Explicit

Debbie Millman

Published Oct 19, 2021, 7:30 AM

Debbie Millman is a world-class graphic designer and one of the most creative people in business. Debbie joins Sophia on the podcast today to talk about how everybody wants to make a difference in some way, the impact of design on our world, and her new book Why Design Matters, on-sale in early 2022!


Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions

Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo

Editor: Josh Windisch

Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters

This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy

Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to Work in Progress. Today's guest is a world class designer and one of the most creative people in business. That's actually a direct quote from Fast Company. And she happens to be a person who I have the most enormous brain crush on, So I am elated that she's here today. We are welcoming the inimitable Debbie Millman to Work in Progress. Debbie is a graphic designer and an educator. She's presented keynote lectures from Princeton University, to the Hong Kong Design Association to Barcelona's Festival of Art and Design. She's also a powerful voice in the podcasting community. Her show Design Matters dates back to almost the birth of the medium and has maintained a strong following for almost sixteen years. Apple Podcasts has even designated Design Matters as one of the best overall podcasts ever. As an activist, Debbie has contributed to a variety of organizations dedicated to the eradication of sexual assault and domestic violence, and she's even taken a more hands on role as part of Mauritka harget Is Joyful Heart Foundation. Most recently Debbie has authored a brand new book called Why Design Matters. The book features transcripts of some of Debbie's best interviews from Design Matters, quotes from her expert guests, beautiful photography, and of course, Stunning Design. Will get more details about the book, as well as Debbie's career and her passion for causes in this episode. I hope you enjoy h well. I I'm just I'm so thrilled to have you on the show today, Debbie. Thank you so much for joining me. Oh my absolute pleasure, Sophie. It is so exciting to meet you and to be here with you. I'm such an enormous fan of yours, of your writing and your speaking and your work and your podcast and the way that you help so many people really consider an understand design. Thank you, Thank you very much, and I'm I'm so excited to talk to you about it because I I think about how design affects everything from how spaces feel to how our cities work and sometimes don't. I think about the design required to tackle things like the current issue of America's crumbling infrastructure and how it needs to be rebuilt and bolstered. I mean, it's design is energetic and political and motivating and filled with art and capable in and of itself. And I'm just oh, I'm so excited to ask you all about how you got into it and and became this expert. But before I um, I completely start to blush about my thrill in this moment, I need to actually go backwards before we we tackle the present. I love to see how the people who joined me on the show got to where they are today. So if if you'll take a ride with me, I'd I'd love to go back to the beginning. I'd love to know you know where home was for you as a kid. What what was your life like pre pre double digits, you know, when when you were little. Well, I'm a native New Yorker, one of the few. I was born in Brooklyn, moved to Howard Beach, Queens when I was too lived there till the middle of third grade, um, and then moved to Staten Island. So I've lived in all the boroughs except the bronx Um lived on Staten Island for about two and a half years that my parents got divorced. My mom got married within a year remarried, and she and her new husband and his two kids and me and my brother all moved to Long Island, and I lived on Long Island until I graduated high school and then went to Sunni albany Um in the capital of New York for college. But growing up it was it was really I called my childhood and adolescents the Black Years because they were so challenging. My parents divorce was was really ugly. My mom's second marriage was really abusive and violent and terrifying in many, many, many ways. I know we share a mutual friend, Mrs Harcit, and so I often talked about how my early life was like an episode of s vu Um and which is why I now work with mauritika Um at the Joyful Heart Foundation. But I went off to college, started to make a life of my own, discovered design, and have had over the years a really interesting and evolving career, sort of trying to make my early childhood dreams come home as as you know, an adult, were you thinking about design as a kid. It's so interesting to me that, you know, you talk about that period of difficulty and I imagine trauma and you assign a color to it, which, yes, is suching. Yeah, I really thought of it that way. But yes, absolutely, when I think of someone quite literally designing something, you know, Um, I guess what comes to mind for me, perhaps because of what I do, is you know, a movie poster or a billboard and to say that this, this story, this moment in this person's life is black. That strikes me as beautiful and poignant and um. And I wonder when you look back on it, do you see that budding passion for design then? Was it? Was it present? Was it perhaps you know, a way to escape and imagine? Oh for sure, I don't know that I would have put a label on it. I know looking back. I love to make things, and I was always making things. I was making perfume out of rose petals and baby oil and Malcolm powder, which just resulted in a sort of pink glooy mess. I made a magazine with one of my childhood friends who's also was named Debbie, and we came up with a great name for magazine. I still think it's a great name, Debutante. You know, both Debbie's. I was always making plays with the assigning parts to my brethren, my stepsisters, and doing whatever I could to really make my imagination come to life. And now I can say that I'm truly happiest when I'm making something, especially when I'm making something from nothing, you know, when there's no preconceived rules, when you don't have to follow any directions and you can just sort of improvise and make it up as you go along. And it could be a podcast, it could be a class uh syllables, it could be a presentation, it could be a piece of art. You know. For me, it's just the act of making that makes me happiest. I love that. And you refer to you know, your brother and your stepsisters. For all of you as kids, I imagine your circumstances were tough for everyone. Were you able to create kind of a team and and be each other's support system in that environment? Yes, and no, to a degree. My brother and I were very close at that point. Our stepfather, my stepfather, their biological father, sort of played us against each other in in a lot of ways. And they were married for only four years. So that's probably a blessing, you know, in disguise in some ways. Um So, from the time I was They met when I was in fifth grade and got divorced when I was I think in ninth, and then for lots and lots and lots and lots of reasons, never saw them again, never heard from them again. And then in um one of my stepsisters wrote me on Facebook with an incredible Yeah. I mean I can't really say it's incredible because of the content, but it was incredible because of the way I perceived the content, which was she wrote me, and all all she wrote was is it you? And I wrote back yes, and then she wrote back and then we started talking. And I have talked on the telephone a few times. And it's sort of interesting when you think about your life. A lot of times, I think people question their memories, they questioned their experiences. Was that exactly how it happened. Sometimes I'll watch something that I haven't seen in forty years, and I'll think, oh, I remembered that differently, or even that great great Harold pinter play Betrayal, where they're each remembering the two characters are each remembering the exact same situation in a very different way. One thought it was in their their kitchen, the other thought it was in their kitchen, and they're fighting about whose kitchen it was in. And it was remarkable to talk to this person, this this step sister that I had forty five years ago and have so many of the same memories. You know, it's such an incredible thing to be witnessed in the same way you remember living and sharing that I think was really healing for both of us. I can imagine, especially as you said, you know, such a sort of seminal time in the development of young women, you know, fifth to ninth grade. That's yeah, that's I just think about how impressionable you are and how much imprinting happens, and and it it's no surprise to me that you guys have that kind of tether. Yeah, yeah, that's it's a good word for it. Tether is a good word. And how special that you found making and creating, you know, glovy messes. Is it sometimes resulting that that you found this outlet to investigate and explore? Um, I imagine that that was just so incredibly motivating and gave you your own world? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. I even made a piece of art from my SIPs. Sister's first question to me, is it you? Um? I was commissioned to do something for American Poets Magazine, And when I was commissioned to do a piece of art for their cover and decided to use that phrase is it you? And you know it could mean so many things, um, and I was just so my heart sort of burst a little bit when when I saw it printed. M hmm, yeah. That that's the kind of thing that really cuts to the core of something I You know, there's that famous saddest story ever written in six words, Oh Ernest Hemingway, never warned, ever, never warned you, and that that it's such a it's like a lightning rod. And is it you? I think, well, at least for me, it feels like a lightning rod kind of sentence. To read to me three words it makes my chest flutter a bit to be in this position now as a maker and an artist, and a teacher and a leader. Do you look back at that time, especially you know you spoke about entering into the ninth grade. I think about, um, those four years of high school and what they mean to so many of us who are trying to find ourselves. Do you do you see now looking back at that time your decision to pursue design, or or perhaps even the you know, the teachers or professors who were inspiring you to find the beginning of that path, not really until much later. UM. I graduated high school really quite unsure about what I wanted to do. My sole decision for choosing the college that I did was because my best friend was going and we decided we were going to try to be roommates and um and that was a nice safety net for me, and I had a very limited range of schools that I could choose from because as they had to be state schools because of what I could afford. But it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made, because I really did begin to find some of my I guess, my creative ambition and some professional hopes and dreams. That all began when I started working at the college newspaper, and I became the arts and features editor in my senior year of college, and as a requirement of the editor, you also had to what was then called put the paper together, which was designing it. And so I learned very quickly how to do basically out and paste up, but fell madly in love with doing it, so much so that I think it's somehow sometimes UM, I spent more time designing than I did editing. And then when I graduated. It really became an opportunity for me to use the only marketable skills I had, which were basic layout and paste up, And then immediately moved to Manhattan, lived in a four story tenement walk up and started pounding the pavement, because that's what you did back then in the in the early eighties, you know, you looked in the New York Times and went and tried to find jobs, sort of going almost door to door, and and found my first job through a wanted in the New York Times. And where did you land What was that first job I landed? I landed at a cable magazine. So back in the eighties, the early eighties, cable was all the rage. Suddenly you had more than just the thirteen channels, and there was a whole magazine about the same same way there was TV Guide, there was Cable View, and and that's where I worked, and I was a traffic girl between the design department and the editorial department. Rose through the ranks and became an editor, which is not in any way impressive. There were like nine of us, and really spent that first year in Manhattan enthralled with what it me to be living in Manhattan and working as a designer. At the time, I knew that I wasn't pursuing the fine art that I wanted to. I wasn't pursuing writing as a career or art as a career. I was pursuing something commercial. But at the time, the lead gene for me, Sophia was really self sufficiency. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to be able to take care of myself. I wanted to be able to be completely independent. I didn't want to have to rely on anyone. So, inasmuch as I did have more creative aspirations than commercial, I was also very financially oriented because I wanted to be able to live on my now. I mean I had roommates. So when I say on my own, just away from the family and be able to pay my rent and you know, buy some pretty clothes every now and then design again, Yes, what what? Looking back? What designs or perhaps even designers would you say in onced you most when you were getting started, When when you were, as you said, you know, pounding the pavement and going to your first job, do you recall what you looked up to? Oh? Absolutely, I started working in but really had a very very limited purview of design. I was aware of the power of design, but not really the discipline so much. And it really wasn't until five or six years later that I became aware of what was happening around me, because simultaneously to my evolution as a designer, the New York School of Design was first gaining real prominence, with people like Tiboor Hellman Um, Emily Oberman, uh, Stephen Doyle and Bill Drantell of Drentell Doyle, the folks at Manhattan Design, Double Space, Frankfort, Kipps, ball Kind. The design that was coming out of New York at that time really changed the game, really changed to any century design. And suddenly I looked around me and realized just how little I knew, how much better everyone was at this than I was, And decided at that point, at about thirty years old, to stop what I was doing at that point and try to learn how to become a better designer and a better sort of critical thinker, and kind of started over at thirty one of my first sort of re one of my first pivots into a sort of different way of living. I love that. I also love a the acknowledgement of a start over at a at a new decade, because I think so many people, especially you know, any young people who are listening, think they're supposed to have it all figured out. They're supposed to make a decision in college, choose a job, you know, and and I think it's so delicious to constantly reinvent yourself. Yes, I almost think of it less as a reinvention and more as a permission love to explore what you learn, you're interested in as you absolutely absolutely and I find it so heartbreaking for young people to feel that they have to know I teach. In addition to running my graduate program, I teach an undergraduate class every semester, and I kind of do that for very selfish reasons. I really want to know what the pulses of young people and hear what they're thinking about and obsessed with and so forth. But I do an exercise with them where they really think about what their lives could be in the future. And it's heartbreaking to realize how many people in their very early twenties are already beginning to edit what's possible for them before they even consider whether it's even really possible. They just assume that they can't because someone else could do it better. And there's so much comparison and so much fear of not being able to make it, or not being able to make it big, or and what does it mean, you know, to make it big? And they're all so consumed by not embarrassing themselves or their parents or looking foolish. And I'm like, if you can't look foolish when you're when can you. And it's astonishing to see you mentioned the word before, that imprint already being so solidified that it's almost like having to reorient a neural pathway in their brains to get them to consider possibilities that they've already at one determined wasn't possible for them. And mostly I feel like it's important to do that because I feel like that would have been so wonderful for me to experience at that time, and I didn't really have that, So it's it's something that I'm really committed to doing. I love that I think about it, you know, pondering why the pressure feels so intense, and I wonder if it's because all of these tools of design that we now have in our fingertips allow us to see so much success that we've recalibrated our expectation, and we think that the success that people share on their highlight reel is their day to day experience. We don't actually see it work that goes into the success and the failure and the rejection. We just see everybody nailing it all the time, and we wonder why we're not nailing it without a doubt, without a doubt. You know, if you look back to pre Facebook, when you look back to even a time like my Space, you know, I remember when my Space came out, my god daughter, who was in high school at the time, asked me why I thought it was so popular, And she was asking me specifically because of my work in branding and because of how much time I've spent positioning and repositioning and redesigning really big brands. And I didn't know at the time. I had no idea, and I was sort of ashamed about not knowing, because here was this thing at the time that had recently surpassed Google in the number of page views that it was getting every day. And it took me many years to figure it out. And by the time I figured it out, my Space was no longer the most popular brand in the world. But at the time Facebook was so it still kind of made sense. And you know, if you think about the time before two before Facebook launched in two six, the iPod had come out, and the thread that was running through our culture was how we we're now living in isolation we were living in The New York Times called its social enemy because of the bubbles we were living in in our iPods, where we were suddenly in control of all of our entertainment and we were turning into a generational loners. Well, if our basic human instinct is to connect with each other, what does that do? It sort of flies in the face of everything that we have imprinted in us. And so it's not surprising then that when we were able to connect through the device, suddenly that this site became the most popular site in the world and then transferred its power to the newer, better, sexier, funnier social sites. Um, you know, we're not really addicted to those sites where to the feeling we get being connected to people, But then the insidious part is what happens next. You know, that instinct to connect is there, but so is our instinct to be the fittest, you know, the survival of the fittest, and so what do we do? We compare, we compare, and it's a real dilemma. It's a challenge because Generation Z is now nickname Generation d D for depressed, because they are constantly comparing and feeling bad about who they are in relation to others. I mean, I joke, now, who comes away from Instagram after thirty minutes scrolling ever feeling good about themselves? Who? You know? Beyonce, you know, j Lo, you know, and who knows if they're even really on it? And it's them posting, you know. I I don't know that what we're seeing is ever really helpful anymore because it's just mostly I mean, we cheer for people when they have babies or get married, but for those of us that are struggling with a bad day, having just had a fight with our friends whatever, you know, it makes you feel really small and lonely. And I and I worry about what that means for the people that are being formed on it, you know, for people that are older, we we still have that early imprint that we can hold on to, but and think about how hard it is for us, yes, yes, so what about the young people who have never lived without it. It's actually so interesting. You know you talked about the the feeling of feeling lonely, the feeling of feeling