20. New Work! Books and interviews, podcasts and playlists

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.

1, 10, 100 Years of Form, Typography, and Interaction at Parsons

For the last year, I’ve been working with the communication design department at the Parsons School of Design in New York on a new book that documents the program’s long history — the longest continually run advertising and graphic design program in the United States. Structured to tell the story in three discreet time scales — the last year, the last decade, and the last century — the book moves between essays, oral histories, interviews, and student and faculty work to show the development of this program’s unique pedagogy and structure.

I served as editor on the project — commissioning all the writing (and doing some writing of my own in it) as well as thinking through the structural questions of how to manage this content. The project was organized by Caspar Lam, director of the BFACD program, designed by Roon Kang and Andrew LeClair, and features contributions from all the current Parsons faculty. I’m so excited this is finally out in the world and available for purchase.

Lucille Tenazas knows what’s missing in design education

Over on Eye on Design, we excerpted part of the book as well; my interview with the great, great design educator Lucille Tenazas. This interview helps open the book and looks more generally at what it means to teach design. Using Lucille’s position as both a designer and educator, we look at how design education has evolved over her career, how to have a long career in an ever-changing field, and the balance between theory and craft.

Design History Society Podcast with Emily Candela

I had the honor of serving as the guest judge for the 2021 Design Writing Prize sponsored by the Design History Society. This year’s winner was Emily Candela, a research at the Royal Academy of Art, who wrote a fascinating piece on how scientists and illustrators have visualized the COVID-19 coronavirus. I guest-hosted the latest episode of the DHS podcast and spoke with Emily about her winning entry, the relationship between science and illustration, and what she’s researching now. You can listen to the episode here.

(And if you’re interested, I was interviewed on the DHS podcast last year before submissions opened, which you can listen to here!)

New Playlist: All We Ever Wanted

I’ve got a new playlist out, the fourth in my winter series of the last few years. This one is called All We Ever Wanted and is available to stream on Spotify. There’s a line in a John Jeremiah Sullivan essay I’ve always liked: “It was wintertime, but the day was a little telegram from spring.” This is the working thesis for these winter playlists, a way to capture the chill of winter while acknowledging the coming Spring. I’m happy with how this turned out and hope you’ll take a listen over on Spotify.

For reference, the previous playlists in this series are: Another Kind of Life (2021), A Ship Out to Nowhere (2020), and We Can Hear When We Are Hollow (2019). An archive of all past playlists is here.

New Episodes of Scratching the Surface

Over the last few months, I’ve released a handful of new episode of Scratching the Surface. I ended 2021 with a conversation with Lorraine Wild, one of the most requested guests and someone I’ve wanted to talk to since the show began! So far this year, I’ve had great conversations with former MoMA curator Sean Anderson, Pentagram partner Michael Gericke, artist and writer Justin Beal, and design researcher and curator Zara Arshad.

I have some great guests lined up for the next season that I can’t wait to share with you! As always, if you like the show and want to help financially support it, you can join our Patreon. Patrons get an exclusive bonus newsletter each month as well as episode transcripts, early episode releases, and other special offers.

What I’m reading/listening to/watching

• I finally got around to watching this interview with architectural theorist and historian Mark Wigley I had bookmarked for a few months, and wow, was is worth the wait. It’s nice to hear his own origin story spelled out a bit more but I always appreciated the second half talking about the role of the architect, something that feels very analogous to the role of the graphic designer.
• I’d heard good things about Fiona MacCarthy’s Gropius biography from 2019 so I finally picked it and am about halfway though. Walter Gropius, of course, was the founder and first director of the Bauhaus, but he also went on to be dean of the Harvard GSD. He’s someone who fits my interests, moving between design and teaching and administration and curating and history so I’m enjoying this immensely. After I finish Gropius, I’m excited to dig into Olga Ravn’s The Employees. I’d been wanting to read it for a while but just picked it up in hardcover because of this amazing cover!
• Speaking of interviews, this episode of At A Distance with fashion designer, industrial designer, creative director and general polymath Samuel Ross was an excellent listen.
• Here’s Diana Budds on the MTA’s Covid Campaign. I’m glad someone else finally shines some light on the New York Subway’s excellent branding and advertising.
• I loved this tribute to Virgil Abloh from curator and writer Antwaun Sargent, who’s curating the Brooklyn version of the Virgil retrospective Figures of Speech.
• We watched the first two episodes of jeen-yuhs, the three-part Netflix documentary series on Kanye West. I kind of love it? It’s so rare to have so much footage of someone so culturally significant before they became famous. It’s a fascinating insight into who Kanye was/is before he became Kanye. Highly recommended.
• I’m slowly working my way through the films of Austrian director Michael Haneke. I’d only seen his two Funny Games films before. So far my favorite is Benny’s Video, a low-key thriller with a gut punch of a finale. Does any director capture social isolation better than Haneke?
• We also started Severance, the new Apple TV+ sci-fi series. It’s good! AppleTV+ has lowkey become a powerhouse of quality content (I predicted this!) and it’s worth paying attention to their new series.

Thanks for following along. If you have comments, potential collaborations, or just want to chat, simply hit reply to this email.

Until next time,

JF