273. Nick Foster

Jon Marshall and Piotr Woronkowicz are industrial designers and partners at Pentagram. Jon, who joined in 2018, fuses product design with strategy, packaging, digital, and physical environments. Piotr, who joined in 2025, works across products, packaging, furniture, interiors, and environments. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Jon and Piotr about the role of industrial design in Pentagram and their interest in raising the discipline’s profile, all while trying to make sense of what it means to be an industrial designer today. Links from this episode are available at scratchingthesurface.fm/294-jon-marshall-piotr-woronkowicz. — You can support our work by joining our Substack. Paying members get bonus content each month and annual subscribers will receive at 50% off coupon for any of Jarrett's books.

Jarrett’s new book Graphic Designers After Graphic Design was just published by Princeton Architectural Press! The book, which features interviews, profiles, and case studies of emerging and mid-career graphic designers working in non-traditional practices, makes the case for aa new, expansive understanding of graphic design. To talk about the book, Draw Down’s Kathleen Sleboda turns the tables and interviews Jarrett about the ideas behind the book, the writing and design process, and the generational argument that emerges from the collection. Links from this episode are available at scratchingthesurface.fm/293-graphic-designers-after-graphic-design. — You can buy a copy of Graphic Designers After Graphic Design wherever books are sold, including Draw Down, where your book will include a signed bookplate. — You can support our work by joining our Substack. Paying members get bonus content each month and annual subscribers will receive at 50% off coupon for any of Jarrett's books.

Will Hunter is an Adjunct Instructor and Executive in Residence at New York University in the Schack Institute of Real Estate where he is leading the Building Better Cities Collaborative, a two-semester fellowship that brings mid-career professionals across disciplines to help cities be more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous. Before this, he was the founder and chief executive of the London School of Architecture, a fully-accredited alternative model for architecture education. In this conversation, Jarrett and Will talk about the origins of the LSA and the architectural environment it was responding to, how new models of education and can create new models of practice, and how design can find new ways to work with other disciplines. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/292-will-hunter —— Support the show and sign up for our newsletter at surfacepodcast.substack.com

Rathna Ramanathan is the Provost of Central Saint Martins and the Executive Dean, Global Affairs at the University of the Arts London. Over the last few years, Rathna has led a complete restructuring of CSM, creating a new model to think about art and design education. Trained as a graphic designer, her research focuses on publishing and intercultrual communication and she previously served as Dean of the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art. In this conversation, Jarrett and Rathna talk about the new CSM structure and how its “Schools of Thought” model flips our understanding of disciplinary study, the influence of graphic design on her work, and why art and design education needs to change to reflect this current moment. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/291-rathna-ramanathan —— Support the show and sign up for our newsletter at surfacepodcast.substack.com

We're taking the summer off and rebroadcasting some of our favorite episodes in the archives over the next few months. Today we're rebroadcasting our 2019 episode with writer Kurt Andersen, who's new novel, The Breakup, is out this week! — Kurt Andersen is a writer, radio host, and journalist. He's the author of novels True Believers, Heyday, and Turn of the Century, and has written for film, television, and stage. He was the host and co-creator of arts and culture radio show Studio 360, co-founder of Spy Magazine, and is author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. Oh, he was also the design critic at Time for eight years. In this episode, Jarrett and Kurt talk about how he started writing about design, how design is a constant theme that runs through all of his, and why Fantasyland might be a book about design. Links from this episode can be found at: https://scratchingthesurface.fm/post/183578516030/115-kurt-andersen — We're continuing to publish new content on our Substack. Paid subscribers get bonus interviews every month. Sign up and support the show here: surfacepodcast.substack.com