Ep. 230: SVA’s Molly Heintz on Why Design Writing Matters
Molly Heintz grew up fascinated with Greek mythology, and eventually, fashion – drawn to enthralling storytelling and visual aesthetics. She carried this interest in Greek mythology over to studying archeology but when she became burned out in academia, she transitioned to work as a fashion editor, setting her on an entirely new careerpath. From there, she worked in marketing and communications, eventually co-founding Superscript and teaching at SVA, chairing the Masters of Arts in Design Research, Writing & Criticism program. Together with Steven Heller, she’s co-edited The Education of a Design Writer to showcase exemplary design writing and share practical advice for writers. Molly makes a compelling case for why design writing is essential for the design process, and for understanding the world around us.
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Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Molly Heintz, a writer and editor specializing in architecture and design. Her latest book, co-edited with Steven Heller, The Education of a Design Writer - is an anthology of great writing and practical advice for those who practice, observe, chronicle and critique all forms of design. Since 2015, she has served as the Chair of the Master of Arts in Design Research, Writing & Criticism program (also called D-Crit) at the School of Visual Arts in New York. And she is co-founder of the editorial consultancy Superscript, which has developed programming, exhibitions, and editorial content for a variety of institutions, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of Arts and Design, and MoMa. Prior to Superscript, Molly led communications at Gensler and Rockwell Group. She has edited multiple books and magazines, and her writing has appeared in Fast Company, The Art Newspaper, AIGA Voice, and Journal of Decorative Arts, among others. As you’ll hear, Molly makes a solid case for why design writing is necessary - and is as essential to the design process as it is to understanding the world around us… here’s Molly….
Molly Heintz: My name is Molly Heintz. I live in New York City, and I am the chair of the master’s program in Design Research, Writing & Criticism at School of Visual Arts. And operate out in the world professionally as an editor focused on architecture and design to make those subjects intelligible to a broad public.
Amy: Well, thank you for that. Making those subjects intelligible to a broad public is important work, especially when creativity is undervalued in our society. But before we get into that work, I would love to double back to your childhood because I’m always interested in learning how the seeds of creativity were planted and nurtured. Can you walk me through some of your early fascinations and curiosities?
Molly: Yes, I don’t come from a ‘design-y’ family, I come from a family of physicians, but there are a couple of specific publications actually that I think made a big impression on me as a kid that helped chart the path that I’m on today. One of those publications was a book that was given to me as a gift when I was about eight years old and it was D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. It’s intended for children, so it’s sort of a simplified telling of Greek mythology accompanied by wonderful, very evocative watercolor illustrations. And I got this book and I was growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, fairly small city of southern, pretty traditional, pretty homogenous. And as somebody who was being trotted off to Sunday School every week, this book really struck me, not only for the great stories, the Greek myths and its beauty in terms of just those illustrations, but because it was a whole new way of thinking about the world that was being told through these stories.
And that really was so enticing to me. Like oh wow, that kind of put me on a path to really being interested in mythology, all kinds of mythology. I went on to have an interest in Norse mythology, thanks to a teacher at one of my schools who gave ad hoc lectures about Norse mythology during lunchtime, (laughter) which some students loved, some students did not so much. But yeah, that particular book, I still have it today and I actually go out and get new copies to give to kids when I need an eight year old gift. It really made an impression on me.
Amy: It sounds like it did in the same way that sometimes travel to another country can kind of crack your worldview wide open.
Molly: Yes. Yeah, exactly and I was lucky as a kid too, speaking of travel, to be able to travel a bit abroad and again, coming from the south and a fairly small city, being able to be in London and walk the streets that I know so many people had walked before me for hundreds and maybe even thousands of years. I think that feeling that I was being connected to a past through just inhabiting a city, again, it made an impression on me and I think when you’re living in a smaller world, certain things can really have a deep impact and stick with you. And so yeah, being able to travel, I think instilled a love of history in me in particular and just being curious about what that history was. Not only was I a budding history nerd, another publication that I remember making a big impression on me as a kid was the original W magazine.
