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From the subtleties of typography to the emotional impact of color, and the way everyday objects influence our lives, our guests share their unique perspectives on the power of design. Through candid interviews, we’ll get a closer look at the challenges they’ve faced, the breakthroughs they’ve had, and how design is not just about aesthetics, but about problem-solving, communication, and making an impact.
Join host Rae, as Type Speaks aims to inspire, inform, and showcase the voices behind the visuals.
This podcast is supported by WEGL 91.1 FM, Auburn University’s radio station. weglfm.com
(0:00:03) Welcome into Type Speaks, the show where I dive into the stories, struggles, and sparks of inspiration behind great design. I'm your host, Rae, and I'm going to be pulling back the curtain on the creative process, but not just the work itself, but the people who make it happen. Each episode, I sit down with a different creative mind to uncover how they think, work, and everything in between. So if you're curious about the why behind design and the stories of the people shaping our world one idea at a time, you're in the right place.
(0:00:50) Hello, everybody. Welcome in. This is the first episode of season two of Type Speaks. I'm very excited to be back over the summer hiatus. It was a very interesting summer for me. I hope it was good for all of you if you're listening in the summer. If you're not, that's okay, too.
(0:01:07) I'm with our first guest of season two, Jarrett Fuller, a designer, writer, an educator, and a fellow podcaster. He's also an assistant professor of graphic design at NC State, director of Studio 26, and the host of Scratching the Surface. You've co-edited four books now, published writing and leading design outlets, received awards from Communication Arts and the Type Directors Club. Does that all sound good? Sounds right to me. Anything you want to add? No, I think that was probably too much.
(0:01:35) Oh, I try to shorten it from the bios because I know it's awkward and people introduce me, so I try to help and shorten it.
(0:01:44) Yeah, no, that was great. Thank you for having me. Of course. I'm very excited to have you on. As I was talking earlier to you, two people have come to me now saying, your podcast is kind of like this other guy's podcast. You should listen and have him on your show. Both my professor and another guest. And here we are. And I'm very glad you said yes, because I think it'll be a very fun episode.
(0:02:10) Yeah. So I think at every every start of the episodes, I always like to ask how you personally got into design, because I know that experience is so different from everyone. And I feel like that always informs the rest of your career is where that like starting point kind of sparked for you. Mm hmm.
(0:02:32) I mean, how far back do you want to go? Some people have talked about how they would... I believe it was Trey Seals. He was like sketching logos and type when he was younger. Yeah. Some people just start off in college. So wherever you feel like you were like, I don't want to be a designer. Yeah. I'll tell you like two...
(0:02:57) two sort of parallel stories that um you know maybe maybe connect and i think it's it's like hard to kind of go back and it's really easy to go back and like connect a bunch of dots that like we're not actually being connected in in real time um the short answer
(0:03:15) Honestly, as I kind of was have like been doing design forever, like I don't ever remember a time where I wasn't interested in design. I didn't always have that language. I didn't have that word design until until I was probably in high school, you know, maybe middle school. But I have a very vivid memory of being.
(0:03:35) four, five, six years old learning letters as you do in preschool and kindergarten and being really fascinated and confused about how people's handwriting didn't always look like the letters that I was learning. And I have this very vivid memory of being in a shopping cart with my mom in a grocery store and seeing two
(0:04:05) signs that had different twos on them. One, two, the like bottom of the two was straight. I'm making a hand motion, which I guess no one will be able to see. No, I really was like the loop-de-loop two and the one that doesn't have the loop. Yeah, and then one had the loop. And I was like, why is that? Like, that's not how I learned how to...
(0:04:21) write a two and just like being fascinated by that difference that there were these structures but then you could do different things i remember all through elementary school just looking and obsessing over how people wrote letters and seeing like okay my fourth grade teacher's writing a k like that i like that k i'm gonna make my k
(0:04:41) like that. And then when, you know, we got a computer and that like very quickly went from handwriting to fonts. And I, you know, in elementary school would like go to the store, the mall or whatever with my family and then kind of see the signs there and then come home and try to like recreate those signs using like Microsoft Print Shop Deluxe, which was like a very early like page layout kind of thing.
(0:05:09) And so I was doing all that stuff as a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old. And this is in the suburbs in Pennsylvania. And so no one, I never met a designer. I didn't know anyone who was a designer. Design was not a word that was used. Mm-hmm.
(0:05:30) And I don't know, somewhere around middle school or so, I thought that I wanted to be an architect. Like that seemed like the thing that I was, that was like the closest thing that people around me could see as a job that related to the things that I was doing.
(0:05:49) Um, and then my friend down the street who was my best friend growing up, he wanted to be an architect too. And so we started a little business where we would like design houses for fun. And then that turned into like a real business where we were redesigning our friends' bedrooms. And so like all the neighbor kids, we would like go over and like measure their rooms and pick paint colors and furniture and like go and like redesign their rooms.
(0:06:12) and with that we were then we had to like make a logo for our business we made a little website and we made a brochure and a contract and i kind of realized that i was i liked making the logo for my architecture business more than i liked doing the actual work
(0:06:28) And so around that time was kind of early 2000s. This was the internet. Somehow on the internet, I discovered that there's this thing called graphic design. And it was like, oh, that's actually the thing that I've always been doing. It's not architecture. It's not interior design. This is when blogs were a big thing. I started reading blogs and kind of discovering design and design history and design theory.
