Special Guest Elizabeth Goodspeed on Design Education, Experimental Branding, Weird References, and Archiving Everything

[Music] You are listening to works but makes noises. Jacob, what's going on with my friend? Hey David, how are you? I'm doing okay, I'm doing okay. I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling a little bit frazzled, so my aura ring is telling me I've got eight and a half hours of sleep debt, which I don't. I don't fully understand. I don't quite understand how sleep debt works. Can you get out of debt once you're in? Can you pay it off? Yeah, is there like a clarner, like I can split it into like four payments or something? I don't know what happens if I don't pay down the sleep debt, so yeah, a little bit frazzled. It's just kind of on those weeks where I go to sleep fine but then I wake up in the night and then your mind starts cranking and then you can't go back to sleep. I've had like four of those in a row and I'm like, I normally just sleep like a log. So yeah, that's what's going on with me, pretty exciting stuff. Do you have a hack for getting back to sleep? I try and meditate, I try and just like, which I mean I try and follow my breath, focus my attention on my body, but when your mind's racing, that's hard to do, which is what makes a meditation, I guess, but yeah, so I just try and focus on my body and if I can hold a meditation practice for long enough, I will just fall asleep. It's kind of funny. You know, when you're just just before you're falling asleep and you start, your mind starts drifting into like dream territory, like all of your thoughts get really incoherent and you're just like, wait, what is that? You're like, oh, I was falling asleep and then you kind of wake back up and I've been doing that a lot and it's been a lot of like design related dream moments. You know where I'm like, dragging and dropping some text, I'm like, I've got to get off this fucking screen, man. Wow, that's a sign. I don't know if I've ever had a design dream. I don't normally. What about you, man? Anyway, what's going on with you? I have been prepping for a New York trip based around a workshop that I'm giving at persons in a couple of weeks, so I've been prepping for that trying to figure out what I want to do with this new nice, which has been kind of fun. Nice. So have you been doing it? Give them hell. After hours. Oh, yeah. Always. What's the workshop vibe? What's the cult? What's the topic? All right. So this is a bit of a debut here. I'm going to run this idea by you. But the theme is stuff you probably won't learn in design school. Dude, I love that. That's my will. That's my willhouse. Right there. I'm already in. So it's going to be, I don't know if it's going to be like a mix or like half and half or one of the other, but I want to do basically like some business stuff, like business for designers, like how much to charge, whatever, I don't know. And then I want to do half this sort of like on, I studied philosophy, not graphic design. So I want to do one that's kind of on like ethics, like design ethics. Cool. Very cool. I've got some ideas kind of dancing around for both of those. So Jacob school of life, exactly, exactly. Well, I was cool about like, if I was in like a master's program, what would I want to learn? And I was like, I'm probably going to learn it, you know, like in, in the normal like curriculum. It's like, what would I, what else would I want to learn? Totally. I tried to do a bit of that when I was teaching as well. Like, I feel like that was the stuff the students are most interested in. It's like, you know, we, we get it typography blah, blah, blah, but like, what's it like being a real designer in the real world being paid to do this stuff? Like, because they, that's the stuff they have no idea about. I mean, they have no idea about the rest of it yet. They just don't really know that either, but, you know, the, that's, that's, I remember being a student, that was the biggest unknown for me and anything I could find and the I could read on, you know, you know, you know, you know, book, how to be a graphic designer without losing your soul. I was obsessed with that book. I think I've read it a lot. Three times. I read it again more recently. It's not, no fence to the author. It's really not a good book, actually. It's, it's really not, it's really not very compelling and, but in a time and a place, it really, well, because it was like, you know, the internet was a different thing, totally. Yeah. Yeah. The internet was, it was very prevalent, but, but it was just, people were sharing way, way less. And I had not, I was so hungry for the commercial side of design. I was so hungry for the knowledge around the commercial side of design, because that's where the rubber hit the road, right? That's where things got real. You know, I was so excited for that to be my life. I just didn't know how it all worked in reality. Well, it's so hard to imagine like, okay, so I'm going to graduate and then I'm going to get a job. And then like, what happens? Like, what do I do? I just like, show up one day. Yeah. It's so hard for me to be like, what would that be like if I was certain, you know, so, and just all the, just the stuff, just all the in between stuff, you know, that no one really talks about. You just learn after doing it for years and I started writing a book. It was like, I think really cheesy, but it was a real clickbait title, it was like 50 things you need to know about design before it's too late or something like that. And it was broken up into five sections and each one of the sections was, it was all like, it was mostly real world stuff and each, each section had like, you know, a collection of small notes and articles I've written, but anyway, yeah, the in between stuff, I still don't think enough people talk about it, you know, now, I think, yeah, get that book on. There's a need for that, for sure. Just quick ones, like one pager, you know, I mean, you know, I do think about breaking life up like that sometimes, you know, like, if I wrote one article a week or one article a month, if I just, I just did that, you know, if I just started doing that once a month, you're like, oh, yeah, but that'll take forever to do it, but if you just start doing that stuff and commit to it, it compounds pretty fast, you know, well, you're already journaling, just, you know, tack on it, and then the design rating, I don't know, I don't think, I don't think my nightmare, theiva design dreams that appreciate me also writing about designs for this one is doing it. Yeah, you actually need to like, uh, full, full departure. Yeah. Um, I was, this is a bit of a topic change, but something you said made me remember I was listening to 99% invisible this week. Oh, I guess just because like getting advice about design, Michael Beirut as always, I feel like he's very wise, you know, every time, every time I listen to him, I'm like, oh, that's really smart. I've never thought about that way. It's not just like design. He's like, really good at like connecting these like stories, a great storyteller. And he was just on 99% invisible. And he retired. Like, I didn't know that. Did you know that? I didn't know that. Um, no, but I mean, it probably makes sense. How old is he now? Like he's been doing it. He's been pushing those pixels for a long time. Well, pushing pixels before they were pixels, you know. Yeah. Yeah. He's an OG. Yeah. He's an OG. Yeah, that's for sure. He's earned it. I don't know. He didn't really use the word retired. I think he like stepped back from pentagram. The amount of times he mentioned his sailing on his yacht, you just kind of, he was just kind of inferred it from that. I guess he's got other stuff to do now. The amount of times he mentions his model train set, you were like, I just think he's, I don't know if he's designed in any moment. That would be my retirement. Harvey for sure. Did when you're, when you're 65, like, what, what is the, what is the design book and look like? You think, I mean, I think about this. I'm going to ask my own question for you that you want to, I think about this. When I was a design intern at London agency, Coli Porter Bell, many moons ago, the task I was doing, we