I don’t know if you’ll remember that before it was a glossy, monthly publication, that it still is today, it was this newsprint tabloid, style publication that was a pretty direct offshoot of the Women’s Wear Daily business newspaper. And it came out bi-weekly and my mom had ordered a bunch of magazine subscriptions for her waiting room office and I think somehow she got a bonus subscription to W Magazine and gave it to me. And so at a pretty young age, I was nine or 10, getting this fairly sophisticated fashion magazine that also just blew my mind, especially compared to the magazines of the day that were marketed to tweens and teens, like Seventeen or Sassy. W was a totally different level. And just really wonderful photography, like the complete bleeding edge of fashion was represented there. And again, that was really eye-opening and really instilled a love of fashion design in me.
Amy: I relate. I grew up near Detroit, but that magazine is one of the reasons why I went to FIT for my first undergrad. There was something about that magazine that made both the business and the art of fashion so appealing, which had to influence you. It sounds like it did have a profound impact on you. Did you know this at the time or are you just collecting these experiences and sorting them out later?
Molly: I think I was not conscious of it necessarily, although things started to, let’s say manifest, kind of a convergence of these interests. So perhaps in kind of dorky ways, I would often create, let’s say vignettes, almost as if I were designing like a storefront window in my room, based on a book I was reading or a movie that I saw that I found really inspiring. And so I would create these displays. So that was a kind of storytelling as well, kind of the visual story, or setting of a scene. But because I really didn’t have, close family that were in those professions myself, I was not necessarily thinking of them as professional pathways. I was going back to sticking my head out from Raleigh, North Carolina and being able to see that there was a bigger world, I really wanted to connect with that world. And so I was really interested in diplomacy; thought I might want to be in the Foreign Service. We had exchange students living with us when I was in high school. So I was kind of feeling like I was very connected to places outside of Raleigh. And I really had, I think, planned from a pretty early age to… maybe I would be moving away from Raleigh and not living there my whole life.
Amy: Okay. (Laughs) Got it. That brings me to the teenage years because they’re often a crucible for the alchemy of becoming an adult and it sounds like you were pushing at the seams in Raleigh, North Carolina, but excited for these windows into a larger world. What particular sorts of challenges did you go through as a teenager that you look at now as really formative?
Molly: I would say one particular challenge that was really unexpected, that happened my senior year, was my father, who was a physician, had enlisted in the army reserves a few years before… when I was younger in high school. And he ended up being called to the Gulf War.
Amy: Oh wow!
Molly: He ended up getting sent to overseas, stationed in Saudi Arabia for most of my senior year and working as a field doctor. And it was just like a completely unexpected turn of events in my family. And whereas I had been, I kind of had my eye set on going to Georgetown University and doing the Foreign Service track, all of a sudden this whole thing happened that sort of gave me this very immediate up close look at the mechanics and some of the ugly sides of what foreign diplomacy really is, you know, and I was experiencing it.
Amy: Oh wow.
Molly: Yeah, so I pressed pause on that future plan and I ended up going to, instead, Duke University, which is in Durham, North Carolina, not that far away. Ended up staying a little, maybe closer to home than I thought. But that ended up being like a real gift and life-changer because of what happened next and who I met there.
Amy: Well, (laughs) that’s a way to tease a story, I’m ready for that! What happened next?
Molly: I was looking in the course catalogue for the courses, taking French in high school. I was kind of assuming I would just sign up for a French class. And flipping through the course book I saw that Ancient Greek language was offered as a class. And I sort of had this immediate flashback to the D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths and I was like wow, I didn’t know you could even take this as a class, a language class and let me just try it. And I signed up for that class and it ended up being just… it was this portal into this wonderful world of the classics department at Duke University, which also has the archeology program and I started taking archeology courses with a fantastic professor, John Younger. And he was just one of those, again, like my drama teacher in elementary school, one of those people who just really made the material come to life in such a wonderful way. And I was completely hooked. I changed my major to archeology and ended up going on several trips to Greece…
Amy: Wow! This is… oh, I’m so excited for you! (Laughter)
Molly: It was great! And I ended up living in Greece for my semester abroad, I lived in Athens and ended up working at the School of American Classical Studies in Athens, and it was fantastic. And I found that going back to thinking about my first experiences in cities, these older cities, London, Paris, and Athens obviously, but I could also think about the connection to the past through these objects, which in the archeological realm, they’re referred to as the like the objects of daily life. And they’re often quite humble and quite often broken in many pieces and you have to kind of puzzle them back together. But you also have to puzzle them into a context and think about how you found them and how they might have been used and why they were in this location and what the date might be for this that can help you date the rest of the structure.
