There’s been a lot going on around here the last few weeks. The weather has turned, giving us a preview of spring so I’ve been spending the weekends outside prepping the gardens, building new raised beds, and generally getting excited for this year’s harvest. We’ve been eating outside and walking to the library. Despite the flu moving through our house, it’s been a good start to the year.

We’re a few weeks into the new semester and I’m also wrapping up a fun design project this month that reminded me that I still love designing when I get to work with fun people on intellectually engaging projects. I’d like to do more of this again — if you have a project in need of a designer, let me know.

Here’s what else has been going on:

2022 was supposed to be a quiet year; a year of settling in after last year’s big move and new job, not to mention the remaining lingering pandemic. Professionally, it was indeed a year for deepening in favor of the new but that was complicated by a series of personal changes in the second half of 2022 when we welcomed our second child and bought a home here in Raleigh. The end of the summer was spent preparing for the baby and coordinating contractors for a remodel before we moved in. The timing worked perfectly: we moved into our new house and three weeks later, we brought home a new baby. Needless to say, it’s been a good year.

It’s hard to believe but I’m already in my second year as an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. The year began with the Spring semester where I introduced and wrote a new class called “Publication and Distribution.” The class operated as a sorta-hybrid seminar and studio where we spent a lot of time reading about the histories, theories, and futures of publishing while also enacting these ideas through experimental projects. I brought in a handful of guests (via Zoom) like Paul Soulellis, Sara de Bondt, and Andrew LeClair to speak about their practices and thinking. The class was a blast (for me, at least) and built upon a lot of the thinking and work I’ve been doing the last few years. It was a nice space to test some ideas and get a group of smart students together to work through them. I’m teaching it again this Spring and am excited for round two.

At the beginning of December, I stepped away from my role as contributing editor at Eye on Design. What started as a three month contract in 2020 turned into a two and half year engagement that proved to be one of the most intellectually stimulating activities of my recent professional life. I am forever grateful to my colleagues there — Liz Stinson, Meg Miller, Maddy Morley, and Zac Petit — all of whom made me a better editor and a better writer. This year, I got to commission, edit, and publish a variety of stories, essays, and interviews like Rick Poynor’s piece on Ed Fella, Nika Simovich Fisher’s essay on early 2000s web design, George Kafka’s look at online exhibitions, Saha Hammari’s personal essay on how social media changed design, Rachel Berger’s look at John Updike’s cover designs, Jacquelyn Orgorchukwu Iyamah’s look at white bias in interface design, among others. Eye on Design has one more project I’m involved with — that I spent the most of my time on these last few months — but let’s not talk about that until next year. :)

As for my own writing, I published two major essays on Eye on Design this year including the AIGA Medalist biography for this year’s winner Andrew Blauvelt and a long exploration on the intersections of cults and branding. Both of these were fun to work on and related to so many of my interests. The cult piece, especially, was one I’d been thinking about for years and it was nice to finally get that out in the world. The biography of Blauvelt, too, was special. Blauvelt is a figure who means a lot to me and has served as model of sorts for the kind of career in design I want to have. To tell his story — and in a subtle way, frame it within my own interests — was a fascinating writing challenge. Additionally, I published a handful of interview on Eye on Design this year including with Sara de Bondt about Belgian graphic design, Kevin Finn about the the Australian design journal Open Manifesto, and designer Morgan Crowcroft-Brown about the art of designing photobooks. Eye on Design also republished my interview with designer and educator Lucille Tenazas about design education that was originally published in 1, 10, 100 Years of Form, Typography, and Interaction at Parsons, the book I edited last year. I also moderated a panel on books and branding for EoD, for one of our online web events, an edited transcript of which we republished this fall.

Hi friends,

Remember me? Jarrett Fuller, here, writing from a crisp, Fall morning in Raleigh, North Carolina. You’re getting this email because you signed up to receive updates from me and my work. These were supposed to be monthly but have became more sporadic over the past year. My text file for this newsletter says I started composing this draft at the beginning of August. That last month of the summer proved to be especially hectic, both personally and professionally.

This summer was defined by reading and writing. I took a break from Scratching the Surface and took advantage of my first summer as a tenure-track professor (thus, not hustling for freelance work) to think deeply about some recent topics of interest. I did more reading than I have in a while and finally got back into a groove of regular publishing for the first time about a year. I’m grateful my schedule and work allows for this and I already miss the time and space for this thinking. As much as I love solitude, however, I (think) love teaching even more and it feels great to be back in the classroom again.

