Archive - Scratching the Surface

September 2025: Karel Martens, Queer Typography, why AI isn’t design’s biggest problem

New episodes return this month!

20 hrs ago

August 2025

Nat Pyper’s Queer Year of Love Letters

A conversation about using typefaces to connect to the past and how all writing is collaborative.

Aug 14

August 2025: Cranbrook Month! Plus, New York's Earth Room and Design Collections

Last month, we shared two interviews with former Cranbrook designers-in-residences.

Aug 4

July 2025

Scott Klinker’s Life After Cranbrook

After twenty-four years, the director of Cranbrook's Industrial Design program steps down. We caught up with him to hear about what's next.

Jul 17

July 2025: Summer Break, Favorite Episodes, Designed Forests

plus, remembering Michael Bierut’s Yale School of Architecture posters.

Jul 7

June 2025

June 2025: Junction Making, Camp Life, and a new exhibition on mid-century modernism

Plus new books in the studio about speculative design, graphic design education, Mexican architecture, and more!

Jun 2

May 2025

Eventually Everything Connects: Andrew Satake Blauvelt on mid-century modernism and his ongoing critical project

A new exhibition at the Cranbrook Art Museum expands our definitions of mid-century modern design.

May 27

Hans Ulrich Obrist is just trying to make connections

The famed curator closes our Spring season with a wide-ranging conversation about curation, conversation, and why the art world is still his home base.

May 14

May 2025: Virtual Architecture, Graffiti in the City, a fashion designer's home garden

Plus, imagining a Scratching the Surface Eras tour!

May 5

April 2025

Sarah Ichioka on moving from sustainability towards regeneration

Her book, Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, explores the intersection of systems change and the…

Apr 30

Matt Owens wants to bridge the gap between design education and practice

His new book, A Visible Distance, is part memoir, part handbook for working in design today.

Apr 16

April 2025: Design Fiction, Against Platforms, an Avant-Garde catalog for Standard Cables

Plus an experimental residential prototype and why we need to imagine new futures.

Apr 7

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