PRINTCast: PRINT's Podcast Studio – PRINT Magazine

A Pretty Complicated Organism | David Haskell

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 14:31:00 +0000

Like many of you, I was stunned by what happened on November 5th. It’s going to take me some time to reckon with what this all says about the values of a large portion of this country. As part of that reckoning—and for some much-needed relief—I’ve opted to spend less time with media in general for a bit.

But on the morning after I couldn’t ignore an email I got from today’s guest, New York magazine editor-in-chief David Haskell.

What struck me most about his note—which was sent to the magazine’s million-and-a-half subscribers—was what it didn’t say. There were no recriminations. Nothing about how Kamala Harris had failed to “read the room.” Not a word about Joe Biden’s unwillingness to step aside when he should have. No calls to “resist.” In fact, the hometown president-elect’s name went unspoken (as it is here).

What Haskell did say that left a mark on me was this:

I consider our jobs as magazine journalists a privilege at times like this.

I was an editor at Clay Felker’s New York magazine, the editor-in-chief of Boston magazine, and I led the creative team at Inc. magazine. And it was there, at Inc., that I had a similar experience. It was 9/11.

I wrote my monthly column in the haze that immediately followed the attacks, though it wouldn’t appear in print until the December issue. It was titled, “Think Small. No, Smaller.” In it, I urged our community of company builders to focus their attention on the things we can control. This is how it ended:

What we can say for certain is that the arena over which any of us has control has, for now, grown smaller. In these smaller arenas, the challenge is to build, or rebuild, in ourselves and our organizations the quiet confidence that we still have the ability to get the right things done.

For all the attention that gets paid to EICs, most of the work you do is done through the members of your team: writers, and editors, and designers, and so many others.

My friend, Dan Okrent, the former Life magazine editor and Print Is Dead guest, once said, “Magazines bring us together into real communities.”

Moments like this demand something different—something direct and personal from an editor to that community. Something that offers a challenge, but also an opportunity, to answer the question in a clear and credible way: So what do we do now?

Read the full episode transcript here.

Print Is Dead (Long Live Print!) is a podcast about magazines and the people who made (and make) them. Magazines that combined thought-provoking attitudes and values with a distinctive look and feel, and cast a long and powerful shadow on American culture and public discourse. Hear stories and learn lessons from legendary designers, editors, writers, publishers, photographers, illustrators, photo editors, and more—stories and lessons that capture a magical history of innovation and inspiration, and that point the way forward. We’ll go deep into the lives and careers of this astonishingly talented group of creators, and tease out what these giants—past and present—have to teach the next generation of creators.

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is a special collaboration with The Spread and is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Liza Enebeis

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:30:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Liza Enebeis, partner and creative director at Studio Dumbar/DEPT®. Studio Dumbar is an award-winning international agency with Dutch heritage. They specialize in visual branding and motion, and Enebeis is directly involved in all their main projects. She also co-founded and co-hosts Typeradio.org, a podcast on type and design, and is co-initiator of the Design in Motion Festival, also known as DEMO. In this episode, host Nicola Hamilton and Enebeis talk about her early career and the value of a little discomfort in our process. She also spills the beans on DEMO 2025, which will happen in January. There will be screens around the world—and for the first time ever, also in Vancouver.

Welcome to the DesignThinkers Podcast! Join host and RGD President Nicola Hamilton as she digs into the archives of the DesignThinkers conference, reconnecting with past speakers about their talks and ideas that have shaped Canada’s largest graphic design conference. Follow the RGD on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit them at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Hans Thiessen RGD

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Each year, RGD asks a different Canadian design agency or studio to tackle the conference identity. In these shorter episodes, host Nicola Hamilton will speak with some of those folks—past DesignThinkers Design Partners. In this episode, Hamilton catches up with Hans Thiessen RGD. Thiessen leads the design team at Rethink—an agency that’s been named AdAge’s Creative Agency of the Year, one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Creative Agencies, and Strategy‘s Creative & Design Agency of the Year five years in a row, and counting. Rethink was the DesignThinkers Design Partner in 2017 and Hans was on the team that executed that work. Listen in as they recount that process—and the speed bump they hit along the way.

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What Makes Steve Brodner Happy

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

When your boss tells you to track down an amusing Steve Brodner factoid to open the podcast with, and one of the first things you find is a, uh, a “dick army,” welp, that’s what you’re going to go with.

Lest you judge me, I can explain. Brodner’s drawing of this army was inspired by a guy who was actually named Dick Armey (A-R-M-E-Y)! He was Newt Gingrich’s wingman back in the nineties. I thought to myself, The people need to know this.

However, with the election now a few days behind us, maybe the time for talking about men and their junk is over?