Amy: Yeah, it’s like a cold case, it’s like forensics of daily objects. (laughs)
Molly: Detective work, yeah. And I just loved that. And there’s something that really spoke to the detective in me that yeah, I found so fun and fascinating. And that just put me on a track to… I was like, I’m just going to keep going for it. And I went straight out of undergrad into a PhD program in the history of art and architecture, focused on archeology. And yeah, as you might be able to predict, I completely burned out. (Laughter) Yeah. I did a master’s and did my PhD exams and got through those and was working on a dissertation proposal and sitting in the library day-after-day and there was just one day I was like, man, I am just so disconnected and far away from my contemporary culture.
Amy: Yeah, it’s interesting, you can find something that you find so fascinating and then you can dig into it so deeply that you don’t even realize you’ve walled yourself off.
Molly: Yeah.
Amy: And based on you earlier, what you said about growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, I can imagine that once you looked around and found yourself so mired in this specialty, that it started to feel like small, like a trap.
Molly: Yeah, exactly, yeah, it started to feel a little claustrophobic. Not only because of the material that I was studying and obviously it was all in the ancient, medieval realm, but the fact that I knew that once I did my research and analysis and wrote a paper and the paper came out, it was going to be read, and hopefully appreciated. But by a very small group of people and that is a little deflating. For me at the time that just felt like wow. And it’s not that I don’t love the research I’m doing, it’s fascinating, but I just would love to be able to think about ways I can connect it to today and now and maybe have more people aware of what I find exciting about this subject.
Amy: And maybe through that connection be able to light somebody up the way W Magazine or the book on Greek mythology lit you up. That early experience where you were the audience that was so affected is profound when you think about okay, I’m going to put content out in the world, who is it for.
Molly: Yeah, exactly. I was like well, maybe I’m just having a moment, let me find something else to do maybe as a distraction and maybe that might help my mindset. So I went to work as a fashion editor at a startup magazine, a lifestyle magazine in Boston, where I was. It was certainly a complete change of milieu from the dusty stacks and the library. But it was a very welcome change and really fun and it was like a really, from scratch operation, starting out in her second bedroom and then growing, until we got offices in downtown Boston. It was started out as a local publication that ultimately was distributed nationally and even internationally, in North America. And that whole experience was…
Amy: What’s the name? I’m sure some people will remember it?
Molly: Maybe, it was called Platinum Magazine, no affiliation with Amex, but completely different publication in the sense that there was no publication in that area that was covering the fashion scene, which there was a respectable fashion scene in Boston because there were so many students. And so there was stuff that we thought we could cover well and in an interesting way and created this monthly publication and I got to learn all the different aspects of how you put that together and what that production process looks like.
Amy: Yeah. And so I’m hearing a couple of layers there, first of all, interesting coverage of an exciting and sexy subject, in a place where they’re probably hungry for it. But also the from scratch scrappiness of seeing everything super closer up in terms of how you grow. And this particular start up had the opportunity to grow. Was this in the 90s, when was this?
Molly: Very late 90s.
Amy: Very late 90s, okay.
Molly: And I think one other aspect of it that I really appreciated was the highly collaborative nature of it. In academia you are able to collaborate, from time-to-time with your peers, and of course if you’re teaching, your students. But to collaborate to meet something is really gratifying, I find, and so being able to work in that kind of team environment, to actually make something and you’re able to actually make something, start to finish every month. That metabolism is quite different than the academic, humanities academia metabolism where you’re working with much longer lead times on projects typically, whether it’s an exhibition that you’re supporting as a curator or whether it’s a book project or even a journal article, that may take a couple of years. So the metabolism of the monthly magazine just… I was addicted. And yeah, it was where I did, at that point, just a kind of 180. (Laughter)
Amy: It’s like going to the gym and going, oh my god, I really love CrossFit, I didn’t know. (Laughs)
Molly: Yeah. Yeah. and I was doing articles that were, for example, you know, like a history of tartan, because that year tartan was all over the runways. But I would do a deep dive research-wise, that I knew how to do from working at… my humanities academia skills. But then what I found actually a wonderful challenge, was to take that and be able to have the challenge of turning it into an article that was engaging an accessible and that was something that people would want to read, who were not coming from the academic world. And so I realized there’s a lot of fantastic magazine writing and in the hands of a great writer also becomes like a wonderful story. And that aspect of the magazine realm I loved and I was hooked.
