Design Better
by The Curiosity Department
Latest episode
Creative Leadership Retreat: Paul Dichter
Creative Leadership Retreat: Paul Dichter
About this podcast
Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with guests across many creative fields, helping you hone your craft, unlock your creativity, and learn the art of collaboration.
Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”
Episodes
The newest 50 of 268 episodes
- Creative Leadership Retreat: Paul Dichter · 1 h 0 minThis episode kicks off a special series recorded live at our Creative Leadership Retreat in Sonoma, which we co-hosted with our friends at September Works in late September. We…
- Maurice Cherry: Revision Path creator on why attention isn’t impact · 51 min · Season 12 Episode 197For eleven years, Maurice Cherry made a weekly podcast called Revision Path showcasing Black designers from around the world. He recorded more than 500 episodes with designers on…
- Tom Foley: How to pair typefaces and why the best brand fonts go unnoticed · 40 min · Season 12 Episode 196Tom Foley didn’t set out to design typefaces. As a postgraduate student at Central Saint Martins in London, he was researching why Ireland, unlike Switzerland, the Netherlands…
- Kevin Flores: Find Your Inner Rebel · 39 minKevin Flores has been part of the Design Better community for years — we first met him in 2017, while he was leading design at 23andMe, back when we were researching how design…
- Randy Hunt: Notion and Etsy design leader on why the best design teams stay small · 40 min · Season 12 Episode 194In graduate school, Randy Hunt poured his heart and soul into a poster for Milton Glaser’s class, a picture built entirely from hand lettering that read as an image from across…
- Matt Owens: Athletics co-founder on keeping your creative fire lit · 56 min · Season 12 Episode 193When Aarron was fresh out of grad school, working at an agency outside Philadelphia, he and his coworkers used to crowd around a monitor to study volumeone.com. Most websites…
- Blaine Billingsley: OpenAI designer on the collaboration problem AI hasn't solved yet · 28 min · Season 12 Episode 192Blaine Billingsley is a staff designer at OpenAI, and his path there was anything but a straight line. He studied music composition and comparative religion, played guitar in…
- Mack Paul: Co-author of Miracle Road on designing places where innovation happens · 44 minIn the mid-1950s, North Carolina was one of the poorest states in the country. Its economy ran on tobacco, furniture, and textiles — all three in decline — and its universities…
- Federico Casalegno: Samsung EVP and MIT Design Lab founder on what 20,000 years of human creativity means for design today · 24 min · Season 12 Episode 190When Samsung’s CEO asked Federico Casalegno to redesign the cameras on the company’s phones, Federico told him he was the wrong person for the job. He wasn’t an optical engineer…
- Jonathan Adler returns: The minimalist inside the maximalist · 44 min · Season 12 Episode 189Jonathan Adler was one of our favorite guests, so we’ve been angling to get him back ever since. He started as a potter and now designs furnishings and interiors that are…
- Clay Parker Jones: author of "Hidden Patterns" on why your team isn't really a team · 24 min · Season 12 Episode 188We all know that there is something fractured about the workplace, that makes it inefficient, and at times inhumane. If only someone was thinking deeply about those problems, and…
- Angel Steger: Wealthfront's VP of Design on what architecture teaches you about software · 53 min · Season 12 Episode 187A few years ago, Dropbox redesigned its website and revenue dropped by thirty percent. It was an all-hands-on-deck moment: people working weekends, everyone hunting for a…
- Ben Drury: Yoto co-founder on audio, imagination, and screen-free design · 51 min · Season 12 Episode 186Like a lot of parents, Eli struggled over the years to get his kids more into reading and away from screens. He wasn’t necessarily on the search for a technological solution, but…
- Jeff Hammoud: Chief Design Officer of Rivian on constraints, color, and what separates designers from stylists · 46 minThis is a special bonus episode, an interview with Rivian’s Chief Design Officer, Jeff Hammoud. We’ve got all the audio here, but it’s worth heading over to our Youtube channel…
- Eric Ries: Lean Startup author on why good companies go bad, and why good design is critical to success · 34 min · Season 12 Episode 184Fifteen years ago, Eric Ries handed a generation of founders a playbook. When Eli was in a Palo Alto-based startup accelerator in 2011, The Lean Startup felt like the only book…
- Ian Bogost: Game designer, Atlantic writer, and philosopher of the ordinary, on the small stuff that makes life delightful · 47 min · Season 12 Episode 184A few years ago, Ian Bogost wrote what he thought was a throwaway Atlantic piece about how electric vehicles would finally kill the manual transmission. It went off like a bomb —…
