Graphic Support Group Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

A few months back Drew invited John Provencher to his Brooklyn home and we had a deep dish conversation on the many trappings of design work. John very candidly shared his many experiences working as a designer and how he found a “loop hole” from his former client-driven career.

Nowadays, Provencher’s work revolves around the generative art he creates using scripts and code-based tools. At a time when technologies like NFTs, Web3, blockchain and AI are quickly shifting the landscape of creative work, John has been able to find harmony with technology. He even has taken a reverse trajectory and mined older machines like an old iMac and other archaic screen-based devices.

Ironically, while producing this episode we had some heated battles with our own podcast technologies. We’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that the current state of these AI tools—tools which many designers fear threaten their creative labor—simply aren’t all that smart yet. Graphic Support Group is about the human dimension of creative labor and, as we all know, humans aren’t perfect. So, please pardon some of the audio quality hiccups you may pick up throughout the episode.

Fortunately, with patience and some luck with backed up files, we are finally able to share this lively conversation. At times we run “off-script,” but we had a great time speaking with John, talking about the epic Pink Floyd album “The Wall,” sharing how bad I am at video games, and getting behing the tomfoolery of graphic design.

As always, thank you for the support and stay tuned for exciting updates in the next few months.

Please subscribe, rate and share if you’ve enjoyed our sessions.- James

Hey hey! Hope everybody is having a truly relaxing, mindful summer with enough sunscreen and design totes filled with image-heavy, text-light books to go around. We’re back with another episode of Graphic Support Group, believe it or not.

We have a very special episode for you, the first in a series we’d like to call “Behind the Screen” (thanks to Drew’s partner Deniz Önder for the great nomenclature). This series focuses on the behind-the-scene heroes of the design industry: the printers, technicians, administrators, and studio managers who keep the wheels of this chaos screwed on. Without them, we’d be pretty helpless, so we’d like to dig into what keeps these instrumental figures motivated and inspired, and the pitfalls they undoubtedly face from time to time.

Our inaugural Behind-the-Screen-er is Hasan Askari. Hasan has been a key figure at The Rhode Island School of Design since the late 90’s when he co-founded Concept-Link, a print and design shop that slowly but surely became a go-to resource for design, photo, and architecture students, helpless to find the proper printing capabilities on RISD’s Campus. Over the years Concept-Link offered their services to RISD’s students and faculty to the point of giving students access to the print shop after hours, answering emergency 3 am phone calls from feverish degree project candidates in the 11th hour of production, and even eventually moving into RISD’s official facilities to become the one-stop-shop for students to talk through print techniques and revise projects to make them actually printable, while Hasan dished out philosophy and literature references and pearls of wisdom to bloodshot-tearful eyes of the RISD woebegone.

Besides being a full time print hero and entrepreneur, he has also enjoyed a journalistic career and contributed in critical studies and creative nonfiction. He has also been working on an anthology of English translations of contemporary Urdu poetry.

James and Drew were delighted to talk with Hasan, after years away from Concept Link with memories rushing back in of our days as crying students. We hope you enjoy!

We are so thrilled and honored to have sat down with Chloe Scheffe to discuss her impressive and inventive design career. We chat with her about the highs and lows, and inner struggles developing her sense of self and self-worth, from Community College to RISD to Metahaven to Pentagram to NY Times Magazine to HERE, and now, to a budding individual design practice. Chloe digs deep into the complex reality of being on the inside of a string of highly-coveted design positions, and the trials and tribulations of centering herself along the way. We can’t thank Chloe enough for her time, honesty, and generosity. It was a real treat.

PSA: Please don’t forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast. All the support we receive is very dear to us. We still have a few t-shirts available for purchase, but supplies are running low! Thanks for listening!

We sat down with Phillip Kim, the LA-based Korean designer who's confident, effortless typography and form-making defies rules for both small and large clients alike. We talked to him about his recent struggles with anxiety and stress, and how he's struck a balance with his life through a recent move to LA. Kim actively engages clients and takes bold risks on all of his projects, so we were pleased to learn the methodologies behind his work, and how he strives to bring clients along for a wild but collaborative creative ride.

It’s finally here! Long in the works, here is our episode with the one and only Eric Hu. We talked to the designer extraordinaire about his dynamic and illustrious career, designing while neurodivergent, the industry’s obsession with age, his own forms of generational trauma, the early 2010s Design Twitter wars, adopting an ethos of excellence, and working like…a lion! It was an incredible conversation and we can’t thank Eric enough for spending his time with us. We hope you enjoy, too. A great way to recontextualize modes of working while we take in the summer breeze.

Now residing and working in New York City, Amy Fortunato grew up and spent most of her life in Southern California, after she was adopted from Korea as a young child. Amy sat down with us to patiently recount her personal story, dissect her relationship to her identity, talk about her career working with Lorraine Wild’s Green Dragon Studio, and to discuss her evolving relationship with Korea—where she eventually went on to pursue masters studies in Design. We shared a lovely, intimate conversation about how it all informs her design practice, teaching career, and approach to life. Perpetually humble and insightful, Fortunato’s calm strength emerges as a unique force of nature. Please enjoy this special episode and thank you, Amy for your time and generosity.

Stephanie Specht runs her own unique design practice, which embraces bold colors, elegant typographic hodgepodges, and formal intuition. We talk with the delightfully adventurous Belgian designer about mindfulness, health scares, the great outdoors, and the importance of work-life balance. In the past, she has struggled with stress management through physical manifestations of her relationship to her mental well-being. Stephanie opens up about the effects of a life-halting health-scare and how she successfully re-framed her approach to work and let her experience of the natural world influence her life in unimaginable ways. Please enjoy responsibly. And, quite literally, take a hike!

And do not forget to purchase your GSG T SHIRTS, just in time for summer time

We chat with Montreal based Designer and Activist about his forthcoming book of essays, Design Against Design (out soon through Onomatopee), ideas of trust in design practice, and how his traumas inform his design work and his activism. Kevin’s generosity and positive spirit lead us through a warm and open conversation about what it means to create work for both profit and protest, the responsibilities of the avant-garde, Kanye, and illegibility as a tool. Trigger Warning: Childhood Sexual Abuse discussed.

[Please excuse slight buzzing throughout, as we had some technical difficulties during the recording.]

And Don’t forget to grab your GSG T Shirt!

Welcome back for a new season of GSG! We are beyond thrilled to kick off a new season by sharing our chat with the one and only Eike König of Berlin’s HORT studio. A true inspiration, Eike gave us a lot to think about over the course of our abundant conversation. He shared so much of himself, talking about his community, his own battles with depression, his background in competitive gymnastics and how it impacted his ideas of discipline, and how he has attempted to challenge the rules and ideas of graphic design from his studio’s early beginnings, all with a cast of ever-revolving collaborators. Unlike our other episodes, we offer this one up nearly unedited (minus some technical difficulties). Trust us, it’s. worth the listen. Thanks again for listening and thank you Eike!

A special episode long in the making, we finally got a chance to sit down with our dear friend Elizabeth Leeper, the calming voice behind our meditations and hotline. Liz guides James and Drew through a joint Support Session, giving us a unique opportunity to reflect on our relationship and our progress in making this project. We’ve learned a lot along the way and we want to thank everyone who’s been a part of the journey, especially our lovely guests and listeners. This marks the end of Season 2. Stay tuned because we have a lot in store for Season 3! Please don’t hesitate to send us a note, call the hotline, and give us some feedback if you have any thoughts.