(0:06:51) And once I locked in on that, which was like sophomore in high school, it was like graphic design is the thing. So I told you that was the short answer. That was actually like the long answer. The long answer is I've been doing, it's sort of what I've always been doing. The short answer is sophomore year, I got on the internet and realized that graphic design was a thing and kind of locked in on that and then went and studied design and worked as a designer.
(0:07:15) No, that was short and concise. Okay. I feel like those things you can't really like push down into like a short little story. Yeah. I think it was interesting because when I was learning handwriting, I was really upset that we weren't learning what was on the computer because the A's and the G's are different on the computer than they are on the handwriting. And I got into arguments with my teachers because I would do them like they were on the computer. Yeah.
(0:07:45) I had, like, that was just, I think, a funny thing that I did. Yeah, like, when I was learning the alphabet, we didn't have a computer. Like, this was the early 90s. And so, like, it was, like, opposite. And then, like, getting the computer and seeing that there were hundreds of ways you could write it. Like, that came later. And I was just, like, my mind was blown. But, yeah, I totally get that. Because we were learning, like, we were learning, like, typing and also writing and also cursive. And it was this weird 2000s. All at the same time?
(0:08:15) Maybe like in second grade we started writing, but I remember in third grade we had computer class where we learned like about Microsoft Word. Yeah. And I learned about those like fun, the like fun titles you could do and all the swirlies. Yeah, like word art and stuff.
(0:08:33) It's insanely over-designed when I was a child. I forgot what it's called, but it's that one very southern consignment shop font with all the dots and the... I'm visioning it in my mind and I can't remember the name. Comic Sans was huge as a non-ironic thing as a child.
(0:08:52) yeah because it was like everything different yeah i i mean this reminds me i i don't remember when we got a computer but i remember very specifically when you said that it brought back this memory in fifth grade when we had to do like public speaking we had to like give like a five minute speech to the class on a topic you were interested in you had to have visual visuals to do that
(0:09:14) and that was the first time i ever used powerpoint and i was the only kid that used powerpoint and i like presented slides and picking the fonts for that and designing that um was really exciting to me and was also like exciting to the class because like everyone else just had like posters and i had this like slideshow um yeah so i i relate to that even though it was like a slightly different slightly different era yeah
(0:09:40) I was the computer, like, born when, like, Facebook was already a thing. No, was it 2006 when Facebook was a thing? Four. Yeah, 2004. Oh, I guess I was born the exact year Facebook was born. Okay. Even though I've never had a Facebook. Yeah, good for you. Yeah.
(0:10:00) See, it was already not cool when I was like a middle schooler because that was like your mom had Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. But that like being on the computer and I think while learning to write was something that was very interesting for my generation. Yeah.
(0:10:17) because for me at least it was like they're not the same why aren't they the same and that was really fun but we talk about process a lot because to me that's a very interesting part of kind of anyone's workflow in like any creative field uh it's something that i i love talking about but when you're working um
(0:10:41) how do you typically get that first, like the hardest part of any project is like getting the first like spark that makes you excited to work on it. Are there any ways that you typically get that or is it kind of just different for every project?
(0:10:55) I would say it's different for every project, but the thing that is consistent is that I never force it. And this goes for a design project, which I admittedly do a lot less of now than I used to, but also writing an essay or a book or even thinking about the types of questions that I want to ask somebody on my show. I never force that, and I don't have a set...
(0:11:23) process or structure and when i get an assignment whether that is a design project that comes in or somebody asks me to write about something i never start right away i you know sometimes takes me a couple days it sometimes takes me a couple weeks and i just sit with it i just let it be in the air i let it like
(0:11:45) you know, roll around in my brain. And when I like go on a run, I'm think it's sort of like it like pops into my head, or I'm driving somewhere. And it's like, I just kind of like, let it sit there. And I'll maybe do some reading will like, you know, do some research on it, I'll start to kind of take some notes on things. And it's a very slow beginning process. And then all of a sudden,
(0:12:09) you know, something, something clicks. And so, for example, like it's in writing, for example, I'll just be kind of like thinking about the thing that I want to write about. And then usually I know I'm ready when I feel like I have a good first sentence. Like I know how I want to open it. And that doesn't mean that that's the first sentence that's going to be in the published thing. But if I suddenly know like, oh, here's how this thing starts.
(0:12:37) then i can begin in design usually you know it's i'm thinking about it and then i'll like move i'll start like playing with things in in illustrator or whatever and then like something feels right and then like once once i feel like i i know like oh here's how it starts then then i go into it um same thing same thing on the podcast when i once i know what the first question is going to be
(0:13:04) then I feel like I'm in the process. That's when I feel like it starts, if that makes sense. No, I think it makes complete sense. I was thinking when you were saying that it's like instead of like a bonfire, more like a wildfire. Okay. And like a spark type, you know, where it's like you don't try to force it. You just kind of let it happen.
(0:13:25) Yeah, I've heard people describe the creative process in a way where it's like you're just looking out at things.
(0:13:37) And everything's flying by and you're just like grabbing things as they fly by. I really relate to that. You know, it's sort of just being open to things, letting your mind wander. And then when something seems interesting, you grab it and you write it down or you put it into a document or whatever.
(0:13:59) And then for me, that's like when I feel like I've wrapped my head around the process. I've wrapped my head around what it is that I'm supposed to do with this project that I'm working on. Yeah. I think leading into that, when you kind of start going into something, do you...