depressed. And I won't say like you, because I don't know that there's anyone's brain like you. But similarly to you, I see things very visually. Even when I think about something, I get an image. Um, probably because I, you know, grew up working for my dad who was a photographer for his whole working career, and you know, I make moving pictures for my career. And the image that came to mind for me was that sad, sad, classic photograph we've all seen of a person just sitting alone at a slot machine in Las Vegas, looking depressed, but they can't stop pulling the lever. And it comes to mind because I actually read a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone, and it talks about it's a very smart You've got to read it. The irony. I'm going to fully be vulnerable with you and all of our listeners today. I stopped about halfway through the book. I was like, WHOA, I am not ready for this. This is a lot of information, um. And so now it just sits on my nightstand, taunting me to finish it because I know that when I finished it, I have to break up with my phone, and that is daunting. But it helped me recalibrate even my relationship to it, because it taught me something about design. And it's the designers of smartphones used the same studies that were done to design slot machines. Yes, they're designed to be addictive and repetitive and to make you think that just the next time you touch that screen, the next time you pull that lever, the next time you thumb Scurorell down, you're going to win something, Yes, and you never do. It's it's really astonishing how well they mimic that. And you know, I've thought a lot about slot machines over the years and why people are so addicted to them, and why they sit there and just sort of press and press and press. And there's that moment before the numbers or the symbols hit where you have hope, where you think everything can change in an all second. Yeah, and and that is so as you said before, Delicious, that idea that suddenly all your problems could be gone if you win the jackpot, you know, and I think that the same thing happens, not so much that everything will be different in an instant with your phone, but the constant somebody wants me, needs me, likes me, follows me, is interested in me, is contacting me. You know, it's that dopamine hit that can never ever be long lasting. That's just the nature of dopamine. And and and that sort of sense of that charge that we get, that hit that we get. So I'm fascinated by this. We're looking at this sort of sliver in time. You know, we're talking about smartphones, iPhones, Instagram. Um. You mentioned Facebook coming out around two thousand six, my Space before that, and and what led us down this road was you talking about this incredible boom and design from getting that first cable magazine job in and what happened from that year leading up to this permission slift. You wrote yourself at thirty and you said something that I find so interesting that you were aware of design but not the discipline of it and getting into the discipline and the expertise UM, and and the boom happening at a time when, as you said, you know, the or net was coming, Google was coming, the the access was being born. The great side of tech. Can you tell us a little bit about first what what it means to be aware of it versus the discipline of it? And then I then I'm curious about how technology enabled all of us to understand design better. As a sort of second part, No, no, no big deal. Well, you kind of have to go back to the beginning of our modern history as the species, because we started creating intentional marks to record our reality. And that is something that we still do today. If we go back about eighteen thousand years ago, and now archaeologists are finding that it's far far, far far further back in time. But the caves of let's go where we found the markings of humans that were recording their history. They were drawing the most that they were killing. They were um drawing each other. We have been marking our reality since the beginning of our modern history. And however that is imprinted in us. Whatever that part of our brain is that fundamentally needs to connect with others and share, is exactly the same. Now. We went from that too, beginning to record our relationship to what we believed was a higher power. Every every tribe of religious people from ten thousand years ago until now has used symbols to signify their beliefs and affiliations. No matter where they were on the planet, they all created symbols. They all created places to worship together. They all created very specific rich wells. Many of those rituals were identical despite different religious beliefs. How women cover their hair, what we can and can't eat, how we prepare our food. Marriage, the signification of marriage with wedding bands or other marks to indicate being committed to someone else. We behave as a species very very similarly, regardless of our gender, our orientation, our race, our class. These are all the foundations of our relationship with design, because it was a decision that we made to create a mark that, through sharing, created consensus, and that consensus is what allows us to all keep track of reality because we believe something very similar about this specific thing. Our earliest our earliest fights as a species were because we were fighting either over land or God. Whose beliefs are right? Whose land does this belong to? Most of our early wars were religious in nature, and we created flags on the battlefield to signify what site we were on because essentially people look the same, and so there was no way to tell friend from foe, and then that turned into crests and shields, and that turned into brand logos and the Nike swoosh and everything else. It's it's really quite an astonishing, consistent way of behaving that has changed very little in the last ten thousand years. That's so cool. I've read an article just this summer about a group of archaeologists studying cave paintings, old old carvings and caves, and they were theorizing that perhaps the imagery that they were seeing that then had these strange sort of vertical lines carved through them. They thought, oh, we're people trying to essentially paint over the canvas, so they could, you know, do something new, and then realized, oh, this isn't working in the rock. And it took them some time, and what they finally realized was they were in these caves with you know, giant flashlights torches, analyzing, and that in history man didn't have that, And so they brought fire in and realized that as you moved through the cave in the in the actual light of a campfire a burning torch, that these strange squiggly lines as you went from one side of an image, you know, a few feet over to the other made the images look like they were moving. Oh God, that's so great. And these scientists, I mean, I have goose bumps thinking about it. They wrote about how this was the first movie that these cave carvings were done in a manner that in firelight looked like they were moving, the animals, the grass, the people, and I I just thought, to your point, we've always tried to preserve this. You know, our memories are our experiences, and and I I suppose it's why I love to lean into experts like you, minds like yours, you know, shows like Abstract on Netflix. I mean, from typography to lighting design. I just I love seeing the inside of of so many of these people's minds. And I I wonder if for you, loving the sort of history and the totality and the possibility all wrapped up in design, is that what motivated you to to start Design Matters, to interview other designers, to you know, to launch I mean, you launched a podcast sixteen years ago, talk about me on the Tip of the Spear in what arguably is a was at that time a new design model of communication and exploration. I mean, what what made you decide to start that, and how in the world did you pick a podcast? Then, well, it's it was an interesting time in my life. I talked a little bit about how you know, those black years turned into that. That first I would say thirteen or so years of my career I called I call them experiments in rejection and failure because they were just saying I just kept trying from thing to thing to thing to thing, and finally fell into branding quite by accident. And then yeah, I went from design into branding, and it's a natural evolution and a lot of people do it now, but at the time I had no idea what I was doing. It was I needed a job, jub I had sort of failed as a designer. I'd sort of filled as a project manager at the time, and somebody was offering me a job as a salesperson and I needed to pay my mortgage and took the job and ended up being quite by accident, very very good at it, and then rose back up through the ranks over those years. But when I got to Sterling Brands, I first experienced my professional success. That was like the first time in my life I was ever really acknowledged as good at something, and so for the first eight years of doing it, that's all I wanted to do. You get that first taste of feeling good about yourself, It's like I want more. I want more and more dopamine, more dope me more, dope meine. And so I gave up all of my sort of creative pursuits which had kind of gone nowhere. Um. I stopped writing, I stopped drawing, I put my guitar into the bed. I even stopped doing textile work and needle point and things that I've been doing just for fun and just worked seven and it was, you know, and looking back on it, I'm glad I did it. It got me an opportunity to sell a very successful company and do really well for myself at the time. But after about eight years, I started to feel like, you know, everything I'm doing is so commercial and it's all about return on an investment, market, share position, shareholders, consumers. I'm losing my creative soul. I actually thought it might be dead or certainly dying. And then one day I got a cold call from a internet a fledgling internet radio network who had seen something that I had written about election graphics that had gone a little bit viral. And this was in two thousand and four and it was m a piece that I had written about purple states as opposed to red or blue. And I wrote it with a dear friend of mine, Mark Kingsley, on the first ever design blog called Speak Up. And they