ArtsDesignExplicit

DesignThinkers Podcast

The Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD)

From the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, this is the DesignThinkers podcast.

DesignThinkers is Canada's largest graphic design conference. Since the year 2000, the Association of Registered Graphic Designers has been bringing together visionaries from a range of disciplines to explore creativity and the design process live and on-stage.

This podcast is an extension of that mission. We’re here to talk about process, creativity and the business of design with past and present DesignThinkers speakers. Join our host, Nicola Hamilton, for candid conversation with creative legends such as Erin Sarofsky, Michael Beirut, Paul Scher, Gail Anderson, Meg Lewis, Christopher Doyle, and so many more.

Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.

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S5 · E8
October 28 · 43 min
Martina Flor Live at DesignThinkers
Martina Flor is an award winning lettering designer, author, TEDx speaker and educator who helps designers develop expertise and creative voice so their work is impossible to ignore. Originally from Argentina, she moved to Berlin in 2010 where she founded her independent studio specializing in lettering, typography and custom letterforms. Over the past fifteen years she's collaborated with global brands including Adobe, Vanity Fair and Mercedes-Benz and spoken on stages around the world. Through her books, online programs, workshops and educational resources, more than a hundred thousand designers have used Martina's teaching to sharpen their visual judgement, master lettering and typography and build expertise that sets their work apart. Her DesignThinker's keynote was called The Art of Seeing: How Letter Design Changes the way You See the World, it explored how creativity begins with seeing what others overlook. In this conversation, we're gonna talk about how she got her start in lettering, how she approaches teaching, how she built her online presence and what it means to observe before you start creating. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E7
October 14 · 51 min
Nikki Gonnissen on Designing for Human Connection
Nikki Gonnissen is co-founder and Creative Director of Thonik, the Amsterdam design studio she started with her partner Thomas Widdershoven in 1993. That’s the same year they met in Vondelpark, when Thomas spotted her eating ice cream with friends and followed her until she stopped to talk. What began as two solo practices under the clunky name "Gonnissen and Widdershoven" eventually became Thonik. A name built from their two first names: Thomas and Nikki. Thirty-three years later, they're still creative and life partners, running a studio that's stayed intentionally close to the same size, around 15 people, because, as Nikki puts it, grow too far past that and the work starts to slip through your fingers. In this conversation, Nikki walks through two recent identity projects that show just how differently "moving people" can look in practice: a bright, kinetic identity for the Phion Symphony Orchestra, where the typeface bends and slants like a conductor's baton, and a complete overhaul of Schiphol Airport's identity, where the job was actually a practical one of stripping away visual noise and inconsistency until travelers could simply find their way. From there, the conversation turns to the argument at the center of Nikki's DesignThinkers talk: that as AI makes the world faster and more efficient, staying close (to yourself, to the people you design for, to what actually resonates) becomes increasingly more important. This episode is for designers thinking about what to protect as their tools get speedier, for anyone building a studio and thinking about their philosophy, and for listeners who believe the most human parts of design are also the most valuable. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E6
September 30 · 50 min
Erika Barbieri on Tasty Packaging Design
Erika Barbieri is the co-founder and creative director of OlssønBarbieri, a design studio in Oslo. The studio's ethos is built almost entirely around one idea: that packaging can be a portal into much bigger conversations about food. She and her partner Henrik met in design school in Florence, moved to Oslo in 2005, and spent years finding their footing before officially committing to the studio in 2012. In this episode, Erika talks about how for her, good packaging design lives at the intersection of economic interest, cultural and social expression, ecological complexity, and aesthetics. That balance shows up in how the studio works, too. They’re as equally committed to research and storytelling as they are to creating beauty in the world. We talk about their work on Varus 775, a spirits package that was named Best in Show at the 2026 Dieline Awards, their work on Steroescope Coffee, an early wine project and her upcoming DesignThinkers talk. This episode is for designers who want packaging that does more than sit on a shelf, for anyone curious about the research that hides behind a beautiful work, and for the food lovers who've always suspected that there's some overlap between what tastes good and what looks good. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E5
September 16 · 52 min
Goldie Chan on Personal Branding for Introverts