(0:14:17) if it's like freelancer you're working with like a client or any aren't even a personal project is there like a typical workflow that you need to follow or is it again just one of those things where it's like oh i'm thinking i'm having a day for this part and this part and this part i don't think i have a process
(0:14:43) i mean i mean that's an answer yeah is the short answer it's like every project i treat differently everything that i write there's it's like slightly different like i have little tricks i have little things that i know i can fall back on things that i know i can do but i am not somebody and i don't mean for this to sound like i'm just organized like i think i i think i'm like very organized in my work but i don't have like uh
(0:15:06) I'm going to do this thing first and then I'm going to do this. Like, you know, I'm not going to, you know, it's not like, oh, I'm going to do five different options and then narrow that down to three and then present this to the person and then go from there. Like, I don't ever, I've never done that. I've never been good at that. Same thing with writing. It's not like, oh, I'm going to write an outline of everything that I want to.
(0:15:25) write about and put it into an order it's a much more organic um uh exploratory process and then when it seems like hey i want to get some feedback on this i put it into some form that is legible and i send it to the people that i want to get feedback on whether that's a client or an editor or or whatever yeah uh you know and that feedback is kind of a gut check
(0:15:51) And then hopefully there's some direction that can emerge there or feedback or notes or comments that then kind of help shape it down. But it's kind of like the sculpture metaphor. It's like you have a big block of stone and you're just kind of like chipping things away until it gets to the form that it feels like it needs to be. And then that's when you know it's done. It's like David was already in the stone when you chipped away at it.
(0:16:21) Yeah, that feels true to me. No, that's what I feel like. I always ask that because some people have very rigid workflows. And I almost envy them sometimes. But then I try to do that. And then I don't envy that.
(0:16:37) Yeah, I don't envy that at all. I like bristle at too rigid of processes. You know, I don't know what your curriculum is like or how you learn design, but I really bristle at the like design thinking process of like identify the problem and then interview the stakeholders. And then like, I actually think that that's like
(0:17:01) overall, probably like not actually a good thing to just always do the same process for every project, no matter what I think. I think you need to be open to variety and chance and, you know, different variables.
(0:17:17) I'm very lucky to have, as I've gotten to my junior and senior year, we've leaned away, or they've let us lean away from that strict. They taught us that in the beginning, and they let us do not whatever we want now, but a little bit more of our own way, which is very nice to kind of figure that out for myself before being sent into the big world, the scary world. Where you don't get to do that anymore. Yeah, where it's like, oh, there's not all this freedom. Yeah.
(0:17:46) But yeah, I think going back to a little bit of the spark idea, I also wanted to talk a little bit about influences and almost ideologies in design. And you had a quote that I liked a lot about design being ideology made artifact. And I thought that was a really interesting way to put it. And I just kind of want to hear more about that. Yeah, I...
(0:18:18) I really liked that definition of design. And when I, when I arrived at that, it felt like it explained so much of what I had been trying to think about and trying to understand about what design does and why design matters. And so I will, I will answer your question, but I'll give you a little bit of a backstory first. So I, 10 years ago, I was in grad school and I went to grad school because I was really kind of
(0:18:47) unsure of whether I still like design. I've been working as a designer for a while. I was in jobs that I was sort of not the happiest in. I was kind of bored with the work. And so in grad school, I got an MFA in graphic design, but with a concentration in critical theory. And so half of my classes,
(0:19:04) were studio classes. I was making design. I was doing design. But then the other half, I was taking philosophy classes, art history classes, writing classes, critical theory classes, classes on aesthetics, classes on philosophy, race, culture, et cetera.
(0:19:29) And so I was really trying to figure out like, how do these things actually relate to each other? Like these actually feel like it seems like there's ways I should be able to bring this together, but I couldn't figure it out.
(0:19:41) And I remember sitting in a philosophy class and we were talking about the work of a French Marxist philosopher named Louis Althusser who wrote a lot about ideology. And he had this essay called the, I think the exact title was Ideology.
(0:20:00) and the ideological state apparatus or something like that. And what he was basically saying is that ideology, he has this line in that essay, something to the effect of ideology doesn't obscure reality, it creates reality.
(0:20:20) And what had previously thought about ideology is that it was a way, it was a set of fictions. It was a set of beliefs. It was a point of view. It was, you know, something personal. And what he argued there is that what an ideology actually does is it actually makes those things real in some way. It's not just, a belief isn't something that is intangible. It actually changes the world a little bit, literally, or at least changes your world.
(0:20:47) i remember reading that i remember sitting in that class and hearing that and being like oh that's what design does design is what makes the ideologies real design is design is that transference from here's an idea in my head to here's a real tangible thing in the world
(0:21:08) and so when i say that design is ideology made artifact what i mean is the act of designing is taking beliefs taking points of view taking ideologies taking ways of seeing the world taking things that you think
(0:21:25) about the world and it is giving them a shape it's giving them a form it's giving all of that belief system something that then can be communicated out to other people that could be a message that could be a brand that could be a product that could be a building that could be a city um all of these things are designed with and put into the world with
(0:21:53) beliefs, with biases, with points of view, with a sense of how a thing should be in relationship to other things. And so, you know, the the very obvious big example would be when when you build a road.
(0:22:14) what that road is connecting is a belief of who should be in communication with each other. But then it's also then a belief of how people should get around. You get around by a car instead of by walking or by train. All of those are ways of seeing how the world should be. And then you make it real by actually building the road.
(0:22:32) And that's what design does. Design takes these belief systems and makes them tangible. It gives them a shape. It gives them a form. And then in so doing, makes them real. Because now it's not a belief. It's now just how the world works.