What you really want to learn about is this Society of Illustrators Hall of Famer’s career. Brodner’s work, which has been called “unflinching, driven by a strong moral compass, and imbued with a powerful sense of compassion,” has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and many others.

In this episode, Brodner talks about how the death of print has led to the current misinformation crisis. As it gets harder and harder to tell what’s true, the future becomes increasingly uncertain. Even his most biting drawings are rooted in truth.

Satire doesn’t work if you are irresponsibly unreasonably inventive. If satire doesn’t have truth in it, it’s not funny.

A production note: This episode was recorded exactly one week before the election. As our conversation began, we took turns telling stories about memorable election night parties, and our plans for November 5th. Here’s Steve, talking about his plans…

Check out the episode page for the full transcript and illustrations by Brodner.

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Michael Johnson

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Michael Johnson. He set up Johnson Banks in 1992, after a decade spent learning design, branding, and art direction across the globe. His company is known for how they define, then design, brands that make a difference. ‘Do great work for good people’ is their mantra. Johnson has produced an enviable portfolio of work and received countless awards, including D&AD’s highest honor, the President’s Award in 2017. In this episode, host Nicola Hamilton welcomes Johnson to discuss starting and sustaining a design business, the value of strategy in our practice, and the criticism the internet lobs at rebranding projects.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Jessica Hische

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Oakland-based designer, lettering artist, and New York Times best-selling author, Jessica Hische. If you’re a child of the internet, you’re probably already familiar with Hische’s work. She kicked off her career working at Headcase Design and later as a senior designer working under the great Louise Fili. In 2009, Hische stepped out on her own as a freelancer. You might remember her Daily Drop Cap project—or more recently, you’ve likely seen her tidying up some of your favorite wordmarks. In this episode, Hische and host Nicola Hamilton look back at her early days as a creative, the process of reclaiming artist as a title, and her transition into children’s books and shop ownership.

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For more, read PRINT’s interview with Hische about her latest children’s book, out Oct 2024, My First Book of Fancy Letters.

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She’s Our Type | E. Jean Carroll

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Everybody knows that in May 2023, a jury found Donald Trump liable for defaming and abusing E. Jean Carroll, and awarded her $5 million. And everybody also knows that in January 2024, another jury found Trump liable for defamation against her to the tune of $83.3 million. P.S., with interest, his payout will now total over $100 million.

But not everybody remembers—because we were guppies, and because, ahem, Print is Dead, y’all—that E. Jean is a goddamn swashbucking magazine-world legend: a writer of such style, wit, and sheer ballsy joie de vivre that she carved out a name for herself in the boys club of New Journalism, writing juicy and iconic stories in the seventies and eighties for Outside, Esquire, Playboy, and more—and then finally leapt over to women’s magazines, where she held down the role of advice columnist at Elle for, wait for it, 27 years. Elle is where we intersected with E. Jean and where we first saw up close her boundless enthusiasm and generosity for womankind.

We’ll also never forget sitting at one of the magazine’s annual fancypants dinners honoring Women in Hollywood—these are real star-studded affairs, folks—when Jennifer Aniston stood up to receive her award and started her speech with a shoutout to her beloved “Auntie E.,” whose advice she and millions of other American women had devoured, and lived by, for decades.

Here’s the truth: The woman that most of the world came to know through the most harrowing circumstances imaginable really is and has always been that fearless, that unsinkable. It’s not a persona—it’s the genuine article. And when you hear her stories about how hard she slogged away for decades to finally get her big break in publishing, listeners, you will have a whole new respect for her.

As E. Jean tells us herself in this interview, she does very, very little press. So we couldn’t be more honored that our friend and idol and the Spread’s most enthusiastic hype woman sat down after hours with us for this interview. We just hope we did her justice!

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is a special collaboration with The Spread and is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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Gifted, Neurodivergent, or Nerd

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:30:00 +0000

The Highs and Lows of Growing Up Tagged as “Gifted”

Our fascination with neurodivergence continues as we are joined by PsyD, Dr. Matt Zakreski, to break down the semantics of giftedness, and inclusive design for neurodivergent people in a variety of public spaces. The term “gifted” was of particular interest to us and our guest because, at one point in each of our lives, we had been called out of the classroom to take an exam that would ultimately label us as gifted. While it does make some complex topics clear, some seemingly simple topics are much harder to resolve for gifted children – the mistake lies in assuming that exceptional skills make them exceptional at everything.

One thread that connects this episode to our previous conversation with Kathryn Parsons was the idea that neurodivergent people may consciously modify behavior to receive the expected response from the world. To varying degrees, they anticipate their settings, surroundings, and (most importantly) the people they come into contact with in order to socially adapt and make it through the day. This gives meaning to the phrase “meeting someone where they are,” especially important as something to strive for, but it’s also clearer why it can be hard to do: people habituated to their circumstances and can end up suffering in silence.

