Martin Venezky is a graphic designer, photographer, artist, and educator. Since 1997, he's operated Appetite Engineers to produce books, installations, and illustrations and since 1993, he's been on the faculy of the California College of Art in San Francisco. A new book of his photography, What I Know About Photography was released last year by Jon Sueda on Kickstarter. In this conversation, Jarrett and Martin talk about his career and work, the value in image and form making, and why he's focu...
Jan 22, 2020•1 hr 12 min
Rosanne Somerson is a furniture designer, educator, and President of Rhode Island School of Design. After studying industrial design at RISD and running her own practice, she returned to the school in 1985 to teach furniture design, and became the first leader of the new furniture design department. In 2015, she was appointed the 17th president of RISD. In this episode, Jarrett and Rosanne talk about her early career and how she started teaching, how she approaches her presidency like a designer...
Jan 08, 2020•50 min
Reed Kroloff is a renowned educator, writer, critic, and consultant. He’s the newly appointed dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture and previously served as the director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and dean of the school of architecture at Tulane University. He was also the editor-in-chief of Architecture magazine and runs the consultancy Jones Kroloff. In this episode, Jarrett and Reed talk about his unease in becoming an architect, how he started writing, and...
Dec 18, 2019•54 min
Mary Banas is a graphic designer and educator. Her independent creative practice, Yes, is More, spans research, teaching, and design. She also collaborates with Breanne Trammell and is on the faculty at California College of the Arts. In this episode, Jarrett and Mary talk about her roundabout journey into teaching, the value of an expanded practice, and how to set up better critiques in the classroom. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/142-mary-banas.
Dec 04, 2019•52 min
Josh Owen is an industrial designer and educator. He runs his own design studio, Josh Owen LLC, and is a Full Professor and the Chair of the Industrial Design Department at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he also works with the Vignelli Center for Design Studies. In this episode, Jarrett and Josh talk about spending his summers on archeological digs with his father and how that influenced his interests in history and culture, how he started teaching, and how his work as a designer a...
Nov 20, 2019•50 min
Johanna Drucker is an author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. She's currently a professor in the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Her research and writing has focused on visual language and letterforms, typography, visual poetry, the history of books and digital aesthetics. In this episode, Jarrett and Johanna talk about her interest in making books as objects, her work on design history, and the being both ...
Nov 06, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Lucinda Hitchcock is a book designer, typographer, and educator. She's on the faculty at RISD, where she's currently the head of the graphic design department and has designed books for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MFA Boston, and Tufts University Art Galleries. Her research involves narrative, place, and the shape of language. In this episode, Jarrett and Lucy talk about graphic designers as cultural curators, compassionate teaching, and what she learned during her recent sabbatical. Links f...
Oct 30, 2019•1 hr
James Voorhies is a curator, art historian, writer, and educator. James is currently the chair of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice and a professor of fine arts at California College of Arts. He’s the director of the Curatorial Research Bureau, a bookshop, learning site, and exhibition space in San Francisco and is the author of Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968. In this episode, Jarrett and James talk about curation as a mix of mediation, caretaking, and ...
Oct 23, 2019•57 min
Darran Anderson is a writer and author of *Imaginary Cities* and the forthcoming *Inventory*. His writing on architecture, design, and space has appeared in The Atlantic, Vice, and CityLab. In this episode, Jarrett and Darran talk about his early interest in architecture and literature, experimenting with new forms of writing, and expanding how we talk about architecture and cities. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
Oct 16, 2019•56 min
Nicholas Korody is a writer and artist. He writes for Archinect, where is also the editor of their print publication, Ed; and is one-half of Adjustments Agency, a studio and artistic practice he formed with Joanna Kloppenburg to investigate the architecture of architecture. Earlier this year, Nicholas launched Interiors Agency, his new independent practice interested in the role of interior design and decoration in culture. In this episode, Jarrett and Nicholas talk about his liberal arts backgr...