(0:22:50) Yeah. Well, when I read that, I was thinking this past election season, I'm not going to go into that. I was really invested in the visuals of the campaigns surrounding them and how incredibly different they were.
(0:23:11) But also sometimes similar in very incredible ways, but seeing how these different ideas are almost are communicated to, you know, obviously the public who they want to be voted for. And that was something that I have been kind of stewing over personally in my process of like, you know...
(0:23:33) How can you kind of truly tell that the design is from the heart and not performative, if that makes any sense? Yeah. And I don't know. I just really liked that quote because it kind of clicked for me on why some things sometimes feel a lot more real because you know it feels like it is coming into shape of this thought is being communicated rather than trying and pushing something to force it almost. If it makes any sense.
(0:24:03) Yeah. And I think that goes both ways to like from designer to the public, but then also from the public to the designer. And so it's interesting that you brought up, you know, the 2024 election because I was thinking about all of this stuff in grad school 2015-16 during that election. Yeah.
(0:24:24) And, and so that was a context that was shaping a lot of this also. And I think, um, a good example, you know, if I, if I, you know, just, just not to go too much down a rabbit hole, um, but 2016 election was, was Trump and Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton had this like,
(0:24:43) really kind of the H with the arrow was designed by Michael Beiruton Pentagram. Everything that you saw from Hillary Clinton was the same fonts, the same colors, that logo was everywhere. It was really perfectly executed. And then Trump's was not that. He did not have a kind of clear logo. Everything was a different font. Everything was different. The only thing you had was this red Make America Great Again hat, but even that had different fonts. There were like different versions of that. There was nothing clear.
(0:25:11) And you can read into both of those your own ideologies, your own beliefs of the candidate. And so you could look at Clinton's campaign, say, look how perfectly packaged that is. That shows that she's...
(0:25:26) competent, that she knows what she's doing, that there is a clear point of view, that there is a, you know, that this is organized and she knows what she's doing. And then you look at Trump and you're like, oh, look how chaotic this is. This is like an embodiment, you know, whatever. This is an embodiment of him. Like, oh, like we can't ever vote for him. Like, look how all this stuff is different. But if you're on the other side of that,
(0:25:48) you can say, look how packaged all that is. That feels fake to me. That's like a corporation. That's not actually a person. That's a brand now. Everything looks the same. Look, all this, like, look how different this is. This looks like something I would make. I see myself
(0:26:03) and this i like that this isn't undesigned i don't think actually that was the strategy of either of them um but you can see that you know you your own beliefs can be projected onto the beliefs of these two design systems and you can do that with anything you do that with a brand that's like cracker barrel thing too it's like oh yeah thing of you know that's just like
(0:26:26) That's not actually about that logo at all. It's just about like your own ideologies. And the logo is the shape, is the form that allows you to project your ideology onto it. And so it goes both ways. It's not just the designer taking an ideology, giving it shape, but it's also us projecting our ideologies onto design things in the world too. It's like the form that allows us to then talk about it and wrestle with it, you know?
(0:26:53) Yeah, it's funny you talked about the Cracker Barrel thing. You have no idea down here. It was a huge problem.
(0:27:05) This is your show. We don't have to get into it. Alabama loves Cracker Barrel. We love it here. Everyone was talking about it and asking me about it. It was hard for me because I didn't care so much. I was like, yeah, they probably had a focus group or something. People here...
(0:27:30) It doesn't feel the same. It's not homey anymore. It's not my grandmother's house anymore. They were so emotionally connected to Cracker Barrel and what they had projected onto Cracker Barrel that when they changed it, it almost felt like a betrayal. Right. And that was very interesting to me.
(0:27:52) But what you just said is the actual, like, important thing that nobody seems to be talking about, which is like, oh, it feels like my local store. It feels like going to my grandma's. It's not. It's a mega, it's a chain restaurant. It is also...
(0:28:11) It is also using design to project a certain ideology that is not real. It is not your local store. It is not your local diner. It is not going to your house. Most of the people that go to a Cracker Barrel, you know, your friends or whatever, have never actually been to an old corner shop because those don't exist anymore. And so it is the designed experience to make you feel a certain way that doesn't exist anymore.
(0:28:38) And so when they changed their logo, it reveals the fakeness that was there all along, you know? That is such a trend now, I feel, of people sometimes, they feel betrayed by these brands, but the brands didn't have any connection with you to begin with. Yeah. It's like you put that onto that brand. Enough so that now Cracker Barrel is not changing their logo. Yeah. Yeah.
(0:29:08) And actually, I did see a billboard driving to Birmingham, Alabama with the new one. So maybe I don't know what they're going to do about that one. Well, it'll take time. It'll take time to roll everything back. But that like I'm here. It was insane. The people talking about it here. And it was funny because most most of my friends and students and other artists, designer friends were just very much like, yeah, that happens.
(0:29:38) Yeah. But people had this connection that was so ingrained. Yeah. Which is funny because we actually have diners here that no one goes to. Right. Exactly. That's exactly my point. It's a projection. You used that word performance earlier. I think that is an example of that.
(0:30:00) that's been a huge conversation online right now i mean the joke about the performative male um but and i was and i was talking to one of my classmates about it and i was like in a lot of corporate design it feels like that where it's like i know this is not a representation of your heart and your soul i know there was 15 people that worked on this yeah
(0:30:26) And I think that's, I don't know if I call it a trend, but I think now people are almost noticing and reacting to it more. Unless I'm just young and have not been in the industry for a long time. I think some of this is like, I think some of this is like a question of
(0:30:48) like distribution and like media channels. And so, and I think, I guess what I, what I mean by that is I think this is like a, a very social media. Yes.
