Design Matters with Debbie Millman — 20th Anniversary Celebration

Episode Date: December 15, 2025
Guests (in featured interviews): Marian Bantjes, Oded Ezer, Jessica Hische, Tobias Frere-Jones, Matthew Carter, Kris Holmes
Host: Debbie Millman

Episode Overview

In honor of Design Matters’ remarkable 20th anniversary, Debbie Millman curates and reflects on standout conversations from the past two decades with some of the world’s leading typographers and lettering artists. Through deep-dive excerpts with Marian Bantjes, Oded Ezer, Jessica Hische, Tobias Frere-Jones, Matthew Carter, and Chris Holmes, the episode explores the art, craft, creativity, and sometimes quirkiness of typography and letterform design—shedding light on how these visionaries shaped their disciplines and elevated the daily language of letters.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Marian Bantjes: Visual Integration and Personal Narrative

Timestamp: 05:06–14:40

• Main Insights:

  • Bantjes discusses her book I Wonder, emphasizing the integration of graphics and text, refusing to treat visuals as "superfluous" to the written word ([05:06]).
  • She describes the conceptual creation of each essay with distinct visual languages to enhance reading experiences, such as transforming a chapter about signage into a "typographic signage experience" ([06:28]).
  • On subjectivity in legibility and typographic purity, Bantjes unapologetically blends typefaces, challenging purists but always ensuring fundamental legibility ([07:36]).
  • An intimate, touching segment recalls pages from her late mother's notebooks, which inspired a chapter—turning to-do lists into deeply personal visual memoir and a metaphor for graphic design as a portrait of life ([12:39]).

• Notable Quotes:

  • "I wanted to really integrate the two so that when I'm speaking of something visual... I'm actually representing the entire piece in that visual sense." – Marian Bantjes ([06:12])
  • "These are to-do lists, and they're funny, and there's just so much of her in there. They're the perfect example of a graphic representation of a human being." – Marian Bantjes ([13:49])

2. Oded Ezer: Activating Type and Emotional Letters

Timestamp: 14:40–23:06

• Main Insights:

  • Ezer challenges traditional thinking: "How does this type behave?" versus "How does this type look?" ([15:37]).
  • Experiments like "Tortured Letters" and "Typosperma" turn letters into visceral, living (and suffering) entities, making type convey pain or joy and merging biological forms with typography ([17:05], [19:06]).
  • Ezer also explores conceptual performance—eating seaweed-formed letters in video art to "physically consume" meaning, investigating the boundaries between body and design ([21:48]).

• Notable Quotes:

  • "When you ask it like that, you understand that you can activate type just like a person that sits in front of you." – Oded Ezer ([15:47])
  • "I wanted to create a new creature. So then I slowly, slowly understood... together form new creature, then it looks convincing." – Oded Ezer ([19:19])
  • "I thought I can try to read [typography]... by trying to taste it and to eat it and to try to have it in my body." – Oded Ezer ([22:11])

3. Jessica Hische: Daily Projects and Creative Community

Timestamp: 23:06–29:12

• Main Insights:

  • Hische recounts launching Daily Drop Cap to impose structure during freelance life—eventually becoming a viral phenomenon and influential for young designers ([23:46]).
  • The importance of online community, self-initiated projects, and generosity—"Steal My Idea" is an open-source platform of her unexecuted concepts ([27:22]).
  • Hische uses side projects as creative outlets to balance commercial work by “exercising other creative muscles” and infusing humor and personality into her brand ([26:22]).
  • She describes the whimsical "cake for design feedback" experiment, poking fun at creative networking culture ([28:13]).

• Notable Quotes:

  • "I love just coming up with like really stupid conceptual projects that I can never do for clients." – Jessica Hische ([26:52])
  • "If you can send me a cake that's creative and good, I will do a massive write up about how awesome you are at baking and how that probably translates into your design portfolio." – Jessica Hische ([28:44])

4. Tobias Frere-Jones: From Highway Signs to Iconic Typefaces

Timestamp: 33:18–39:28

• Main Insights:

  • Frere-Jones talks about developing Interstate after observing the unique utility and form of US highway signage—translating "working class" letterforms for general use ([34:26]).
  • The process is patient, “trial and error and most of all observation,” and each change must be made systematically to understand its impact on the whole ([36:39]).
  • He values the "fluidity" in how typefaces from different eras are mixed in contemporary design ([39:19]).

