Creative Characters

This week, Creative Type Director Phil Garnham sits down with Elliot Jay Stocks, designer, musician, and lover of all things typographic. From his time with Adobe Typekit to his current project building out Google Fonts' Knowledge center, Elliot has explored the vast universe of typography and helped people understand what they need, how to use it, and why there's so much to love about type.

What has everyone been up to for the past two years? Is AI coming to take all our jobs? What's your least-favorite typeface? We packed up our recording gear and traveled to Adobe MAX, one of the largest creative conferences in the world, to pose these very questions to people just like you. What we found was an audience craving connection and inspiration, and that was more than happy to wait at ou...

From big brands to lego bricks, Craig Ward has left his mark all over the world of typography. This week, host Charles Nix sits down with Craig to talk about his career, his myriad side projects and quirky pastimes, and how technology could revolutionize the way we use type and ensure the rights of ownership for designers.

Today we're welcoming Annie Atkins, a creative in the film industry. She's known for her graphic props and set pieces for Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs . She's also done design work for The Tudors , The Boxtrolls , and Spielberg's thriller, Bridge of Spies . Tune-in to learn about the magic of film.

Today we're welcoming Holly Fraser, editor-in-chief at WePresent, WeTransfer's digital arts platform that works with 1,000+ creatives from over 100 countries. Holly was part of the team that commissioned the 2022 Oscar-winning best live action short film,  "The Long Goodbye" , created by Riz Ahmed and Aneil Karia. Tune-in to learn what makes a hit film, how to stay inspired, and why the creative i...

Today we're welcoming Mindy Seu, a New York-based designer, researcher, and assistant professor at Rutgers. Seu recently completed the  Cyberfeminism Index , a book documenting more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism. Tune in as Seu shares her story of getting involved in cyberfeminism and the process involved in publishing her book. To see what Mindy Seu is currently worki...

Today we welcome Jason Debiak, an old friend of our co-host, Carl, and co-founder of Paper Tiger , a family-owned design agency in New Jersey. Jason runs the agency alongside his brother, creating designs for user-friendly websites and mobile applications while having a "Helvetica of a good time" (his words, pun intended, no apologies). They've worked with big-name companies including the New York...

This week we speak with Ximena Amaya, recent graduate of ArtCenter in Pasadena, California by way of Mexico City. Ximena talks about what led her to study graphic design and her passion for using it as a communication tool, in architecture, and for emerging technologies through her work as an intern at Pentagram. To see Ximena's work, visit ximena.works. To learn more about the research she docume...

Today, we're welcoming Sarah Boris, a London-based artist who runs her own creative studio. Creativity seems to be in her DNA. Tune in as Marie Boulanger, Brand Designer at Monotype talks to Sarah about her experiences working in-house versus running an independent creative studio, the power of titles, and her interest in pop art. To see more of Sarah Boris's design work, view her portfolio at sar...

This week's guest is passionate about designing for change. We're welcoming Nathan Lance, creative director at Leap, a B Corp certified design agency in Truro, England. Nathan is here to spill the tea on eco-friendly design, sustainability, and brand transparency.   To see more design projects from Leap. Design for Change, view their case studies online .   For more information on the agency's sus...

Get ready for a dive into punk rock history! This week's we're welcoming Andrew Krivine , author and punk rock collector, alongside Michael Worthington, faculty at CalArts and co-founder of Counterspace. The creative duo is here to tell the tale of how they co-created the largest exhibition of punk and new wave graphics ever shown on the West Coast.    Visit the "Torn Apart" exhibit at the PDC Des...

This week we're joined by award-winning creative Cristina Pandol , VP Creative at Westbrook Media , an entertainment company founded by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Tune in as our own Bill Connolly talks to Cristina about her experiences as a creative from growing up multi-cultural to her short-lived allergy to entertainment. Listen until the end to hear their favorite advertisements.

This week's episode features the first ever guest from Monotype, our very own Juan Villanueva, a senior type designer on the studio team. Outside of the work he does designing typefaces for clients like M&M's, Tencent and Google, Juan leads a busy life as an educator and active member of the design community in NYC. The overarching theme of this episode is personal challenges – and how you can cha...

