Typeradio Podcast

The busy Tina Roth Eisenberg (aka Swiss Miss) had a talk with us at her birthplace Sankt Gallen. Although she was born, raised and educated in Switzerland, she found in New York a place that actually adapts to her speed. She is the curator and composer of the swissmiss-blog, that started out as a personal visual bookmark archive in 2005, but reaches more than a million viewers per month nowadays! Her blog has so much impact that she can actually launch an upcoming designer by the exposure of a single post. We are wondering if this acquired power makes her nervous and if there are certain Swiss things that she misses in the States. In the end we talk about the other concepts, products and brands she created, that originated from her need to be her own client. Recorded at Tÿpo St.Gallen 2011, Switzerland.

We had a critical and insightful talk with Dan Perjovschi, visual artist from Romania, about the role of art in society. He is well known for covering museum walls with his humoristic yet critical political cartoons. The fall of communism in Romania gave him the freedom to travel, but did it also take a part of his artistic identity with it?  He shares his need for changing perspectives in this materialistic society and how it took him ten year to move his work from paper to the wall. His need for perspectives eventually led to a retrospective exhibition of his work, together with his wife who’s also an artist. Did it bring him what he was looking for? Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

This is the second time we meet Martin Tiefenthaler, who runs his own studio, teaches ‘typography and semiotics’ in Vienna and is the co-founder of the Typografische Gesellschaft Austria (TGA). Six years ago he just set up an educational system regarding typography, now he shares the results of this first harvest with us. We ask him why he thinks he’s a good teacher, but a bad designer.  He tells us how he was always into type, while he thought he was into art and how a book totally changed his life. At the end of this interview he leaves us with an untold story about his statement that typography is actually a political issue. We should start planning a third interview with him soon. Recorded at Tÿpo St.Gallen 2011, Swiss.

Graphic artist and illustrator Henning Wagenbreth shares his story about growing up behind the German Wall in East-Berlin. Being a student in this period might be where his love for the artistic dark side comes from. When the wall fell he had the chance to study in Paris for a year, where he was amazed that there was more to comics than just Asterix and Obelix! Nowadays his handwriting is starting a life on its own as the typeface FF Prater,  we ask him how he feels about that. He tells us about his observative mind that made him save all the African scam-emails he received over the years and how he refers to them as modern fairytales. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

Frederik Berlaen is a multi-talented Belgian type designer, programmer and teacher, who just fell in love with scripting while attending the postgraduate Type & Media course at the KABK in The Hague. He didn’t graduate with a typeface, but an application that eventually set the foundation for his recently released typescripting program, Robofont. We ask him what drove him to create his own tools. He tells us how he misses drawing, how scripting can save a designer in several ways and even makes a confession on Typeradio about his thoughts on sharing. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

In this second part of the Paul Sahre interview, he tells us how being a teacher gives him a lot of inspiration, which is his selfish reason of being a teacher in the first place. He thinks the digitalization of the design culture will actually give the traditional way of the tangible graphic design a huge boost; few, but happier designers! We ask him about the crazy deadlines for NY Times illustrations and he tells us about the importance of setting rules for graphic design. Humour is something you can find in a lot of Paul’s work, so we ask him how serious he takes himself as a designer and ofcourse: how he would like to be remembered. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

This is the first part of an amusing talk with American graphic designer Paul Sahre, well known for his book cover designs and illustrations for the NY Times. When we asked him about his earliest memory of graphic design, he shares a story about his mother and a scary ink drawing of a demon beast that he drew when he was around 12 years old. Being a parent himself, he tells us how this is changing his way of working as a designer and how it affected his traveling. We were curious if he actually reads all the books he’s designing covers for and if he thinks there will be any book covers left to design in the future. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

We sat down with the colorful twins Thomas and Martin Poschauko. They are working, living and creating together for almost their whole life, only art school separated them for a while. We talk about their old-style heroes and their love for the van Gogh color palette. Their strong preference for a seclusive and designer-free surrounding brought them to a small Bavarian village after graduating. They had the luck to settle their design studio in a curious old cinema. They released their first book in 2011, Nea Machina, a 400 pages creative experiment, which took them 2,5 years to complete! We ask them how this experience changed their way of approaching design. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

Richard van der Laken and Pepijn Zurburg run the Dutch graphic design studio Designpolitie and organise the What Design Can Do conference in Amsterdam. They tell us how they came together in Designpolitie, about their minimalist design approach, and how a design style can also be limiting. Their roles in the studio have changed over the years, but they still do their best work together. As design disciplines nowadays merge and cross-over more and more, they felt this was missing in conferences in The Netherlands. So they decided to organize the What Design Can Do conference. We asked them if their personal (political) opinions are important in their work. And they elaborate on the next conference. And no, they don’t wear the suits to the studio everyday. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

Designer/typographer/calligrapher Yomar Augusto was born in Brazil but left to travel the world. His first stop was New York, where he lived and studied. Now he lives in Holland. Part of his famly was from Lebanon, so he feels a connection with Arabic calligraphy, even though he doesn’t speak the language. How did he get from a military school in Brazil, all the way into the world of design? Learn more about Yomar, and also his opinion about education in the Netherlands and other things. Recorded at Integrated 2011, Antwerp, Belgium.

With her first name meaning ‘artist’, Shilpa Wadhwa seemed destined to become a designer. She started studying science to become a doctor, but failed and chose to study Fashion and Communication at NIFT design college. After this she landed a job as a window-dresser and from there rolled into graphic design. We talk about the balance between modern digital techniques and traditional arts and crafts skills in college. After graduating in 2008 she started her own studio, Wishbox. She tells about her struggles as a starting freelancer, and we talk about what is typical Indian in design, and the many local differences. Recorded at DesignYatra 2011 in Goa, India.

This time Typeradio is joined in the studio by Shormista Mukherjee, Bidisha Roy Pratheeb and Mahua Hazarika of Rickshaw in Mumbai, India. A conversation emerges about music, movies and food, lots of food! Try out the recipe described in the interview, but make sure to get the small river prawns instead of the bigger ones. And please turn off your smoke alarm. Now you’re all set and ready to eat, with your hands of course! Why not have a lassi made in a washing machine as desert? Recorded at DesignYatra 2011 in Goa, India.

Michael Johnson calls himself a guitar playing designer. In this interview he tells how he taught himself design through just four books. It turned out to be quite successful as he now runs his design company Johnson Banks. The walls of his studio are covered in magnetic steel so everyone can put ideas up. This way even the idea of an intern can get trough, so no-one feels left out. Finally he gets asked where his company will be in 15 years time and how he wants to be remembered. Listen and find out. Recorded at Design Yatra 2011 in Goa, India.

Garech and Declan Stone published the first edition of their book Logo R.I.P. in 2003, and this month a revised edition is being presented. They talk about the life expectancy of logos, their most common death, and logo nostalgia. What are the effects of globalization on logo design? We asked them about their personal favorite logos and the logo hit-list. The interview ends with questions from the audience. Recorded in front of a live audience at Bijzondere Collecties (Special Collections department of the University of Amsterdam).

Rajesh Kejriwal is a busy man, as director of the Kyoorius Group, Transasia Paper, SaffronDesign, and Kyroorius Exchange (the organizer of the Design Yatra conference). Right after its closing we talk to Rajesh about the conference and its history, and his many other endeavors. He talks about his affiliation with Dutch design in comparison with British and American design. And he tells us about his vision on the future of Graphic Design in India, and the preservation of traditional Indian crafts. Recorded at Design Yatra 2011 in Goa, India.