(0:31:02) I don't want to say the word problem, but this is an issue that arises only because of social media. And so, you know, when you are scrolling a feed, you can see the stuff of your friends and then you see the stuff of your brands that you follow and they're all in the same feed and they're all formatted the same way.
(0:31:22) And before, the way you would get content from a brand is you'd have to like go there. You'd have to get the catalog. You'd have to go to the website. You would see the signs. You'd see the advertisements. But now when it's in your feed with content from your friends, the difference between brand and person starts to dissolve a little bit. Yeah.
(0:31:45) And so brands talk more like people now as opposed to talking like brands. People talk more like brands, right? It's all about personal branding right now.
(0:31:55) Right. Like the fact that that's a thing is because of social media where brands are now communicating to us in the same channels that our friends are communicating to us. And then that all gets really blurry. And so now everybody thinks about themselves as a brand. If you do something different, it is not, you know, you, you, you go into class and your, your hair color is different or something like someone will say to you, oh, that's off brand.
(0:32:20) That is hilarious. Where did that come from? Because I wear light blue eyeshadow every day. It's my favorite color for a long time. And if I'm not wearing it, like it became a thing. And I don't know if I like this, like people, my friends would wear blue eyeshadow. And in the comments, they would be like, oh, you're pulling a ray today. And I was like, blue eyeshadow does not belong to me.
(0:32:42) This is not part of your brand. But now people are like contributing it to my brand and they call it my brand now. And I don't know how I feel about that. But it's the language of branding has become because of social media has become so like normalized in conversation.
(0:33:00) It's very weird to me to talk about personal branding because I used to be upset when I was first getting into art in high school and posting online. It was all about how to present yourself, how to get clients, how to get commissions and your personal brand. But now that I'm going into doing more freelance work now in workforce, I'm like, don't brand me. I'm a human. I don't want to talk about my brand. Yeah, I think that's right.
(0:33:30) Yeah, but going kind of off of that, this is something kind of off topic, but I saw on your website, you talked about wanting your website to be open source, which is really cool for me as someone who my closest friends and my brother are all in cybersecurity and computer science. And learning about website design and stuff like that, I thought that was a really cool thing you were doing that not a lot of designers really think about in the modern kind of digital age we're kind of going into.
(0:34:00) did you have any like it's like was that just kind of something you were like i'm gonna do this or did yeah i mean in a weird way it sort of connects to the ideology comment you know the ideology conversation earlier where it's like how does
(0:34:18) how does what i how how do how do i present myself online and present my work online how is that reinforcing or not reinforcing my beliefs and whatever and i think so many so much design is made by the same tools and the same platforms
(0:34:41) And so it's really easy to, you know, you, you open up illustrator or Figma or any Adobe product, and they have all those defaults and they have like ways of making you design things. And it all starts to make everything kind of look the same. And you can make a website on Squarespace or Wix or, uh, index index a bit, uh, or whatever those things. And it's like, everything's been so platformized and that just like,
(0:35:11) A, makes everything look the same. And so I wanted to do something. I wanted to own everything. I didn't want to be reliant on a platform. So that's one. And then two, how do we not become reliant on a platform is we share resources among each other. The tools do not have to be top-down, big corporation,
(0:35:31) gives us the software and the tools to use we can make our own tools and then share them and so that was that was just like a little gesture towards that to say hey here's a thing that i made for myself it's free for anybody else also so you don't have to use wix you don't have to use squarespace you don't have to have any custom software it's all html and css it's hosted on github where it is open you know all of all of that stuff
(0:35:57) Yeah, I thought that was really cool as someone who wants to get more into all of that. My computer science friends tell me that I should learn basic CSS.
(0:36:10) Yeah. I mean, I don't know, like that might be something that like AI does now, but I think it is really good to understand the like tech stack of what you're doing to not be reliant on these big platforms, which are owned by big corporations. And, you know, I don't, I don't want them controlling everything.
(0:36:27) Yeah, and also it's easier to communicate with the actual programmers you're working with if you know what they're doing. Yeah. That was a big thing that I thought about. And you mentioned earlier, and it comes up almost every single episode, and I don't always want it to, but it kind of has to happen.
(0:36:50) AI and design. So I read, you recently read an article that AI isn't design's biggest problem. I only read the first part because the other part was under a paywall. But I really enjoyed that, the first part, because something I've been thinking about is that
(0:37:07) there's so much fear surrounding it. But I think once you really think about it, there's other almost threats to the modern design that almost, that feed into the problem of AI in a sense. Yeah, I think that's really well said. The...
(0:37:32) I have like two things that I'll say about that. I think one, the reason that I wrote that was for two reasons. One, I was trying to figure out why everybody was talking about AI. And also I was tired of hearing about AI. I'm sick of it.
(0:37:53) And so I wanted to try to shift the conversation a little bit because I found a lot of the conversations around AI to be really reductive around, oh, this is going to take all our jobs. This is going to revolutionize everything. And I just don't buy that, to be frank. And I think the things that people are worried about in regards to AI are actually not...
(0:38:20) it's not actually AI that they're worried about. It is these larger forces like what you're talking about. And so, you know, I have the line, my original title for the essay before it was AIs and Desensibility's Problem was designers are afraid of AI taking their jobs because they already design like AI. And it was this, goes back to our earlier conversation around process. It's like when all the processes are the same,
(0:38:46) when all the tools are the same when there's all these design principles that we have to follow that starts to make everything look the same also so you open up any app on your phone and it's usually shades of blue and gray and rounded rectangles and humanist sans serif typography going back to the branding conversation all brands are simplifying down to these like
(0:39:07) Sans serif, bright colors, removing icons. We are creating a homogenized style and we're doing that through rigid processes. Well, guess what AI is really good at? Following rigid processes and making things that look like the average of everything else.