were using computers, but like, I vividly remember there being a cutting room, a literal cutting room. And one of my tasks was having to spray mount pictures of these cleaning bottle designs for a cleaning company, spray mount them to a phone call and then scalpel them all out for a presentation, spending like a day doing that with like all these sheet, the stack of these sheets of phone board, like, can you, if I was describing that to a, you know, that does young design. And now they'd be like, dude, what the fuck you were doing? What? I would love that task though. How relaxing does that sound? Just head bones. It's putting out, you know, getting a little fine motor skills gone. My iPod shuffle. It's on the air yet. My, what? Headphones in? Yeah, it's hard to say where it'll be like when we retire. Will there even be designers? Yeah, I think things are just changing. I mean, obviously things are changing so much. And it's interesting, you know, I think back maybe around 2011, 2012, era, like UX designer was the hot topic. It was like the hot role where, you know, everything gets really hyperbolic and people are like, you know, if you're a digital designer, if you're designed for digital, you have to understand UX, you have to understand, you know, you have to integrate that into what you do. If you're designing websites and you don't understand UX, you're going to be obsolete in five years. You know, there's that very hyperbolic tone around this very like hot thing. And I just think it's funny because like when was the last time you heard about a UX designer now? Like, I mean, in the at the level that we're operating at, which is not at some very, you know, information, dense, large corporate, you know, data center vibe. You know, people were talking about you need to like, UX is needed on like an everything you're designing like an e-commerce site. What about the, you know, UX is just as buzz when it's true. Yeah, it's crazy. And now I also feel like the forward of this being a design. Exactly. Yeah, it's just been subsumed into like the general skill set of a designer. Yeah, that's a good point. I'm sure that whatever we're talking about with specificity today will just become like part of the job description in the future, right? What's funny is that was always my take along. I'm like, well, I don't break up what I do into specialisms. I'm a designer. And I think about the overall experience. And I break that down into whatever stages I need to break it down into to make whatever I'm designing good, you know. And some projects require some more up from thinking about the structure, how the user is going to navigate through it. How the person is going to interact with it. Like that's, that's UX. I don't need to have, you know, a special holster of quick draw post it notes to be able to like, you know, do that type of design work. Yeah. I think it has always felt so like, you know, organic to me. Yeah, I don't know, I think it's just like this weird hype cycles of a specialization that seems to like an urban flow depending on to anywhere people think, I guess, where the future is going. Yes, everyone's just always trying to predict the future. And through doing that, these kind of these, you know, these specific roles get hyped up into something bigger than they actually are. Yeah. So I've just been thinking about that, I guess. There's so much interesting conversation around, you know, coding and design. And the age old question should design as code and all that stuff. And that whole back and forth, I think that an really interesting kind of role that I'm seeing more and more is design engineer. You know, I think that's a really, I think that's really interesting because it's kind of a really cool space to occupy. It's, you know, he almost almost like an evolved creative developer was what you would have called it five, 10 years ago, right? It's someone who has the technical chops to execute, to actually build something front end wise, but has the taste and the, and Ash to be able to instill some creative flair and really just dials in the details. So it's just, you know, very beautifully crafted experience in the design. I think that's really interesting. I think it's, I think it's different to the whole UX cycle. I think it's just, it's an interesting evolution of a few different roles and convergence of a few different roles, which I get and I can see a need for. I think there's still, I wonder how much design engineer will converge on to a regular designer as all these tools get better as, you know, as it's easier to build things as the front end will develop and requires maybe less code. I don't know, five, 10 years is, are, you know, if me and you are designing something digital, we're going to be expected to, you know, do that component of it deliver something which is crafted in that sense. It's just, it's interesting to think about as everything collapses and mixes and evolves. Yeah. Well, the barriers obviously going down, barrier to entry, right? It's getting easier to do that stuff because of the tools, but also if you really think about the process, like what we've been doing up till now is so inefficient in organic, like I'm going to draw a picture of the thing and then someone else is going to have to go recreate it again by typing in the letters that makes the thing that I've already drawn. You're like, that seems like an extra step, right? Like, but it's just really been like, yeah, like I see stuff. I mean, I mean, I, I, yeah, I think, I think this is where I think a lot of stuff I see online blurs in my mind because I think certain types of design require more thrashing in the, oh, for sure, it's an exploration like software design. I think it's a back and forth. I, I, without getting into the whole, the whole, you know, should designs codes, etc. You know, I think it's, I think it's an interesting back and forth. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think if I think there's a, there's a, there's a time and a place for that to be implemented for sure. I think, I think the, where we're at now, it's like, well, I can, I can iterate on a design 20 times in, in, in five, 10 minutes. The speed with which I can move one thing, tweak one thing, pull what delete one thing is, is just infinitely faster than any tool, any code tool would allow me to make those changes. It just is because there's no, there's no, there's not the same kind of logic and structure involved. I can just pull stuff apart and then, you know, put a little bit more structure and clean it up a little later, which is still a very quick task. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that, but that to me says more about like the part of the process that's probably going to get more hollowed out as tools get better is like, not the sketching part, which is like, you still need the visual exploration component. It seems more like the actual, the making that into code implementation, 100%, 100%, 100%, 100% right now, you know, it would take me a long time to do what I'm trying to do if I was trying to like actively, if I was trying to design in code. Yeah. I don't, no matter how, you know, I don't care what anyone says, it's like, no matter how good you are at coding that, there's, there's no way you can make, you'd be able to make changes as faster than I could, like, I can make him Figma kind of thing. But in the future, that might be very different. If I could iterate in code at the speed of Figma, amazing, sum me up, I'm down. I also, I'm just not sure that that's like the result that we actually want to be moving towards in the sense that it would probably really dumb down, like over a simplify, what would otherwise be like interesting or new ideas, you know, it's like because you kind of have to just like exactly within like patterns or like very like repeat system is a bit, it's really restrictive. