A podcast about design criticism and practice

102. Laurel Schwulst

Dec 5, 2018

Laurel Schwulst is a designer, writer, teacher, and webmaster. She runs an independent design practice in New York City and teaches in design programs at Yale and Rutgers. She previously was the creative director for The Creative Independent and a web designer at Linked By Air. In this episode, Laurel and Jarrett talk about how horses got her into graphic design, what websites can be, the potential of the peer-to-peer internet, and how writing and teaching influence her practice.

Scratching the Surface is made possible entirely by listener support.

Support the show on Substack!

Latest Episodes:

270. Sarah Ichioka

Sarah Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator, and writer. She’s the author, with Michael Pawlyn, of Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency and the founder of Desire Lines, a cross-disciplinary studio that helps places, communities, and organizations chart paths toward thriving futures. In this conversation, Jarrett and Sarah talk about moving beyond sustainability towards regenerative practices, how thinking about the climate crisis as a cultural problem changes the role of designers, and why curiosity is a driving force in her work.

Listen →

269. Matt Owens

Matt Owens is co-founder and Chief Design and Innovation Officer at Athletics, a brand studio based in Brooklyn, and author of the book, A Visible Distance: Craft, Creativity, and the Business of Design. A graduate of Cranbrook’s Graphic Design Program, he previously worked as an art director for Methodfive, founded a small design studio, One9nine, and self-published the Flash-experimental design quarterly Volumeone. In this conversation, Jarrett and Matt talk about the gap between graphic design education and practice, the parallels between design today and design in the 1990s, and why Flash was a transformative piece of design software.

Listen →

268. Lara Lesmes & Fredrik Hellberg

Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg are the founders of Space Popular, an architecture studio that explores relationships between media and the built environment through research, design, and artworks. They are also professors at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where they run the Architectural Design Studio 2. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Lara and Fredrik talk about the relationship between virtual and physical spaces, how media shapes architecture, and the role of the architect in shaping digital environments.

Listen →