called me. I thought they were offering me a job, Sophia. I was like, are you offering me a job? Was like a talk show host? And like, know my my eyes had like the money sign like bugs bunny, like just rolling around, and I was like, oh my god, they weren't. They were offering me an opportunity to pay them to create a vanity show on their radio network. And and that was very typical at the time and it might still be. I was. It was a real hall Mary. I was like, this is kind of creative, and maybe I can interview my clients and I can kind of have it be a little bit about branding, which is what they wanted, but I can really you can go in as a trojan horse. I'll say it's about branding, but really be about design, and and that's and that's sort of what I did. I paid them five thousand dollars to produce thirteen episodes, and in February of two thousand and five, my my little radio, live radio show launched. At the time, Sterling Brands was located in the Empire State Building, so I could very legitimately say broadcasting live from the Empire State Building and and that was it. It was on one time live during the week on Fridays at three pm Eastern and then rerun three hours of the morning during the week, and one of the one of the co founders of Speak Up rany Go, miss Plascio, said to me, you know, it's really inconvenient just have the show on one time a week that we can listen to. Why don't you take the digital file and uploaded to Apple, upload it to iTunes like an indie musician. There was no podcast section at that point, and I thought, oh, what a great idea. That's a great idea, and so that's what I started to do and inadvertently became one of the first and longest running podcast But it wasn't intended in any way to be I wasn't intending for it to be, you know, a pioneering thing, and the sound at the time was utterly unlistenable. I was doing interviews Sofia with people and I was sitting across from them in the Empire Stab building. They'd to my office. Um, and we each have a handset, a landline telephone handset that was then put through a modem and sent to my producers in Arizona. And I swear my producers could have been stand ins for Wayne and Garth in Wayne's world. Um. And you know, there were times where I felt like, hey, guys, are you there? Are you? Are you like smoking a bong or something? You know, it was so it was so bootstrap and bed and but I really fell in love with it. And I did a hundred episodes on Voice America. And then in two thousand nine, the late great Builder and Tell, one of my heroes from my earlier career attempts, approached me and asked me if I would be interested in bringing it to his blog, which was also another one of the first design blogs and Design Observer. And but with the proviso that I improved the sound quality, It's like, you have to get a real producer, you have to be able to do this professionally and not some you know, clap trap, little bootstrap radio, rinky ding, you know, can with a string on it kind of thing. And I didn't have any access to producers or didn't know anybody, and so he introduced me to Curtis Fox, who was then doing the New Yorkers podcast, and Curtis became my producer has been my producer ever since. So it's twelve years and um I was on Design Observer exclusively for a really long time. Two years ago I started to be now part of the Ted Audio Collective. So after my Ted Talk, I was invited to participate in the Ted Audio Collective. So now the show is distributed through TED and it's just grown very organically over you know, it's nearly seventeen years now, and it became one of these sort of unexpected gifts of a lifetime that is so cool when you look back at all of these episodes that you've recorded. Are are there episodes in particular that you always think about when people ask what episodes do you think about? You know, things that have changed the way that you approach your creative endeavors or or the way that you think about things. Yes, and lots for different reasons. My first interview with Milton Glazer, who was the most sort of the first legend I ever interviewed. I was very intimidated. Also, my my first interview with Massimovanielli, another legendary designer who at the time I first was trying to reach him, didn't have an email address. That's how far back this goes. And I decided to call his studio and he answered the phone was likely, sir, Can you tell our listeners who may not be familiar with them a little bit about to whom you're refer Yeah, Milton Glazer designed the I Heart New York logo. He designed that very very famous Bob Dylan poster with the streams of color coming out of his hair and he's in profile. Massimo van Yelli designed the American Airlines logo, not the current one, but the one before that, and that was in existence for I don't know. It feels like most of history um so so people that really created the visual language of our time. And and what's interesting about those two in particular, I think they're the only two Sophia that I interviewed that seems sort of content with how their lives have have unfolded. They didn't have any particular regrets, They were very proud of their legacy. They were still very engaged in their work, and I came to realize that I think it's because I interviewed them when they were both in their late eighties, when they had like no more fs to give kind of thing. But and that's the only common denominator like they everybody else that I've interviewed. And this is something I've really come to understand in a way that I never expected. Everybody wants more. Everybody wants a bigger life and a bigger way of being able to connect, and everybody wants to make things. Everybody wants to make a difference. And very few people, aside from Milton or Massimo, of the nearly five people I've interviewed now are just like Okay, as is. They just want to keep growing, they want to keep learning, they want to keep making. And I think that that's part of what being an artist or a designer or creative person is, just this constant evolution and reinvention of creativity making things. When you think about that, it strikes me as really a perspective on the world. And I am curious how you think your background, your your level of expertise in design itself affects the way that you see and interact with the world around you. Well, there's sort of the practical and then some of the ritual, because I'm so schooled in now understanding how brands become what they are and what it takes to maintain the level of a Nike or an Apple or why things like the Tropicana debacle of two thousand and what was that. I don't remember what year it was, but the year that they redesigned and lost their market share in six weeks. Um. You know, I'm really aware of the of the inner workings of this methodology. I understand that kind of madness. So there's that, and then there's just the pure aesthetics, sometimes just admiring something for a cheer, beauty or ease of use, or how it makes you feel or how you are changed through the experience of using it somehow, and then also the sort of behind the scenes how did how did that happen? And trying to re engineer how something like that made it to market. So yeah, I can't I can't help but still do those things. When you think about that branding brain that you have because you've you've worked in it, you see it, you know it I imagine you can't turn it off. Sometimes, much to my dismay, I have that. I have that with my activist brain. Sometimes I just want to go to a dinner party, and the minute I hear that something's wrong somewhere, I'm like, I can't, so I have to go read an article. So I totally get it. Yeah, you just you can't. You can't turn off. You can't turn it off after after a time. I think when you when you dedicate so much of yourself to something, and and I wonder when you think about brands you've worked on, or perhaps you know lessons from the world of branding that might be great to share. I I know there's folks at home or like, wait, but I want to know more about what she what she means, what's she talking about? Are there some of those things you might be able to share with us? Absolutely? Um. There are two that come immediately to mind, and the two of the most recognizable marks in the world and have been for a very long time. The first is the Nike swoosh, of course. Um. The Nike swoosh was created by a college student named Caroline Davidson, and she did it overnight for Phil Knight. I think she was paid at the time. She's still she's since been made whole, but at the time she was paid thirty five dollars when film Night first saw Phil Knight as the CEO of Nike. When he first saw the logo, uh, he didn't like it. Actually said, I don't love it, but but maybe it'll grow on me. He had a deadline, he had sneaker shoeboxes to print, and he needed the logo. He preferred the Adidas logo. He felt that that had more of a sort of sense of movement. And so I asked people, now, you know, is it the mark or is it the marketing? Would we be able to recognize that mark as solely Nikes if a hundred million dollars of advertising wasn't put behind it every year? And then I challenge people. I'm like, Okay, does it look like anything else you have ever seen? And people are usually like no. Look at a box of Newport's cigarettes, turn it upside down, and the Newport iconography is becomes the Nike logo. When you turn it upside down, you can look at something like the Capital one logo, which is very similar to the Nike logo on sort of its side. So is it the mark or is it the marketing? And then and then I'm going to give you another example which is sort of mind blowing and trigger alert because I'll be talking about the Holocaust for a moment and Hitler, I'll talk about the swastika. So before it was appropriated and stolen by Hitler, the spastica, which comes from the sanscrit words FastICA um, was used everywhere. It was a symbol, an ancient symbol in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit definition is good luck, well being in fortune. So this mark was used in the nineteen twenties and I have a I have an actual photo of this. All of this is absolutely true. In the nineties, by Coca Cola, they designed a good luck bottle opener. It was used by the Boy Scouts. It was used on poker chips, good luck poker chips, playing cards, cigar rappers, road signs. Even the Jane