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Yeah. Okay. Well, I said I didn't want to get into design as code, but we kind of, we dip to toe. We dip to toe. No, that's not, dude, I need, I can't, I've got to pay back that debt. I can't, I can't, I literally can't afford another bad night's sleep. The little toggle doesn't go any further on the aura ring bar. So I don't know, I don't know, I don't know where to go. This debt is coming to you this week. Speaking of which, what's new on the pod this week? What do we got in store? Love we got in store. Normally, normally just me and you talking shit, but this week we have our first ever guest, Elizabeth Goodspeed, who is a designer, incredible designer, who has the most amazing archive of design references, like you've never seen. She is the most prolific arena user you've maybe ever come across and a spacey design writer critic and and a spicy design writer critic and a professor at RISD. She's awesome, super talented, super fun. Welcome, Elizabeth Goodspeed. How's it going? Hi, glad to be here. We were, we were trying to think about who the first guest could be. We wanted someone that was passionate about design, but also a good talker and I feel like you're the perfect intersection of those two things. Thank you, I appreciate that. When I was on James Edmondson's Ono podcast, he described me as talking in paragraph form, which is very funny in me because I was like, doesn't everybody do that? Isn't that inherently what speech is, but I take that as a compliment. It's a great description. I feel like I'm sometimes guilty of that as well. When I'm like editing this podcast, I look at the waveforms of me and Jacob and like mine are just these solid blocks of like color. I'm like, damn, I need to shut up sometimes. Well, I'd highly recommend getting into teaching then because it's the best opportunity to grandstand. Oh, I did, actually, I did briefly. I taught, actually, well, Jacob taught a Parsons for like eight years and I did like one year teaching the exact same class as him, which is an experience. But you've didn't, you're Visty, right? Oh, you were. Yeah, I taught at Parsons for maybe two years total. Weirdly, when I had already left New York and I was doing the reverse commute back to Parsons to teach from Rhode Island. And then I got a job teaching at Visty, so I decided it was not worth commuting down anymore, but I always really liked Parsons. I wasn't teaching in communication design though. I was teaching intro graphic design to non majors in the SDSMS department, which was the School of Design Strategy and Management, which was actually very interesting because I'd have, you know, a violinist and a journalism student and pretty much open to any grad students that was, you know, intro, typography, explaining sort of basic graphic design concepts, but most of them were using it for really cool projects to supplement. You know, they were an architect working on layouts for their, you know, portfolio or they were a fashion designer wanted to do more textiles. So it's really cool, but I miss, I miss that, but I do like commuting 10 minutes to my class. Is that an elective? The one at Parsons, yeah, it was an elective. I think they still offer it. It was called visual literacy. That's super interesting. So, but you're still teaching at RISD now though. Yeah, I teach in the fall a class called Design Studio One, which is for sophomores who have just declared design. It goes alongside a typography track. So this is sort of everything that isn't typography. It's a really cool class partly because they're coming out of foundation year at RISD, which is very fine art-oriented. And we almost have to teach them like, how do you critique graphic design? We even do a little skit. That's like all the sort of like things not to do where we have everyone labeled. Like they don't say this looks like blank or, you know, like share a personal story and how design is really about to some extent communicating meaning because a real thing I run into a lot with the sophomores is someone will say, this is a legible. And they say, I made it a legible intentionally. It's like, okay, that's not graphic design. You were in the wrong department if you're trying to do that. So I teach that. And then in the spring, I teach various classes. But this year, I'm teaching a new elective that I have sort of invented and devised that's called experimental branding, which I'm sort of excited about. Wayne, what's tell me what's what's the experimental component of this? I would say I don't know if I'm going to keep the title because I kind of just knew to come up with a title and that's where I landed. But my goal very much is I think there's not. There is a wonderful branding class that already is taught, but it's a little more sort of modernist. Here's the logo, here's the lockup. Very much sort of approachable. Like what you might do if you were at a pentagram or an ogleby. So I kind of wanted to look at all the other ways people are doing branding. So, you know, taking cues from people like Talia Cotton, you know, maybe doing an assignment where they each get a data set or to work with to inform their branding. I want to do sort of very roughly constrained projects. So maybe one where they can't use any imagery, can't use any color or have one that's going to be sort of madlib style where they have to pull a audience and a product out of a hat. So like skin care for truckers or crypto for witches. You know, and a lot of them, the hope is that even though they sound kind of ridiculous, there is a real analog to the real branding world. Like I've done weed for golfers in the real world. So I think there's going to be like maybe five or six short projects like that. And then they go to choose one of those and do it to its conclusion with brand guidelines, applications, et cetera. That's amazing. I love the format. Father, you want to come in and guess, Chris? That's super fun. I remember when I was at university. I mean, we had one big project which is a brand project. And I was as a student, a weird student. I was really excited by branding and, you know, I feel it's like as a student, I don't know, it wasn't exactly the most punk thing to be like empty about like a brand, you know, corporate identity. But I was really excited about it. And I was just like, this is my time. Like, you know, I've read, you know, the Ogilvy books. I'm going to, like, and I totally, I totally flocked. Well, I think mainly, I think mainly because the wim it was too broad. I wasn't given enough like anything that resembled real world constraints. I think it was literally just something broad like a cupcake shop, which is lame in its own right? Sure. But that was it. And then he was just kind of do whatever. And I, you know, obviously in the real world, you have all these weird, nuanced kind of things you have to hold in your head simultaneously while you're crafting this design. But yeah, so I love the idea of these really, and these really bizarre combinations of audiences and profiles to think about. That's super cool. I did a workshop at Micah this past fall, where I was sort of asked to do, it's a two day workshop for their grad students. And they said, it couldn't really be print publications. It was a bunch of things it couldn't be because they did those and other workshops. So what I ended up having them do is they each had to choose a piece of what I would call folk packaging. So that's like, you know, the cafe boostelos of the world and sort of do a reverse engineered brand kit out of it. So identify the typefaces, the colors, all that. And then unbeknownst to them, they had to then trade that with another classmate and only could use those materials for it. And then to add an additional level of just annoyance on top of it, we had also simultaneously us like a research project the other day, Dana, what I call like a mood board telephone where they had to pull mood board imagery that related to the prior image. So they were doing this long train on the wall of those. And then they arbitrarily got assigned four of those that also had to be incorporated into the branding. So it was like, oh, you're now doing a, you know, a law zinge inspired by cafe boostello and you have to incorporate this page of a magazine of a woman eating soup. And it was great. It's like, incredible. You never know how it shows up, but they were all, I also think I like teaching in the same reason I like art direction, creative direction, where I get to come up with just preposterous ideas and not have to execute them