Welcome to Breaking the Code! Behavioral science is a cornerstone of modern marketing practice, but much of what passes itself off as behavioral science is just bs. Good social science gives us the insights and roadmap we need to change behavior, but bad social science just muddies the water and tarnishes the social sciences. As behavior change is a core objective of marketing, getting behavioral science right is crucial. Listen in as hosts Brad Davidson, PhD and Sonika Garcia, MPH, Medical Anthropology Strategists at Havas Health, sound off on what is, and isn’t, good social science, from a variety of disciplines covering new topics every podcast.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Khoi Vinh

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 14:32:00 +0000

Khoi Vinh is a senior director of design at Adobe. He’s been a leading figure in the design community for more than two decades, leading design teams at both large companies and startups. Host Nicola Hamilton first sat down with Khoi during the pandemic-era Virtual DesignThinkers conference, where they had a pretty in-depth conversation about the intersection of design and technology. In this episode, they dive right into artificial intelligence, talking about all the wonderful ways AI and machine learning are accelerating the creative process. They also discuss the things we might lose during that acceleration and the things that can’t be automated. And of course, they take a quick detour into Khoi’s love of film.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Tina Mackenzie RGD Emeritus

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Each year, RGD asks a different Canadian design agency or studio to tackle the conference identity. In these shorter episodes, host Nicola Hamilton will speak with some of those folks—past DesignThinkers Design Partners. In this episode, Hamilton catches up with Tina Mackenzie RGD Emeritus. Mackenzie is a very accomplished graphic design manager. In 2012, the award-winning in-house graphic design team at the City of Mississauga—which Mackenzie was leading—was invited to be the first-ever, in-house group to design DesignThinkers. Listen in as Hamilton and Mackenzie talk a bit about the importance of that moment both internally and within the industry at large.

If you’re curious to see and read more about the 2012 DesignThinkers branding, you can do that here.

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Soul Survivor | Richard Baker

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Just about every magazine Richard Baker worked for has died. Even one called Life.

Also dead: The Washington Post Magazine, Vibe, Premiere, and Parade. Another, Saveur, also died but has recently been resurrected. And Us Magazine? A mere shadow of its former self.

Sadly, Baker’s career narrative is not that uncommon. (That’s why you’re listening to a podcast called Print Is Dead).

But Richard Baker is a survivor. He’s survived immigrating from Jamaica as a kid. He’s survived the sudden and premature loss of three influential and beloved mentors. And he’s survived a near-fatal medical emergency in the New York subway.

Yet, in the face of all that carnage, Richard Baker just keeps on going. To this day, he’s living the magazine dream—“classic edition”—as a designer at a sturdy newsstand publication (Inc. magazine), in a brick-and-mortar office (7 World Trade Center), working with real people, and making something beautiful with ink and paper.

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is a special collaboration with The Spread and is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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The Evolution of Female Success

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Women, Sports & Leadership

Women’s professional sports are “having a moment”, but this did not happen in a vacuum nor did it happen overnight. In a highly anticipated episode (for us), the hosts finally got a chance to sit down with Claire Knapp (CEO of Havas Lynx) and Denise Melone (Managing Director of Havas Life San Francisco) to discuss the implications of the growth of women’s sports, both as a business and as an opportunity. Both of these female leaders are accomplished athletes, and we discuss the role of things like teamwork, coaching, and mental fortitude learned on the judo mats and tennis courts, in their successes as corporate leaders at Havas.

The growing interest in the competitive aspects of women’s sports has coincided with the appearance of women in a variety of hitherto-denied spaces, such as the boardroom, the judging panel, and even just full-court basketball. While this shift is notable, both Knapp and Melone express the sentiment that disparities in treatment, compensation, and conversation are still as important as ever to address and overcome. What’s important is how we talk about women, not as bodies but as humans and, in the case of this episode, as fierce, aggressive, badass athletes.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Debbie Millman

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

This week’s guest has been named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, “one of the most influential designers working today” by GDUSA, and a “Woman of Influence” by Success magazine. It’s author, educator, curator, and podcast pioneer, Debbie Millman. Host Nicola Hamilton first interviewed Millman in 2020 as part of the pandemic-era, Virtual DesignThinkers, where we talked at length about Millman’s professional history. (If you’re an RGD Member, you can access that conversation at rgd.ca.) But in this episode, we’re talking about how Millman splits her time between hosting Design Matters, one of the first and longest-running podcasts in the world; Being the chair of the first-ever Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts; Supporting PrintMag.com, where she’s a co-owner and Editorial Director; and working on her own design, art, and writing projects. Hamilton and Millman discuss turning down big, shiny, professional roles, the value of growth and risk in your work, and why she believes personal branding is a misguided concept.