tribe used the spastica on a hand of God emblem that they created for worship. It was only when Hitler appropriated it stole the mark first to it was like it depends that there's backwards. There's so many different ways that it's been used. But yes, he did, he did turn it, But there are lots of other places where it's not. It's it's in history where it was in one direction or or the other. The other, yeah, it was. It was used quite similarly in either direction, and we don't necessarily know if it was intentional that the direction was what it was historically. But he stole that emblem and has and created a situation where it is now what Stephen Heller, the historian says, is a mark beyond redemption. You know, it could never be rehabilitated. But but it did start out very much as something else. You know, it was created for for eons. You know, it was there was consensus around this mark meaning good luck and good fortune, and then through the use as a Nazi symbol, became turned into something completely different. And now there's consensus around that, and that's what we associate that mark with. So it's it's quite intriguing to look at things like the hand of God, things like the swastika, things like Nike, the Nike swoosh, any any religious symbol. You know, they're all created in very similar manners, and they all need consensus to be sort of to be amplified through culture, and they need to be widely shared in order to achieve that. So there needs to be a sense of a Philly Asian with those marks that then engage you too into that tribe, so to speak. Yeah, And when you think about iconography that exists in so many places, you know, the the famed image of the flaming Heart. Um, it is really interesting how so many versions of us in so many places have come to the same symbology. Absolutely, if you look at the origination of our religious symbols, these were happening all over the world simultaneously, simultaneously, and we we weren't traveling by a steam steam roller, we weren't traveling by high speed trains. We we had no way of being able to know what people around the globe we're doing, and they were happening all at the same time. I think a lot about Liz Gilbert's book Big Magic. It talks about wild instances of that, including a story of hers that she started working on a book, and this the particulars of the book, I mean a character who was going in a certain era to to a certain part of the Amazon with a very specific name and then she put the book away. She had things happening in her life, and you know, two years later, she runs into another writer at a conference who says, you know, I've just started working on this book and it's the same book, right, And they were both just floored, and she said, you know, ideas that want to be born, they're gonna they're gonna pop into multiple brains to get out. And I think I think about that in terms of the sorts of things you're referring to, the you know, coincidental timelines and a few coincidences. Yeah, I mean it's sort of a confluence though. Yeah, it's a confluence that it feels like it's both magic like that and then also something very deliberate and intentional. And it reminds me a little bit of that seen in the Devilwares product where Miranda Priestley is talking about Cerulean blue and that lumpy sweater that Anne Hathaway's character was wearing, and how that was chosen for her by the very minds in that room because of their ability to market and manufacture messaging. M hm. So when you think about the ability to influence, how do you then apply that sort of power out in the world for good. You know you mentioned earlier that you work with Marishka on No More And I think about the symbol of that, that turquoise logo. I know the moment I think of it, And that might be because she's my friend, and it also might be because I've shared it, and it might just be because I've seen it on billboards all over the place, but I know what it is. Did you assist with that design as well? Yes, I did. Actually I worked on it and I designed it at Sterling Brands with my friend and colleague, Christine Mao. She was then the global design director at Kimberly Clark. And there was a consortium of organizations back when we first did this that came together along with Mrshka's Foundation, which is Joyful Heart Foundation, to really try as a as a group of organizations to eradicate sexual domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. And we wanted a simple We wanted to create a mark that would be telegraphic. There was lots of reasons. We chose that that little dot in the middle of the blue circle is what we called the vanishing point. So eventually this goal of eliminating and eradicating sexual violence, um and now the rape kick backlog. But that doesn't always mean it's going to be successful. You know, you do have to be able to launch something like that with a very specific, very single minded strategy that you hope will ignite the imagination of the world. And it doesn't always happen. And the mystery here is that you never know when it's going to happen. You never know, And if anybody tells you that they do, don't believe them, because it's it's a match that gets ignited by the zeitgeist. It's not something that you can predict. Otherwise everything that was intended to go viral and be successful would And we know how many things are failed that are failed, you know, most startups, I would say eighty at least eight of startups fail. It's so hard, you know, that idea. You've got to really hold it with an open hand. And I imagine for something like this, a cause that is not only so meaningful to so many people in the world, but also to you personally, given your childhood experiences, how how hard it must be to put it out there and say, I don't know if it's going to work, but I want it to work so badly. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. At the time, we never doubted it, and I don't know if it was because it was so many really impassioned people. You know, it was the Joyful Heart Foundation and Avon and Verizon and Kimberly Clark and for the first time corporations were even talking about this. So there was so much socialized shame associated with this, and I know you know this too, that even talking about it made people feel bad, feel icky, feel damaged, feel shameful. Victims never wanted to disclose because they felt that somehow it was something bad about them as opposed to the perpetrator. And so for the first time we started talking about these things, and it was really right before me too, and there was this ground swell of people that were just coming forward and sharing and I mean share personally, but also sharing the information with the world. So it was almost like this devastatingly thirsty planet that needed to come together to start to protest this, because if you think back before that, people weren't talking about it at all and now they are, and so at the time and I was actually feeling a lot of my own shame. I hadn't really disclosed to anybody other than really close friends and my family. I felt very damaged by it. I felt very less than because of it. But going back to you know, one of the questions that you asked about guests, certainly one of the pivotal moments in my growth and simultaneously the evolution of of the podcast was my interview. Was this collective interviews Tim Ferris and I have done on each other's podcasts and the subsequent conversations that we've had about early childhood abuse and what that does to a person, and his journey has been very different than mine, but they co they sort of coincide in lots of points, and so having those conversations have fundamentally changed my life, mostly because the shame is gone and and that's you know, I'm going to be sixty very soon. So that only happened in the last couple of years, and so it's been a real journey to get to that place when you carry that giant bag for so long and then and then let it and then let it drop. That that certainly has been a big moment for me through the podcast. I wouldn't have I wouldn't have met tim otherwise, that's so incredible. What an amazing moment when you whatever, does it finally, when you finally get to put the backpack down and you realize how heavy it's been the whole time? Right? Right? Yeah? Is there something that you know thinking about that that that weight of shame which is so deeply misplaced onto victims and survivors rather than perpetrators. We're in this moment, it feels, you know, a zeitgeist moment and culture where we're really beginning to, as you said, talk about these things, acknowledge them, eradicate the shame, educate people about the circumstances. Is Is there something that you wish more people understood about domestic abuse that it's never the victim's choice, and if they're still staying, it's because they have no other choice. That's certainly how I feel about the about domestic violence. When it comes to child abuse, the fundamental fabric of a child psyche is obliterated when they're trespassed in that way and they don't then have any resources that they could depend on. It's not just the abuse, it's the conditions that lead to the abuse, especially systemic abuse where people that are being abused are too afraid to say something because they've been told that they'll be killed, or their mother will be killed, or their brother will be killed, or they'll be killed. You know. Um, there's there's it's never ever the victim's fault. Ever, there's nothing that anybody could ever say that would make this the victim's fault. And it doesn't matter what they were wearing or what they weren't wearing there, what they were saying, what they were doing. If somebody trespasses another person's body, then they trespasser is always at fault, and that's something people don't always understand, you know. It's it's really a lot of the work that you've done in in the work that you've done as an actor and as an activist, the work that Mauritsk has done, that's really mainstreamed it. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way. I mean that You're audiences have been so big and so um desirous of this content, to this these stories, um, this evidence that they are not to blame. That has changed the culture of our time. Yeah, I think it's an incredible privilege to tell and to fight to tell stories like these because what they've done is they've modeled reality for people, and once you see it, you can't continue to believe, oh that person must have said something, Oh it must have been you know what. It takes two to tango all that sort of nonsense. That that just really excises the reality of you know, abuse or violence or harassment that people go through. And to be able to tell real stories, um, you know, these are people's real stories that were often representing it's. It's been an incredible privilege to help um, you know, tear the mask off and get real about it. And oddly it always circles back to design. There is a design to creating a world. To tell that story, you have to design a container. You have to create space for survivors to come and tell their stories to writers, and then for writers to change just enough of the details that we can protect the survivors who've spoken to us. You know, it's it is to me an act of love and resistance and a very tender and consider it design. Yeah. Absolutely. I've often been asked because even before my work with Mauritika, I really loved the television show and watched it on repeat, and me too, even before meeting my wife Frank Sanga and finding out that she also watch those shows. We've both been asked why we like these shows so much, you know, if we've both been through the things that we've been through. Um, she's also a huge fan of yours, by the way, and we only will watch the reruns of of p D that you're in. The show changed so much after you left. I have to say, I just love rock Sands so much. And every time, you know, she responds to something I say online, I'm like, oh God, it's a good day. So that she was two of you to get Oh, she was so jealous that I was on the show. So I'm going to introduce you guys, hope please. She so wants to come on. I just I also just so want to come over and hang. Yeah. But but the thing that we we both acknowledged when we're first first getting to know each other, like, oh, do people ever ask you why you like these shows so much? Because they do the same with me too, Why would you want to keep reliving you know, the horrors of humanity? It's like no, no, no, we're watching justice. We're watching justice and action. We're watching a different outcome than what we had, and it makes us feel safer because it gives you the possibility of saving, of someone being saved, of someone being helped in the way that you or I or she or anyone listening has felt let down by a system that didn't show up for us. To watch someone show up and to watch someone fight for a person being harmed, it's it's incredible And what a what a whirl when that was for me to be working with her, you know, a hero of mine and a woman who I call a friend, and you know now to have been given the privilege of her friendship through a job, to be working on a job that I had said I'd always wanted to do because of the story she was telling, and to be you know, behind closed doors, not not ever on her set. Obviously she runs one of the best sets I've ever been on, because she is who she is. But you know, in my I set to be going through abuse. Yeah yeah, and it was well, it was just a very confusing thing, um because I thought, you know, this is my shot to represent the help, but I don't have help here? What's happening? And you know, ironically, because people will ask me, oh, you know, you must just not watch any of that anymore. I'm like, well, I I barely watch shows I'm on because when you're making a show, you don't have time to watch a show because you're always on set. But you know, I think about the fact that, for whatever reason, her show, as it seems to be for you and for rock Sand still feels like such a safe place to me. So if I turned on the TV and it's you know, it's a Sunday and there's an SPU marathon, I'm like, I'm in all day. This is just gonna be on in the house all that I'm gonna do laundry, and I'm gonna, like, you know, give the dog a bath, and I'm gonna do all the things I need to do. And this is just going to be on. And I feel the same way as you. I I do love it. Yeah, absolutely absolutely. It's an interesting thing that that's, you know, a bond that that you and Roxanne have and as I've I've you know, just admitted to you and everyone listening also, Hi, Roxane, I love you that I really love her, and and just so amazed with her writing and her leadership and and I think about the way that you write and you lead. I mean even the way you referenced by the way your conversations with Tim Ferris, the space that you create not just for women like us, and you know, not just for queer women and women of color, but but also men out there in the world who need great community. You both in your own incredibly unique ways, which which also overlaps so beautifully you do this. How how did you two meet? Are you just inspired all the time? What? I don't know. Part of me just thinks about how interesting your breakfast table must be. So I'm just so hey, I'm so happy for you both. Congratulations and and be um. Yeah, I just kind of want to know what you know to powerhouse leaders, authors, creators, living under the same roof is like, well, every day is just she is the most magnificent human to have ever walked the earth, as far as I'm concerned. I pursued her, Sophia, I I like, really really pursued her. I initially wanted her to be on the podcast after I read Hunger Um. Hunger, as you can well imagine, just devastated me, both good and bad, and it was just a one of the most powerful books that I had ever read. But I also felt that she had somehow gotten a peek into my own life somehow and wrote My True for me. And at the time, I was very intentionally single. I was not looking for a relationship. I was trying to break some really bad habits from my past and just just very innocently asked her to be on the podcast. And then she said yes and then no because she was there was a lot of scheduling issues with her PR people and whatnot, so she ended up not being on it, and I just kept writing her, you know. I then I read Bad Feminist and I'm like, oh, I love this for you two, and I love scrabble too, and like to seem like there was all these these overlaps, dorky overlaps that led me to believe that we were meant for each other. I really did. I thought we are meant for each other. And then um, finally through the writer Ashley Ford, magnificent writer of a book that came out this year, Nobody's Daughter, which is just Ashley and I were both doing a spoken word event together at a was a design event, and afterward we and the rest of the ensemble went out for some drinks and we ended up going back to my apartment because they were there were so many of us it would have been a wheeldy find a place that we could all sit down, and my my place was around the corner from the venue. And somehow we all started talking and Ashley started talking about her mentor Roxanne, and somehow I just blurted it out. I said, it surprised me too. I said, oh my god, I have such a crush on her. And Ashley looked at me and it was like, really, like, sister, I can hook you up. But I mean, it was all in her face. She didn't say that at all. It was like she gave me an eyebrow and yeah, And I'm like, do you think I have a shot, And She's like, well, there might be a window of opportunity available. I said, would you put in a good word for me? And she said sure, can I And I said, can I use your name? So then I wrote her again and I said that I had just spent an evening with Ashley Ford and I just thought that there might be a chance. So I was wondering if I could take you out on a proper date. That's what I asked her, and she responded shore. Roxanne is a woman of just you know, she's so arid and she's such a good writer. And I got back a Shore, which I just said, okay, you know, I'm just at her own pace, and then I wrote back and took four months to schedule, but we did and then sort of had a great first date, great second date after she canceled, and then re re upped, and then a great third date and we've been together ever since. Oh. I just love that. I also love witnessing. I wish everyone listening could see you in this moment because you're just beaming and you look like a bubbly little girl, that pure joy of a crush. And then they when they last, when you still have a crush on your partner, it's it's so nice. Yeah. Well it's only been three years, so I guess we're still in that honeymoon phase. But I do really feel so lucky. And you know, for anybody that's listening, that's like, oh, when will I find my true love? I didn't meet Roxanne until I was fifty seven, so you know, everything takes a long time. But it's possible, you know, it's really possible. And I never ever ever thought that this would happen for me. Never, never, never. I always had this sense of I always had this fantasy that whoever I was with would find me kind of amusing, sort of funny, and no one else had ever felt for ROXI really genuinely is amused and thinks amused by me and thinks I'm funny and like things that I would have with fights with with other people about she laughs at, or things that she says that we're big friction points. She just wrote a piece I think, I don't remember what magazine it was. I think maybe l She wrote a piece about an ex of hers thinking she was an acquired taste and that wasn't a compliment. And she writes about how, you know, people just have different ways of relating, and the very things that delight and thrills some people are the very things that outrage others, and that sort of across the board of everything in life, the particulars, I think can take time, especially when you are the sort of multi hyphen it of all the things that many of us are, you know, creatives, curious people. You're often out exploring outside of yourself, and when you mix in a little bit of being a version of a survivor, and um, you know, carrying your childhood trauma backpack and all the things that we can have, it can make it really hard to to get still enough to even know what mirrors you well beautifully said, thank you. I think about it with you know, with my fiance, and God, yeah, on no planet did I think this person was going to be my person if I had written on paper who my human is. And and yet you finally do enough of the work and you put the backpack down and you really get still, and you take some time. You