Goldie Chan is the author of Personal Branding for Introverts, the founder of the social strategy agency Warm Robots, and the Huffington Post once called her the "Oprah of LinkedIn." She built that reputation kind of by accident. She started posting a daily video on LinkedIn as a way to push her introverted self to speak on camera. She then went on to post 800 consecutive daily videos between 2017 and 2019, long before AI made that kind of output easy. In this conversation, Goldie takes us back to her biology degree from Stanford, a failed fashion brand, and an intervention from her friends that nudged her out of a depression and into a marketing job that shifted her focus. From there we get into the real substance of her work: the five C's of personal branding, why she thinks the stereotype that introverts are quiet is a myth, how she protects her energy, and the surprisingly playful daydreaming exercise she uses to help people figure out what they actually want. We also get into her side hustles, which includes producing films and writing Archie Comics, and a candid conversation about why she chose to share her cancer journey publicly. This episode is for anyone building their personal brand or working in branding. It’s also for the introverts in the room who feel like the current playbook wasn't written for them. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E5
September 2 · 51 min
Gabby Lord & Lauren Wong on Being Delusional Enough to Start a Company
Five years ago, Gabby Lord and Lauren Wong started a design studio because a friend joked that they should—and because Gabby was, by her own admission, extremely burnt out and looking for a way out of her work situation. Those aren't good reasons to start a company, and yet SUPER KEEN is succeeding by most metrics. They complete 20 to 35 projects a year, have found a work-life balance that works for them, and have built a reputation for delivering solid design and strategy work. In this conversation, Gabby and Lauren walk me through the studio's early years. It was reactive, maybe a little chaotic, and included a website that instead of showing work, redirected prospective clients to a video of Tom Holland lip-syncing. They talk candidly about why they've kept Super Keen small despite pressure to grow, why they've published their studio's financials publicly every year, and how they're thinking about success. This episode is for anyone questioning whether bigger is actually better. It’s for anyone feeling the pressure to scale—or to do things the way they’ve always been done. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E3
August 19 · 54 min
Valentina D'Efilippo on Giving Data a Voice
Valentina D'Efilippo is equally comfortable immersed in science as she is in storytelling and graphic design. That tension has shaped nearly two decades of work translating dense, unwieldy datasets into visual stories: flowers standing in for a century of wars, a dandelion holding the shape of the #MeToo movement on Twitter. A cold email from HarperCollins turned an early instinct for this kind of work into a profession—pairing her with data journalist James Ball on The Infographic History of the World, a book that's since sold in eleven languages and launched the career she now runs through her studio, Apostrophe One. In this conversation, Valentina traces her path back to a graduate thesis on gender stereotypes in children's books. It was her first real data project, before she had a name for what she was doing. We talk about the responsibility of deciding what a dataset reveals and what it hides, and why she reaches for beauty and visual metaphor even when the numbers are devastating. She also opens up about revisiting her 2014 project Poppy Field last year: an analog visualization where each hand-painted mark represents a single Palestinian death, made largely in silence over sixteen hours and shared on Instagram. This episode is for designers, journalists, and anyone who's ever had to decide how to represent a data set—and felt the weight of that choice. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E2
August 5 · 42 min
Edel Rodriguez on the Risk of Staying Quiet
Edel Rodriguez refuses to be small or quiet. He’s the illustrator behind some of the most recognizable political images of the last decade. That 2016 cover for TIME Magazine, the one of Donald Trump melting down: that was Edel. The Der Spiegel cover of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty. Also Edel. At this point, he's produced more than 300 images of a single, very orange, subject. As a kid who grew up in a country where saying the wrong thing about the wrong leader was dangerous, Edel has spent his career speaking up. In this conversation, Edel talks about hustling his way into an art director at just 26 years old. We talk about how that experience informed his editorial illustration process. We talk about how social media is a great place to share the kind of work you want to be making and to rally interest until someone notices. We get into how he wrote his graphic memoir Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey backwards, designing the cover years before he wrote a word. We talk about how the book's ending—a visual rhyme between the events in Havana in January 1959 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—came together at the very last minute. He talks candidly about why he refuses to self-censor, why he's not tired of the Trump-based work, and why the question he'd most want to ask himself in twenty years isn't about politics at all. This episode is for illustrators, designers, and anyone else who's been told to play it safe—and isn't sure they want to. Hear Edel speak at the DesignThinkers conference, Canada's premier design conference, in Toronto and online this October 20–21, 2026. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S5 · E1