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This is a Prototype: Kevin Bethune

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

In the final episode of Season 2, host Doug Powell speaks with renowned design leader and author Kevin Bethune. Kevin’s remarkably divergent career spans engineering, business, and design over more than 25 years. He’s worked as a nuclear engineer at Westinghouse Nuclear, launched sneaker brands at Nike, and consulted with global enterprises at BCG. Kevin currently leads Dreams • Design + Life, a think tank that delivers design & innovation services using a human-centered approach.

A Board Trustee for ArtCenter College of Design and a Board Director for the Design Management Institute, Kevin is the author of one of the top design books of recent years, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, which was published by MIT Press in 2022. Kevin’s next book, Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction will be published in February of 2025.

Look for new episodes in 2025!

As an executive design leader, Doug Powell is fascinated by the experience of designers moving into new leadership roles. For most, this is completely uncharted territory; the jobs are often undefined and there is rarely a roadmap or playbook to help us succeed, so most of us have had to learn on the job. In each episode of This is a Prototype, Powell invites design leaders who have traveled a variety of life and career journeys to share their stories, compare notes, and talk about what it takes to be a leader in this new era of design.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Karin Fong

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Karin Fong is an Emmy award-winning director and designer. She’s a founding member of Imaginary Forces, where she works at the intersection of live-action, design, and animation. If you’ve watched shows like Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Little Fires Everywhere, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, or feature films like Spider-Man: No Way Home or Slumberland—you’ve encountered Fong’s work. She’s also helmed spots for major brands, including LEGO, Lexus, Target, Google, PlayStation, and Herman Miller. At the root of it all, she is a visual storyteller and in this episode, host Nicola Hamilton and Fong talk about all the ways the film industry has changed and all the ways it’s stayed the same. Plus, Fong takes us behind the scenes and really breaks down the process of designing film titles.

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Smiling Through the Apocalypse | Will Welch

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 13:30:00 +0000

In the past few weeks, Will Welch has taken a bit of flack for letting Beyoncé promote her new whiskey label on the cover of GQ’s October issue, with an interview that one X user described as “an intimate email exchange between GQ and several layers of Beyonce’s comms team.”

Whether that kind of thing rankles you or not—and yes, we asked him about it—in the five years since Welch took over, GQ seems to be doing as well or better than everybody else in the industry. Why? Ask around. He’s got a direct line to celebrities, who consider him a personal friend. He’s got real credibility with The Fashion People. And because of both of these things, advertisers love him.

Perhaps most importantly, his boss, Anna Wintour loves him.

The Atlanta-born Welch started his career at the alternative music and culture mag the Fader in the early aughts and jumped to GQ in 2007. For a decade under EIC Jim Nelson, he operated as the magazine’s fashion-and-culture svengali, eventually becoming the creative director of the magazine and the editor of the brand’s fashion spinoff, GQ Style.

In 2019, Wintour tapped him for the big job: Editor-in-Chief of GQ—a title that in 2020 was recast in the current Condé Nast survival mode as Global Editorial Director of GQ, overseeing 19 editions around the world.

After speaking with Welch only a few hours after the Beyonce cover dropped, we get what all the fuss is about. He is a great sport with good hair and just enough of a Southern accent who is confident-yet-never-cocky about his mission at GQ.

Let other people bemoan the “death of print.” Will Welch is having a blast at the Last Supper.

Read the full episode transcript here.

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is a special collaboration with The Spread and is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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Bridging Minds

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 12:30:00 +0000

Autism, Neurodivergence, and Inclusive Communication in Advertising

The term “neurodiversity,” introduced 25 years ago by autistic Australian sociologist Judy Singer, marked a milestone in our understanding of autism and the appreciation of “difference, not deficit” in how brains work. More than a buzzword, neurodiversity describes a growing population whose brains work differently from the “neurotypical” and whose historic separation from social engagement has been replaced with a social inclusion that allows them to share their unique talents and perspectives. These differences go beyond functional tasks like working in an office or completing an exam. Their unique interactions with the world inform their fascinating worldview and their day-to-day challenges. For us in advertising, knowing how your audience interacts with the world is crucial to creating communication that speaks to them.