Oct 09, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Marco Steinberg is a strategic designer who works on the complex challenges that face governments, society, and the environment. Currently working independently, he previously founded and led the Helsinki Design Lab and was an Associate Professor at the Harvard Design School from 1999-2009. In this episode, Jarrett and Marco talk about the evolution of his career and move from architecture to strategic design, what strategic design means and how he thinks about his work, and why governments are ...
Oct 02, 2019•58 min
Eddie Opara is a Pentagram partner whose work spans design, technology, and strategy. He previously ran his own studio, The Map office, and worked as a designer at 2x4 and Imaginary Forces. In this episode, Jarrett and Eddie talk about questioning the brief, why his work is considered enigmatic, and thinking about your legacy. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
Sep 25, 2019•44 min
Vishaan Chakrabarti is an architect, urban planner, author, and academic. He's the founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, the author of A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for Urban America, and was just announced as the next dean of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. In this episode, Jarrett and Vishaan talk about his circuitous path to architecture, the intersection of practice and teaching, and how he plans to approach his new deanship. Links from this episode can be foun...
Sep 18, 2019•54 min
Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California. She's the author of How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, teaches digital/physical design at Stanford and has been the artist in residence at the Recology SF (aka 'the dump'), San Francisco Planning Department, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In this episode, Jarrett and Jenny talk about her background in literature and design, the intersection of text and image, and the value of seeing what is ...
Sep 11, 2019•55 min
Danah Abdulla is a designer, educator, and researcher. She's a Senior Lecturer in Communication Design at Brunel University London; founder of *Kalimat*, non-profit magazine about Arab thought and culture; and a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform. In this episode, Danah and Jarrett talk about localizing design education, studying social design, and what it means to decolonize design. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
Sep 04, 2019•1 hr
Rick Poynor is perhaps the foremost writer, critic, and editor on graphic design and visual culture. He is Professor of Design and Visual Culture at the University of Reading. In addition to founding and serving as the first editor in chief of Eye, Rick also cofounded Design Observer, continues as a columnist for Eye, and has written for Print and Blueprint. In this wide-ranging conversation, Jarrett and Rick talk about the early days of Eye and his early interest in visual culture, the evolutio...
Aug 21, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Mark Foster Gage is an architect, author, and educator. He's an Assistant Dean at the Yale School of Architecture, principal of Mark Foster Gage Architects, and the editor of the new book, Aesthetics Equals Politics. In this conversation, Jarrett and Mark talk about the history of aesthetics and how it shapes our experience in the world, the problems with critiques, and how narrative can obscure how a building functions. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
Aug 07, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Ali Qadeer and Chris Lee are designers and educators. Together, they edited a recent issue of C Magazine with the theme graphic design. In this episode, Jarrett talks with Ali and Chris about the issue and their ideas around the editorial point-of-view, their teaching practice, and why they like finding new definitions for graphic design. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
Jul 24, 2019•59 min
Jerome Harris is a designer, educator, and curator. He’s currently the design director of Housing Works and recently taught at MICA and curated the show As, Not For, a survey of African American graphic design. In this episode, Jerome and Jarrett talk about his background as a flyer designer and dancer, , how thinking about design history changed his own approach, and why we need to include as wide a range of work as possible when teaching design. Links from this episode can be found at scratchi...
Jul 10, 2019•57 min
Edwin Heathcote is the architecture critic for the Financial Times and the founder and editor-in-chief of Reading Design. Originally trained as an architect, Edwin has also written for GQ and is the author of multiple books on architecture and design. In this episode, Jarrett and Edwin talk about his writing process, looking at architecture through a wider cultural lens, and the value of reading criticism from history. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
Jun 26, 2019•50 min
Erik Brandt is a graphic designer and educator. From 2013 to 2018, he curates the internationally recognized experimental typography project, Ficciones Typografika, which has just been commemorated with a book by Formist; and is the chair of the graphic design department at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In this episode, Jarrett and Erik talk about expanded practices, teaching alternative forms of design, and staying creative as you get older. Links from this episode can be found at ...
