Time Sensitive20 Okt 2021

Debbie Millman on the Importance of Playing the Long Game

Artist and designer Debbie Millman has been fascinated by the power of branding for most of her life. And as the host of the Design Matters podcast (which was recently translated into a book, out next month) and chair of the School of Visual Arts’s Masters in Branding program, she constantly has branding on her mind. For Millman, part of the allure of logos, identities, and marketing stems from the exercise of clearly and confidently expressing a purpose and meaning—a challenge that she has concurrently grappled with on a personal level. The parallels between aims in her work and life are no coincidence: Millman’s professional projects are often her way of searching for answers to life’s deepest questions.

Millman has long considered how design can reveal people’s innermost desires. She has worked at several prominent New York City agencies, including Sterling Brands, for which she served as chief marketing officer and president of its design division for 20 years, and was part of teams that created identities for brands such as 7Up, Burger King, Tropicana, and Twizzlers. She even moonlighted as the first-ever creative director of the pioneering hip-hop radio station Hot 97. Over the years, her career has helped her recognize the importance of slowing down, and of trusting that she doesn’t have to approach everything—writing, teaching, special projects, love—as if it’s her last chance to experience it.

On this episode, Millman describes her quest to feel comfortable in her own skin, talking with Spencer about the benefits of being a good listener, branding and marketing as ways to manufacture meaning, and why she doesn’t want to peak until the very end of her life.

Show notes:

Full transcript
debbiemillman.com
(03:50): Roxane Gay
(06:34): Millman’s “Together Apart” poster for #CombatCovid
(08:15): RAND Art + Data
(11:58): Master’s in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts
(13:19): Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People (HarperCollins)
(13:19): Design Matters podcast
(33:52): Look Both Ways (HOW Books)
(50:09): Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits (SkyHorse Publishing)
(54:35): Millman’s 2019 TED Talk, “How Symbols and Brands Shape Humanity”
(01:17:16): How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (Simon & Schuster)

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(160)

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten’s lifelong fascination with craft and making runs deep. He grew up in a multigenerational family of retailers and tailors in Antwerp, and in the 1980s, he was part of the famed avant-g...

24 Jun 59min

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Through PIN–UP, the German-born, New York–based editor, curator, and founder Felix Burrichter continues to expand the possibilities of what an architecture magazine can be. He constructs intuitive bri...

17 Jun 1h 20min

Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Through her multifaceted work, the Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based writer, reader, and researcher Maria Popova, founder of the “free, ad-free, A.I.-free, fully human” website and newsletter The Margina...

10 Jun 58min

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

For our latest “site-specific” episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer meets Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, where she has called home for more than 60 yea...

27 Mai 1h 4min

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

The singer-songwriter Valerie June has a gift for writing contemporary songs that feel timeless and as though they could also have existed at various points across the past century. Her expansive laye...

13 Mai 1h 13min

George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World

The novelist, essayist, and short-story writer George Saunders—widely celebrated for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), which won the Man Booker Prize, and book of short stories Tenth of December ...

6 Mai 1h 11min

Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art

There’s an animate quality to the biomorphic sculptures of the self-taught, Utah-born artist Alma Allen. His works, carved from wood, marble, and bronze—and informed by his deep appreciation for the n...

22 Apr 1h 6min

Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound

To be in a room with one of the artist and audiophile Devon Turnbull’s texture-rich Ojas hi-fi audio systems may be the closest one can get to being in the studio with the musicians themselves. It’s n...

8 Apr 1h 4min