In this episode, hosts Brad Davidson and Gabriel Allen-Cummings are joined by Havas’ own, Kathryn Parsons, a digital marketing expert and an advocate for neurodiversity. Parsons has autism, and she shares multiple anecdotes describing how she’s adapted to a neurotypical world. The three of them also discuss what brands can be doing better to reach their neurodiverse audience – which is one in every five of us.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Dominic Ayre RGD

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 12:30:00 +0000

Each year, RGD asks a different Canadian design agency or studio to tackle their conference identity. In these shorter episodes, host Nicola Hamilton will be speaking with some of those folks—past DesignThinkers Design Partners. In this episode, Hamilton sits down with Dominic Ayre RGD. Ayre is the Creative Director at Hambly & Woolley, who worked on the conference identity in 2009. Ayre also plays a big role in helping RGD identify DesignThinkers speakers each year, so you’ll hear a little bit about that process too.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Steven Heller

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 12:30:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Steven Heller. Heller is the co-chair and co-founder of the School of Visual Arts MFA Design program. He was a senior art director at the New York Times for 33 years. He is the author or co-author of 200 books, mostly on design and pop culture, and has been a contributing editor to PRINT, BASELINE, EYE, and other design magazines. You’d know his writing best under the slug The Daily Heller. In this episode, host Nicola Hamilton and Heller talk about how he got started, how he’s seen the industry change and the value of chronicling things to better understand our experiences. It’s a meandering conversation—the best kind of conversation in our opinion.

For more on Steven Heller, you can also read PRINT’s recent interview with Heller, his wife Louise Fili, and their son Nicolas Heller (aka New York Nico). Grab a coffee or a cup of tea, the Heller-Fili family roundtable is worth a diversion.

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When House is Not a Home | Dominique Browning

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Dominique Browning jokes that after the interview for this episode, she might end up having PTSD. After more than 30 years writing and editing at some of the top magazines in the world, Browning has blocked a lot of it out.

And after listening today, you’ll understand why.

At Esquire, where she worked early in her career, Browning says she cried nearly every day. There were men yelling and people quitting. Apartment keys being dropped off with mistresses. A flash, even, of a loaded gun in a desk drawer.

At House & Garden, where she ended her magazine career in 2007 after 12 years as the editor-in-chief, the chaos was less Mad Men and more Devil Wears Prada. It was glitzy Manhattan lunches mixed with fierce competition and coworkers who complained that her wardrobe wasn’t “designer” enough. The day she took the job, she says she felt like she had walked into Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (Her friends had warned her that it was going to be a snake pit.)

When the magazine unexpectedly folded on a Monday, she and her staff were told they had until Friday to clear out their offices. “Without warning,” she says, “our world collapsed.”

In this episode, Browning talks with Lory Hough, editor of Harvard Ed. magazine, about those chaotic years, which, she admits, could also be fun. (Spoiler: The fun had nothing to do with the loaded gun.) You’ll also hear why in her editor’s columns she often wrote about her kids, why she still thinks of herself as an editor, and why a certain bit of advice from a golfer friend helped her during the stressful parts of her life when she worried too much about what others were thinking: Keep your eye on the ball and just swing through.

Read the full episode transcript here.

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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Making Sense of “Trigger Warnings”

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Stigma, Taboo, and Trauma

The relationship between content and audience is always complex, and the power of words to inspire or harm is widely debated. In this episode, we discuss the controversial yet ubiquitous “trigger warning,” a specific form of content advisory suggesting that some content is so offensive or traumatic it may “trigger” you. Trigger warnings are relatively new and are seen both as a means of respecting and including your audience by allowing them to disengage from harmful content and as evidence of a decline in the ability to handle difficult content.

While content warnings and advisories have long been part of the landscape, the concept of “trigger” is contentious. It has moved from a clinical environment into a moral one, where “offensive” content is labeled as potentially triggering–even in cases where no underlying trauma exists to be triggered. One under-examined aspect of trigger warnings is the potential re-stigmatization of storytellers whose work is labeled and the reinforcement of cultural taboos. Should scenes of interracial dating or stories of single motherhood come with trigger warnings if the audience finds such content distasteful?

Join us as we explore the emerging literature and experimental data on trigger warnings, their utility, function, and impact.

Correction: In this episode, we mention that Anna Calix had a miscarriage. Anna actually had a 40-week stillbirth. Miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) is a fetal demise in utero at less than 20 weeks of pregnancy, and stillbirth (fetal death) is a spontaneous fetal demise in utero at 20 weeks or more of pregnancy. The two have very different experiences medically, legally, logistically, and socially.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Erin Sarofsky

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 12:30:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Erin Sarofsky. Erin is an internationally heralded creative, regularly chosen by brand and entertainment titans to lead their most artful storytelling projects. Erin launched Sarofsky Corp in 2009, in Chicago’s West Loop. The firm has forged long-standing relationships in the advertising and entertainment industries, but it’s best known for title sequences for movies like Peacemaker, The Staircase, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, We Were the Lucky Ones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Community. In this episode, Sarofsky and host Nicola Hamilton talk about the challenges of bouncing between our creative and business brains. The two spend a lot of time talking about what it takes to build a sustainable creative business, (i.e. cash flow). And they wrap up by talking about The Skrimps, Sarofsky’s adorable and hilarious AI-generated characters.