(0:39:27) And isn't it interesting that over the last, let's say 10, maybe 15 years, designers have suddenly decided that they want to just make things that look like everything else, as opposed to making things that are different and stand out and original and weird and like strange. And so in a way we have been
(0:39:51) designing like AI as an industry for the last 10 years that
(0:40:00) then makes it easier for AI to take our jobs if that is really what is going to happen. And so what I'm trying to say in that essay is that who cares about AI and what it can do? It is an averaging tool. It is an aggregation tool. It is not necessarily a creative tool.
(0:40:20) And so we need to lean into what it means to be a designer and reclaim that. We're not engineers. We don't have a set process. It is not a mathematical data heavy industry. We should be leaning into culture, to creativity, to originality, to difference, to strategy, to all of this stuff.
(0:40:44) that a computer can't do that we for some reason have decided we don't want to do anymore when that's actually the thing that makes design unique in the first place and fun yeah and fun yeah and interesting and makes you know like that's actually the value of design it's not doing a focus group and doing a bunch of research to then like decide that you're just going to do a logo that looks like everybody else yeah anybody can do that
(0:41:05) Yeah, my professor, Devin Ward, who I had on the show, he made us do a project. And then the next project was the same project, but with ChatGPT. And when I did that, I was like, I'm not having fun with the ChatGPT one. It's like we had to use like inspiration from it generating images. And I was like, this is ugly and boring. I can't do anything new.
(0:41:31) And I think that's when it hit, for me at least, because I was really afraid. Because everyone was telling me I should be afraid. Yeah. That was one thing where people around me who weren't in design were being like, oh, you must be so scared. Like, AI is coming for your job and whatever. And I was like, I guess it's coming for my job. Until I realized that the people that are going to use AI for a logo or something are people that weren't going to appreciate the process of design anyway. Mm-hmm.
(0:42:01) in a sense of like jobs yeah i mean i heard that when i went to college 15 years ago it was like well why study graphic design when everybody can get a copy of photoshop for 70 bucks uh you know when when these tools are just like some there's some like design tools that just come on computers now um you know microsoft word has a font menu like why like why would you do that
(0:42:26) I remember 10 years ago when like Squarespace and Squarespace launched like a logo generator thing. I was like, oh, all this stuff can be automated. Now there's always something that people think are going to going to take designers jobs. And I think we have to remember that our job is not the actual business.
(0:42:45) It's not just, you know, making an image. It's that whole thought process that leads to an original form. It's the ideology. It's like, how do you take a way of seeing and then give it a shape?
(0:43:00) And that's not actually about crafting a beautiful logo. That's not actually about, you know, writing a prop to then generate something that's based on everything else. It's actually about trying to find connections that are harder to make. It's about looking for the place that nobody else is talking about. Software can't do that. Technology can't do that.
(0:43:18) yeah i mean it is it just pulls from whatever it already knows and it will never create something 100 new and i think as humans the best things that we do it's because we can create things that are 100 new it's like our biggest thing that we do every a thousand years or now faster but it's just been a huge conversation but the more i feel like i'm doing design the more i'm not afraid of it yeah
(0:43:47) As someone who's... I did a logo for someone and they didn't like it and they used AI for that logo. Worst experience of my career, but it taught me something that I actually don't care that much. The science fiction writer Ted Chiang has this line where he says, most fears of AI are actually just fears of capitalism. And that... I agree with that. And so I think like, you know, technology...
(0:44:17) is neutral technology doesn't have a point of view the people who make it have a point of view the way we use it we have a point of view um and when we're worried about things taking our job it's not actually the technology it's that there's a uh you know capitalist system that is encouraging speed and efficiency and um and profit margins and yeah
(0:44:41) doing things really fast and automated is good for the bottom line. Does that actually mean that it's good for humanity and good for us as people? No. I forget which anti-capitalist guy said this or said something very similar, but I hold it really close as like,
(0:44:58) When we first imagined technology, and we talk about the 40s and the 50s when we were at the space race, it was doing the hard labor for us, and we had the time to do the fun stuff, the art and design, but now it's opposite. It's doing the writing and the art for us, and we're still having to do the labor, and that's not fun. That's not what we want technology for.
(0:45:25) But reducing the time it takes to be creative is better for capitalism as a whole because you have to work more and your labor is what generates money.
(0:45:39) Right. Um, my friend Tobias Revel, who was on the, on my show a long time ago, he's a futures designer and he has this great line where he says, anytime somebody talks about something that technology will do or can do, replace the word technology with billion dollar Silicon Valley company and see if it still feels right to you. And so you're just like, oh, AI is going to cure cancer. Oh, AI is going to write the next great novel.
(0:46:07) Billion-dollar Silicon Valley company is going to cure cancer. I don't think so. Billion-dollar Silicon Valley company is going to write the next great novel. I don't think so. We need to always put into perspective that this technology is not natural. This did not come out of...
