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Optimal, minimal.
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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
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Can I ask you a personal question?
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No, I just think that broke the timeline.
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What if I did the opposite?
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I must have a magnetic organism living this year with a metal endoskeleton.
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This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks.
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That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance.
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Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them.
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In this case, it's a little different.
3:56
I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal.
4:00
They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.
4:10
But, I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh in the team and the company itself.
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There's no downside that I can think of. Hello, ladies and germs.
4:43
This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job each episode to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, from entertainment to sports, chess, military, and everything in between, to tease out the habits, routines, thought processes, decision-making processes that you can use and test yourself.
5:03
This episode, we have a very, very special treat, and I will say in advance, we cover some very, very deep, hard, and also sensitive material in this episode.
5:14
For some people who listen to this, it will be, I think, the most important podcast episode you ever listen to, and that has nothing to do with me.
5:22
It has everything to do with the stories and lessons of Debbie Millman, @debbiemillman on Twitter and elsewhere, you can say hello, is quote, one of the most influential designers working today, end quote, by Graphic Design USA.
5:37
She is also the founder and host of Design Matters, which is the world's first and longest-running podcast about design.
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She's interviewed nearly 300 design luminaries and cultural commentators, including Massimo Vignelli, Milton Glaser, with an S, and uh remember that name, he will come back.
5:54
Her artwork has been exhibited around the world.
5:56
She's designed everything from wrapping paper to beach towels, greeting cards to playing cards, notebooks to t-shirts.
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And if you've heard of, say, Star Wars, well, she worked on the merchandising.
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Burger King, the redesign. Hershey's, Tropicana.
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At one point, if you walked into any given grocery store, or, say, supermarket, anything like that, she had a hand in about 20% of everything you might see or touch.
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She is the president emeritus of AIGA, one of five women to hold that position in the organization's 100-year history.
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She has six books that she has authored, and in 2009, Debbie co-founded with Steven Heller the world's first master's program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where I've spent some time.
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Now, in its eighth year, the program has achieved international acclaim. We cover a lot.
6:51
We cover facing rejection, overcoming personal and professional crises of faith.
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And this is one of the most powerful conversations that I've ever had on this podcast.
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So, without further ado, please enjoy and think hard on, reflect on this conversation with Debbie Millman.
7:14
Debbie, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim.
7:16
It's really wonderful to be here.
7:16
I have wanted to interview you on numerous occasions now over the last few years, so I'm thrilled that we are finally doing this.
7:26
Point number one, and I thought I would start with a question that someone like yourself, who has explored so many different things and so many different formats, when someone asks you, what do you do?
7:40
Let's say you meet someone at a party.
7:41
They say, "What do you do?"
7:42
What is your answer to that? That's a tough question. Um what do I say?
7:48
Well, I Now, I say that I'm a designer, and sometimes, if I'm feeling wordy, I'll say that I'm a designer and a writer and a podcaster, and sometimes people look at me like, huh? Like, you huh?
8:08
A lot of Too many hyphens. What does that mean?
8:12
Um I found, when I was working at Sterling Brands, which I did for over two decades, I had resolved to just saying, when I was filling out what I did on passport applications and this and and things like that, I used to say executive, and that made sense.
8:32
Executive Executive's a great catchall. You can use that.
8:34
Executive is a great catchall.
8:34
For a long time on Twitter, I had Debbie Millman is a girl until enough people said, "Debbie, you've really got to change that." And and then I did. Uh the internet.
8:46
Well, you could put anything there, and I think about 10% of the people who come across it will be outraged for one reason or another. Oh, yes.
8:53
I've found that the very things that it delight and excite some people are the same exact things that outrage others.
8:59
It's really hard to please everybody all the time.
9:00
Yeah, you I think that if you try to please all the people all the time, you'll just end up displeasing yourself all the time.
9:07
That's the That's the only guaranteed outcome there.
9:09
Oh, Tim, I've learned that the hard way.
9:11
Well, I want to talk about so many things, Debbie, but let's start with And for those people wondering, I I always ask my guests beforehand, are there any particular, say, prompts for stories that we could explore that that that might be fun to dig into.
9:29
And one of them was drawing you did when 8 years old.
9:35
And so, I know nothing about this, and I just want to start there, since it seems to make sense to begin at the beginning.
9:42
Well, I have a um somewhat of a pack rat mentality. I keep things.
9:48
I have I'm a sentimentalist at heart.
9:52
And I um like to keep things from all different stages of my life and I have boxes of journals and drawings and all sorts of report cards and you name it, I have it.
10:08
Well, apparently I I got this trait from my mother who um couple of years ago did what a lot of good old Jews do.