know, you and I are the same. I took some time. I was just like, I'm not going to date anymore. I'm just not going to do that. And because I think I needed a lesson in not settling and not ignoring what wasn't mirroring well and and yeah, how funny it's And it's just so fun that the thing I'm recognizing in you, the joy when you speak about your wife, makes me so happy because I I feel that way. I had to work on Saturday, and so I was driving to this set and we had been on the phone talking about something that needed to happen at the house that that he was going to take care of. And I called him back ten minutes later, and he goes, oh, did did you forget something? And I was like, no, I just I really love you, and also I like you so much as a person that's won and I just thought, I just this is so fun. I didn't know it could be this fun. Yeah, yeah, how did you guys meet? Oh my god, So this is the craziest thing we met. It will be ten years ago this New Year's on a big trick with a group of friends in South America. It's just the most random thing. And we just were these like nerdy friends forever. We were never single at the same time. And he's such a good person. He was never one of those like single guys whould be like your boyfriend seems nice or whatever gross thing you know people do when they throw a vibe just to see. He never did that, and that's also not my vibe. Um. And so we, you know, we'd see each other, We knew each other's exes. We would bump into each other weirdly in New York a lot. We were living on opposite sides of town. So if I had to go to, you know, a birthday party on his side of town traffic in l A. Is obviously a nightmare. So we'd meet up for a coffee and sit around for two hours and talk about technology and what was happening in politics, and then I'd be like, all right, I'll see you later, great to see you, whatever, and and it's just so it's so funny. The thing that, the thing that reconnected us right at the start of the pandemic, before we even knew it was a pandemic, was working with a huge group of people trying to get um supply chains opened from the Midwest to get warehouses of Ppe to New York and and it was like jumping into this moment of you know, public health advocacy and activism. We were like, oh my god, this is the longest I've ever gone without seeing it was a bit like two years what you up to and it it kind of um yeah, just changed all of it. Wow, it's so romantic, it's so fun it's congratulations. Thank you, I mean gosh, congratulations to the two of you. I like, I said, the breakfast table conversation and the bookshelves in your apartment I imagine are so good and I have to say thank you for this addition to my bookshelf. This is incredible. Thank you able to send you a book plate so you could have it, send you a little message for it's so fabulous. Everybody at home. I realized, I'm saying, this is amazing, and you can't see us. We're seeing each other. We're having like a we're having a friend giggle. But um, I'm holding Debbie's new book and it's called Wide Design Matters and it's conversations with the world's most creative people. It's gorgeous. It's I would say, what is this measure ten by ten? It's ten by ten and it's five pounds. It is heavy, it's delicious, and it's this incredible collection of you know, as you said earlier, some of the most fascinating and impactful conversations you've had on the podcast you've you've given to us in this. I mean not that anyone is surprised the most beautifully designed coffee table book, but but as you said earlier, it it really does Trojan Horse empathy and thoughtfulness and uh permission and a deep honesty inside of a design book. Oh, thank you so much. I'm curious. You know you've written a bunch of books. So as you look at your writing life, what do you think sets this book apart? And why did you decide you wanted to write this one? Well, in many ways, I didn't really decide I wanted to write it. I had completed a book with three dear friends, Maria Popovo, Wendy McNaughton, and Sarah Rich. We all worked on creating a book about the twentie century. One of the one of the great female designers of the twentieth century, really unsung. We wanted that to be changed. Her name is c. P. Panellis, and we wrote a book to We all put to work together on a book that Sarah edited about CPS life and she she was a cook, and its recipes and it's it's quite an unusual book. And through that experience I met Charlotte Cheaty, who was our agent for the book through Wendy McNaughton, and Charlotte said, why haven't you done a book about your show? And I said, well, because I once told a friend of mine who I really respected, the idea about possibly doing it, and he thought it was a terrible idea. And he's a really good friend and he meant it at the time. It was, you know, back when the show was like three years old and everything was for free on the internet, so he just thought like, why would people pay for something like that? And I'm glad he said that because at that time it would have been the really wrong book to make. And Charlotte thought it would be a idea and she put out some feelers and hardware. Collins was really interested, and then all of a sudden I had to make a book and it was somewhat daunting. It also happened just at the time I met Roxanne, and it was like book schmuck, I even love. So then I had to get a year a year extension of my deadline. Nobody was happy about that except Roxanne. But then I ended up doing this during during mostly during COVID, so that's that It was an accidental book in many ways, but I feel that it's a good moment in time to sort of be a monograph of the show, of some of the those best moments. It was very hard to edit because I had a limited amount of space and a lot of people that I wanted to include. So I know it's a dense book. It's a hundred and fifty thousand words later or not. If that's why it's wipe bounce. I love it and I love that the you know, the conversations it it almost feels like a collection of essays. So it's the kind of book you can do a little bit at a time. I'm glad that you said that, because that's also why we designed it in the way that we did. Alex Kellman, who is t Work Hellman's son, you know, one of my early heroes, So there's that phenomenal symmetry to this story. Um. Alex Hellman designed the book for me, and initially I was a little bit surprised at his approach, to his use of typography and the and the variety that he was using and the way he was using that range of faces. But I think it makes a lot of sense because it gives you permission to put it down because suddenly there's a pause and and it's sort of like a different like a different scene in a play, and you can have a natural pause to stop and then we pick it up. So I think he was really really smart in the way that he did that. Yes, yeah, it's almost like you know a TV series, you do it an episode at a time, right, exactly. That's exactly right. Thank you. That's really profound, really well, I'm clearly a major fan, not only of you, but of this book. I think it's so beautiful, even you know, since it's arrived here at my house, the the moments I find myself sitting with it, whether it's you know, the day it came and I read there for forty five minutes, or you know, yesterday morning, I was like, I'm going to skip ahead. I want to read the esther Perel Conversation. And I just read that, and you know, I took a few minutes in the morning and it was a really um just inspiring, a little moment as there is, you know, an icon to me, and I pinched myself also a friend, and so I thought, I wonder what they talked about. She is, you know, she she can talk about anything, anything, and every conversation I have with her, I come away from it thinking what a freaking queen she is. And a vocabulary, Oh god, it's so gorgeous. I I wonder when you think about all of these capabilities of design, you know, to be a trojan horse for conversations like this, to enrich our lives, you know, to give us people to look up to, and also sometimes to be a real pain in the ass. This is actually, I think my moment to pitch that I would really love to talk to you about redesigning email because I think there is no uglier interface. There is nothing that makes me more stressed out. I if email was a thing you were required to participate in, like say, paying your taxes, I would be in jail. I can't do it. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say, for anyone else who thinks inboxes are hideous, Um, maybe we can discuss something. I think it is the ban of bin of my existence. I think it's time, you know, when we talk about these moments of cultural evolution, I think we deserve an upgrade email. I agree, um, And I guess I offer that as my example because it genuinely makes my skin crawl, and because you are the expert in this arena. And I think about the fact that design is always changing and evolving, and that may be what I would like to evolve. But I wonder, I wonder where you actually think on the larger scale of design and the way it's constantly reshaping itself. Where where do you think it's heading, is there something that you see coming in the next five years or ten that you're really excited about. Well, I think everything is cyclical, and you know, a hundred and sixty years ago, the first registered trademark um was bass Ale of all things. I think super interesting to to really ponder what that means about our humanity that the first trademark registration mark was a galic beverage. But you know, you think back to that time, people were very willing to pay a premium for something in a box or a rapper or a can, and the mass manufacturing of products at that time signified that they were safe, which is something we really take for granted. Now. They were consistent, another thing we take for granted, and that they wouldn't kill you. It really wasn't until the Food and Drug Administration made it illegal to for any manufacturer to make something that harmed someone. You know, we didn't have, you know, humans, consumers didn't really have rights to safety before that. But at the time, people were willing to pay a premium for these manufactured, mass produced goods because they were a novel. Too. Hundred and sixty years later, we're willing to pay a premium for the opposite, you know, for the things that are grown, and