July 22 · 46 min
Temi Coker on Starting Before You're Asked
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Temi Coker. A Dallas based designer, photographer and the multidisciplinary artist behind Coker Studio. Temi’s client list includes Adobe, Apple, Google, HBO, Peloton and The Oscars. But almost none of it started with a client brief, it started with a self assigned poster a day challenge in 2016 made for no one but himself. And it led Temi to a belief that you should be making creative work just to make it. In this conversation, we trace that thread through his whole career, from a stint studying biomedical engineering to please his parents, to pursuing digital media for himself, from making a pillow because his wife thought his work would look good in people’s homes to a full fledged home collection at Walmart. From teaching photography and design at his former high school, so that students would have a model of what a Black creative professional looks like to finding the nerve to ask the Academy if he could steep his Oscars statuette artwork in Black history. This episode is for anyone with an idea sitting quietly in their mind, something they haven’t started yet. Temi’s whole career is proof that the things you make for yourself are often the things that end up mattering the most. Hear Temi speak at the DesignThinkers conference, Canada's premier design conference, in Toronto and online this October 20–21, 2026. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E8
June 3 · 1 hr 13 min
Live Recording with Dalit Shalom
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Dalit Shalom. Dalit is the Director of Product Design at The New York Times where she oversees the creation of new formats, spaces and tools that advance the future of storytelling. She also leads Design and Strategy for various work streams for the company's AI initiates, having previously focused on trust and credibility by developing features that clarify Times journalism for its readers. An educator as well as a practitioner, Dalit also teaches design thinking classes at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering and ITP. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E7
May 20 · 50 min
Kenjiro Kirton on How Design Doesn’t (Only) Happen at a Desk
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Kenjiro Kirton. Ken is the co-founder and creative director of HATO, the London- and Hong Kong-based publishing house, design studio and concept store known for its playful, research-driven approach to culture, branding and digital experiences. His work moves fluidly between publishing, interaction, retail, and storytelling, often blurring the line between design practice and everyday life. In this conversation, we talk about what happens when design escapes the boundaries of the studio—when research becomes fiction, when process becomes play and when creative practice becomes something lived rather than simply produced. We also get into the value of iteration and experimentation, the similarities between cooking and design, building participatory creative communities, and why some of the most meaningful creative work happens along the soft edges between disciplines. This episode is for designers who are interested in expanding everything design—and the design studio—can be. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E6
May 6 · 48 min
Ariane Spanier on Typography as Visual Voice
This week on the DesignThinkers Podcast, I’m joined by Ariane Spanier, a Berlin-based designer whose work sits at the intersection of typography, culture, and editorial design. Ariane has built a practice working closely with cultural institutions—museums, publications, and artists—where design isn’t just about communication, but about interpretation. She’s also the creative director and co-editor of Fukt, an annual magazine dedicated to contemporary drawing, known for its experimental and often tactile typographic covers. In this conversation, we unpack her DesignThinkers talk, Type with an Accent, and what it means to think about typography not as something neutral, but as something that carries voice, identity, and history. We talk about the tension between rules and expression, how designers develop a visual “accent,” and why your first instinct is often the most honest place to start from. We also get into her work on Fukt, and how using typography in a more physical, expressive way can shift how people experience a publication altogether. This episode is really for anyone thinking about their own voice as a designer—how it forms, how it evolves, and how to trust it. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E5
April 22 · 50 min
Dr. Dee Miller on Designing Beyond Compliance
