With Intent – Details, episodes & analysis

Hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum explore the tale of Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York City Subway Map. Vignelli's design was celebrated for its modernist brilliance yet heavily critiqued for its practical shortcomings. Here, Thamer and Albert delve into the tension between geometric abstraction and geographic accuracy, examining how Vignelli’s map became both a milestone and a lesson in design history.

Take a deep dive into the complexities of designing for large-scale systems. This episode explores the importance of finding a delicate balance between aesthetic innovation and practical functionality, emphasizing the importance of user-centered design and iterative processes. Take away valuable lessons for engineers, designers, and systems thinkers on the profound impact that design and client decisions can have on user experience and social progress.

 

 

RESOURCES

Harry Beck’s London Underground Map

Understand the pioneering design that influenced transit maps worldwide.

Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 Subway Map

Explore the original design that sparked both acclaim and controversy.

Hertz and Associates 1978 Subway Map

Explore the 1978 successor to the Vignelli map and foundation of today’s NYC Subway Map

The Subway Map that Rattled New Yorkers, The New York Times

The New York Times’ take on the Vignelli map controversy.

Helvetica and The New York Subway System, by Paul Shaw

A detailed exploration of the history and evolution of signage in the New York City subway system. The book examines the complex interplay between design, politics, and public perception in shaping the visual identity of one of the world's most iconic public transportation systems.

The New York Subway Map Debate, Edited by Gary Hustwit

A book containing the full transcript of the New York Subway Map debate  from the newly discovered tape, along with new interviews with surviving participants John Tauranac, Peter Laundy, Arline Bronzaft, and more.

 

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

In this introductory trailer to With Intent Season 3, hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum introduce themselves as this year’s Latham Fellows at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. They share their excitement about co-hosting the podcast and reflect on their 15-year professional partnership, including their collaborative work on a broad range of design projects and their previous podcast, The Design Vault. Their longstanding relationship sets the stage for insightful discussions on design and its impact on society.

The hosts outline the themes and focus for the upcoming season, which will explore designs featured in ID’s list of 100 Great Designs of Modern Times, published with Fortune magazine in 2020. They will delve into topics centered around innovation, responsible design, social impact, and scalability. By using notable designs as a backdrop—such as Zipline’s drone-based logistics platform (2014, #69), Massimo Vignelli’s New York City Subway Map (1972, #28), the ClearRx prescription bottle redesign (#36, 2005), the OXO Good Grips Peeler (1990, #6), LifeStraw water filters (2005, #53), and the Raspberry Pi computer (2012, #54)—they foster deeper conversations about design principles and the unexpected insights embedded within these creations.

RESOURCES

ID: 100 Great Designs of Modern Times

Published in 2020 by Fortune magazine, this list was created after the Institute of Design conducted an extensive survey of various professionals in the design field to identify designs widely regarded as exceptional. This season of With Intent discusses six designs from the list.

Fortune: 

Article: The Greatest Designs of Modern Times

What does it take to become a design icon? There‘s more to it than good looks. These 100 products have made our lives simpler, better, and yes, more stylish.

Video: The Greatest Designs of Modern Times

An introduction to the list and the designs included in it say about how design is evolving in business.

The Design Vault Podcast

Thamer and Albert’s podcast series about the stories and lessons behind iconic products from the past.

 

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

Jon Veal is co-founder of alt_, an organization that focuses on the power of community. The alt_ market is the organization's flagship program. Their first market transformed an abandoned space into a communal free market, encouraging community members to give, take, and take care of one another. Jon talks about how serving his community and making art come together for him, the importance of faith in his work, and the planning he and his co-founder, Jordan Campbell, have done to help secure their organization's longevity. Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking. Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

Kenneth Bailey, co-founder of the Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI), and co-author of Ideas, Arrangements, Effects, talks about his approach to building a better possible world. Talking about specific projects like Public Kitchen, as well as the thinking and pragmatism shared in his book, Kenneth presents an approach to building that new world. As he sees it, one must go beyond the problems we see and experience every day to understand the systems, infrastructures, or "arrangements" that underpin them. Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking. Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

Michela Magas has had a nonlinear career path driven by a focus on bringing people together to make deliberate decisions that enable long-term creativity and innovation. Those decisions may reside in the realm of intellectual property, as in the Industry Commons, or music technology, as in the case of MTF (Music Tech Fest). Michela talks about how to foster innovation by bringing people from disparate fields together, why nonlinear career paths are the way forward, and the kind of skills people need for navigating our changing world. Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking. Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

Episode 5 of With Intent is available now. Ruth Reichstein is part of the European Commission’s Presidential Advisory Board on the New European Bauhaus, or NEB, which was developed to help the EU achieve the goals set forth in its Europe Green Deal. The NEB aims to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. We at IIT Institute of Design (The New Bauhaus) announced our partnership with the New European Bauhaus earlier this year. Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking. Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

An organizer in Chicago for more than a decade, Richard Wallace, founder and executive director of EAT (Equity and Transformation), is focused on supporting Black informal workers—people like George Floyd, who are boxed out of the formal economy. Richard explains the historic rivalry between Hispanic and Black informal workers, his confidence in democracy, the reasons we have an informal economy in the first place, and why the informal economy is tied to issues of equity and race. 

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

Last week we talked about technology as medicine. This week: food as medicine. Rita Nguyen, Assistant Health Officer at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and founder of the Food as Medicine Collaborative, explains why doctors should be able to prescribe food—and why the healthcare system should pay for it. Institute of Design at Illinois Tech Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking. Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

As Global Head of Employee Digital Experience at the Kraft Heinz Company, Tope Sadiku describes herself as a corporate doctor. To extend the metaphor: her patients are Kraft employees, and her medicine is technology. 

Tope considers the evolving employee experience—really, how an employee spends their everyday—and how technology can enhance it.

Tope is a 2021 Latham fellow at the Institute of Design.

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.

In the first episode of With Intent, Kristin Gecan talks to Morgan Ames, author of The Charisma Machine, about One Laptop Per Child—a hugely ambitious, or as Morgan defines it, charismatic—project with good intentions: to bring a laptop to every child in the developing world.

We talk about why that project failed, how it connects to utopianism, and what design might learn from it all. 

Morgan is a 2021 Latham fellow at the Institute of Design.

Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Discover programs and resources on design and systems thinking.

Subscribe to With Intent for more explorations into how design shapes our world, whether we call it design or not.