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This is a Prototype: Jenna Date

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 13:30:00 +0000

On this episode, host Doug Powell is joined by Jenna Date, a pioneering design practitioner, entrepreneur, educator, consultant and executive design leader. With deep experience leading design and innovation programs in the healthcare industry, Jenna spent a decade teaching at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. More recently, she has relocated to Burlington, Vermont, where Doug met her on a recent visit to that city.

Jenna has navigated changing circumstances many times in her long design career, and she brings a refreshing candor to the discussion, openly sharing the challenges and joys of professional and personal reinvention. Doug and Jenna discuss the emotional strain they’re seeing in many of their design leadership peers, the increased need for supportive community connections, and specific tactics for approaching mid-career job searches.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Mikey Richardson & Mike Kelar RGD

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Each year, RGD asks a different Canadian design agency or studio to tackle the conference identity. In these shorter episodes, host Nicola Hamilton will speak with some of those folks—our past DesignThinkers Design Partners. In this episode, Hamilton chats with Mike Kelar and Mikey Richardson, co-founders and co-ECDs at Toronto-based Jacknife. In 2008, the year they were Design Partners, the pair were working as AmoebaCorp. Kelar and Richardson took a very hands-on approach to the work, which they talk about in this episode.

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Fabien Baron | Vive la Créativité!

PRINT Magazine — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

There are many reasons for you to hate Fabien Baron (especially if you’re the jealous type). Here are seven of them:

He’s French, which means, among other things, his accent is way sexier than yours.
He’s spent more than his fair share of time in the company of supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Kate Moss.
He gets all of his Calvin Klein undies for free.
Ditto any swag from his other clients: Dior, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, or Armani.
When he tired of just designing magazines, magazines went and made him their editor-in-chief.
He was intimately involved in the making of Madonna’s notorious book, Sex. How intimately? We were afraid to ask.
Also? Vanity Fair called him “the most sought-after creative director in the world.”

With our pity party concluded, we admit “hate” was probably the wrong word, because after spending time talking to him, it’s easy to see why Baron has been able to live the kind of life many magazine creatives dream of—and why he’s been so incredibly successful.

His enthusiasm is contagious. It’s actually his superpower. And it’s a lesson for all of us. When you get next-level excited, as Baron does when he can see the possibilities in a project, his passion infects everybody in the room.

And then, when you learn that Baron believes he’s doing what he was put on this earth to do, and claims that he would do it all for free. You’ve kind of got to believe him.

I never, ever worried about money. I never took a job because of the money. Because I think integrity is very important. I think, like believing that you have a path and that you’re going to follow that path and you’re going to stay on that path and that you’re going to stick to that. And that’s what I’m trying to do.
Fabien Baron

Read the full episode transcript here.

If you’re in the magazine business—if you’re in any business focused on content creation—this podcast is for you.

This episode is made possible by PIDLLP sponsors Commercial Type, Mountain Gazette, and Freeport Press.

The team behind Print is Dead (Long Live Print!) also produces The Full Bleed, a podcast about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.

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The Pain We Feel

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Culture in Storytelling and the Learned Expression of Emotions

Something that has fascinated us recently is the role culture plays in the emotional aspects of storytelling. The emotional response, its justification, and the words used to describe it all are heavily influenced by an individual’s identity and how they’ve learned to express themselves. In this episode, we discuss some of the cultural differences when it comes to talking about pain and the importance of being a good listener. In our roles, we are listeners who support other listeners, whether it’s an HCP hearing their patients’ needs or members of a disease community propping each other up. Listening to someone’s pain, however they express it, is how we learn and design successful outcomes for them.

As you’ll hear us say many times in the episode, pain is a broad topic with many interesting facets to discuss and discover – and we intend to do more episodes on other aspects of pain in the future.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Aaron Draplin

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

This week’s guest is a DesignThinkers favorite. Aaron Draplin lives and works in Portland, Oregon. He does creative work under the moniker Draplin Design Co. for rock bands, comedians, restaurants, festivals, and leftie politicians. He also makes typefaces for the recently launched DDC Fonts and has a merch line that’s produced over 350 products. In 2016, he published his first book, titled Pretty Much Everything, now in its twelfth printing! In this week’s episode, host Nicola Hamilton and Draplin talk about the immense privilege of living a creative life, the value of doing work for the big bucks and the not-so-big bucks, and what Draplin is thinking about now as he enters his next decade.

