WELCOME TO DESIGN MATTERS MEDIA.
Typographer and poet Robert Bringhurst once said, “By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately, and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.”
We’re told many things in life, and we tend to accept those things as canon. Consider the agreed-upon and prescribed trajectory of a life itself: You grow up. You go to college. You choose a job and work in an office 40 hours a week. You hunker down with a partner. You have a family. You retire, and make the occasional trip to Florida.
The design and creative industry follows its own set of precepts: Art hangs on gallery walls. Poems live in books. Design is a mere slice of consumer creativity negotiated and traded for a fee. Moreover, disciplines should not blend. Print is dead. A painting is a painting, lyrics are lyrics, a blog is a blog—
A project’s creative potential is bound by the original form in which it was designed: a radio show is a radio show, a podcast is a podcast.
At Design Matters, we choose not to accept the accepted. We long to view the world with the fresh, eager, open eyes of youth. We revel in possibility. We crave revolution. We celebrate those who have broken beyond the path of the typical, the bounds of the accepted, the bonds of tradition. We seek to school with those who share our values. We do not delineate between talking about making a difference and making a difference. As our founder, Debbie Millman, has long said, you can do both.
And all of that is why we have launched Design Matters Media: To bring you more. More of the Design Matters podcast, now in its 14th year, in more ways than ever before. We are here to break rules and, with hope and intention, break them beautifully, and well.
We hope you’ll join us on our journey, and support an independent creative enterprise comprised of a small group of longtime collaborators with the purest intention: to highlight the best voices and minds operating on the creative landscape today, and to engage and spotlight them with an unrivaled depth, passion and critical eye.
Keep an eye on this space. Truly exciting things are coming. We can’t wait to share them with you.
Zachary Petit, Design Matters Media Editor-in-Chief