

AIGA Design Podcast
AIGA, the professional association for design
The official podcast feed of AIGA, the professional association for design. We explore various facets of the design discipline, profession, and industry to help our listeners learn about the past and present and prepare for the future. The theme of our 2024-2025 season is "Design and Performance."
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 9, 2023 • 46min
Maigen Thomas on career changes and starting a new design job
Maigen Thomas, a senior UX designer and career switcher, talks about leveraging life experiences into design and gives tips for starting a new job. They discuss the importance of personal experience and user perspectives in design, the lack of diversity in the industry, and the lessons learned from a career change. They also touch on creating site maps, the effectiveness of boot camps, learning styles, gamification in HR tech, the 'Alfred effect,' and the impact of design in enterprise software.

Oct 28, 2023 • 51min
Pentagram 50 at the 2023 AIGA Design Conference
Debbie Millman interviews Pentagram partners Emily Oberman, Giorgia Lupi, Marina Willer, Natasha Jen, and Paula Scher. Recorded LIVE at the 2023 AIGA Design Conference in New York City!

Sep 27, 2023 • 4min
Clip: Steven Steiner on Designer Archetypes
What is your designer archetype? Are you a generalist, strategist, researcher, architect, artist, author, or design operations person? How does knowing your archetype help you progress in your career? We discuss these archetypes and more in the full episode of the AIGA Design Podcast with Steven Steiner: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aigadesign/episodes/Steven-Steiner-on-designer-archetypes--career-coaching--and-communicating-your-value-e29h0h4
Steven Steiner is a Career Coach for Designers who helps them get what they want next with the right levels of industry knowledge, rigor, and moral support.

Sep 20, 2023 • 39min
Steven Steiner on designer archetypes, career coaching, and communicating your value
What is your designer archetype? Are you a generalist, strategist, researcher, architect, artist, author, or design operations person? How does knowing your archetype help you progress in your career? We discuss these archetypes and more in this episode of the AIGA Design Podcast with our guest Steven Steiner.
Steven Steiner is a Career Coach for Designers who helps them get what they want next with the right levels of industry knowledge, rigor, and moral support.
Steven’s career achievements include 15+ years as an award-winning designer, manager, and educator. He’s held roles in-house, start-up, and agency teams for international and regional brands where he delivered results for TV, kiosk, responsive web, and mobile experiences.
Now, he wants to help YOU reach YOUR career goals.
Visit careercoachfordesigners.com to learn more about how Steven can help you right now and join the Career Community for Designers that he hosts on Slack.
Connect with Steven on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensteiner/

Aug 22, 2023 • 1h 4min
FEED SWAP: Yellow Glitter, Collective Change and Community-Centered Design with Lee-Sean Huang
FEED SWAP: Lee-Sean Huang, AIGA's director of design content and learning, recently appeared on Steven Wakabayashi's Yellow Glitter Podcast to talk about collective change, community-centered design, his midlife career crisis, and more.
Listen/subscribe to the Yellow Glitter Podcast: https://yellowglitterpodcast.com/podcast/42-collective-change-and-community-centered-design-with-lee-sean-huang/
Stay tuned for new original episodes of the AIGA Design Podcast in September 2023.
Join us for the AIGA Design Conference in New York City, October 12-14. Get your tickets before the price increase on September 7. We will sell out. Online streaming tickets are also available. https://www.aiga.org/design/aiga-design-conference

Jul 20, 2023 • 37min
Learning with Ritesh Gupta, Useful School
We are back for a special summer special edition of the podcast. We are catching up with Ritesh Gupta, founder of Useful School, which offers 12-week online pay-what-you-can classes in product design, branding, decolonization, and financial wellness aimed at beginner and advanced creatives of color. Applications to the Useful School fall cohort are due August 18, 2023. Learn more: https://www.usefulschool.com/
Listen to our original 2022 interview with Ritesh here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aigadesign/episodes/Design-Adjacent-with-Ritesh-Gupta--Founder-of-the-Useful-School-on-re-visioning-design-education--radical-changes--impact-of-design--and-finding-a-coach-e1jt5if
Check out AIGA's professional development and learning opportunities on our website: https://www.aiga.org/professional-development/aiga-passport-to-learning

Apr 4, 2023 • 13min
From the Archives: Matt Groening at the 2002 AIGA Design Conference
In this episode, we present a clip of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, speaking at the 2002 AIGA Design Conference in Washington DC. This footage has not been seen or heard publicly for over 20 years. Groening shares a story he had never told before, explains why he values design conferences, gives advice to fellow illustrators, reveals the namesake of Homer Simpson, and divulges some of the things the Fox Network censored from his shows.
Watch the video version of this podcast on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/814432149/f56404d0b2
Connect in person with your design community at the 2023 AIGA Design Conference, October 12-14 in New York City. Prepare to get inspired and re-energized while learning in community from designers at the cutting edge of today's hot topics. https://www.aiga.org/design/aiga-design-conference

Feb 15, 2023 • 9min
Rodrigo Canales and Michael Bierut on Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders
“If you want to be a truly effective designer, you need to make sure that whatever it is that you’re designing is also designed to reside within a broader and more complex organization…and is not just solving for the problem that you are analyzing, which is what designers are excellent at.” - Rodrigo Canales
Rodrigo Canales, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, and Michael Bierut, Partner at Pentagram discuss the challenges that designers face as we advance as leaders in our careers and how the Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders program equips design leaders to address those challenges.
Join us for our Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders open house on Thursday, February 16 at 3 pm Eastern. RSVP: https://my.aiga.org/event-details?id=04831ca3-ba96-ed11-a81b-000d3a000cf9
And learn more about the program here: https://www.aiga.org/professional-development/business-perspectives-for-creative-leaders

Feb 9, 2023 • 6min
Hugh Dubberly on design as finding balance in systems and why problem solving is not enough
"Thinking of design as problem-solving is an improvement over thinking of design as art, but as we move into a world of systems, the idea of solving a problem may be replaced by the idea of finding balance in a system..."
This clip from Hugh Dubberly is from a never-before-released interview conducted in 2019 at NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hugh will be teaching a workshop on Generative AI for Designers with Shelley Evenson, managing director of Song at the AIGA Executive Leadership Summit (Alexandria, VA, March 12-14, 2023).
Learn more and sign up for the AIGA Executive Leadership Summit: https://www.aiga.org/design/design-conferences/aiga-executive-leadership-summit
More about Hugh: http://www.dubberly.com/about

Dec 5, 2022 • 38min
The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection with Anne H. Berry, Jennifer Rittner, and Kelly Walters (RECORDED LIVE in Seattle at the AIGA Design Conference)
The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection spotlights teaching practices, research, stories, and conversations from a Black/African diasporic lens.
Lee-Sean Huang, AIGA's director of design content and learning interviews editors Anne H. Berry, Jennifer Rittner, and Kelly Walters about the purpose, people, and processes behind the book. This episode was recorded live at the AIGA Design Conference in Seattle in October 2022.
Fast Company recently named The Black Experience in Design one of the best design books of 2022.