• Notable Quotes:

  • "These shapes that are so distinctive and recognizable don’t exist outside of this one particular environment... I thought the strength of these forms can be remapped to a new situation." – Tobias Frere-Jones ([34:33])
  • "It was really the first time I took this very sort of foggy notion of a personality, and tried to break that down into the parts that would project that." – Tobias Frere-Jones ([37:33])
  • "Type design has a tendency to point back to itself... There’s a kind of fluidity now to history." – Tobias Frere-Jones ([39:19])

5. Matthew Carter: Tradition and the Tools of Type

Timestamp: 39:28–47:49

• Main Insights:

  • Carter explains the "smoke proof" punch-cutting method—an ancient, laborious step to visualize type, and how waiting days or weeks for type tests shaped his design discipline ([39:55]).
  • Reflects on finding his calling via typographic craft rather than formal academia, encouraged by both family legacy and chance opportunities ([42:47]).
  • Describes how the UK’s slow access to Helvetica inadvertently helped him master lettering for modernist designers in postwar London ([46:55]).

• Notable Quotes:

  • "It's very difficult to persuade students that... the first time somebody digitized two letters on a computer and sent them to a laser printer and they came out at real size, in real time, was the first time in the history of type making that any type designer saw their work in that way." – Matthew Carter ([40:21])
  • "Who needs two typographers in the family?... Would be much more interesting if you went and did something else." – Matthew Carter ([42:47])

6. Kris Holmes: Calligraphy as Efficient Art

Timestamp: 47:49–52:51

• Main Insights:

  • Holmes discusses calligraphy's origin in bookmaking and its basis in efficiency—every stroke counts ([48:17], [49:22]).
  • She weaves together lessons in calligraphy and modern dance, revealing the physicality of letterform creation and movement across media ([50:32]).
  • Her career path, influenced by pivotal mentors, moved from greeting cards at Hallmark (which she quickly left) to further study and discovery in New York ([49:43], [51:25]).

• Notable Quotes:

  • "They say that it takes 10 years to make a good calligrapher. And when I heard that during my first year, I thought, oh, no, I'm never going to make it. But I did make it... one step at a time." – Chris Holmes ([49:22])
  • "If you want to be a good calligrapher, get into modern dance. That’s where you really learn how to, you know, move that pen across the paper." – Lloyd Reynolds (as recalled by Kris Holmes, [50:52])

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Secretive Design:

  • "It's written in a type that I designed that is difficult to read... The other part of that chapter is actual secret text in that I wrote it in a cipher, a kind of code. It’s secret. There’s secret text in there." – Marian Bantjes ([10:34])

• Design as Performance:

  • "Imagine to yourself that you are introduced to typography, but you don't know what is it... if you are really a curious person, you will try different things. And one of the things that I thought I can try to read is by trying to taste it and to eat it and to try to have it in my body." – Oded Ezer ([22:11])

• The Importance of Asking Questions:

  • "The importance is to ask this question rather than to answer." – Oded Ezer ([18:29])

• On Side Projects and Community:

  • "I have this walk that I do every day...and I’m always coming up with, like, some random weird idea on that walk that I wish that I had time to do myself, but I don't. So instead, I tell the Internet, hey, do you feel like making a website..." – Jessica Hische ([27:22])

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:06 | Marian Bantjes on integrating visuals and text | | 07:36 | Banjes on challenging typographic purists | | 12:39 | Personal lists and their relevance to graphic storytelling | | 14:40 | Oded Ezer on making type behave, not just look | | 17:05 | Ezer’s "Tortured Letters" and design improvisation | | 21:48 | "Eating" typography video/performance concept | | 23:46 | Jessica Hische on Daily Drop Cap and going viral | | 26:22 | Using side projects to balance commercial design work | | 27:22 | "Steal My Idea" and the generative power of ideas | | 28:13 | Cake for design feedback story | | 34:26 | Tobias Frere-Jones on creating Interstate from highway signage | | 36:39 | Type design as trial, observation, and learning cause-effect relationships | | 39:55 | Matthew Carter on the old craft of type: smoke proofs and production delays | | 42:47 | Family influences and choosing the path of type | | 46:55 | On the staid British typesetting trade of the 1960s | | 48:17 | Kris Holmes: calligraphy as efficient writing | | 49:22 | Ten-year mastery and the difficulties behind effortless calligraphy | | 50:32 | Modern dance as a lesson for movement in letterform creation | | 51:25 | Training with legends in New York, transitioning from dance to type |

Tone & Language

The episode maintains Debbie Millman's signature warmth: thoughtful, intimate, and meticulously curious. Her questions invite reflection and storytelling, while the artists offer frankness, wit, and occasionally poignant personal history. Conversations move fluidly from technical detail to arcane anecdotes—always honoring the artistry, labor, and humanity beneath every letter.

Conclusion

This 20th-anniversary retrospective captures both the diversity and interconnectedness of contemporary type and letterform creation—the tactile traditions, the innovative experiments, the community, the struggle, and the humor. Whether describing a piece of punch cut in candle soot, the agony of designing in whiteout and black ink, or the pleasures and absurdities of cake-powered networking, these creative voices illuminate the enduring magic and challenge of designing the alphabet’s building blocks.

[To hear full interviews, visit designmattersmedia.com.]