myself. It's like, wouldn't that be cool? Bye. Good luck. And they always do you enjoy the process of coming up with the sample projects? Yeah, I mean, it's tricky because I think it's, you never know if it's going to work until you do it and you always realize the pain points once you do it. I'd say I feel the same way about, you know, in the last couple of years, I've been giving more talks and no matter how many times you practice a talk at home, it's you won't know if it works until you are in the room and nobody is laughing. And I think the same is true of these projects. But I like them. I think they're sort of good experiments. And it's, I'll jot down notes all the time when I'm working on a project of interesting constraints, interesting challenges. And it also helps that I've been teaching now for almost six years. So I think I have a little more of a sense of what people are, or, you know, mostly excited about or what are sort of the pain points that tend to exist with students and either how to push against those in order to, you know, encourage experimentation or where I can give them a little bit of an easier time. Like certain things ending up being templated for that, for that brand kit, for example, I gave them a template to use because it's like, that's not where I want them to be worried about spending time because they'll start to worry about, you know, what if I lay these out poorly and they don't want to get judged for it? So finding ways to kind of like open and close the experimentation, I think is helpful. Yeah. And you kind of build up like a library of projects that you can do, right? And I mean, I'm sure you have this too. There are projects that I stole from professors that I had years ago. I took a class with a professor Ben Shaken who is now the creative director at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. And he did this project where we had to go and find a book and then make a new book only using material from that first book. So that was sort of what I stole for this packaging design project. Cool. You know, just that idea of like constrained material and matter. I definitely appreciate anyone who teaches and puts their like syllabi online also is like an incredible resource. I'm like, blessed here. Yeah. I will see. I excerpts a lot of mine from other people's and have like footnotes at the bottom. I think since this is the first time I'm teaching this, I'm a little bit like shy about publishing it until it's done. Just kind of make sure it works before I tell other people to do it. But no, I enjoy it. I think, you know, living in Providence, I, you know, it's funny. All three of us are ex-New Yorkers in some capacity. ex-current depends on how you define it. I think in Providence it's a much smaller city and it's a much smaller design scene. And it's, I didn't feel as compelled to teach in New York because I could brush up against designers in plenty other places, including, you know, index space and other such wonderful locations. But I think here the like graphic design world and that RISD world are very closely overlapping circles of event diagrams. So having access to the students, having having a space where I can go and really be like in capital GD graphic design land, I think is a nice counterpoint to what I also like about not living in New York, which is going back to my house and having all these friends that aren't graphic designers in the city. So I think teaching is just kind of a nice like injection of energy, especially as we all get older and less relevant. I think it's probably good for our egos and creative energy to be around 20 year olds who are wearing clothes that I immediately hate. And then in four years later, I'm always like, oh, actually, that's kind of cool. So it's like, it forces me to reconsider my norms. Yeah, that's why I was going to ask, teaching just made me feel really old. Like, I'm also older than I think I generally generally look as well. So my students are like, well, you're not that old. I'm like, no, I'm literally more than double your age. Yeah. When I first started teaching, I think I was 26 and I used to always say to students, oh, I'm not that much older than you. In this year, at the beginning of my class, I started saying that and I was like, what's with you? Can't fucking say that. And I think, well, I don't know, again, I'm 32. It's funny recently when I, I obviously self-google every once in a while, it was like auto-correct. It was with good speed age. And I was like, that's weird. I feel like I talk about I'm not shy about my age. But um, 32 has proven to be funny in that it is old to young people and young to old people. Like, I think there's a certain like three kids 30s seems to be like, that is what it is. So, you know, like, one of the funny stories about out of touchness with students was I recently had to explain the existence and concept of blockbuster. And a funny part of it, like, so that's already like, oh, stab in the heart, but I showed them a picture of a blockbuster. And the student said, oh, looks just like Netflix, but real. I was like, no, Netflix is blockbuster, but digital. It's so trippy that I had a similar-ish experience of um, my class when I was talking to them about schymorphism and giving, you know, apple, apple, you know, apple, apple as an example that all notebook. Yeah, the leather, the trim, all these physical tactile cues. And um, one student kind of said, well, yeah, no, I mean, I'm nostalgic for this too. I'm like, what do you mean? I mean, you've never touched a notebook, you know, so I know what I'm nostalgic for when these icons and these apps came out the first time around with the first iPhone because my dad had the first iPhone. I'm like, oh, wow, that's that. Well, and I think I think it is really like, I've found the feeling of I'm old to be a poison that I am desperately trying to suck out of my wounds because I think it is like the first step towards a relevance and a certain type of like judginess that I think comes naturally with getting older. That is really hard to to work against, but you know, I just remember so much being whatever age under 24 and either older people saying, oh, I'm old in me being like, no, you're not. Just stop. Like the saying you're old and feeling you're old is what makes you old. And I, I think nothing has also insulated me more against that than being someone who's interested in trends and starting to be able to recognize how many things from my own childhood that felt an eight were also just the same churn as any other period. There was a, I think it was New York Times had a stat like a little diagram somewhere where they asked people like, what, what was the best era for media or culture? And basically it was everybody being 12. Whatever it was, when you were 12, that was the best thing. And you know, while I do love being a millennial because we are the only generation that has like not gotten just as like extremely worse as we've gotten older, I'd say like politically and socially and other things like that. Like there's a rumor that the Gen X is bad, I think, because they had more lead paint exposure. So we succeeded past that as millennials, but I do think like, as Cornie, it is like the generational warfare thing is a very new concept. I don't think that was, I think media and culture used to be way more cross-dimensional than it is now. And in that sense, I really like try to hold on to, I'm not trying to be 20, but I'm also not, not trying to be 20 in terms of engaging with the same things and the same problems through just different contexts. I agree. I mainly struggle with this in my own life in the widths of my pants. Like I started out going wider and then everything got really wide. And then I was just like, this feels to extreme. And the pendulum's going to swing back the other way. So I'm trying to sit in like a middle, I'm trying to sit in like a 501 zone. But it's not skinny, but it's not super wide, it's just, it's just like normal, just like normal. So I can survive a swing either way, you know? The pants, the pant thing is interesting because they used to be I think way more constrained to trends. And now no one really knows what width pants to wear. It really varies