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Dee Miller. Director of Product Strategy and Insights for Product Equity at Adobe. Dee is a researcher and innovation leader, working at the intersection of technology, design, and equity. She's focused on turning real world insights, into products that are more accessible, usable, and culturally relevant. In this conversation, we unpack what inclusive design actually looks like in practice, and why it's not just about compliance, but about building better more innovative products. Dee shares how her work at Adobe translates research into real product decisions. From improving accessibility features, to shaping how AI tools like Firefly are developed and deployed. We also talk about the tension between speed and accessibility, what it takes to advocate for inclusive design inside large organizations, and why designing with communities is critical to building trust and accountability. This episode is for anyone working in product, design, or research who wants to move beyond theory and start building experiences that truly work for more people. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E4
April 8 · 50 min
Peter Smart on Why Your Design Skills Still Matter in the Age of AI
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Peter Smart. Chief Experience Officer and Managing Partner at Fantasy. Based in the Bay Area, Fantasy is a creative partner behind some of the world’s most widely used digital products. Working with companies like Disney, Nike, Spotify, Netflix, Meta, and Google. In this conversation, Peter shares how he’s thinking about the next shift in digital product design. One where fixed interfaces and screen based experiences may no longer be the default. We talk about what happens when products become more dynamic and more personalized. How AI is reshaping the relationships between brands and users, and why designers may need to redefine their own value. We also get into some of the trends Peter is seeing and why he thinks the most important thing designers can do right now is zoom out. To look beyond the tools, understand where value is shifting, and rethink what they’re really designing. This episode is for anyone trying to make sense of where design is heading. Maybe you’re early in your career or leading a team or simply wondering how to stay relevant in a moment that seems to be changing every single day. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E3
March 25 · 51 min
Nu Goteh on Designing With Community
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Nu Goteh, founder of Room for Magic and co-founder of Deem Journal. Nu’s path into design isn’t a straight line. He started out making graphics on early internet platforms, spent over a decade working in marketing for brands like Puma, Red Bull, and Sonos, and eventually returned to design through a deeper set of questions—about power, participation, and how he wanted to show up in the world. In this conversation, we talk about what it really means to design with communities—not just for them—and why that work often comes down to time, trust, and budget. We get into the limits of performative “purpose,” the realities of working with clients, and how design can move beyond outputs to shaping systems. We also talk about Deem Journal: a print publication that explores design as a social practice. We discuss why print as a medium still matters, especially as a way to document, archive, and expand what we consider to be design. This episode is for anyone thinking more critically about their role as a designer—whether you’re early in your career or rethinking what your practice is really in service of. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E2
March 11 · 50 min
Emmi Salonen On Managing Your Creative Inputs
Emmi Salonen is a Finnish graphic designer and art director whose work spans editorial design, visual identity, publishing, and exhibition graphics. She often works with cultural and institutional clients, bringing a thoughtful, systems-driven approach to typography and structure—with just enough play to keep things interesting. Beyond the systems and the structure, Emmi has long been thinking about something deeper: the conditions that allow creative work to be sustainable over time. Her new book, The Creative Wellbeing Handbook, explores creativity not as a lightning strike or a productivity hack, but as an ecosystem: something that needs tending to. In this conversation, we talk about burnout, systems, slowness, education, and what it really means to protect your creative energy in an industry that often demands constant output. We also talk about typography, control, joy, and the small signals we ignore when we’re pushing too hard. This episode is for anyone who loves design—and wants to keep loving it. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S4 · E1
February 25 · 50 min
Elizabeth Goodspeed On Finding New Ideas in Old Things
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Elizabeth Goodspeed. Elizabeth is an independent designer, art director, writer, and educator oscillating between Providence, Rhode Island and New York City. Her work riffs on history and visual culture in ways that feel both smart and weirdly intimate. She’s a devoted generalist: branding, packaging, book & editorial design. She’s also known for her sharp writing on the culture of design as the American editor-at-large for It’s Nice That. In this conversation, Elizabeth shares how her fascination with archives and ephemera became a creative method. We talk about how you can use design history without getting stuck in nostalgia, why research can be a powerful tool for original thinking, and what it means to design when you think in words before images. We also explore her approach to teaching, the value of slow craft, and how paying closer attention to the visual world around us can change the way we work. This episode is for anyone who wants to build more depth into their practice. Whether you’re trying to move beyond trends, develop a stronger point of view, or simply learn how to turn curiosity into compelling creative work. Let’s get into it. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S3 · E8