I’m Jarrett Fuller and this is my newsletter. You’re getting this because at some point in the last few years, you signed up to recieve updates about my work and thinking. Sometimes these are long-form updates, sometimes its work updates, and sometimes it a grab-bag set of thoughts and links and cultural recommendations. This issue is very much that last one. Thanks for reading.

I didn’t expect — nor necessarily want — to add to the commentary on Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. I’m no Musk fan and my Twitter usage has steadily decreased over the last five years. I finally left the site six month ago. But I am interested in the language both Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey are using in discussing the acquisition.

Musk keeps referring to Twitter as a global ‘town square’ — suggesting Twitter is a type of public space — and claims it can’t reach its “full potential” as a publicly-traded company. In taking Twitter private, Musk thinks he’ll be able to turn it into the town square it’s meant to be. Of course, the ideas he’s suggested — an edit button, removing bots — have little to do with the mechanics of a town square. A town square, by its definition, is a public space and there’s an inherent tension in talking about private property as public space.

When the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas articulated the idea of the public sphere, he wrote of publicity as being separate from the private. For Habermas — in language Musk is clearly cribbing — the public sphere was the most democratic of places: collective governing, a place for debate, for politics in the broad sense: articulating and negotiating how we live together. But what happens when the public sphere is a profit-driven company, or a privately-held company?

Hi friends,

Jarrett Fuller here with the rare second-newsletter-in-a-month! I want to begin by acknowledging the tragic situation in Ukraine. I’m sure like many of you, I frequently find myself returning to the latest news, unable to think clearly about anything else. I stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and denounce war in any and all circumstances. My thoughts, as always, go to those suffering under this tragedy.

As the weather here in Raleigh is beginning to show signs of Spring, I’m coming up for air as a bunch of recent projects are now out in the world as I slowly begin transitioning to some new projects. I wanted to share with you a bit of what I’ve been working on the last few months. Thanks, as always, for your continued support of me and my work.

I’m pretty sure I learned about the architect Robert A.M. Stern and his work in 2006 when I bought a copy of Michael Bierut’s book 40 Posters for the Yale School of Architecture. Stern, who was then Yale’s dean, had commissioned Bierut to develop a cohesive identity for the school and Bierut responded with custom black and white posters for each season of visiting lectures. The long-running collaboration produced what are still some of my favorite poster designs. And for years that was my only relationship to Stern’s work aside from being aware that he designed the masterplan for Celebration, FL, the planned community developed by Disney, and the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas. Stern’s new memoir, Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture, out next month from Monticelli, remedies this with a first-hand account of not only of Stern’s career but also the major intellectual debates in architecture of the last century.

Stern begins his book with his childhood in Brooklyn where looking at the quickly changing Manhattan skyline an interest in architecture was seeded early. He studied history first, writing about architecture for his thesis, before continuing his graduate education at Yale, under a program then headed by Paul Rudolph. It’s here that Stern’s story opens up, filtering a fascinating intellectual history of architecture through the lens of his own career. To watch the evolution of Stern’s practice and thinking around architecture is to understand the history of contemporary architecture as it moves from modernism to post-modernism and back again, tracking the rise and fall of different schools of thought and institutional figures.

In addition to Rudolph, Stern studied with architectural historian Vincent Scully and controversial architect and curator Phillip Johnson. His connections to these men return again and again throughout his life as he oscillates between allegiances, ideologies, and building modes. A surprising number of his career moments, in fact, can be traced back to Scully and Johnson. An academic as much as an architect, Stern spent as much time at Yale writing about architecture as much as designing. He contributed essays to journals and began a historical project on architect George Howe, spending time in the archives and libraries (and ultimately producing a monograph and biography of Howe years later.) While at Yale, he found himself caught in the middle of a newly raging debate between modernism and postmodernism and he jumped in with both feet. He became close friends with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, the leading postmodernists at the time, and penned essays and delivered lectures articulating what this new movement meant, becoming one of the intellectual leaders on the new stylistic and theoretical movement.

2021 was not the year we emerged from a pandemic like many of us thought it might be. A lot of the world — my family included — is still largely working from home, days filled with Zoom meetings and asynchronous work. The omicron variant once again triggering new mandates and precautions. It was another year filled with deaths and grief, confusion and exhaustion. Despite this, I’m privileged enough to have made it through. Not only that, I’ve also had a largely fulfilling and energizing year, both personally and professionally.

For me, 2021 is split in two, between Brooklyn and Raleigh. My family and I moved from our small apartment in Sunset Park Brooklyn to Raleigh, North Carolina in July so I could take a new tenure-track position at North Carolina State University as an Assistant Professor in Graphic Design. It was a hard move and a big change but went as smoothly as it could have. We found a home quickly. Our movers were great and efficient. We bought a car (our first!) and outdoor furniture and settled into the rhythms of a new life here quickly.