Amy: It sounds like it, I felt your passion as you were telling me that story. I’m also thinking late 90s, that we’re heading into the era of the internet, so it’s probably not very long-lived, this Platinum magazine, is that what happened?
Molly: Yes, that’s what happened. Platinum had a great run and I think by that early internet era, yeah, it was done. And I was exploring other avenues. I ended up moving to New York and getting a call from a friend who was working for a company called Rockwell Group and she said, “There’s this job opening, if you’re interested and by the way, I think they’re also trying to wrap-up this book project they have on the boards and maybe you’d be interested in that, given your background.” And so went in, took a job at Rockwell Group.
Amy: Just for our listeners, Rockwell Group is a prominent and large interior design studio. How would you describe it at the time that you joined?
Molly: At the time I joined, I think maybe it was about 150 people in the New York office and they had really made their mark, David Rockwell, the founder, had made a mark with restaurant design in particular. And they had just, I think, done the first Nobu restaurant, they’d just done the first W Hotel. And were really, I think, changing the game, in terms of the experience of restaurant design. And so that was going to be the environment I was coming into. And the office itself, it was like Santa’s workshop for designers. That was the vibe. It was amazing! But yeah, they were working on their first monograph as well with I believe. And that was called Pleasure. And I got to work on that with the team. And then soon after that project wrapped, I was able to stay on and then work fulltime on a new book project called Spectacle.
And that particular book project I was involved in from the very beginning. And I would say, thinking of career highlights, that was one of them because it was a book that was by this really creative, fantastic firm, byline by David Rockwell and the designer, Bruce Mau. But there was no Rockwell Group work in it. It was just ideas. And it was an appreciation really of the design of these larger than life events around the globe and kind of looking at those ranging from the Olympics opening ceremonies to festivals in Italy… through a design lens. And breaking them down, talking to people who were producers, interviewing them about how they conceived and actually executed these events. And really thinking about what was it about these events, many of them temporary entities, what made them so compelling. And how that connected to Rockwell Groups approach to their own design work.
Amy: What a fascinating project! And what access, to be able to get that up close and personal exploded view of these amazing spectacles…
Molly: Absolutely.
Amy: That are built for not just the consumption of a niche audience, but the whole world. (Laughs)
Molly: Yeah, no, it was fascinating. Talk about people who are passionate about what they are doing. The long time producer of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and how she organized all the people carrying balloons and this like super big, almost like military level kind of operation. (Laughs) And to be able to talk to Simon Doonan about the spectacle of windows that he would design. Or talk to Larry David from Burning Man about Burning Man back in the day, you know, kind of early Burning Man and what that was intended to be. It was a really profound experience and collection of voices.
Amy: All of this gets filtered through your sensibility for language, words, context, messaging, rather than you sort of being pulled into the making of an interior or a spectacle.
Molly: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.
Amy: How did you identify for yourself that your real finesse, your real superpower is in the realm of crafting the message?
Molly: Yeah, I think I realized at some point that through my somewhat patriarch previous professional experience, (laughs) actually had the tools to be that translator between designers, architects and translating their visions and ideas to be able to put them into words. But not just words. There are a lot of designers who are quite adept at describing what they do or describing a vision. However that, I would say, is only one piece of the puzzle when trying to communicate about design. Because you also have to tell people why it matters. And I answer this question of, so what? Frankly, to be a little rude. But I think that’s a question when I’m sitting with an architect or designer and talking about their work and just wanting to push them a little more to think about how it’s going to exist out in the world.
So what? Why should anybody care, really, about this? You care, but why should other people care? And I think being able to connect the dots is not so easy sometimes because you as the designer maybe just don’t have that perspective yet on your own work, or you’ve been deep in it and it’s hard to pull back out. But I think it’s really important to do that and also to think about how your work as a designer or architect sits out in the world. Why is it relevant to today? And what is its context. And that is sort of where I come in, to frame all that up.