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This is a Prototype: Richard Hollant

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Throughout this season of the series host Doug Powell has been speaking with leaders who have used their design superpowers in community and civic leadership roles, and in this episode, he continues that thread in this conversation with Richard Hollant.

In 1988 Richard founded CO:LAB as a design consultancy with a focus on brand design and product launches. Over time the firm moved from its original home in Boston to Hartford, Connecticut, and has shifted its focus from brand design to social impact work, engaging with community and cultural organizations in Hartford and across Connecticut. CO:LAB has won awards from PRINT, HOW, and Cause & Affect, among others, and Richard has been featured in Business Weekly, Communication Arts, and Fast Company. A longtime leader in AIGA, Richard was appointed Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of Hartford in 2017, and during the Covid pandemic, he was tapped by the Mayor of Hartford to lead the strategic reopening of the arts, culture, and recreation throughout that city.

In 2019, Richard founded Free Center—a collection of rehabilitated community spaces providing free access to arts, culture, trauma healing, and advocacy programming in forgotten neighborhoods across Connecticut.

Photo of Richard Hollant by Mike Marques.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Michael Bierut

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 12:00:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut. Michael has been at Pentagram for more than 30 years. He’s led projects for clients like The New York Times, MIT Media Lab, Mastercard, Princeton University, and the New York Jets. He’s also the co-founder of the Design Observer and has authored countless books on graphic design. In this episode, Bierut talks about his early career landing in New York City in 1980. Host Nicola Hamilton and Bierut discuss his first job, working at Vignelli Associates, and what it was like to unravel that influence later in his career.

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Uncomfortable Conversations Save Lives

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The Surgeon General Weighs in on the Risks of Social Media

In this episode, Brad and Gabe delve into the US Surgeon General’s proposal to introduce warning labels on social media platforms, aimed at highlighting their impact on young people’s mental health. In the US, the surgeon general is seen as a moral authority who looks at social issues through a health-first lens from the dangers of social media to gun violence. There’s a lot to discuss here from the complexities of communicating risk to teenagers and Murthy’s strategic choice to liken these risks to those associated with smoking cigarettes.

While using warning labels may not be the most effective method to deter use in the short term, the branding associated with such labels can have lasting effects. Many of us broadly understand the potential negative effects of social media on mental health, but a warning label would explicitly create the connection between harm and these platforms – it’s a confrontation reminding them of the risks of logging in.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Glenda Rissman RGD

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In this bonus episode of the DesignThinkers podcast, host Nicola Hamilton sits down with Glenda Rissman and Darrell Corriveau of Q30 Design. Rissman co-founded Q30 Design with Peter Scott in 1991 and Corriveau joined as Creative Director Interactive in 1993. Today Rissman is a regular civilian, having retired from the industry, while Darrell is still at Q30 as their VP of Digital. They caught up about the DesignThinkers identity they worked on in 2007, one that was a big step forward into the world of interactivity.

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This is a Prototype: Daniela Marzavan

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Host Doug Powell caught up with his guest for this episode, Daniela Marzavan, in the middle of an eight-week design road trip through Europe with her partner and two children—she’s calling it the Traveling School of Design Thinking.

Based in Portugal, Daniela, is a self-described “pracademic”, fluidly straddling the line between design practice and design education. Daniela is fluent in seven languages and puts many of those languages to use in a practice that takes her across Europe and around the world working with universities, startups, scaled enterprises, NGOs, and governments, infusing these organizations with design thinking, innovation, and human-centered ways of working. Daniela is the co-author of the new book Creativity for a Sustainable Future, which seeks to harness the power of creativity as a driving force for positive change in complex environmental, social, and economic problems.

Doug and Daniela covered a lot of territory in this discussion, including Daniela’s refreshing perspective on the trends she is seeing in the global regions she’s working in—trends that don’t always match what we see in parts of the design industry dominated by North American tech companies.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Forest Young

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

This week’s guest is Forest Young, fresh off announcing his new position at Fundamentalco, where he leads the design discipline for new economy clients. He is part of the senior business acceleration team with a singular focus on value creation. Prior to that, Forest was the Global Head of Brand at Rivian and the Chief Creative Officer at Wolff Ollins. In this episode, host Nicola Hamilton asks Forest about the past, present, and future of design. They cover his comfort level as a speaker, the responsibility of designers working in innovative tech spaces, and what transitioning between agency and in-house environments has taught him about making work.

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If Everything is Healthy, Nothing Is

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In a world of ubiquitous marketing, figuring out what supports a “healthy lifestyle” can be challenging.