The same goes for the new job. I’ve enjoyed being in a new institution. Even though classes were in-person, it took a little longer than usual to find my groove with the pandemic still disrupting so much of daily life. I’m excited for the future here and look forward to finding my place within this department/institution/city.

tick, tick…Boom!, the new Netflix film and directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, is an adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s small musical-slash-one-man show of the same name. Miranda, of course, is known as the man behind the Broadway success Hamilton and Larson, a prodigy in his own right, is known for writing another Broadway smash hit: Rent. I enjoyed the film, overall: Andrew Garfield embodies Larson perfectly and the ensemble cast does a wonderful job bringing the music (and 1980s bohemian New York) to life.

Unlike Miranda, Larson never saw the success of his Broadway show. He died unexpectedly the night before the first cast reading of an undiagnosed aneurysm at 35. tick, tick…Boom! is a decidedly smaller production than the other work both Miranda and Larson are known for. “tick, tick…Boom!” is an autobiographical show about a character also named Jonathan, who, about to turn thirty, wonders if he’ll ever make it as an artist and musician. The plot follows Jonathan as he tries to stage a complicated and confusing sci-fi musical before entering his new decade, while balancing his work as a waiter at a New York diner. Miranda smartly bounces back and forth between a faux-stage production of the show and scripted interludes that flesh out Larson’s life and process. It’s fast moving, anchored by Larson’s catchy show tunes, while also being intimate and personal, staging one artist’s life against a backdrop of 1980s New York and the AIDS crisis.

Miranda is well documented in his admiration for Larson and for Rent and tick, tick…Boom!is a show that makes sense for Miranda to choose as his directorial debut: it’s a niche Broadway show and Miranda is a product of Broadway. It’s a semi-autobiographic musical and Miranda made a name for himself first with his own semi-autobiographical, In The Heights. It’s a story about art and life, ambition and failure, legacy and death. In other words, it’s what all of Miranda’s work is about.

When I launched Scratching the Surface — in what now feels like a lifetime ago, all the way back in the Fall of 2016 as part of my MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art — all I wanted was to keep it going so I could graduate. Then I graduated and felt like there were more questions and more people to talk to so I wanted to get to fifty episodes. Then I got to fifty and wanted to get to one hundred. After one hundred episodes, I wondered if I’d make it even farther, to 200. It didn’t seem likely. I’ve written and rewritten this post countless times over the last few days, unsure of what I want to say or how I want to commemorate this milestone: Scratching the Surface just turned five years old and I just released its 200th episode.

I’m as shocked as anyone that we got here. If you told me five years ago that a podcast about graphic design criticism would have this kind of longevity, I’d have said “I wish”. But it turns out that these questions I’ve been asking the last few years are questions other people also have; and that each question only brings up even more questions.

The original tagline for the show was “the intersection of criticism and practice” but it quickly expanded beyond that tight focus. The show, at its core, I believe is still very much about design criticism if we accept that criticism means figuring out what we do and why we do it—and then, of course, how we talk about that. Over the years, Scratching the Surface has become a forum for me to ask people much smarter than me about how they think about their work. Every single episode is a conversation with someone who is doing something that I want to be doing but am not sure how.

Het Nieuwe Instituut (or “The New Institute” in English) was founded a little over eight years ago, the result of a merger between three Dutch cultural institutions: Netherlands Architecture Institute, Premsela Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion, and the Virtual Platform. Beumer, who was then the director of NAI Maastrict and the Marres Center for Contemporary Culture was brought on to oversee the merger, conceive this new institution, and develop its programming and curatorial agenda. Thus The New Institute was born.

On How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?, Big Red Machine masterfully balances the collaborative and the personal

When the world is upside and the future is uncertain, I lose myself in listening to music. Over the summer, I moved 500 miles away to start a new job in a new city in a new state — in the midst of a global pandemic that seems like it’ll never end and the climate crisis never not far from my mind. Fortunately for me, 2021 is shaping up to be a great year for music. I’m listening to more music than I have in years and especially listening to more new music, so I have plenty of albums to lose myself in. The one album I’d been anxiously awaiting is How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last, the sophomore release from Big Red Machine. After spending time with it over the last two weeks, it seems to distill the feeling of this moment in a way I’ve never heard before.

Greetings, friends.

