Chain Letters


Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Celene Aubry
 “The natural path to solving any design problem is rarely straight.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Melissa Deckert + Nicole Licht
 "We really enjoy the ideation stage of a project because it is where we can be thoughtful and considered, but also allow ourselves to entertain crazy ideas."
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Victor Melendez
 This December, we’re elevating the act of gift giving by pondering the items inside the box: examining design as craft, poring over process, and picking the brains of designers whose technical skill turn products into objets d’art.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Dana Chisnell
 You might think these aren’t design questions, but you’re in the business of culture change.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Toni L. Griffin
 I strongly believe—and have seen firsthand—how shared ownership in creating a vision plan inspires greater collective action.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Chelsea Mauldin
 “Most broken government systems are not designed—they accrete, bits and pieces stuck on to address problems.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Steven Heller
 “Design is a profession that has grown out of its stereotypes.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Elysia Borowy-Reeder
 “Information is everywhere now. We need educated, well-versed curators to make sense of it.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Alexander Tochilovsky
 "Reading the imprint of past choices can teach us a lot about how to be a designer today."



Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Sean Adams
 The point regarding design history is about documentation. If the work is not documented and disseminated, it disappears.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Margaret Gould Stewart
 Margaret Gould Stewart is Vice-President of Product Design at Facebook where she leads a global team of product designers and researchers for teams such as Artificial Intelligence and Privacy & Data Use.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Arthur Cohen
 I support a world in which design is not elevated and codified into some idealized “other,” but rather integrated into everyday practice that is just good business.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Randy J. Hunt
 “There are examples of designs that were the spark of an innovation and there are examples of designs that added to and evolved an otherwise already innovative idea.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Grace Jun
 “Design is way of seeing and a way of doing. A unique perspective and method that combined can lead to innovation.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Zachary Lieberman
 “Tools and jobs will always change but the fundamentals stay the same.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Paul Pangaro
 In my experience, an understanding of the processes of design and the means for expanding techniques and capabilities are a matter of practice and critique, tightly coupled.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Dori Tunstall
 “Designing is not about a job. Design is one of many pathways for doing meaningful work in the world.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Gail Anderson
 “As a designer, I am sensitive to the way people consume information, and very concerned about the survival of print.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Joan Wong
 “I’m not sure the experience between print and ebooks is really that different.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Jennifer 8. Lee
 “In my line of work, sometimes you have to wait for the future to catch up.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Anna Gerber
 “Readers and writers are open, adventurous, and eager to try new things. Even if those experiences are not always perfect.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Paul Moore
 “Streaming has shocked new life into the music industry and the vinyl we all hold dear to our hearts. Now the platform is finding a new generation of ardent fans. As designers, that’s where we can influence a movement.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Emily Batson
 “A key part of my job is collaboration. I enjoy the negotiation of finding a concept that truly works.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Frank Ockenfels 3
 “I am a true believer of creating in the moment.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Lawrence Azerrad
 It‘s June, and you know what that means—the unofficial kick-off of summer concert season. This month, we examine design and music, and why fans everywhere benefit when these creative industries work in concert.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Jamer Hunt
 “And it’s likely the case that most design criticism today focuses on ideology more than aesthetics, as we’re going through a period of long-overdue self-scrutiny.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Molly Heintz
 Labeling design, or anything, “good” is a slippery slope—good for whom?



Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Andrew Blauvelt
 Criticism allows for self-reflection, and that is necessary when we use words like discipline and field to talk about design.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Alice Twemlow
 “Of course design criticism is still relevant—it just inhabits formats that we might be less familiar with.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Karin Fong
 “A bit of uncertainty is good for the design process. I would hate to be trapped in the sureness of my own thoughts.”



Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Deva Pardue
 “I don’t believe that being an artist or a designer by definition makes you an activist. I think the responsibility arises when you have something relevant to say.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Rhea Combs
 “I believe art has many functions, and one of them is to interrogate the status quo.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Lindsay Peoples
 Celebrating Women’s History month and how to better design for inclusivity with The Cut’s fashion market editor, Lindsay Peoples.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Julian Alexander
 What made Julian Alexander become a designer, and what was it like working with 50 Cent during the start of his career?



Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Jason Murphy
 “Inclusivity. That is the cliché. Where are they doing that?”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Ced Funches
 “Admitting you may not be the best person to bring a vision to life is the hard part.”



Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Dian Holton
 "As designers, we are problem-solvers, visionaries, and teachers," says Holton. "It’s important for us to be empathic and proactive in learning about our audience, so that we can provide meaningful experiences. This means getting to know the people who may not be like you."
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Briana Como
 “We make an effort to be aware of and remove bias by focusing on behaviors instead of demographics when creating distinct personas.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Sarah Doody
 “With anything we create, the first step in the design process must be to understand. This happens through research.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Richard Ting
 Richard Ting, Global Chief Experience Officer at R/GA, continues our Chain Letters interview series.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Jessica Gaddis
 This interview is part of a new Design Observer series, Chain Letters, in which we ask leading design minds a few burning questions—and so do their peers, for a year-long conversation about the state of the industry.



Observed


A number of prominent—and progressive—initiatives that once promised to attract women and people of color to the tech industry (including Girls In Tech and Women Who Code) are closing. Three reporters at The Washington Post dig in: “The drop in support for programs that tech companies once touted as a sign of their commitment to adding women, Black people and Hispanic people to their ranks follows a right-wing campaign to challenge diversity initiatives in court.”

Celebrating Black Business month with two inspiring design legends, Kevan Hall and TJ Walker – the founders of the Black Design Collective.