- Chris Entwisle and Mark Havens: authors of WAIL on the constraints that led to timeless designs for Prestige Records · 25 min · Season 12 Episode 183Years ago, two friends in Philadelphia — both designers, both obsessed with jazz — kept noticing the same notation on the back of their favorite records: “recorded by Van Gelder…
- Niyati Gupta: Netflix Product Design Lead on what happens when a designer becomes a product manager, and why your influence might not be in your title · 44 min · Season 12 Episode 181Niyati Gupta describes her career as one long experiment — deliberately putting herself in uncomfortable, ambiguous situations and treating every move as a personal learning…
- Mike Schnaidt: Fast Company Creative Director on typography, creative endurance, and designing for the long haul · 24 min · Season 12 Episode 181Typography is often treated as a detail — the thing you finalize after the real design decisions are made. But for our next guest, it’s closer to the foundation everything else…
- Bonus Episode: Dorrian Porter returns with the Vestaboard Note · 39 minThere’s something magical about the Vestaboard: it’s a physical, split-flap display connected to the internet that displays missives and useful information with a charm that we…
- Tina Roth Eisenberg: Creative Mornings founder on building communities that run on trust · 38 min · Season 12 Episode 180When Tina Roth Eisenberg moved to New York in 1999 as a new designer, she kept asking herself the same question: where are my people? Eighteen years ago, she answered it by…
- Paul Ford: Writer, developer & "fun Cassandra" on why everything is changing (but not how you think) · 26 min · Season 12 Episode 179Paul Ford likes to call himself a “fun Cassandra” — someone who, like the priestess in Greek mythology, sees trouble coming, but unlike her tries to make the warning as…
- Jessie McGuire: National Design Award-winning studio leader on design as a civic tool · 41 min · Season 12 Episode 178As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the Constitution remains the most consequential document in American life — and more people are reading it than ever. But…
- Colin Fisher: The lone genius is a myth · 33 min · Season 12 Episode 175This is a preview of a premium episode. To listen to the full thing, visit our Susbtack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/colin-fisher In jazz, there’s a concept called minimal…
- Nir Eyal: Beyond Belief and how to change your mind to change your life · 1 h 7 min · Season 12 Episode 176Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/nir-eyal-returns If you want to understand how much your beliefs shape your reality, try this…
- Mason Currey: Mason Currey: Author of Daily Rituals on Making Art and Making a Living · 27 min · Season 12 Episode 175This is a preview of a premium episode. To the listen to the full thing, head over to our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mason-currey At several points in his life…
- Etinosa Agbonlahor: Behavioral economist on why pricing belongs in the design process · 48 min · Season 12 Episode 174Find the full episode and bonus content on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/etinosa-agbonlahor For product teams at startups and established tech giants alike…
- Paul Dichter: Stranger Things writer on why the writers’ room isn’t so different from the design studio · 32 min · Season 12 Episode 173Both Aarron and I are official Stranger Things nerds. We watched the show ourselves when they came out, and again when our kids were old enough. As children of the 80s, the way…
- Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden: "Innovation-ish" and why most innovation doesn’t have to be a moonshot · 46 min · Season 12 Episode 170We’re all familiar with the tropes around innovation and how it starts. You just need a garage in Silicon Valley, a few geniuses and visionaries, maybe some good snacks. Our…
- Luis Mendo: Designer turned illustrator on making things that could only come from you · 32 min · Season 12 Episode 171Luis Mendo is a Spanish-born illustrator based in Nagano, Japan, and his work is unmistakably, irreducibly human. His drawings are populated by bespectacled bird-like figures —…
- David Shim and Rachana Rele: Read AI CEO and VP of Product Design for AI-native products at Adobe on amplifying creative work — not replacing it · 36 minToday we have two guests from two different companies who have one shared conviction: AI works best when it amplifies people, not replaces them. Today we’re joined by Rachana…
- Leonardo Giusti: Archetype AI's co-founder on physical AI and the limits of the chatbot · 29 min · Season 12 Episode 170Leonardo Giusti has spent his career in the spaces between disciplines — between art and science, between research and product, between the physical world and the digital one…
- Brooke Hopper: Adobe's machine intelligence design lead on what AI can't touch · 47 minBrooke Hopper stays close to her craft. Before she hopped on a call with us to chat about her role at Adobe, she was deep in Cursor prototyping navigation design ideas. Though…