I’m writing to you, for the first time, from my new home office in Raleigh, North Carolina! July was a whirlwind as we saw our things boxed up and taken a way on a truck that was probably too big for our small Brooklyn street. A few days later, it appeared again, in our new home 500 miles away. We bought a car. We tried to enjoy our last days in New York. And now we’re here. In Raleigh. My new job starts next week; I’m neck deep in syllabi prep and getting up to speed on a new academic policy. It’s fun, exciting, stressful. I can’t wait to get back in the classroom.

I, by the way, am Jarrett Fuller, a recent Brooklyn ex-pat about to start my new job as assistant professor at North Carolina State University. You’re getting this email because you signed up to get updates from me and my work. Thanks for following along. If you decide it’s not for you, just hit unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. No hard feelings. I get it.

Hello again!

I’m back with a new issue of this newsletter in under a month — this might be a record! (By “I”, I mean me, Jarrett Fuller. You’re getting this newsletter because you signed up to receive updates on me and my work.) I’m going to try to send these out more regularly, using it as a way to capture my current thinking and projects. In the first issue of this — all the way back in 2019! — I compared my goal for these to Berg’s Weeknotes but I’ve fallen away from that framework and its time to get back to it. If it turns out that’s not for you, no worries — you can hit unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. If it is for you — thanks! I’m glad you’re here!

Thanks for all the kind words regarding my new job, announced in last month’s issue. It still hasn’t sunk in but we’re looking forward to a trip to Raleigh soon to begin looking for houses — it’ll feel real then!

Hi!

It’s me, Jarrett Fuller and this is my newsletter. You’re getting it because at some point in the last few years, you signed up to recieve updates from me about my work and interests. I’m glad you are here. I have a bad habit of burying the lede so let’s get right to it:

Hi friends,

A few weeks ago, we hit the one-year milestone for the COVID-19 pandemic. The last twelve months have felt like a blur, both like nothing has changed and everything has changed, as if time both stopped and sped up simultaneously. It’s hard to figure out what to make of the last year: in some ways, both personally and professionally it’s been a fruitful year of new ideas, new work, new friends and collaborators, and new ways of seeing and being in the world. Yet there are also the family members no longer with me, the cancelled events, the false starts and opportunities that fell through. I’ve never longed for Spring as much as I have this year, after a winter that seemed to go on forever.

Hello friends, both near and far:

It turns out I’m bad at sending newsletters. When I started this newsletter — all the way back in August 2019! — my hope was to send a new missive every month or so; a collection of links and insights, updates on my work and perhaps a photo or two. That quickly slipped to every other month and then every three and before we knew it it was February 2021 and the last time you heard from me was October! In the year and half I’ve been “publishing” this newsletter, I’ve sent only eight issues.

Hello! Since we last corresponded, the heat of summer has made way for a cool, crisp breeze. I traded in the cold brew for hot coffee and afternoon tea. I pulled out the sweaters. School started back up and it’s been…interesting? I’m usually excited to get back in the classroom, back to teaching, but this year has been tough. Teaching classes, even classes I’ve taught before, over Zoom has been more challenging than I expected. I never realized how much of my teaching practice relies on bodies being in the same room together, how much I feed off the energies in the physical classroom. But we’re figuring it out, all of us, together. Each week a little bit easier.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You are getting this email because you signed up to receive emails from me, Jarrett Fuller, about my work, writing, and whatever else I’m interested in. I had grand plans of sending one of these out each month but that slipped to every other month and then suddenly its October and I hadn’t sent a newsletter since July. (But what is time anymore, anyway!). Nevertheless, I’m glad you are here. If this turns out not to be your thing, it’s easy to unsubscribe right at the bottom of this email. No hard feelings.

Hi friends,

Lots going on these days. We’ve settled into some semblance of normalcy around here, each day has a rhythm and a cadence. It’s no longer strange to be working right alongside my family each day. I love having them around but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The balancing act is tricky. We’re fortunate — I won’t deny that — in that we’re safe and healthy and like being around each other.

A reminder: you are getting this email because you signed up to receive emails from a one Jarrett Fuller (aka me) about my work, writing, and whatever else I’m interested in. I’m glad you are here but if this isn’t your thing, it’s easy to unsubscribe right at the bottom of this email.

Friends, colleagues, collaborators, and fellow travelers,

Jarrett Fuller here. You’re getting this newsletter because at one time, you signed up receive updates from me — updates about my work, links to things I’m looking at and thinking about, and whatever else is on my mind. Thanks for joining. If this turns out not to be your thing, no worries. Just hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this message. Easy!