on a level that I don't think, it used to my mom told me a story about in the 70s wanting a pair of wide leg jeans or wanting stovepipes when everything was wide leg and driving like 45 minutes to an army navy store in Ohio to buy them because it was the only place she could find them for plumbers or something. There was a good, I don't know if I'd be listened to Avery truffleman's 90% sorry, she's not 90% she used to be on that, but articles of interest. But she love it. Yeah, she's great. Love her. She has an amazing newsletter as well. And she had this post that I think about all the time, which is about timeliness versus trendiness, basically, and how like A, what's wrong? There's no moral good to either of them. They are just different constructs of living in the world. And I think she talks about it in relation to architecture. First of, I think the, what's the building that everybody committed suicide off in New York. Do you know what I'm talking about? The swirly building yards. Yeah, the vessel. Sorry, left pivot, but she talked about that as being like very of its time and how that is like almost an index fossil of a certain approach to architecture. As compared to, you know, these like beautiful, polatial estates, you see in Italy, but how, you know, like there's nothing wrong with being of its time. And she relates to defashion in the sense that I think she compares Madonna to patty Smith. And how patty Smith is like one style and its culture moves around her. Like she is always wearing the same stuff. Sometimes it's in, sometimes it's out. And, but she's kind of static, whereas someone like Madonna, you don't argue any celebrity now who has kind of air as starting with Bowie all the way through to, you know, Taylor Swift. They're moving with the culture. And how those both are just sort of neither has more merit. They're just different ways of experiencing sort of the world. And I think that's, I think that a lot about design, honestly, where you're, I were having an interesting conversation with someone who was a big hand letterer in like 2012. And how at that time, you know, they were getting multinational campaigns for square space and, you know, doing huge, huge projects for, you know, a lot of money. And then hand lettering kind of fell off. And I was asking them like, did you feel the need to pivot? And based kind of said, frankly, no, because everyone else pivoted. And now if anyone needs hand lettering, there's only four of us still doing it. Well, you can hire. So there's some, there's some value to kind of holding that, holding that on and keeping that sort of going. In the same way that if she was no longer interested in hand lettering, there also would have been nothing wrong with doing something different. But I'm a big, if it ain't broke, you know, keep doing it. It's, it's interesting. I mean, I've witnessed a similar thing in my design practice where, you know, my design is very minimal. That style of very clean crisp kind of design goes in and out of fashion as, you know, technologies and different things, you know, when, when every, everyone's a little bit more uncertain and people are trying to launch brands that they need to feel like I have a lot of credibility, maybe let's do with money, maybe let's do with, you know, things where you really need something very concrete, then, you know, this hell vetica crisp trusted aesthetic like my inbox gets full, you know, and now we're in this kind of weird zone where everyone's building, you know, AI stuff and open AI happens to have a very, very minimal aesthetics that everyone wants to look like open AI. So again, my inbox is full for different, but overlapping kind of reasons. It's, yeah, and I just kind of, I don't try to move with it. I'm just like, Hey, this is, this is what I do. This is what resonates with me when I create things to make something that feels clean and true and honest and, and yeah, kind of whether the, whether the trends storms. Actually, I wanted to ask you because I feel like, and if it's still your bio, but the casual archivist, I feel like, I feel like I'm curious how that relates to, you know, the yearly trend reports because I feel like I've seen you post something about the nausea that they kind of induce in, you know, the December, January time when everyone's saying, okay, this is what's going to happen. This is what you're going to see the year ahead. Talk to me about what's going on inside good speeds head when that happens. Yeah, I mean, as context, I did also write an article called, I'm a hater. So like, I'm just, I'm, I'm a, I am a critic at heart and I don't think of that as a negative thing. Like, I love going to restaurants and I eat the food and I think, what's me my partner, we, we talk about one of our big things we do as a couple is like, analyzing and discussing, you know, like, what, what flavors are in this? What's working? What could be better? What could be different? You know, and I think that's how I feel about almost everything in the world. I like to take everything seriously and also very unseriously. So that's sort of where some of that casualness comes through. And on a very, very short level, I would say just a context for the casual archivist side is that, you know, I've been using that term for like 14 years now and it was just when I started getting into archives, but I was coming from a science and graphic design background. It never really took an art history class. I didn't feel comfortable calling myself an archivist. So it was just a way to kind of caveat. So no one could call me out on in atrocious. In the same way, I don't call myself a journalist. I'm like an op-ed writer because I don't do research. I just use sort of put my finger up and feel the breeze. But with the inout list, I think there's something about, I mean, this might come from an exhaustion with social media more than anything else. And I think the inout lists remind me of my Christmas wish list or, you know, gift guide fatigue where I think it's a lot of like posturing about taste and identity with no real directional benefit. You know, I think there's something to be said about creating, you know, inout list for yourself to guide your behavior. But posting a public inout list to me is just like social media fodder that has no benefit to anybody. And also especially, I rarely see ones that actually are interesting, frankly, like maybe if I had a point, but I'd be like being like, you know, in, being nice to me, out, like coffee, I'm trying to drink less coffee. And it just feels like they tell you more about the person than they do about the culture. I also think I find, I wrote something last year when the Pantone color came out about this idea of like trends as self fulfilling prophecies where trend reports are kind of, you know, you put a stake in the ground a lot of times and you keep it vague enough that you can claim a success where, you know, Pantone is the case where they say this is the color of the year and then they launch a collaboration with Joybird to buy the couch in that color. Sort of as, of course, you can say, now it's the color of the year, everyone buys the couch and now it's in all these rooms. Right. And you were right. And I think a lot of these inout lists, people are sort of very, either comically specific to the point where it becomes a joke or vague enough where the one that's been driving me crazy right now is everyone saying analog is in. It's like, what does that mean? What do you, what does it mean to say analog is in? Are you talking about analog processes, analog aesthetics? Are you posting things that you made by hand on Instagram? Is that analog? Or is that just another form of digital? So I think my frustration with all of these is as someone who actually takes trend cycles, sort of ser, very seriously as a way to really think about human nature and the arc of aesthetic movements. I find that so many of them are just surface level narcissists who've not, I end up just not really being interested in reading them. I don't mind. I send one to my best friend, but I don't feel the need to put them out for public consumption. I've always been really confused by them because I'm like, what am I supposed to take away