(0:46:24) nowhere it came out of a culture that we know what they believe and what they believe is growth at all costs no matter what to increase our profit margins and so i almost like i i almost find like talking about ai or technology talking about ai is just a technology or talking about any technology is just a technology um
(0:46:48) is inefficient if you don't acknowledge the billions of dollars that are going into producing it and then the billions of dollars that are going into marketing it to us as a certain way and that's like everyone telling you you should be afraid of it that's because they want you to be afraid of it yeah they want me to not it that's I totally agree with that the fear of it is what I'm kind of
(0:47:10) I'm almost sick of that conversation. Yeah, I agree. You know, I mentioned one of my closest friends, and I also co-host with him on the news show we do here at the radio station. He's a computer science major. And the discussions we have about AI, it's like it's a tool. It isn't this...
(0:47:33) Yeah. This like amorphous being that is learning and it's just a bunch of, you know, code that we put together and that uses a billion pounds of water every second. Yeah. Yeah. And once you almost think about it that way, you're like, oh, okay. Okay.
(0:47:55) Like, why should I be afraid of it? Right. I think we should be more afraid of its ecological impacts. But moving from that into kind of, you know, newer designers, you know, we shouldn't be afraid of AI. But now it's, you know, you're teaching, you're an assistant professor. Did you have like a journey into teaching or did you kind of always want to do that? Or were you like, oh, I am more interested in that now than before?
(0:48:25) I think I always in the back of my mind was interested in it. I remember in undergrad, a professor kind of told me it was like, oh, like, you should think about like, you would be good at this. And so that was kind of like always back there. I going back to the earlier conversation was always interested in stuff around design, also like not just doing design, but thinking about it, talking about it, writing about it. And when I taught my first class, I realized that that was a way to combine all of those things that in the classroom, I could be
(0:48:56) a designer, a writer, a thinker, a critiquer or critic. That kind of, that was like very, it was very obvious to me that that was a way that I could be in the design world and not have to like do design in a studio that I was like not wanting to do anymore. And so as soon as I taught my first class, I was like, oh, this is, this is going to be a part of my practice because
(0:49:26) Would it become the main thing? I don't think I realized that right away. I think that just after teaching for a while and teaching more and more and more, I was like, I should actually just center everything around this. But as soon as I started teaching, I was like, this is the thing that I like doing the most. Mm-hmm.
(0:49:44) Yeah, and this has kind of come up before, but a lot of people who do teach talk about how that directly affects their own kind of design, working with students. Have you seen that in like your own kind of career? Yeah.
(0:50:00) yeah i think the classroom is sort of a lab it's a way to like test out ideas it's a way for me to put things that i'm thinking about in front of other people and see how they respond i kind of think about it like a stand-up comic who's like working shows and they're like constantly like changing their jokes to kind of see like how do people react to this how do people laugh if i use this punch line do people laugh more
(0:50:25) yeah to me that's kind of the classroom it's a way like hey here's this thing that i've been thinking about let me put it to this group of people and see how they respond to it let me actually talk about it with some people and we see how that works and then that then goes into a goes back out into a design project or it turns into an essay or it turns into a conversation on the podcast and so there's this constant dialogue between what's happening in the classroom and out of the classroom
(0:50:54) And I would also say, to go back to our earlier conversation about the sameness of everything, I've almost become like radicalized in a way of like,
(0:51:10) I don't want to teach my students like the design rules, like modernism is best, minimalism, you know, all of this stuff that I was taught, this sort of dogma. I think my job is to shake them out of that, to say, okay, we have all these things.
(0:51:28) But what if they weren't there? What if we tried something different? What if we broke all of these rules? And I think that has affected how I practice design, too, and how I write about design, too, because I'm kind of always thinking about the otherwise. Well, what if it wasn't like this? That's the AI article. It's like, what if this wasn't the only thing we were talking about? What if everything didn't look the same?
(0:51:53) And so I think that has been a big influence on just the way I approach design generally as a designer, a thinker, a writer, you know, public person, whatever.
(0:52:05) Yeah. Talking with my other professor who was on, Robert Finkel, and others, we had talked about how Pinterest is almost like the death of design sometimes. And I railed against that when I think that was originally brought up to me. Because I was like, what's wrong with Pinterest? What's wrong with a good mood board? I love to start my project with a mood board. But...
(0:52:32) i now i'm realizing it's like no that's how you get boring stuff because you'll try to make things that look like pinterest yeah and i don't want to make mood boards anymore or i do but i shouldn't start i think i as i'm moving on i think students should not start with an idea of what they want at the end that makes any sense
(0:52:54) Yeah, it does. I think I have two responses to that. I think one, Pinterest is also, I feel like I'm just kind of repeating myself. Pinterest is also not like a neutral technology. It's not just a place to collect things. They have an algorithm. There are things that are popular. There are things that go viral on Pinterest or any of these things. And so that subtly influences what you think is good or not good. And so if you see something on Pinterest a lot, you start to kind of even unconsciously think,
(0:53:22) this must be good because a lot of people like it because the algorithm keeps showing it to me. And so there's this like, and what happens is that then creates a thing where then everybody starts to design things because they know it does well. It's why like, you know, like you see this on any platform, there's stuff that just does well. There's certain kind of tropes of any medium. And then you start to lean into those because you want your stuff to do well too. And so I think that's a problem.
(0:53:48) And I think, you know, creating a mood board, you get a bunch of stuff that looks the same, then you design something that looks the same, because then like you, even if it's unconscious, have this sense of like, this is what is good. I think it's really important to like break out of that. And so I always encourage my students, I'm not anti Pinterest, I'm not anti mood board, but I am anti only looking at other graphic design.
