Clever with Amy Devers

Interior Designer Kia Weatherspoon spent her youth making frequent trips to visit her brother in prison - a deeply dehumanizing experience that left a big impression. In the military, she was deployed shortly after 9/11 and awakened her innate designer in the need to create privacy and comfort. Now, Kia is delivering on a quest to ensure that interior design is accessible for all, especially those...

Multidisciplinary designer, Nick DuPey, hit a few rough patches growing up in Chattanooga. When his girlfriend’s mom suggested he take an art class, he found a path to fine art, graphic design, and a creative hive. His career led to IDEO, where he added human-centered design to his practice. Now, as Head of Experience Design at co:collective, he cultivates collaborative co-creation informed by pur...

Furniture designer Jomo Tariku grew up in Ethiopia in a home full of eclectic objects collected via his dad’s travels. In the U.S. with an Industrial Design degree, he embarked on a mission to change the western canon by designing modern furniture through an African lens. After initial heartbreak and years as a data scientist, Jomo Furniture is now in museums and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever! Im...

Industrial designer and founding partner of Barber Osgerby, Jay Osgerby, grew up in a small town in England, with his close-knit multi-generational family and the backdrop of his grandparents’ experiences through WWII. His childhood was filled with making things - inspired by his Swiss ancestors’ stories of watch and camera making. His parents were incredibly resourceful, whether it was opening a...

Brooklyn-based podcaster Avery Trufelman has radio in her DNA. Her parents met while working at WNYC, so from birth she was nurtured with love and appreciation for radio. As a teenager, Avery took to expressing herself through wild, quirky thrifted fashion ensembles, much to the confusion of her peers. After cutting her audio teeth in college radio, Avery submitted a midnight application to intern...

Airbnb’s Global Head of Marketing, Hiroki Asai, grew up riding his BMX through the orchards of Cupertino, CA. But it was the visual language of skateboard culture that ensnared his creative imagination and grew into a passion for graphic design. Always industrious, he took night school art classes as a teenager, went on to earn a BA in Graphic Design, and then got straight to work freelancing. Not...

Co-founder and editor-in-chief of Deem Journal, Alice Grandoit-Šutka says, as a child of Haitian immigrants, her essential function was to listen. Now this practice, a ritual that keeps her grounded in the possibilities of better futures, informs all of her work. A cultural researcher, designer, publisher, and host - Alice’s work exists at the intersection of arts, community engagement, and food....

Creature World’s Danny Cole began drawing the Creature in a dusty church basement in youth. He had his first public exhibition before graduating from high school. His work has since evolved from graffiti and paintings to include immersive art experiences, NFTs, clothing capsules, and adventures in virtual reality. All in an effort to bring us together in a shared version of a more divine reality....

Taylor Levy, half of the multidisciplinary studio CW&T, found adventure and drive early as a competitive skier. Now, Taylor and her life and art partner, Che-Wei Wang, root their practice in transparent, iterative processes that span art, engineering, and design. CW&T received the prestigious Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, a testament to their groundbreaking, and thought provoking wo...

Baronfig founder, Joey Cofone, grew up in New Jersey learning to speak his mind from his strong, single, adoptive mother. A systems thinker, his lens on the world has always been adept at zooming way in and way out with an alarming self-awareness. This has served him well, both in designing “tools for thinkers” and in recognizing the patterns of invention for his book, The Laws of Creativity. Imag...

Ashleigh Axios spent her youth entertaining herself with crafts, immersed in her grandma’s world, finding kinship with the neighbors. After college, she gained a unique bouquet of experience that all added up to a position in the Obama White House as creative director. Now, as an owner of Coforma, she is a fierce advocate for design's ability to create positive social change. Images, links and mor...

Nancy Baker Cahill spent her youth gaining an appreciation for both civic engagement and dark humor. Her creative passions were ignited with a powerful youth arts program, but then went dormant for a difficult spell in adulthood. Now, fully in her stride as a new media artist known for work that examines power, selfhood, and embodied consciousness, her AR artwork can be found covering Times Square...