from this? Like, is this stuff that I don't want to do or that I do want to do? You know? Like, the other day I saw someone who, like, and not to take away, I'm just kind of a natural contrary. And what they were like, thank you for including us in this trend report. And I'm like, oh, like, that's what I would have been like, oh, I was busted. You know? Oh, yeah. Well, and this is a thing I run into when I write sometimes trend pieces. So I don't write a ton of trend pieces for it's nice that I used to write more when I was working for ion design before they disappeared off the face of the earth, but it's nice that has actually a really wonderful whole research arm called insights who does a lot of trend based reporting and things like that. So it's sort of not very much in my purview with that job. And then I just run out of time to write them otherwise because I don't have anywhere else to really publish. But I'll write them occasionally. I wrote one about medieval aesthetics in like 2024. And it's funny because I do like writing them because I like being able to say that I spotted something. And now, you know, there was an article and I think like, women's were daily recently about medieval clothing. And I could be like, well, actually, like, push my glasses up on my nose. Here's my 2024 article about this. But I think a lot of the times what I think trends miss or in and out lists miss is for something to be out. It has to have been in. Most people's in out lists are just things I like, things I don't like. But when you do the trend reporting that goes back to that timeless trend thing where it's being on trend isn't a bad thing. You're not out. You're not sort of caught in the act if you're in an article about medieval aesthetics. When you use medieval aesthetics, I think you might be if you did it three years later. But even so, you know, I was working on a brand recently that was sort of a little bit inspired by some like churchy aesthetics. And because of the title and some other things. So we ended up introducing like a character mascots where they were always in pairs where one was an angel and one was a devil. And because we were then in that world, it made sense to sort of riff on a little bit of medievalism. And to me, that was a great example of, you know, tapping into a trend in some capacity, but also has to be applicable to the brand. And it has to be run through a filter that works with their particular goals as a business. And I think in that way, like I would be glad to be included in a trend report. As long as I felt that trend report was timely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. I was I was digging through your portfolio actually because I was like, Oh, I know Elizabeth. You know, like I hadn't actually gone to your website in a long time because I feel like to explain maybe any more anyways. Well, as someone who's who took Instagram off their phone, it is by like number one medium. Just that is I probably have not updated mine. And like reasonably well, like beyond like, Oh, God, I should really put this one project up. I'm working on a new like real right now because I like to play them sometimes at the beginning of my talk. And I realized I had like nine fully finished projects that I just have not put on my site. But, you know, the problem with working in physical products is unless you want to use mockups and I hate mockups. Whole other pet peeve of mine. You have to plan a photo shoot. You can't just like take nice pictures of the website or like screenshots or just send people to the website. It's like, Oh, I worked on this, you know, instant sourdough brand that comes in these bags. I have to like find someone to take pictures of those bags and then they can look nice. And I have to pay money for that. And I'm building a case study. So I just end up not doing it. And then the project served six years old. But anyway, speaking of porn at me while you, well, I was going to say or insult me. I'm not sure. Yeah. For what it's worth. For what it's worth. It felt really fresh. I hadn't seen any of the work. It's all right. And I wanted to ask you actually as someone who, let's say an archivist, what like I was thinking about the difference between art history and like a mood board and not just oldness or whatever. But you know, like you have these, I found an illustrator who I'd never seen on that board game you designed. And it wasn't like a recent cool illustrator. It was like old and obscure. Yeah. Was it the school I don't go to the illustrator? Richard Hefner. Incredible. And I dug like I went down this like deep rabbit holder like unbelievable illustrations and like the yellow submarine stuff. And I'm just, I don't know if there's a question buried in here. But like when is something like just thrown on to a mood board and when is it like a discovery? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I would say everybody mood boards and everyone has various discreet of obscurity in their mood boards. I've had times where, you know, the thing I'm struggling with right now is like that's that is the question I am struggling with. And I struggle with it increasingly more as I grapple with a quaternary identity as graphic designer, contemporary design writer, historical researcher slash writer and teacher. And there are like things that overlap between all of these and there are things that don't overlap. And I think I have things that I save because they're interesting and I want to learn more about them in report on them. Sometimes those become things that then populate a mood board that I'm working on. And then sometimes that branding project I'm doing makes me think about, you know, some research I want to do, you know, so that comes becomes a hybrid. And I think I can't speak for how other people the difference between, you know, a mood board and an archive. But I think I genuinely got into archives because I was genuinely into archives. I love going to flea markets. You know, if you look behind me, it's like I'd have so much stuff like sitting right behind me is a, uh, Marzipan version of like Kaboose A's. Of course, of course. Yeah. I also have one of those. Yeah. You know, or it's like I just like weird stuff. I wish I didn't like stuff so much because that's part of reason I left New York. It's like I just love having things and I need to live somewhere where I have more space. But so I think like it's not like I set out to find an obscure illustrator to reference for that board game. I simply have on my wall, again, you can't see, but I for maybe 10 years ago find this found this thing called shuffle book, which was this made by this illustrator where you could assemble a children's book made up of individual cards that have nouns and verbs. So it'll say and the rattlesnake on one card. And then the next card says barked or, you know, the tiger laid an egg. And I just thought that was such a way to create a book. I bought a bunch of them on eBay. They weren't expensive. I'm across published with the MoMA. I framed a few of them on my wall. Next to me, and when this project came around, and we were talking about that it's kind of a zany board game with different characters, you know, I just looked to the right and I was, oh, that would be really cool to hire someone who did this kind of thing that's minimal colorful. And it's already practically a board game. So I think it's like very second nature to me. I wish there was more methodicalness because when I don't have that idea, that's when I go into kind of the mood boardy world. But I think the benefit of being such a freakish collector is like, I'm afforded the ability to browse. I can just like pull a random book off my shelf and see what's in there. And then that will lead me somewhere else and, you know, somewhere else. I find that where maybe the difference between me and some other people maybe is I'm really interested in why people made the things they did at the times that they did. And so I find that, you know, going back to that angel devil thing I was talking about. The project I've been working on. That was rooted in Art Deco because we were talking a lot about, sort of, you know, medievalism and Art Deco being both periods of time that are