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Going back in time a little, who came up with the title Design Matters? There’s absolutely no question that Thomas Kail, the director of Hamilton, is also a visionary and a culture maker, so it was more about what’s the lead gene here? Everybody encompasses all of them, but I did feel like you could pick a lead gene and it would stick. I felt that there needed to be a way to organize them that also gave you permission to stop reading, or start in a different place.
It must’ve been so difficult to categorize all of these icons, many of whom fall in all five categories at once.Ĭonfession: Roxane helped me with that. The book is split into five chapters: Legends, Truth Tellers, Culture Makers, Trendsetters, and Visionaries. And third was: Can I get really soulful photography of this person? Then, some conversations were so in-depth and didn’t hold up to editing, so I couldn’t include them. I really wanted it to be removed from a specific body of work so that anybody could relate to it at any moment in time. First and foremost, their interviews had to be timeless. How candid are they with their struggles, or their obstacles, or their challenges? I’m interested in creative people who like to make things from nothing, whether it be a piece of music, or poetry, or performance, or design-anybody who is seeking to make something original.Īfter so many interviews, how did you narrow it down to the 55 featured in the book? Primarily their body of work, the way they think about or talk about the journey to make that work. What is it in other people that you find interesting and worthy of an episode? It’s still very much a show that follows my curiosity about my guests. At the time, it was a novel thing-an interview show about design-so most designers I asked were very agreeable about being in the show. I interviewed Milton, but Milton was my teacher. We did a do-over.Īfter starting with friends, how did you choose who sat in that chair across from you after that?
But I knew it so well, and she knew I knew it so well. But I wanted my audience to hear her origin story and to know her journey to where she was at that point. One of my hardest interviews was with one of my best friends, Emily Oberman, because I already knew so much that it felt inauthentic to be asking the questions that I was asking. But now that I know a little bit more about what I’m doing and do in-depth research that I didn’t do then, it’s much harder. Millman: It was easy to talk to them and have a natural flow. Is it easier to interview people you know? The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.įast Company: The first interviews on Design Matters were with your friends. She also retraces her journey from one of her first interviews with her best friend, to the year she got her book deal, which coincided with falling in love with her now-wife Roxane Gay, whose moving foreword kicks off the book. Here, Millman tells Fast Company about the arduous task of choosing who made the cut in the book.
Why Design Matters, released today, reads like a kaleidoscope of creativity: Michael Bierut of Pentagram dispels the myth that creativity stems from an inexhaustible source of self-expression Milk Bar CEO Christina Tosi talks about taking chances and “embracing the burnt batch of cookies ” and Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, recalls her aspirations of becoming a curator while interning at the Met, and the significance of being the first Black curator of the Whitney. Now, a new anthology features 55 of her most engaging conversations, coupled with soulful photography and playful graphics. As the host of Design Matters, Millman has conducted more than 400 interviews with a who’s who of creative minds, from Milton Glaser to Marina Abramović.