Amy: Yes, and I think that framing and contextual information, but also a kind of being able to place it in terms of current value systems and…
Molly: Exactly.
Amy: And understanding that the audience who is going to be digesting this… These are new ideas, right, these are at the very leading edge of the built world. These are new ideas that are being brought into existence and don’t have yet associations and cultural understandings sometimes. So you are the one who helps people figure out why it’s palatable and how to approach it, with a spoon or with a fork.
Molly: Yeah.
Amy: And there’s such a need for that. And I’m sort of segueing into your book, but we have a lot to cover before we get there. But I’m assuming that your work as an educator, as the chair of the Design Research, Writing & Criticism, also known as D-Crit at SVA, is related. And also you founded Superscript Media, an editorial and content strategy consultancy. And so your power with words and being a translator is also powered by a deep understanding of the current pulse of cultural perception.
Molly: Right, right, and that is, I think again what’s so interesting and makes it fun for me is like being the person who is like the dot connector, or helping connect the dots. And I think what it allows for is for a really expanded conversation around architecture and design and the value of it. Because you are able to, I think if you can connect those dots to contemporary culture and what’s happening in society and politics, economics, that is where you can really help people see things in a different way, through design. And so yeah, having worked at Rockwell Group on this Spectacle book, which was a real high because like I said, I got to connect with fantastic contributors, ranging from, like I said, the Simon Doonan’s to Dave Hickey, the art critic to Julie Taymor, the visionary director or producer.
So I did another 180, which seems to be (laughs) what I’m wont to do. And I went to work for another architecture firm, a big architecture firm, a global firm called Gensler. And they were sort of in a place where they were repositioning themselves a bit from a firm that was working on interiors, behind the scenes, to a firm that was doing a variety of… working in a variety of disciplines and fields as a design firm, a design forward firm. And so I came on board there and ultimately was director of marketing and communications for this north east region. And that was sort of like the equivalent of going to business school for me, I think. (Laughs)
Amy: Oh, was it?
Molly: Yeah. It’s a really well managed company and a great place to work. But they are really very focused on delivery, and to do that you really have to be highly organized in your studio work, in organization and budgets and I was being very exposed to all of that. And also really thinking about how were these messages that we are crafting related to the business development goals. And just kind of understanding these messages in a different way. And that was an education in and of itself. But it was getting a little further away from the storytelling that I loved. And so when I heard about this program, D-Crit, as you mentioned, which in its earlier iteration was a two year MFA in design criticism. I checked into it. I saw that all these people who were my design writing icons were on the faculty, like Steven Heller and Karrie Jacobs and Kurt Andersen who at the time had a great podcast called Studio 360 that often covered design in a really interesting way.
So I was like, this is a program that was made for me, it seems like, and it was an MFA and I thought perhaps I could formalize a little bit more my journalistic bona fides through this program, which was focused on writing and the faculty were all practicing journalists. And so I did this program and then through had met some great colleagues in my class and we decided to create this thing called Superscript. We labelled it an ‘editorial consultancy,’ because we were like, you know, we’re not exactly sure what we mean by this, but we’ll put this out there and see what comes to us. (Laughs) And it turned out to be some really fascinating work because we were very connected to the architecture and design realm, the four of us who started Superscript. And we were one of the only consultancies really focused on the writing side of things and writing for design.
And we started to get some really interesting work from clients like Pentagram Design and Frog Design and MoMA retail, basically entities who waned people like us who could come in and think in a really high level, critical way around what they were doing and put that into words. And really kind of strategize with them about how they should be talking about it and even thinking about it, and their teams. And so doing that work also allowed us to support some self-initiated projects that we did that were really more like conversation series. And at every scale we had, for a while, something called ADBC, the Architecture and Design Book Club, that was intended to be this gorilla-style book club that would meet in public space in New York City, sort of like a flash mob. With the idea that we would have a special guest, if it’s a host, who would pick the reading and then we would come together and have a conversation around this reading. And anybody who happened to be walking by was welcome to join in.