This week's guests are Jennifer Sagalyn, Director of Strategic Partnerships, and JoAnn Becker, Assistive Technology Support, Training and Testing Specialist at Perkins Access. Perkins Access is an organization whose mission is to build a more accessible digital world for all people, regardless of their abilities. Sagalyn and Becker both have years of experience working in accessibility and share s...

Dune. Blade Runner 2049. Spider-Man: Far from Home. Avengers: Endgame. Ready Player One. If you've seen any of these big-name blockbusters (along with many others), then you've seen the work of this week's guest: David Sheldon-Hicks, Founder and Executive Creative Director at Territory Studio, a design firm that specializes in VFX and graphics for the entertainment industry. David sits down with h...

In this week's episode, our host Bill Connolly chats with all-around creative, Greg Lutze. Greg is a founder, advisor and artist based out of California. His company, VSCO, started as an app for photo and video, but now provides tools, tips and community for creatives. Greg has a rich perspective on the evolution of the art community, the role of the artist and talks of his own creative trajectory...

In this episode, Senior Content Strategist at Monotype, Kadley Gosselin, is joined by Dewey Bryan Saunders, the mastermind behind album covers for artists like Anderson .Paak, Future, and Turnstile. Classically trained in graphic design and illustration, Saunders discusses how he landed clients like  The New Yorker  fresh out of college, and a path that's led him to collage, art direction and insp...

In the first episode of Season 2, Carl Unger sits down with calligrapher, lettering artist and beach calligrapher. Andrew van der Merwe from Cape Town, South Africa. They discuss the ephemeral nature of his work; how movement, philosophy and asemic writing play into his letterforms and creative process; and what led him to start carving calligraphy into his local beaches.

In this week's episode, Monotype Creative Type Director, Terrance Weinzierl has an inspiring conversation with designer, educator and design thinker, Adam Weiler, who currently leads the social innovation program at Steelcase, a furniture company founded in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Weiler shares his perspective on design thinking, strategy, his complicated relationship with the internet and the mea...

In this episode, our own Bill Connolly is joined by Chelsea Goldwell, partner and creative director at Zero Studios , a digitally-native branding studio. Goldwell shares her experience designing for the Hillary for America campaign, teaching the next generation of design students at Parsons, and how her team prioritizes balance and health in this era of intense work.   This is a good one for anyon...

Pew pew! Our eighteenth episode goes deep into the world of science fiction films, with a decidedly typographic twist.  Terrance Weinzierl, Creative Type Director at Monotype, talks with Dave Addey, author of  Typeset in the Future,  about the use of type in classic science fiction movies like  Blade Runner ,  Alien ,   and  Wall-E . In particular, Terrance and Dave explore how Eurostile became th...

This week's guest, Ellen Lupton, has built a prolific career as a writer, educator, and designer. She serves as a senior curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, and the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has also authored several books, including most recently  Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist,...

This week's guest, photographer Tyler Haughey, has made a career for himself photographing the unseen angles of beach towns in the off-season—neon signs glowing in the snow, darkened motel rooms blinking out of deep hibernation, a promise to "see you next spring" painted by some unknown hand. We talk about how signage and other visual signifiers anchor memories in our minds, how those memories slo...

Welcome to Creative Characters, a podcast by Monotype exploring the people and personalities behind the brands, campaigns, and designs we love. This week, Creative Type Director Charles Nix talks to James Horwitz, founder of the London-based design agency Two Times Elliott. The agency's work was featured heavily in Monotype's 2020 Type Trends report, thanks to its inventive use of bold type. Even...

This week's guests are Jessica Seamans and Dan Black, who together comprise Landland. Landland is a small but mighty studio that designs and screenprints posters, primarily for bands and musicians. A lot of Landland's aesthetic centers around the strange and forgotten and corners of society—the abandoned gas stations, rest stops, and other relics of lived lives—and the combination of linework, wat...