Interior designer and star of Netfllix’s Queer Eye, Bobby Berk grew up in the rural south, feeling like an outsider. Before coming out as gay, he struggled with anger, depression and tension with his religious family. After running away from home and coming out, he made a break for Denver, and then NYC. Always designing opportunities for himself, he found his way to e-tailing, then retailing and t...

Principal of Commune Design, Roman Alonso grew up in Caracas Venezuela, often traveling around in a motorhome with his family to escape to nature, before moving to Miami as a teenager. He attended Boston University, with the underlying fantasy of getting to New York. After college, he got a job at Barney’s in New York, wrote for the style section of The New York Times , and started a publishing co...

Fashion designer Mimi Plange talks to Amy and Jaime about being born in Ghana, growing up in California, and nurturing herself on a steady diet of fantasy movies. She's always known she’d become a fashion designer, but an invitation to the White House by Michelle Obama came as a total surprise. Plus, she's got cred with both Beyoncé and Jay Z. Images and more from our guest! Clever is created...

LA-based interior designer Kelly Wearstler recounts to Amy and Jaime the journey from creating and selling crafts in her youth to building her namesake global lifestyle brand. Along the way she's worked waiting tables, battled painful shyness, and become a hockey mom. She also describes her closet in mouth-watering, vivid detail.  Images and more from our guest! Clever is created, hosted and...

Artist and designer, Chris Schanck, moved upwards of 22 times in his youth. He credits Uncle Rocco with firing up his creative engine at an early age, and an arts magnet school in adolescence with “saving his life.” That’s not an overstatement. Fast forward a few years and he’s developed a distinct visual language, has a solo show at a prestigious gallery under his belt, and critically successful...

Designer, artist, author & influencer Justina Blakeney spent her youth teaching art to abused/neglected teenage girls at a residential treatment program run by her parents, where she witnessed the healing power of art & kindness. After formative years in Switzerland and Italy, she settled in Los Angeles and harnessed the Internet to build Jungalow, an immensely popular lifestyle brand insp...

Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister did not care for engineering in high school. He found designing a poster that would communicate a vibe and draw crowds to an event to be way more compelling. After design school, the Austrian native decided that New York is the city that fits him best. With many awards and a big name in his field, he’s now focusing on art, exhibitions and taking a sabbatical ever...

Digital designer and writer Amélie Lamont is a native New Yorker and daughter of Jamaican immigrants. A self-proclaimed nerd, she grew up reading Encyclopedia Britannica and teaching herself to code. A life-long learner, she has pursued many different areas of study in school and hated them all, which is probably why her long-term vision for herself involves a PhD and starting a design school! As...

This Old House Master Carpenter Norm Abram charms Jaime and Amy with stories of a youth spent building pinewood derby cars and learning the trade from his father, who lives on in the walls of the house they built together as adults. He got his start in TV by accident, but thanks to an unfailing dedication to patience and safety, that’s about the only major accident he can speak of. These days, he’...

Design entrepreneur and founder of Colony, the designer’s co-op, Jean Lin, grew up in suburban Massachusetts as one of a handful of non-white kids. With two brothers, she was a card-carrying tomboy until her teenage years when she leaned into fashion as a way to express herself. Influenced by her mother’s work as an educator for the incarcerated, she initially followed a career path into social se...

Multidisciplinary designer and art director, Luca Nichetto, grew up in Murano, Italy, steeped in the glassmaking traditions of the region and his ancestors. He got started in design by selling his drawings to local factories for pocket money. As a teenager, he became a rising basketball star and considered going pro, but eventually chose his other love, design, instead. After college and some frui...

Airbnb’s Global Head of Marketing, Hiroki Asai, grew up riding his BMX through the orchards of Cupertino, CA. But it was the visual language of skateboard culture that ensnared his creative imagination and grew into a passion for graphic design. Always industrious, he took night school art classes as a teenager, went on to earn a BA in Graphic Design, and then got straight to work freelancing. Not...

Beat Baudenbacher was born in Switzerland, where he grew up exposed to the dynamic artistic world through his mother and the rational lens through his surgeon dad. Always fascinated by words, he fell in love with typography, and dabbled in graphic design in high school. He did an exchange year in California with no intention of pursuing design, but after his dad mentioned that a friend’s daughter...