Book cover design is a careful navigation between creativity and brute-force market logic. But is it also inherently racist?

Designer's weigh in on … the Olympics!

Billed as a “color trend intelligence service,” Pantone Color Insider provides global data on use of all 15,000 shades in the company color matching system. This year's color? Peach Fuzz!

Lunacy on LinkedIn.

Brian Johnson—one of the founders of BIPOC Design History,  Creative Director at Polymode, and a member of the Monacan Indian Nation — has spent years researching Indigenous design in an effort to help decolonize graphic design by speaking to the field’s racial biases. Links to his essays for Hyperallergic  (including the brilliantly-titled How Can a Poster Sing?) are here.

Bring Them Home is a documentary film that highlights a small group of Blackfoot people on their mission to establish—on their own ancestral territory—the first wild buffalo herd since the species’ near-extinction a century ago, an act that would restore the land, re-enliven traditional culture, and bring much-needed healing to their community. The film, directed by Blackfeet (Niitsitapi/ Siksikaitsitapi) siblings Ivan and Ivy MacDonald alongside filmmaker Daniel Glick, has just won a climate justice award.

What knots in our histories do we need to disentangle? What future relationships do we need to re-weave? Who and what is missing from the connections we make and unmake with our systems and technologies? Spend two days this month in Sweden at The Conference and "you’ll walk away with new mindsets and materials, teachings and tools, practices and parallels to help get us out of “oh fuck,” and into “now what?”  

There are only 75 Māori architects among New Zealand's roughly 2,000 licensed practitioners (and fewer than 10 Pacific Islanders), despite these Indigenous groups making up more than 25 per cent of the country's population—but Elisapeta Heta is one, and she's got something to say about this—and why it matters. "It's no wonder that our built environments don't necessarily reflect who we are as people," she observes. "There's no diversity in it because it's all been designed through the same Western lens."

Through his charitable organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Michael Bloomberg is giving $175 million each to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and Howard University College of Medicine in Washington. These donations are believed to be the largest ever to any single H.B.C.U.

An indigenous design camp for teenagers is the first of its kind in the United States (or maybe anywhere). The goal is to teach Indigenous teens about the range of career options in architecture and design, a field where Native Americans are notably underrepresented.

The functional design elements of the new Michael Graves Design for Pottery Barn collection leverage ethnographic research across several communities, from those aging in place, to individuals with permanent, situational, or temporary disabilities, to those who are planning for the future without compromise, and those who want their homes to be welcoming to everybody, all without sacrificing good design.

“There is no doubt that domestic harmony is endangered by having a designer about,” Mr. Grange told The Daily Telegraph in 2012. “If you are good at your job you cannot avoid looking at everything and, given half a chance, affecting it. I even have an opinion about a tea towel — I just cannot help it.” British industrial designer (and Pentagram co-founder) Sir Kenneth Grange has died. He was 95. 

It's August! You may be heading out on that much-needed vacation! And how will you get there? Map lovers—and travelers all—rejoice! And look no further.

Did you know there is a way to dig in deep to stories about the Olympics that are design-focused? You do, now!

A design-focused conversation about coding, communication, and the beauty of simplicity.

TBD*—the  in-house design studio of the CCA in San Francisco—is looking for local nonprofit/civic partners needing design help this coming fall. Details here.

What does it mean to bestow a “good design” award in today’s design landscape—especially within the context of public space?

A logo conspiracy theory—about the Olympics?

The recent handoff from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris obliged the campaign's designers to launch a new Harris for President logo in just three hours: they also crafted an entire brand refresh—including ads and print collateral AND a website—all of which they built out in just over a day. More on this massive (and speedy) undertaking here.

Our friends at WXY Architecture and Jerome Haferd Studio are among four firms that have won a competition to design a series of cultural venues for historic Africatown in Alabama.

“Our mascot, Phryges, is based on the Phrygian hat, which is a powerful emblem in France on everything from coins to stamps. Phryges is gender-free, which feels appropriate because this is the society we live in. Toys should be for everyone, and not gendered.” An interview with Joachim Roncin, the designer of the Paris Olympics.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently announced that it would eliminate the term “equity” from its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) language. “What organizations like SHRM may or may not realize is that abandoning the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion causes real harm and serious pain,” says Amira Barger. “By sidelining equity, SHRM’s move may unintentionally exacerbate something called ‘dirty pain.’”

“As a person who spent the first part of my career as a graphic designer and art director, I immediately saw the visual power and nearly infinite graphic possibilities of this image.” In today's New York Times, Charles Blow discusses the irrefutable power of an iconic photograph.

In New York City, The Design Trust for Public Space is looking for photographers with “unique lenses on an equitable water future for New York”. Deadline for entry is 11 August. More here.

One artist's (musical) cry for help—or at least, fewer fast-food franchises in North Adams, Massachusetts.

“My design philosophy is to make people happy and comfortable in their environment,” says the 83-year old Irish designer known simply by her first name—Clodagh. “Since I don’t know the rules, I can actually break them all the time.” 

Design for accessibility, blessedly, is on the minds of architects and builders all over the world. Given the fact that an estimated 15-20% of the population is neurodivergent, commercial buildings are increasingly working to become more welcoming, inclusive, and comfortable for all individuals.

“While designers are eager for praise and acclaim and create an aura of ostensibly cultured and intellectual pursuit, often involving awards and accolades, design itself takes no responsibility for what happens when things go wrong.” An excerpt from Manuel Lima's latest book.  



Jobs | November 25