Marketers have picked up on the cultural trend towards wellness branding, and are enthusiastically, if somewhat disingenuously, leaning into claims that are technically true but not very helpful–“no added sugar”, for example, is true, but irrelevant, for a product that has a high glycemic index (like fruit juices). This “healthwashing” has been seen across the spectrum of brands, from the curious case of fast food chains removing unhealthy signifiers like “fried” from their names (BK, Dunkin’, KFC, etc.), to the less curious but equally nefarious labeling practices of breakfast cereals and protein bars, brands are eagerly touting their health benefits.

In this episode, hosts Sonika Garcia and Brad Davidson discuss healthwashing and touch on many forms of virtue signaling. One important takeaway: People are keenly aware of their health nowadays, so brands across the board shouldn’t shy away from communicating the real role they can play. The importance is delivering that message in a way that’s true to each brand, maintains its identity, and respects its audience.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Ellen Lupton

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

This week’s guest is designer, writer, and educator Ellen Lupton. She’s written and contributed to at least thirty books including Thinking With Type and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision. Host Nicola Hamilton talks to Ellen about her varied practice, what it’s like to wear all the hats she wears, and the joy she experiences saying yes to all of the things. She also talks about her role as a design educator and the challenges and opportunities of teaching an international student body.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: John Furneaux RGD

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In this Bonus Episode of the DesignThinkers podcast, host Nicola Hamilton welcomes John Furneaux RGD. John is Managing Director of Toronto’s PS&Co Brand Studio. He’s led his own firm, B3 Strategy, and held executive positions at a handful of leading brand consultancies, including Karacters (Design Thinkers Brand Partner in 2006). John helped lead the team who developed the conference identity that year—and he was also RGD President in 2006. Nicola and John revisit what he remembers about the conference, the identity, and his experience being a part of both.

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Skip the Chocolates, Bring the Blindfold

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 12:30:00 +0000

ParkinSex & Putting Intimacy at the Forefront

In honor of Parkinson’s awareness month, hosts Sonika Garcia and Brad Davidson are joined by Howard Lenn, EVP, Executive Creative Director at Havas Health Plus, to discuss his team’s approach to the work on the “The Kama Sutra of Parkinson’s,” ParkinSex. Couples that include someone with Parkinson’s are more likely to separate than couples that don’t. Howard talks about the massive strain Parkinson’s puts on intimacy, prior to any touching, where one is feeling performance-related shame and/or struggling to communicate wants and needs. The love is there, and ParkinSex puts the focus on practicing intimacy.

ParkinSex is not only great, but it also puts into practice many of the themes that have been previously discussed on this podcast, conducting primary research, co-creating with communities, the shame-stigma-taboo trichotomy, and implementing inclusive design. The campaign was a finalist in the Webby Awards People’s Voice Award for Health, Wellness & Pharmaceutical Advertising.

Learn more on LinkedIn and Spotify.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Sagi Haviv

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

This week’s guest is the one and only Sagi Haviv. Haviv is a partner and designer at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv—a firm responsible for some of the most famous logos of all time. The firm’s clients include Chase Bank, NBC, State Farm, OBS, NYU, Animal Planet, and the US Open to name a few. Haviv also teaches Visual Identity Design at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has penned a couple of books on the topic of identity design. It’s his dedication to crafting beautiful symbols and his deep knowledge of brands that have made Haviv a compelling DesignThinkers speaker. In this episode, host Nicola Hamilton talks to him about his early career working under legends Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, what it means to design a logo today, and why presentations are so valuable for our clients.

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This is a Prototype: Vivek Rao

PRINT Magazine — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Throughout this season of the series host Doug Powell has been looking at the impact of AI and other emerging technology on the future of design and design leadership with a particular focus on the top academic design programs in the US—looking at how students are learning design in the classroom can be a great predictor for how they will show up in the workplace in the years ahead, which of course will have a major impact on how design teams and scaled design programs will operate.

Doug’s guest for this episode is Vivek Rao, director of the Masters of Engineering in Design & Technology Innovation program at the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. A mechanical engineer by training, Vivek spent his early career at the design and innovation consultancy IDEO. He then did his PhD studies in design, innovation, and emerging technology at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining Duke in 2023.

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DesignThinkers Podcast: Annie Atkins

PRINT Magazine — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:30:00 +0000

This week’s episode features Annie Atkins, a leading voice in the world of graphic props and design for film. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Annie has designed graphic pieces for multiple Oscar-nominated films: including the animated feature The Boxtrolls, Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and West Side Story, and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, French Dispatch, and the Grand Budapest Hotel – the latter which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Production Design. Host Nicola Hamilton talks to Atkins about her early career which was full of fits and starts as she found her niche. You can hear her love of history and research throughout the conversation, especially when she talks about designing in character—and the way imperfect assets feel more real.

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