we measure the distance from farm to table and we're we're willing to pay a premium for that. So I think this sort of an interesting cycle that's occurring now with smaller, bespoke, customized, fresher cleaner brands. I also think that people are entirely over the idea of having a different flavor or a different form of a brand. They're much more interested in how that brand is going to make a difference in their lives. And then, more than anything, I think that a good number of people are holding corporations to accountable for their beliefs and their politics. And that's also a brand new thing. I think people are finally understanding that their consensus, getting back to that word about the beliefs that they have, the consumers that believe certain things that if the companies that they're buying products from don't believe in those things, and they're not going to buy them. I thought it was incredibly, incredibly important to the to Wall Street that Nike's share price actually went up after they signed Colin Kaepernac to their roster. Whereas you know, initially the trolls out there were burning their sneakers, and you know, it was kind of like, you know, you're just cutting off your nose. That's about your face, right, You're destroying your own sneakers. You're not doing any harm to anybody else but yourself, but whatever, And and everybody was very worried that this this relationship might tarnish the brand. Well, in fact, it was the opposite. And and the share Nike shares, they were rewarded by that relationship. And now I think that even beyond that, the power that people have via the use of technology, black lives matter me too. Their their brands in a lot of ways. They they have all the tenants of branding, and yet they are not selling anything other than a shared belief in the way the world should operate. And so branding, the discipline of branding, the discipline of design, in many ways, has become democratized. And the more people realize that, the more power will have to redesign the world and the way we want to make it. And that's very exciting to me. M hmm, that's beautiful. The fact that brand's beliefs, a company's politics matter to us as consumers is on the one hand, perhaps overdue, and on the other hand, feels like a real you know horizon event. Yes culture, yes, at that sort of precipice are their common you know, symbols or graphics or messages in our culture that you actually hope will change or or perhaps disappear as we as we take this next leap. Well, I think income equality is super important. I think that the same job should be the same pay, regardless of a person's gender. I think that any company that's using the word authentic should probably rethink that word. I think anybody as soon as you have to label it, it becomes an authentic. Actions can be authentic, but statements generally aren't unless they're provable. And intentions might be sincere, but until they're held accountable to those intentions and those goals, then you can't really convince people with hope and a dream. You have to show people that you are willing to make the risks and the sacrifices necessary in order to bring about change, because not everybody is going to be happy with a political belief and it's highly, highly risky to do that. You can't opinion poll I have a dream. You just can't. And and companies try to but I think that whenever a company is thinking about doing something, just by the share virtue of being a corporation, they have a fiduiciary responsibility to their shareholders. So in it as much as there's this framework that has to be maintained, it's very hard for corporations to do something that is risky or experimental that could potentially harm the shareholders. So I think that that whole way in which especially now with the way that with the Trump mandate that allowed corporations to donate to politicians with with no limits, you know, then you really do begin to see that the capitalist system is indeed rigged. You know, that wasn't the intention and the intention of capitalism was the best possible product at the best possible price for the consumer. That's the case anymore. Now. It's how much money can we donate to this political campaign to make sure that our infrastructure can can be done without any barriers or obstacles. That's not that's not capitalism. So I think that whenever a company is trying to think about what it is that they need to do, they have to take into account what impact they're going to have on the planet and their audience. As well as the shareholders. And that's something that it's going to take a long time for that to happen that I'm not as optimistic about, which is why I think people just have to keep pushing for their perspective to be heard and met, and it makes it incredibly meaningful, and I think teaches us why it's so important to always show up for our elections local, yes, you know, state, national, because the only way we change a system like that is by voting in people who are trying to prioritize the rights of the people over the rights of corporations. Yes, you know, it's what got us after you know, I am a voter. We we launched this little design project as a plan for the mid terms. We just wanted to activate more voters and get more people registered for the mid terms to to help push back the you know, tied of on encumbered you know, billionaire grade that Trump unleashed and and it became a movement that you know, well will never stop. It went well past but I mean this, we got just out of girlfriends of mine, some of the best branding minds, and these group of women sat around and said, if we can all sell you know, eighty million dollars worth of mascara for a company hired us. Why can't we Why can't we apply the same ideas to voting? Absolutely, absolutely, and and kudos to you because it is super successful and shows that these things do count and do matter. You know, the one thing I can say to that is just that there's for you know, every person has a vote, every person can make a difference. One of the biggest obstacles two systemic change is people believing that they have an impact as an individual. And you know, people all say that they are in supportive recycling and they want to save the planet, but when it comes to for example, something is silly and com modified as buying toilet paper, you know, they don't want to buy recycled paper, unbleached paper because of the way that we're socialized. If everybody just made that one minor change, it would save so much waste and it would make a huge difference. Um So, in that case, corporations are not making are not keeping products on the shelves for altruistic reasons. They're only keeping products on the shelves that people buy. There's no corporation in the history of corporations that's like this. We have real heart for this. We're just going to keep it there because we love it. Joke that someone out there likes peach flavored diet powdered iced tea. Because it's still on the market. People are still buying it, and so we The way in which one vote matters is the same way that one purchase matters. And if we if you know, people think, oh, what difference does it make a by by the bleached white toilet paper. It does, because every purchase makes a difference. Yeah, okay, So we have civic engagement to work on. Toilet paper needs a new campaign, and we have to redesign email Debbie. We have things to do. This is a productive call. Oh my gosh, I love it. I'm curious, you know, because you just birthed this new book into the world. You know, I imagine this took a lot of work. And I know you're always thinking about things and projects and and that you can't help but see potential in everything you look at in the world. So I wonder rest might be the answer, which would be well deserved after publishing a book of this size. But I have a hunch there's other ideas too. I wonder what feels like your current or perhaps your next work in progress in your life. Oh, I love that question. Um well, Sophia, this is a fun answer. One of the things that I didn't do so much when I was working full time as a corporate executive was traveling. And I did so much business travel that the idea of being on a vacation and going to get another airport and going through another security line just was something I could not bear. And then when I began to change the way I lived, I started to feel like maybe I wanted to try to see as much of the planet as possible before I died, and so in I went on a National Geographic expedition around the world, which was an amazing, amazing thing. And so Roxanne and I are we both love traveling, and so we're going We've decided to go to Antarctica in December, and we're going to go see the total solar eclipse of the Sun um Antarctica in December. So our work in progress is trying to see as much of the planet as possible together. I am so excited for you. I am so excited for you, And this is wild. One of my best friends went on an expedition trip to Antarctica three years ago. I have to connect to the two of you. Yes, she's her. Her trip was so incredible. I've I've gone over her photos of a fine toothcome. I'm dying to go. I can't wait to hear how you're Oh this is I'm we're so excited. I mean, I I decided I wanted to do this years ago for my sixtieth birthday, and now that I'm getting to do it with Roxanne, it's very much a work in progress. I can't wait. I can't wait to see. This is where I think the Internet is great because I think I can't wait to see when you guys start sharing photos to Instagram of this trip. I'm, oh, my god, this is amazing. Super excited. I'm really I mean, I'm nervous. I'm really nervous. I was nervous, really nervous before the expedition when I when I went in, it was into and I went to eleven countries. It was hardest thing I ever did, and I cried a lot. But I also rule a lot and learned a lot, and I have a feeling it's going to be very similar. I'm so excited for you. Thank you, congrats. Wow, that's a good one. I'm I'm going to put I'm recommitting to that being on my list. Also, how fun. Well, definitely report back and definitely definitely I would love it.

Work in Progress with Sophia Bush

Work in Progress with Sophia Bush features frank, funny, personal, professional, and sometimes even  
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 251 clip(s)