And then the other end of the spectrum was we were invited to the Venice Architecture Biennale to create a three-part conversation series in the main Arsenale building as part of that opening weekend. And so Superscript still exists, although the founders have somewhat dispersed a bit. But it really opened a lot of wonderful doors and I think showed us what the possibilities were for people who were using… were in the design field but using words primarily. And then I ended up getting a call from the founding chair of the D-Crit program, Alice Twemlow, who had been one of my teachers, that she was going to be moving to Europe and would I like to come on board as like a co-chair and then chair of a new iteration of the program that is what it is today, which is a one year intensive master’s program, that we still call D-Crit, but it’s full name now is Design Research, Writing & Criticism.
Amy: And you’ve been in that position since 2015, right?
Molly: That’s right. I think I think it is a wonderful place to work because it’s just… it’s like there’s just a constant conversation happening all the time. And because it is this conversation, it is very dependent on who is in the room. (Laughs) And who that might be comes from all corners, both geographically and professionally really. We have people who are designers, who maybe feel like they’ve been around the world working and they’ve kind of hit a wall, need to up their game. They really want to take on more roles as thought leaders.
And I think that combination of people, and we have geographically people from really all over. So it creates the most amazing conversations you can imagine around the seminar table.
Amy: And how wonderful to have that constant flow of fresh conversation moving through your practice.
Molly: Yeah.
Amy: I definitely want to talk about this book that you and your colleague, Steven Heller co-authored, recently released on Allworth Press, and it’s called, The Education of a Design Writer. I’m going to throw it back at you, so what?
Molly: Yes! Yes! Well, first of all I have to say that Steve Heller was one of the founders of the first iteration of the D-Crit program and he also was the chair of the MFA Design Program here at SVA. And so I’ve always loved Steve from day one. But then when I became chair of the revamped one year MA program, I was like, you have to be on my faculty, stay on the faculty. So he was a teacher too, and a colleague, in addition to having been a mentor of mine. And so yeah, he had launched this series with Allworth and he’s done a few previous books, The Education of a Graphic Designer, The Education of an Illustrator, but he’d always wanted to do The Education of a Design Writer. And so we started brainstorming this book together. We started sketching out what categories we might be looking for, if we wanted to create an anthology that was really exemplary design writing.
And it’s a very eclectic collection, I will say, because much like define design here in our program at SVA, as anything human made, you can imagine all the different topics and different approaches that you might be able to put under this tent, if you’re talking about design writing. And so yeah, we started to invite writers to propose or share some work with us that they might want included in such a book. And we had a really generous set of contributors. And yeah, we packaged it all up into a wonderful book, designed by Rick Landers, and yeah, it’s sort of this handbook of what we think is, as I said, some of the best design writing around. And I wrote a forward in the book that is really intended for making a case to all writers, even if you’re not coming from a design background, to think about writing about design because I think it is kind of… an endlessly fruitful way of approaching almost any topic.
Amy: I appreciated your forward because also some people still need a reminder that design is essentially anything that’s been thought of and made by humans.
Molly: Exactly.
Amy: And so it doesn’t have to be an iconic object. It can be an algorithm or a system or a policy and it can also apply to infrastructure and so I bring that up because I think it speaks to some of the importance of why design writing itself is important. Is because we have to be able to put out messages into the world that help people understand how important design is because these are the decisions that are making the built world.
Molly: That’s right. They are significant. They will have impact in our 3D world as well as the less visible world of, like you said, of algorithms and AI now. But I think one thing that I appreciate about design is the starting point, is that it always allows you to ask really good questions. You’re never at a loss as a writer. If you’re a writer and you feel like, oh, I’m staring at this blank page, I have writers block, just find a piece of design that interests you and trust me, you’ll be off to the races because there are always questions there. First of all, basics like, what does this look like? What is it made of and who commissioned it, who actually made it? Did that person get paid for making it? And where did the material itself come from? So you very quickly can get into much more complex and interesting questions. I think design allows you to do that, engage with some of those questions that are really social, political, cultural questions. And do it in a way that is again, accessible and in a way that is going to be engaging to an audience so that they perhaps will care about some of those little questions or maybe see some of that conversation in a different way.
Amy: Yeah, and I think it has the power to pull focus and lead somebody in through what might seem like an opaque curtain. But once you’ve behind the curtain you start to get this really crystalized vision of how anything comes to be and all of the mechanics and workings and decisions that have to go into that.