Jun 12, 2019•52 min
Bruce Tharp is an Associate Professor in Art & Design at the Stamps School of Art and Design and is the co-author, with his wife Stephanie, of the new book, Discursive Design. Bruce originally studied mechanical engineering before getting an MID in Industrial Design and a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology. In this episode, Jarrett and Bruce talk about discursive design and what that means, the strange trajectory of his career, and bridging the gaps between research and materiality. Links fro...
May 29, 2019•1 hr 9 min
Na Kim is a graphic designer based in Seoul and Berlin. She's a member of Table Union, was responsible for the design of Graphic magazine from 2009 to 2011 and was artistic director of the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial with Prem Krishnamurthy and Emily Smith. In this episode, Jarrett and Na talk about her journey to graphic design, the self-reflexivity in her work, and the relationships between curating and graphic design. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.
May 22, 2019•55 min
Paul Goldberger is perhaps the leading architecture critic working today. He's served as architecture critic for both The New York Times and The New Yorker and is now a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He's the author of several books including a biography of Frank Gehry and his new book is Ballpark: Baseball in the American City. In this conversation, Jarrett and Paul talk about how architecture criticism has evolved, working with Ada Louise Huxtable, and what baseball parks can teach us abo...
May 15, 2019•57 min
Kerry William Purcell has written books and essays about photography, film, design, philosophy, and critical theory. He's the author of biographies on Alexey Brodovitch and Josef Muller-Brockmann and is a senior lecturer in design history at University of Hertfordshire. In this episode, Jarrett and Kerry talk about how he found himself writing designer biographies, why he doesn't like to call himself a design historian, and how design can be a lens to ask questions around culture, politics, and ...
May 08, 2019•43 min
Natalia Ilyin is a designer, writer, and teacher based in Seattle. She's currently a professor at Cornish College of Arts in Seattle where she teaches design history and criticism, design for social activism, and transition design and is a founding faculty of the MFA in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her new book, Writing for the Design Mind, was published by Bloomsbury in February. In this episode, Natalia and Jarrett talk about the book and the relationships between design and...
May 01, 2019•59 min
Michèle Champagne is a designer who moves between research, creative direction, and publication design across media. Michèle works with publication as a public conversation, and meanders open source dynamics, collaborative authorship, and reader participation and her research interrogates anti-criticism culture, positive psychology, happiness measurement, and their communication phenomena. In this episode, Michèle and Jarrett talk about her design criticism publication, That New Design Smell, cr...
Apr 24, 2019•45 min
Oliver Wainwright a writer and photographer based in London. He has been the architecture and design critic of the Guardian since 2012. He trained as an architect at the University of Cambridge and the Royal College of Art, and worked in strategic planning at the Architecture and Urbanism Unit of the Greater London Authority and at a number of architecture practices, including OMA in Rotterdam and Muf in London. In this conversation, Oliver and Jarrett talk about the relationship between writing...
Apr 10, 2019•57 min
Vera Sacchetti is a design critic and curator. She's currently the co-curator of TEOK Basel, one-half of the curatorial initiative Foreign Legion, and was the associate curator of the 4th Istanbul Biennial. Her writing has appeared in Domus, Disegno, Metropolis, and the Avery Review. She is a graduate of SVA's Design Criticism program. In this episode, Jarrett and Vera talk about her move from designer to critic, her curatorial approach, and the process for assembling the Istanbul Biennial under...
Apr 03, 2019•1 hr
Paul Bailey is a designer, educator and researcher. He's currently the Course Leader for the MA Graphic Media Design program at the London College of Communication, an advisor at the Jan van Eyck Academie, and is a founding member of the Design Displacement Group. Paul's expanded practice mixes client work with self-initiated projects and take various forms such as exhibitions, publications, performances, workshops and writings. In this episode, Jarrett and Paul talk about this expanded practice...
Mar 27, 2019•51 min