coming out of, sort of like some form of strife, you know, or the 20s are coming right before this big, you know, economic crash. And the medieval period is also kind of this funny thing right before. It's sort of the dark ages, but the medieval period isn't actually as dark as people think. And just thinking about like, what does it even mean to have like good versus evil? What are the periods of time where you start thinking about that? And what are the formal shapes that you also see mirrored in those times because of the technology that's being used? I mean, there's so many ways to parse all this stuff out, but it's like the example, the easy example I always give is how the 1970s psychedelic posters are just art nouveau with neon, which is true. It's all the same forms, you know, in one period is about industrial shifts. People are grappling with the loss of small farms, the loss of small cities and going towards this mass industrialization. And then in the 70s, you have people grappling with war and, you know, big cultural shifts, but both are about sort of this like looking back to nature to find resonance, but in the case of 70s, throwing a bunch of drugs in there. All this is to say, I could available about specific things for a while, but I do think, I'm always very interested in like, yes, I like the aesthetics, but if I can't tell the right narrative with those aesthetics, and if they don't have like a true story behind them that I can really back up for why that particular form or that particular, you know, style is right for the feelings and the story I'm trying to get across, I don't want to use it, which can sometimes be problematic. I really admire people who can just grab that stuff and use it as form, but I'm not a form maker in my heart. Like I am a thinker and a ruminator who happens to express myself through form. Do you have like one really weird ass reference way of like, I've been holding this one for 10 years waiting for the right one. You think one? Like I have 500 of them, I mean, I go through waves like, as I said, I just go to a lot of vintage, you know, stores and use bookstores and usually how it happens is I'll find one thing. I got obsessed with that one thing and start buying a lot more of it. But one recently that I did a newsletter issue about diner place mat menus and I ended up with over 150 of them. And then also there's this guy. I have like a sort of a femur of penpal. So he sent me a bunch in the mail, which is great. You know, well, weird things like this. It's a mad. That's a great seafood and I don't know, fishermen, but you know, and those are things like it's funny. I categorize also things where I'm going to steal literal pieces of design from it. Like I like this typeface combination. This is like a little drawing of a heart that I think is cute. That could show up in a brand pattern. And then things that are more like, oh, I love the idea of using a combination of borders and photography. Yeah. So I think there's like different levels of theft or borrowing or homage that you can sort of do. But yeah, usually it's just one thread that I pull on until, you know, like the toy story, like dropping the toy, like I'm bored until the next thing comes around. But I'm always finding like different little weird rabbit holes to go down. But I just do it on print. That's all. I just I really like doing it in paper. And I think that is the main differentiator that I have. And maybe that keeps it from being stuff that exists in sort of the Pinterest site, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Do you for last time we talked, you're like, yeah, digital. I'm just not doing anything. I'm not doing anything in the world of digital. Is that still the case? I do not know how I do not know. People keep saying, oh, you could do with vibe coding. I'm like, I don't even know enough code to vibe code. Like, what am I asking this thing to do? Like, I mean, I I don't know if I have really made a web. Whenever I would say my version of making a website is like, in a funny way, now that web has become less constrained, both because of AI tools, but also because of just the way the web works. Yeah. I find that I can make websites more easily than I could five years ago, because I just approach them like a print designer. And I yes, don't you know, me, I design them and like, illustrator and hand them off to someone and they make it work. But also I find that I work with a lot of brands who don't have heavy econ presence. Right. So it does a really matter as much. Yeah. I just don't. Some of it, I think if I got into it, I might enjoy it, but I'm so far beyond the skill set. And I already am multi-hyphenated across so many different things that I feel like the effort it would take for me to get good at it, to get over that taste gap to get the skill set, isn't necessarily worth the time investment compared to me just continuing to do what I do, which is higher my talented friends to do it. Right. But I'm sure I'd make a lot more money if I knew how to make websites. I'm constantly doing these brands and having to be like, okay, well, here you go. Enjoy. Right. Paying someone else three times, what you paid me to do this next part of it. Yeah, I don't know. I really should. Interesting. Learn. It's funny, because in my mind, you're you're like an incredibly online person. Yeah, I love being on as a person. Like it's just such an interesting contrast that you also just like, but I don't want to, you know, the thing I do, I don't want to, I don't want anything to do with it. But it makes sense. It makes sense. It's just interesting. I think I just, it's many things, but I am a little bit of a, maybe just from being a print for so long, but I'm a little bit of a perfectionist about like, I really like things to align perfectly. And I really like control over like, kind of like, I will, because I'm a writer, I change copy all the time and anything I'm giving, given just to like, typeset it better. And the things that I see when I work on web drive me crazy, where it's like, okay, this looks awful on this size. This, you know, this thing is quirky in this way. And I can't control it. And I think also maybe just on a more open way, because I love print so much, I love feeling like I'm contributing back into this world that I love, that like someday someone could find a book I designed, you know, in a store, a piece of ephemera. And I like tactility. And you know, all those things just kind of help. There isn't enough feedback in the web yet for me to enjoy it. And the way I enjoy being online is not like, I don't enjoy shopping on ecommerce sites. I enjoy going on Twitter to shit talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. That makes sense. I wanted to portfolio is super fun because you're not working on digital services, because I feel like they've all just like, they've been like optimized, they've optimized all the color out. They've all, you know, like, I mean, that's a generalization. But I feel like there's a lot of cool stuff that you get to do simply because it's not for that purpose. Well, and I think what's been interesting again, as I've done more of this writing and other stuff is like, I have kind of realized that the big red circle that wraps around all my work is just this, you know, graphic design history. And I think I didn't expect my writing to lead to getting more graphic design work. But I think it has proven that the kind of people who appreciate my perspective and depth of knowledge also end up hiring me for those same things because they know that I'm going to do the same kind of research for their work. And they know my expertise on these other things will sort of also play out in the way that I approach making. But it is kind of this funny. Sometimes I feel a little Hannah Montana about it because there definitely are times where I'm hired to write something. And then I tell the publication I'm working for like, Oh, do you need illustrations? I can do the illustrations for this. Like I just did that for architects newspaper. And then other times I work with clients and I write some copy. And I'm like, this copy is really good. And I'm like, yeah, I'm a professional writer. Um, so how did the