you wrong. Isn’t that so, Pro...
Dec 12, 2017•57 min•Ep. 46
Fashion designer Mary Ping was influenced at a young age by a stylish grandmother who taught her to sew. Always knowing she’d one day run her own label, she studied art at Vassar and worked in east London’s scene before founding her conceptual line, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, a living archive of wardrobe classics, reexamined. Not one to participate on the hamster wheel of trends, she prefers injecting social commentary and sartorial wit into her work. Plus, her photographic memory weirds peo...
Nov 28, 2017•46 min•Ep. 45
We teamed up with Interface for this Clever Extra to dissect and reflect on the current office renaissance. It’s moving away from one-size-fits all toward addressing the needs, rhythms and health of the individual. But what are those needs? How do we address them through design? Is this also good for the brand? We talked to Interface’s Chief Design Officer, Chip DeGrace and corporate interior design specialist Beth Davis to tackle this subject from all angles. Here’s a tip - don’t forget about a...
Nov 21, 2017•31 min•Ep. 44
International design star, Marcel Wanders, grew up in the Netherlands taking things apart and making gifts from the pieces. After a rebellious and experimental adolescence, he discovered design in school and fell in love. Then he got kicked out. 20+ years later, with many global successes (products, furniture, lighting, and magical hospitality interiors) to his name, he is focussed on celebrating small victories, continually learning something new, and warning against the dangers of design funda...
Nov 14, 2017•53 min•Ep. 43
