The Resilient Designers Podcast

What happens when the path forward isn't really clear? In this episode, Vim talks with three students from Delft University of Technology - Toby from electrical engineering, Wessel from architecture, and Lena from industrial design - about navigating the uncertainties of student life. From switching studies to tackling procrastination, from stepping outside comfort zones to managing diverse te...

What happens when failure becomes the teacher? In this episode, Vim talks to Bas Flipsen and Stefan Persaud about productive failure - an approach where you struggle first, learn second, and somehow end up understanding more deeply than before. How do you teach students to become comfortable with not knowing? Why is struggling essential to learning? From aerospace's "first time right" culture to d...

What happens when design meets the real mess of the world? In this episode, Brooke and Leon talk to Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer about designing with complexity - where there are no neat problems, no perfect solutions, and no clear finish lines. From system shifts to directionality, Mieke challenges the dominant worldview of design as problem solving and offers a new lens: one that values relationsh...

When asked about her ongoing strength as a professional working across the disciplines of design, craft and art, Tiiu Meiner says: partial delusion. Upon further investigation, it is the resilience she finds through language, more specifically poetry, that helps her navigate and persevere. Conducting poetry workshops with working design professionals, Tiiu credits language as a tool for understand...

Itika Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Studio Carbon, takes us on her journey of discovering design. When traditional job opportunities failed to recognise the full scope of design's potential, she and her classmates forged their own path into the professional world. By co-founding Studio Carbon, they've slowly expanded projects beyond the traditional view of design, paving the way for a conte...

In the intro episode, Brooke welcomes the driving force behind the Resilient Designers project, Rebecca Price. She shares her thoughts on today's design culture and how a crisis led her to a profound discovery of how resilience, at its core, born out of mostly negative experiences, offers us transformative knowledge. Or in her own words, don't waste a good crisis. In this conversation, we...