Molly: That’s right, a real appreciation of it. And the book is dedicated to former faculty members of the D-Crit program, who both are unfortunately deceased, but Ralph Caplan and Phil Patton and they were both themselves acclaimed design writers and had their very distinctive takes on looking at the world through design that I would say Phil in particular was so adept at taking the most humble quotidian, every day kind of thing and creating this fantastic constellation of information and story around it. He had an article about the design of plastic coffee cup lids that appeared in i-D Magazine in the 90s and that piece was based on him just noticing that of all the coffee cup lids on the floor of his car, that not one was the same as the other, they were all a little bit different. And so he started investigating why that was and so the article itself is a real education on plastic mold-making and distribution. I think it’s that kind of noticing that is really something that anybody can do. And I think if you just bring that sense of curiosity and wonder to your everyday travels in the world, you will see things and wonder about them and there’s a design story there behind it.
Amy: (Laughs) Yes! And so what is your why… or what do you hope, now that this book is out in the world, who do you hope it reaches and how do you hope that it makes an impact?
Molly: Well, I think there are two primary audiences for the book. Designers who may want to explore design writing more in their practice, bring writing on board as a tool. And I think what happens sometimes in design education is you’re so focused on getting your BFA degree, that being able to take that step back and think about how to critically frame something, answer that ‘so-what’ question, think about… the relevance of what you might be designing out in the world. That can get a little bit lost, or it’s just not present in a curriculum perhaps. And so we can, I hope, help people that are coming from that direction, really amplify the work that they’re already doing in the way that they’re thinking and talking to a broader audience.
And then I hope that people who are just interested in great writing (laughs) would maybe pick up this book and just again, see the possibilities of if you were to approach a subject through this design lens, what can happen. There’s some really great examples in the book of that. And then if you are somebody who is already working as a writer, who writes a lot about design, this anthology contains a lot of tips and best practices from the best of the best. There’s a wonderful piece by Julie Lasky who is the editor of the design section at The New York Times. She writes about writing for the ear and how really all writing should be writing for the ear if you want people to read it. (Laughs)
Amy: Amen!
Molly: Yes, so she has a great piece, it’s really instructive. Adam Levy, who is on our faculty, has best practices around interviewing, which as you very well know, (laughs) it’s a skill and you can apply it in so many different ways, so many different contexts. But then there’s some more, I think, surprising ones. Like I mentioned Karrie Jacobs is somebody who is on the faculty of our program. She has a piece in the book that is a keynote address that she gave to one of our graduating classes, but it is about the art of noticing in particular, how she takes her first class. They go to Times Square and they sit on the red steps of the TKTS booth, at Times Square, and she just forces them to sit there and take it all in, you know, a kind of act of extreme, ‘focus,’ maybe you want to call it ‘meditation,’ on this swirl that’s around you, that is very representative of our lives today and the pace of what’s being flashed before us and just the amount of information that we’re confronted with. And how do you as a writer deal with that? And how do you just make time to pause and notice.
Amy: Well, thank you for all of those examples, and I do think in perusing the book, it is a primer on how to process the world around you and how to think critically about all of the content you consume.
Molly: Yeah.
Amy: In addition to all of the design choices that are being made, intentionally or unintentionally. It sort of helps you focus in on that in a way that makes the world richer and more pixelated and there’s so much more to notice that you didn’t even know was there, which is, I think, always a wonderful thing.
Molly: Yes.
Amy: Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and for sharing all of that information about the book, it was just a delight talking to you.
Molly: It was wonderful to speak with you Amy, and thanks for all the good questions and yeah, it was fun, I’m glad you were able to work me in, I really appreciate it.
Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: Complete our listener survey at the link in the description. Share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. For a transcript of this episode and more about Molly, including links and images of her work, head to our website. Cleverpodcast. com. While you're there, check out our resources page for books, info, and special offers from our guests, partners, and sponsors, and sign up for our free sub stack newsletter, which includes news announcements and a bonus Q and a from our guests. If you like Clever, we could really use your support. You can share Clever with your friends, leave us a five star rating or a kind review, support our sponsors, and definitely hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. You can find us at Clever Podcast, and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is hosted and produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Mark Zurowinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anoushka Stefan, and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround Podcast Network. Visit surroundpodcasts. com to discover more of the architecture and design industry's premier shows.
The Education of a Design Writer
Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.
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