Jessie McGuire: National Design Award-winning studio leader on design as a civic tool

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1. 

   11 Jun 2026 · 39 min

   Bonus Episode: Dorrian Porter returns with the Vestaboard Note

   There’s something magical about the Vestaboard: it’s a physical, split-flap display connected to the internet that displays missives and useful information with a charm that we love. The Vestaboard in our kitchen greets our family with the family schedule for the day, riddles, updates from our favorite sports teams, and the best/worst dad jokes. Everyone who visits our house is amazed by it. Vestaboard is the vision of Dorrian Porter, and has its origin story in a Parisian train station. A few years ago, we had Dorrian Porter on the show to tell us about Vestaboard, and since then, we’ve…

2. 

   S12 · E180 · 10 Jun 2026 · 38 min

   Tina Roth Eisenberg: Creative Mornings founder on building communities that run on trust

   When Tina Roth Eisenberg moved to New York in 1999 as a new designer, she kept asking herself the same question: where are my people? Eighteen years ago, she answered it by starting Creative Mornings—a free breakfast lecture series that has since grown into what she describes as the world’s largest face-to-face creative community: 252 cities, 70 countries, and more than a thousand volunteers gathering with around 25,000 people every month. Or, as she puts it, “church for creativity.” Visit our Susbtack for bonus content and more:…

3. 

   S12 · E179 · 3 Jun 2026 · 26 min

   Paul Ford: Writer, developer & "fun Cassandra" on why everything is changing (but not how you think)

   Paul Ford likes to call himself a “fun Cassandra” — someone who, like the priestess in Greek mythology, sees trouble coming, but unlike her tries to make the warning as entertaining as possible. He’s the writer, developer, and co-founder of the tech agency Aboard who saw Claude Code drop last November and immediately understood it was going to change everything — while finding, to his surprise, that most people around him simply weren’t seeing it that way. This is a preview of a premium episode. Find the full interview on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/paul-ford That same…

4. 

   S12 · E175 · 20 May 2026 · 33 min

   Colin Fisher: The lone genius is a myth

   This is a preview of a premium episode. To listen to the full thing, visit our Susbtack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/colin-fisher In jazz, there’s a concept called minimal structures — a rhythmic framework, a harmonic pattern, an implied order of solos. Just enough to hold the band together, but plenty of space for autonomous creativity. It’s a useful lens for thinking about how any team works, and it comes directly from today’s guest. Colin Fisher was a professional jazz trumpet player before he became one of the leading researchers on group dynamics. He’s now an Associate Professor…

5. 

   S12 · E176 · 14 May 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   Nir Eyal: Beyond Belief and how to change your mind to change your life

   Visit our Substack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/nir-eyal-returns If you want to understand how much your beliefs shape your reality, try this quick exercise. Google the “checkerboard illusion” below and you can witness first-hand that even when you know two squares are the same shade of gray, your brain still refuses to show you the truth. If it can’t get a simple shade right, imagine what it’s doing with everything else. In his book Hooked, Nir Eyal helped people build habit-forming products for good. Then he wrote Indistractable to help people break free…

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   S12 · E175 · 6 May 2026 · 27 min

   Mason Currey: Mason Currey: Author of Daily Rituals on Making Art and Making a Living

   This is a preview of a premium episode. To the listen to the full thing, head over to our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mason-currey At several points in his life, Eli imagined what it would take to become a full-time artist — a photographer or illustrator free from client work. What he didn’t realize was that he already had an example of a different path right in front of him: his father, a practicing physician whose published poetry earned recognition from luminaries like John Ashbery. Mason Currey’s most recent book explores these alternate paths. He’s the author of Daily…

7. 

   S12 · E194 · 7 Oct 2026 · 40 min

   Randy Hunt: Notion and Etsy design leader on why the best design teams stay small

   In graduate school, Randy Hunt poured his heart and soul into a poster for Milton Glaser’s class, a picture built entirely from hand lettering that read as an image from across the room and as words up close. Glaser glanced at it, said, “Well, that’s not very good,” and moved on to the next student. Get bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/randy-hunt Randy tells that story fondly. What stayed with him wasn’t the sting but the standard: keep the floor high, and the ceiling keeps rising. He carried that idea from Glaser’s studio, where he apprenticed,…

8. 

   S12 · E193 · 5 Oct 2026 · 56 min

   Matt Owens: Athletics co-founder on keeping your creative fire lit

   When Aarron was fresh out of grad school, working at an agency outside Philadelphia, he and his coworkers used to crowd around a monitor to study volumeone.com. Most websites back then had a picture, maybe an image map. Matt Owens’s site had 3D, animation, and experimental graphic design, and none of us could figure out how he made it. Find bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/matt-owens-athletics-co-founder-on Matt launched Volumeone.com in 1997, and it now sits in SFMOMA’s permanent collection. Before that, he was a skater and punk kid from Texas who…

9. 

   S12 · E192 · 23 Sep 2026 · 28 min

   Blaine Billingsley: OpenAI designer on the collaboration problem AI hasn't solved yet

   Blaine Billingsley is a staff designer at OpenAI, and his path there was anything but a straight line. He studied music composition and comparative religion, played guitar in Texas for a living (he remembers checking his bank account, seeing seven dollars, and feeling pumped), then drove to San Francisco and took a data entry job at a startup. This is a preview of a premium episode. To listen to the whole thing, join our premium membership on Susbtack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/blaine-billingsley The engineers taught him to script his way through the work in a couple of hours, and he…

10. 

    17 Sep 2026 · 44 min

    Mack Paul: Co-author of Miracle Road on designing places where innovation happens

    In the mid-1950s, North Carolina was one of the poorest states in the country. Its economy ran on tobacco, furniture, and textiles — all three in decline — and its universities were turning out talent that promptly left for somewhere with better jobs. Find bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mack-paul-co-author-of-miracle-road Today the stretch of pine woods between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill is the largest research park in the United States. The barcode came out of it. So did AZT, ultrasound, and AstroTurf. Our guest Mack Paul spent years working…

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