- Daisy Fancourt: Epidemiologist on how creativity rewrites your biology and extends your lifespan · 47 min · Season 12 Episode 168You probably already know that exercise, sleep, a good diet, and spending time in nature are the pillars of a healthy life . But what if there’s a fifth pillar we’ve been…
- Fiona Crombie: Academy Award-nominated production designer on storytelling without words · 22 min · Season 12 Episode 167If you’ve ever wondered what a movie production designer actually does, our guest today describes it in the simplest terms: it is everything you see in the frame that isn’t a…
- Sam Beam of Iron & Wine: Grammy-nominated musician on creativity, collaboration, and why a good day is finding one great lyric · 23 min · Season 12 Episode 166Most musicians start learning at an early age—or so we think. But that wasn’t the path our guest today took. He was an arty kid—drawing and painting in his bedroom—then a film…
- George Newman: Cognitive scientist on why creativity is more like archaeology than magic · 25 min · Season 12 Episode 165We’ve all heard the mythology around great ideas: the lone genius struck by inspiration, the eureka moment in the bath or shower. But George Newman believes we’ve been thinking…
- Nate Koechly and Matthew Darby: YouTube's UX Director and Director of PM on redesigning one of the world's most-used apps · 43 min · Season 12 Episode 164Redesigning one of the world’s most-used apps is no small feat, especially when that app is also the second largest search engine in the world: YouTube. Over the last four years…
- Bill Burnett: How to Live a Meaningful Life · 29 min · Season 12 Episode 163When we last spoke with Bill Burnett, it was in 2020 and he’d just published his book Designing Your Work Life, co-authored by Dave Evans. The world was in the midst of a…
- Austin Kleon: Author of "Steal Like an Artist" on building a sustainable creative practice · 29 min · Season 12 Episode 162To make good creative work, you’ll inevitably do a lot of bad work along the way. So building a thriving creative practice relies on showing up and doing the work consistently…
- Raffaela Panie: Designing the brand and visual identity for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games · 20 min · Season 12 Episode 161Every four years, the Olympic Games capture the world’s attention—not just through athletic achievement, but through a complete visual identity that must resonate across…
- Design Better Experts in Residence: Roundtable at Sequoia Capital · 60 minWe recorded this special live episode of Design Better at Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley, with our Experts in Residence: Irene Au, Kevin Bethune, and James Buckhouse…
- Mikon van Gastel: Co-Founder of Sibling Rivalry on why presentation skills matter more than design skills · 25 minThere was a time when a movie title sequence was just the moment you grabbed your popcorn and waited for the real show to start. But in the mid-90s and early 2000’s, that changed…
- Mark Wilson: Fast Company's Global Design Editor on design's defining moments in 2025 · 42 min · Season 12 Episode 158As 2025 draws to a close, it’s time to pause and take stock of what’s been a transformational year in design. From Figma’s landmark IPO to the rise of AI across every category of…
- Video Rewind: Cassie McDaniel: How Medium eliminated its PM function and started moving faster · 27 minWe’re taking a holiday break, so we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes this year with Cassie McDaniel, Medium’s head of design. We’re also including video from the…
- Aaron Draplin: Field Notes co-founder on what skate culture taught him about design · 27 min · Season 12 Episode 154A larger than life figure in the creative world, Aaron Draplin has been designing everything from logos to posters since 1995. Few designers are as prolific as Aaron. He’s the…
- Jessica Hische and Chris Shiflett: Designing business tools that support how creatives actually work · 1 h 8 minJessica Hische and Chris Shiflett first crossed paths at Studiomates, a Brooklyn based co-working space where some of New York’s most talented designers built businesses and…
- 2025 Holiday Gift Guide · 45 minIt’s that time of year again—our favorite episode to put together. A moment to look back at the objects, experiences, and ideas that sparked creativity for us this year. From…
- Phil Gilbert: Making a 114-year-old, 400,000 person company care about design · 44 min · Season 12 Episode 155Changing the culture of a 400,000-person company isn’t just hard—it’s the kind of transformation most leaders wouldn’t even attempt. But when Phil Gilbert joined IBM as General…
- Cecilia Brenner: Moving beyond design theater to measurable impact · 23 min · Season 12 Episode 154We’ve talked to many design leaders who have burned out after a decade or more of corporate work. But after 17 years at Philips designing health innovations, Cecilia Brenner…