writing thing come about? I was curious to ask, like, is that the initial, the first piece I ever wrote was for Ion design. And it was about, uh, you get into magazine inspired typography. And in a story that will surprise absolutely nobody. Um, it was because I had a long tweet thread about that typography. Uh, and someone saw the tweet thread who worked at Ion design, Malle Morle, who I think is now at Hinamo. And she was like, this would be a good article. Do you want to write an article? And I said, sure, even though I had zero experience writing. Um, and I guess I liked it. So I wrote a few more for them. And then as with all things, same with design, you know, like one of them left to go to another company and she hired me for that. Um, the space that job was funny. I, it was sent to me by like a colleague. They were actually looking for a full-time New York based editor with 10 years of experience. And I had been writing for about a year and a half. I had never done editing. Did not live in New York. Could not do full-time. Um, but I applied anyway because this is the kind of person I am. And I always tell people it's like, it doesn't matter. Just, if you're right, you're right. Um, but I wrote them. And I, and a lot of the stuff that they were asking for, I felt I met in terms of, you know, understanding of the industry, comfort being on stage, other things. Um, and miraculously, they didn't apply to me. So that was sort of what kicked it into high gear. Cause I think previously I'd been writing more, you know, if someone commissioned me or reached out to about a story, but I wasn't, I didn't love pitching articles. I just didn't have time. And I wasn't always sure what people were interested in. So the role at its nice side is great because I'm editor at large, which sort of means I don't really have anyone telling me what to do. I kind of just get to say, like, here's what I'm thinking about writing on this month. And they kind of just let me do it. Um, I don't really wondered what that title meant. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's, yeah, at large means just not have not reporting just to the only the highest superior, basically. Um, I know it makes me sound like I'm an escape convict. But, um, I do, yeah, I like that. It's nice. I mean, I do think every time I finish an article there, I have this moment of panic or it's like, I don't have anything else to say. And I have to think of something that I have a strong opinion about in the next month. And then I come up with something, but it is a little bit of a, sometimes I do wonder like, oh my god, not if ideas is, um, was design criticism. If we call that whole sphere, that is that something that you had, like, identified before doing it that you were like, this narrow saying, this is viable? I studied cognitive science with a specialty in visual perception and undergrad. Um, so I was more on the stem side of things mostly. Um, but I, I've always been a reader. Uh, I really like, I read a lot specifically also nonfiction, which I think is closer to what I'm right. I mean, I love, I love, you know, fantasy sci-fi other stuff too, but I would never dare try to write it. Um, but I think, I don't know, as I said, I think I just have strong opinions and it was sort of, I don't like writing. I kind of hate writing it. And I've been told by other writers, like, oh, that means you're a writer. But, um, I think it's more, I've equated, I've equated this in the past, but I think writing reminds me of running as a form of exercise where it is the fastest way to get to the point. Like, if you have an idea, it's like, you could do a graphic design project about it, but it would take a lot longer than just writing it. Um, same with like, you can go do, you know, whatever Pilates or Zumba or anything, but like just running five miles will be sort of like, you don't need any material. You don't need any special equipment. You just do it. And, and both are miserable. Yeah, but miserable for the same reason, but they're efficient. And I think that efficiency was something I enjoyed coming out of, um, design, which felt like getting the point across was through way more, um, like oblique means, sort of like ballet versus theater. You know, it's like, there's the sort of literalism to it that I appreciated. Um, and it often helps me figure out my own thoughts as well, because I usually go into an article and I have a vague idea of what I want to write about. And then by the end, it's sort of turned into something completely different. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Okay, one, one last question. How many blocks you got on that arena? Okay. Oh, I, another auto correct for my name I found out was Elizabeth Goodspeed arena. Um, though I will say they did reject me from the arena annual. So clearly, I have not made it into their good graces yet. Wow. Oh, okay, I still love you guys. Um, but I, I actually did the math a while ago. So I've been technically on arena since 2016, um, because I had a very cool friend, Lucas Winkler, friends who showed me it way back then. Um, but I didn't really start getting active, I think until maybe 2022, 2023. Um, but I did look recently and I realized that I had averaged out basically like 30 blocks a day in the, in like one of the years where I had been using it and I was truly troubled by that to the point where I was like, no, you have to go cold turkey. But I just do it. I do it in like such an intuitive way at this point where I'm not thinking about it. It's just like I will save stuff like quickly off of Instagram or I'll dump a bunch of things in there. But I also have a lot of secret boards. That's the scary thing. You don't need to go how many blocks I actually have because there's all these other ones that are like my half big ideas for my column where like I was just looking at it today because I was supposed to write a column Do Monday, which I have not started. Um, we don't even know what I'm writing about, but I had one that was like guideline, brand guidelines as fetish object and I was like, that's a good one. There's a lot of the blocks are like to be fair. A lot of those 30, 30 a day might be like two dumb words. Right. Right. It's still, it still feels like an impressive clip. You know, I think I should like charge for my. I don't know. I want to read that article. Yeah. I mean, I have this like free newsletter and I have this free arena. And I'm always like, maybe I should pay while these things, but I simply don't have the energy. Yeah. That's all of it. It's a cool stuff. You collect the photograph it and put it also into your arena. You can't see, but right. Just off screen. There's a, um, my pride and joy is my 12 by 18 inch scanner, which I bought. I had a feeling that was so that is definitely very widely used. Um, I find that I don't, in a perfect world, I would love to find some like magical millionaire who has a grant where I can just spend a year scanning all of my books because otherwise it'll never happen. I mostly scan them as I'm like, quote, using or referencing them for a project and then those do go into a repository separate from my arena. I also have a three terabyte Google Drive where I sort all of my scans just because that's I like having them at full res and you can't upload full res stuff to arena. So if it's like a scan of a texture I want to use or a border, like I need to save it somewhere else. Um, I used to have a, I used to have like a really crazy tumbler. Also, I think I'm just, it's going to be my lot in life to like keep rolling these things over in ten different ways. Um, forever. Amazing. Amazing. All right. Well, thank you so much. Elizabeth, it's been, it's been so fun chatting and happy to be here. And, uh, yeah, we're excited to have you as our first, first ever guest. I do indeed make noises. You do make noises, great noises. And you work. So it's, it's a perfect fit. Is that, you can you do a version of the, um, work hard and be nice to people, but with work with makes noises? I like that. I like that. Yeah. It's good. It's good. Oh, thank you. Thanks Elizabeth. See you. Great to see you. You have been listening to works, but makes noises. Music by the Mondo boys and artwork by Pablo Delca.