Scratching the Surface

Jon Marshall and Piotr Woronkowicz are industrial designers and partners at Pentagram. Jon, who joined in 2018, fuses product design with strategy, packaging, digital, and physical environments. Piotr, who joined in 2025, works across products, packaging, furniture, interiors, and environments. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Jon and Piotr about the role of industrial design in Pentagram...

Jarrett’s new book Graphic Designers After Graphic Design was just published by Princeton Architectural Press! The book, which features interviews, profiles, and case studies of emerging and mid-career graphic designers working in non-traditional practices, makes the case for aa new, expansive understanding of graphic design. To talk about the book, Draw Down’s Kathleen Sleboda turns the tables an...

Will Hunter is an Adjunct Instructor and Executive in Residence at New York University in the Schack Institute of Real Estate where he is leading the Building Better Cities Collaborative, a two-semester fellowship that brings mid-career professionals across disciplines to help cities be more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous. Before this, he was the founder and chief executive of the London S...

Rathna Ramanathan is the Provost of Central Saint Martins and the Executive Dean, Global Affairs at the University of the Arts London. Over the last few years, Rathna has led a complete restructuring of CSM, creating a new model to think about art and design education. Trained as a graphic designer, her research focuses on publishing and intercultrual communication and she previously served as Dea...

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. Today we're rebroadcasting our 2019 episode with writer Kurt Andersen, who's new novel, The Breakup, is out this week! — Kurt Andersen is a writer, radio host, and journalist. He's the author of novels True Believers, Heyday, and Turn of the Century, and has written for film, tele...

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. Today we're rebroadcasting our 2022 episode with Nicole Killian, who was just named Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of Graduate Studies in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art. — Nicole Killian is a graphic designer and educator whose work spans design, publishing, vide...

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. Today we're rebroadcasting our 2021 episode with Willo Perron, who was named Wallpaper's 2026 Designer of the Year. We'll be back with new episodes in September. — Willo Perron is a designer, creative director, and partner of Perron-Roettinger (now Perron Studios) whose work spans...

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. Today we're rebroadcasting our 2018 episode with Mindy Sue, who has a new book, A Sexual History of the Internet, out now.. We'll be back with new episodes in September. — Mindy Seu is a designer, educator, and researcher. When she was on the show, she was student at the Harvard G...

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. Today we're rebroadcasting our 2024 episode with Nicholas de Monchaux, who was recently appointed the new dean at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. We'll be back with new episodes in September! — Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect, designer, and author. He is curren...

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. First up is our 2017 conversation with Pentagram partner Abbott Miller! We'll be back with new episodes in September! — Abbott Miller is a designer, writer, and a partner at Pentagram where he leads a team designing identities, exhibitions, and books. Before Pentagram, Abbott ran...

Giorgia Lupi is an information designer and partner at Pentagram. Her work synthesizes data and storytelling for clients such as Google, IBM, Gates Foundation, and the New York Times. She’s the author of Speak Data with Phillip Cox, and previously published Dear Data, Observer, Collect, Draw, and the picture book This is Me and Only Me. In this conversation, Jarrett and Giorgia talk about the evol...

Marco Ferrari is the co-founder of Studio Folder, an agency for visual design and spatial research based in Milan, and the head of the Information Design program at Design Academy Eindhoven. His work focuses on information design and data visualization, the politics of data collection, and visualizing borders and climate. In this conversation, Jarrett and Marco talk about Studio Folder’s setup tha...

Alan Ricks and Sierra Bainbridge are founding members of Model of Architecture Serving Society (MASS). Alan, an architect and co-executive director, and Sierra, director of the Landscape Studio and Abundant Futures Lab, are co-authors of the new book, Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology, and a Flourishing Planet, that looks at MASS’s work across three projects as examples of multidisciplinary colla...

Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider are architects, educators, writers, and researchers. With their research collective Mould, they are co-authors of the new book, Architecture is Climate that re-examines architecture as a practice deeply connected to climate, politics, economics, and social justice. Jeremy was previously the head of Central Saint Martins and Tatjana is head of the Institute for His...

Heidi Korsavong and Benjamin Critton are the founders of Marta, a Los Angeles-based, globally engaged art gallery. Founded in 2019, Marta makes space for “artists to experiment with the utility of design and for designers to explore the abandonment of function.” In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Heidi and Benjamin about art that lives between disciplines, the curatorial ideas that anchor th...

Giovanna Borasi is an architect, writer, and curator. She’s currently the director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where’s she previous held the positions of Chief Curator, Curator of Contemporary Architecture, and Associate Director of Programs. In all these roles, her work often seeks to challenge the conventional definition of the architect. In this conversation, Jarrett and Giovanna t...

Walter Hood is a landscape architect, architect, artist, and urbanist. He’s the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA and the former chair of the department of landscape architecture at University of California, Berkeley. He’s the author of Blues & Jazz Landscapes, Urban Diaries, and the co-editor of Black Landscapes Matter. In this conversation, Jarrett and Walter tal...

Oliver Munday is a graphic designer and writer. His new book, Head of Household, is a collection of short stories that explore the conditions of modern fatherhood. Perhaps best known for his book cover designs, Oliver is currently the executive director of art and design at Doubleday, previously designed covers for Knopf and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and served as associate art director of The Atla...

Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter operate under the name Honey & Bunny. Their work moves between art, photography, performance, video, and writing to explore our relationship to food. With backgrounds in architecture, they are the authors of the books Food Design and Eat Design and the directors of the film Food Design: The Film. In this episode, Jarrett talks with Sonja and Martin about the...

Otto von Busch is a designer and professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design. He has a background in arts, craft, design, and theory and his work focuses on how making practices can mobilize community and social activism. His new book, The Design Comedy, repackages Dante’s to explore the broken promises of design, the problems in academia, and the role of design theory. In this conv...

Sam Valenti IV is the founder of Ghostly International, a music label and art company he founded in 1999 and known for experimental electronic artists like Matthew Dear, Tycho, and Galcher Lustwerk. On the occasion of Ghostly’s 25th anniversary, they just released We’ll Never Stop Living This Way: A Ghostly International Catalogue, a large coffee-table book celebrating the label’s artists, designe...

Thomas Weaver is an architectural writer, teacher, critic, and editor. He is a commissioning editor at Park Books where he cofounded and edits the Gumshoe series, and has teaching appoints at Princeton University and Accademia di architettura. He was previously the Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture at MIT Press, and managing editor at the Architectural Association where he editie...

Carlo Ratti is an architect, engineer, author, and academic. He is the curator of the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture, where he developed the theme Intelligens: Natural, Artificial, Collective. He runs the Senseable City Lab at MIT and is the author of multiple books including Atlas of the Senseable City, The City of Tomorrow, and Open Source Architecture. In this conversation, Jarrett and Ca...

Maggie Gram is a writer, cultural historian, and designer. She’s the author of the new book, The Invention of Design, and her writing as appeared in n+1 and The New York Times. She also leads an experience design team at Google in New York. In this conversation, Jarrett and Maggie talk about how she wrote her book, the evolution of how we talk about design, design’s relationship to power, and why...

Amale Andraos and Dan Wood are the founders of WORKac, an architecture office working across a range of scales with an emphasis on public, cultural, or civic projects all around the world. Amale is also professor at Columbia GSAPP, where she also served as dean from 2014-2021, and Dan has taught most recently at Columbia and Yale. They’ve also published a series of books including 49 Cities, Above...