(0:54:14) you're doing a branding project, don't just look at other brands. Don't just look at other brands in the industry that you're doing. Look at brands from other industries. Look at art, look at, you know, watch movies, listen to music, be out in the world, go see exhibitions. Like there's so much culture
(0:54:30) And I think design sometimes likes to separate itself from pop culture. And I think we should just lean into that. You can borrow things from any of these things. And so if you're only looking at the stuff on Pinterest, only looking at the stuff that's on your hashtag branding mood board, you're going to make stuff that looks like that. But if you're looking at...
(0:54:50) movies and music and youtube videos and like all this other stuff then that's just a wider body of knowledge that you can pull from and new connections that you can make to then create stuff that's slightly different that's off yeah that's you know feels new in some way you know yeah because i mean yeah i agree with that thank you i mean it's just like yeah that's right it
(0:55:20) What I tell my students is if you want a job, because my students ask me all the time, like, especially when we do like really weird projects, you know, and I have students doing stuff that are not legible as design projects. I have students making films. I have students making, you know, I've had students who do performances, who have written poetry in a graphic design class.
(0:55:41) And I'll have students who will be like, how's this going to get me a job? How do I put this in my portfolio? You know, how am I going to do this? And I say, basically, there's two types of jobs. You can get a job where you're following the trends. You know, it's like they want somebody who knows how to follow directions and do a certain type of work and can work with design systems and blah, blah, blah. And if that's the kind of job you want, then you don't show any of this weird work.
(0:56:11) You show all that kind of stuff and you get that job. But if you want to work at a place where your point of view matters, where you as a person matters, where your interests seem like they could be relevant, then you show this other work. And if you show this other work and they don't like it, then that wasn't a good place for you to work anyway. You know, because because you want to show I had a student who just last week emailed me.
(0:56:40) and said that he just got a job from a video that he made in a class and an essay that he wrote in one of my classes, not any of his design work, like classic design work. He went into the interview and they said, look, we don't have a job right now, but we were kind of curious about your portfolio. We will look at it. And he went through a portfolio and he gets to this video and he shows him the video and he shows him this essay.
(0:57:01) And the interviewer is like, oh, you're the same kind of weird as us. And they created a job for him, you know, because of because of that weird. I don't mean to say personal work is in self-generated work, but work where there's a point of view where there was a sense that a person made this, not a brand, not a system, not an AI. And there was a connection there. Mm hmm.
(0:57:26) And I think there are more opportunities like that than we sometimes like to believe. We think everybody wants that other stuff. We want people to follow the rules. I think there are also a lot of jobs where it's like we actually need people who are like interesting and creative thinkers and can break us out of this monotony. And you decide what you want to do. And that's up to each person. And that's not a value judgment that one or the other is better. Everybody needs a job. I get that.
(0:57:52) kind of job do you want to have what kind of work you want to do and that's you know that's a personal decision um and no judgment on whichever one of those you take i've taken jobs because i need the money and i'll do the work that looks like that and i've also turned jobs down because of that and i've taken jobs because of um a unique thing that i thought i could give or i was hired for that reason you know i think that's that's up to everybody so you teach undergrad right uh mostly yeah i occasionally will teach grad students
(0:58:22) What would you tell you if you were in your students' positions entering the design world right now? I would say two things.
(0:58:43) they're kind of related and as i as i'm thinking about this i was like oh there's actually i would also say this i would also say this i would also say that um one i think every generation gets to redefine graphic design for that generation graphic design of 20 years ago is not what graphic design looks like today graphic design of 50 years ago is not what graphic design looks like today graphic design of 100 years ago does not look like graphic design is today
(0:59:05) And I think graphic design gets created by designers deciding what kind of work they want to do. And so just because your professors are telling you this is the type of jobs that are available right now, this is what it means to be a graphic designer, I don't think that that's gospel. I don't think that that's the only way. I think...
(0:59:25) You have graduated with a set of skills and you get to decide where you want to take those skills and how you want to apply those skills. And in doing that, you get to expand what graphic design can be. You get to slightly change what graphic design can be. It doesn't always have to be just what has come before.
(0:59:41) So that's one. Two is there's a designer, Richard Hollis, whose definition of graphic design is graphic design is anything made by a graphic designer, which is my favorite definition of graphic design. And so with these skills, you can do whatever you want. You can make whatever you want. Design is medium agnostic.
(1:00:00) Like it is not just apps. It's not just posters. It's not just brands. It's not just this. It's also, it can also be videos. It can be films. It can be writing. It can be a podcast. It can be a conversation. It can be an event. What is the thing you want to communicate? What's the thing you want to say? What's the form to do that? And like,
(1:00:23) Do it. Do it. Don't be held down by what people tell you design is and what design is not because it's all flexible and it's moving all the time. I know you said that. I know I asked if that was for you, but that was also for me because everyone asks me why I'm in radio as a graphic designer because they think that those two fields are the opposite. One is non-visual and one is incredibly visual. And I've had to argue being like, actually, it's about communication.
(1:00:50) and graphic design doesn't have to be visual yeah and it's like that that that was that was good for me to hear because i love radio and i love design and they can be the same thing i mean it's coming from a podcaster who thinks that his podcast is also a design project um so yeah you're this show this conversation i would argue is graphic design
(1:01:17) Hey, thanks for listening to Type Speaks. Hope you had a good time, because I sure did. But unfortunately, the episode is over. But don't worry, you can check us out in other places. Be sure to follow the show to listen to every new episode or listen back to some old ones. Check us out on Instagram at typespeakspod. And remember, always keep curating and always stay curious. I'll see you next time. I've been Ray.