When I started this newsletter, I imagined sending a new edition every month but we’ve seemed to settle into an every-other-month cadence. The last issue, sent early March, was fresh into social distancing. Classes had just gone remote, the work shifted. In that time it feels like a lot has happened and nothing has happened. I haven’t ridden the train since. I haven’t crossed the river into Manhattan. It no longer feels weird to wear a mask when I go to the grocery store. The semester ended, not with the usual celebrations but with a whimper, saying bye to my students over Zoom calls and Google Chats. I congratulated my graduate students and apologized for how the semester ended, unable to fully celebrate their accomplishments. After spending a year together, they ask me for advice in finding jobs. I don't know what to tell them.

Hello! Greetings from social distancing! Jarrett Fuller, here. In case you’ve forgotten — and you very well might have, it’s been a while — you are getting this email because you signed up for a newsletter about my work, photography, reading, food, and other interesting ideas. If it turns out this isn’t your thing, you can simply hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email. But if it is your thing, cool! I’m glad you are here and would love to hear from you, feel free to introduce yourself by replying to this email.

The beginning of the year was overwhelming with a variety of projects, big and small (read: this is why there were no email updates) and March was looking equally busy. Then, overnight, everything was cancelled and my calendar is looking strikingly bare. My classes have gone online-only for the rest of the semester, a talk I was supposed to give this week was cancelled, podcast interviews need to be rescheduled, and other meetings and plans postponed indefinitely. At the end of the month I was going to be interviewing Sheila de Bretteville, the long-time director of Yale’s graduate graphic design program for a live episode of Scratching the Surface at the Type Director’s Club conference here in New York but that, too, has been postponed and hangs in limbo.

But all is not lost. As someone who’s always preferred social isolation, I can’t complain too, too much. I get to spend the next few weeks with my family. Let’s make the most of it. After a brief update on work, I want to share some books, television shows, essays, and music to help you pass the time.

Happy New Year!

I spent the last few weeks of 2019 and the first week of 2020 unplugged but am back and ready to kick off the year. I hope your holidays were as relaxing as mine. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Jarrett Fuller, a designer, writer, teacher, podcast guy, or who knows what anymore, and you’re getting this email because you signed up to get updates from me and my work. If it turns out that’s not your thing, feel free to unsubscribe at the link below. If it is, cool! I’m so glad you are here! Thanks for sticking around!

Hi friends,

The weather in Brooklyn turned seemingly quickly and we're well on our way into winter. The semester is winding down and I'm looking forward to taking some time off between semesters to finally spend some time painting, researching for upcoming projects, and generally moving a bit slower. I mean that literally btw. I'm a fast walker; always have been. I'm never actually running late but I walk like I am, like I have a million places to be. One of my goals for next year is to slow down a bit, enjoy the walk, take my time. That applies to walking but, yeah, it's also life in general.

In case you're wondering what this is, you are getting this email because at one time, you subscribed to this newsletter written by me, Jarrett Fuller! If you decided this isn't for you, no worries, just hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this message!

Hello from Brooklyn, where I’m sitting at my desk, with a fresh brewed cup of coffee (a Topeka Breakfast blend in a Kalita Wave for those interested) and a nice breeze blowing through the windows. I’ve long said I don’t have a favorite season but that’s been a lie: it’s fall.

Anyway, I’m Jarrett Fuller and you’re getting this newsletter because you signed up for updates from me on my work, photography, reading, and general thinking. There are so many more of you this time around — it seems mostly from this way-too-nice mention in Robin Sloan’s recent newsletter! The Robin Sloan bump is real! It was his weekly newsletter that inspired me to begin this one; it’s all come full circle!

I’m happy you are here but if, for whatever reason, this isn’t your thing, unsubscribing is easy. Just click the link at the bottom of this message. No big deal, no hard feelings.

Hi, friends! Jarrett Fuller here. Maybe you know me as the host of the podcast Scratching the Surface or the proprietor of readings.design. Maybe it's from my design writing reading list or my video essay on design criticism. Or maybe it's from my photography on Instagram or my #windsorinthewild Twitter series. Or maybe you know my small design studio, twenty-six.design. Maybe we're friends IRL or you were one of my students. Or maybe you've followed my work for years and know me for all of those things! Whatever the case, I'm glad you are here! (And, by the way, there are way more of you here than I was expecting!)

Welcome to the first edition of my new newsletter! I've been posting content — ugh! is that best word we have — online for fifteen years across blogs, social media, podcasts, and other forums. My hope for this newsletter is to be a place to bring all of those together: to share news and updates on recent work, yes. But also to sort through in-progress thinking, share the links, books, movies, and music, etc I'm enjoying. A place to gush about my other enthusiasms, design or otherwise.