Sep 24, 2025 · 44 min
Pali Palavathanan on Design as Activism
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Pali Palavathanan, co-founder and creative director of Templo. Based in London, Templo is a purpose-led design studio known for bringing creativity and activism together—working with clients like the UN, Amnesty International, and GF Smith, alongside grassroots organizations fighting for justice around the world. In this conversation, Pali shares how his own experiences as a refugee shaped his desire to build a different kind of studio. We talk about what it means to take on projects where the stakes are as high as arresting war criminals or tackling corruption. We also talk about how to balance activism with commercial work, the importance of instinct in choosing clients, and why he believes design is both a privilege and a responsibility. This episode is for anyone who’s ever wondered how design can drive real change—whether you’re looking to make your practice more purposeful, thinking about the ethics of the clients you take on, or simply curious about what it looks like to build a studio where values lead the way. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S3 · E7
Sep 17, 2025 · 46 min
Pablo Martin on Building an Agency Culture In-House
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Pablo Martin, Creative Director at MUBI. A legend in editorial design, Pablo has spent four decades shaping the visual language of publications and brands across Spain, the UK, and beyond. His journey has taken him from a work placement with Massimo Vignelli to co-founding the Barcelona-based studio Grafica and then Atlas, to leading major cultural projects for clients of all kinds, to now steering the global creative vision of MUBI. At MUBI, Pablo oversees everything from brand identity to experimental publishing—including Notebook, the streaming platform’s print magazine that treats cinema as both cultural archive and design playground. In this conversation, we talk about his path through editorial design, why he’s always resisted specialization, what it means to run an in-house team that thinks like a studio, and how print still has the power to push boundaries in a digital-first world. This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service for great cinema from around the globe. Try MUBI free for 30 days at mubi.com/designthinkers. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S3 · E6
Sep 10, 2025 · 41 min
Debra Bishop on Making Magazines
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Debra Bishop—an award-winning creative director and one of editorial design’s most influential voices. Over the past four decades, Debra has shaped the look and feel of some of publishing’s most iconic titles—from her early days at Rolling Stone, to launching magazines at Martha Stewart, to serving as a design director at The New York Times. For the last eight years, Debra brought her bold, playful vision to The New York Times for Kids, a monthly print-only section beloved for its inventive layouts, striking typography, and respect for young readers. The project published its final issue at the end of August, though Debra continues her work at the Times. This interview was recorded before the official announcement came out—so you won’t hear us talk about the closure, but you might sense a little mourning in the conversation. What we do talk about in this episode are the joys and challenges of redesigning magazines, what Debra learned from design legends like Paula Scher, Fred Woodward, and Robert Priest, and how she has continued to expand the possibilities of what publications for kids, women, and niche audiences can look like. We also explore why she still believes in the enduring power of magazines—even as the industry continues to evolve. Whether you’re a designer, editor, or simply someone who’s ever loved a great magazine, this episode is packed with insight, honesty, and a whole lot of design wisdom. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.
S3 · E5
Sep 3, 2025 · 49 min
Nadia Tzuo on Storytelling Through Title Design
This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Nadia Tzuo—an Emmy Award–winning motion designer and director whose title sequences have become cultural touchstones. Nadia’s work spans television, film, and streaming, with credits on The Last of Us, Shogun, American Horror Story, Pachinko, Star Trek Beyond, and Captain Marvel. Her sequences don’t just introduce a story—they set its mood, build its world, and often become iconic in their own right. In this episode, Nadia shares how she approaches title design as both storytelling and branding, the deep research that fuels her process, and why she thinks in moods before visuals. We talk about the importance of cultural specificity, the role of collaboration, and how streaming has reshaped the way audiences engage with titles. Whether you’re a designer curious about motion, a film lover fascinated by world-building, or someone interested in the intersection of story and design—this conversation is packed with insight and inspiration. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca. Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com.

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