10:15
She moved from Queens, New York to Florida. The great migration. Yes.
10:24
And before she moved, she unloaded several boxes of ephemera of mine that she had kept unbeknownst to me and I went through everything quite gingerly.
10:35
It was all sort of folded up very neatly and very tidily and came across an illustration that I did when I was about 8 years old and after I admired my handiwork cuz I thought, "Wow, 8 years old.
10:49
I was I was like rocking the drawings."
10:53
I realized that that this particular drawing had predicted my whole life.
11:00
And and so I will explain I will try to explain this drawing as best as I can.
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And and for some backstory, I am a native New Yorker. I was born in Brooklyn.
11:10
When I was about 2 years old, my parents took me to Howard Beach, Queens.
11:16
I moved there before there were any sidewalks.
11:18
That that will give you a little bit of a sense of how old I am.
11:23
I lived there until I was about I was I was in the middle of a third grade and we moved to Staten Island.
11:30
And I lived on Staten Island until I was in the fifth grade.
11:32
End of fifth grade, my parents got divorced.
11:34
My mom took my brother and I, he's 2 and 1/2 he's 2 and 1/2 years younger than I am, to Long Island.
11:42
My childhood was spent in almost all of the boroughs except Manhattan.
11:47
And for some reason, I had a I guess a sense of what Manhattan looked like and felt like probably from television.
11:57
And at 8 years old, I draw I drew a picture of the streets of Manhattan.
12:02
I'm walking I'm a little girl.
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I'm walking along with my mother.
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My mother, by the way, is um wearing a very popular Barbie outfit of the time, an outfit called Tangerine Dream which I I really loved.
12:20
I I put her in that outfit.
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And and despite not having a lot of time on the streets or any time on the streets of Manhattan, I I drew it quite in quite good detail.
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There were buildings and buses and taxis and I labeled everything.
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I labeled the cleaners cleaners and I labeled the bank bank and I labeled the taxi taxi.
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In the middle of the street, there is a delivery truck and I not only labeled the the delivery truck I also drew the sign on the delivery truck and the sign was Lay's potato chips.
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I drew the logo at 8 years old.
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And when I saw this drawing, I realized that I had predicted my whole life.
13:10
I'm a native New Yorker now living in Manhattan.
13:14
I've been living in Manhattan for 33 years. I go to the bank. I go to the cleaners.
13:19
I take lots of taxis, lots of buses.
13:22
And at the time I found this drawing, I was drawing logos for a living.
13:31
And and you know, had I known that it would have been that easy just to follow that drawing, I would have saved decades of experiments and failure and rejection.
13:43
So so this this is is fascinating to me for a number of reasons.
13:46
I've had a few guests on the podcast.
13:48
Chris Sacca would be another example. He's an investor.
13:53
And he at some point wrote in his journal.
13:55
Well, I think it was one of these composition notebooks with the sort of modeled black and white zebra/camouflage covers Oh, I love those.
14:03
what he would be when he was 40 years old and he must have done this when he was 10 or 12, something like that.
14:08
And he found it in his I think his parents' garage later around the age of 42 or something like that and it also predicted effectively exactly what he would be doing, but it was lost in the slipstream and he took this very meandering in some ways odd, seemingly fractured path to come right back to where he started in a sense.
14:32
Did you then it sounds like you didn't follow that plan that had was so neatly summarized in this picture because there are folks out there say, "You know when I was five, I knew I always wanted to be X."
14:46
But what was your or should I say, when did you figure out that you wanted to actually do what was in that drawing on some level?
14:52
That you wanted to be a designer.
14:56
I actually never set out to be a designer.
14:59
I thought that I was going to be a journalist.
15:04
The only thing that I knew for sure when I was in college was that when I graduated, I wanted to live in Manhattan.
15:13
At that point, I had not ever lived in Manhattan.
15:17
And that was my big dream.
15:17
And I came to Manhattan the summer of 1983.
15:23
I often say that that was the summer of David Bowie's Modern Love and The Police's Synchronicity.
15:30
I saw both concerts that summer.
15:34
Um I moved into a sublet apartment with a friend that had also recently graduated.
15:39
Um she had found a sublet on the corner of Hudson and Perry Streets in the Village.
15:45
I didn't know it at the time, but moving into an apartment on the intersection of Hudson and Perry was almost as if I was entering the movie Gidget Goes to Manhattan.
16:00
Um I didn't know where I was going.
16:00
I It was quite serendipitous.
16:04
My friend Jay found the apartment for us.
16:08
Um unfortunately, that wonderful summer um turned out rather unfortunate because the woman who Jay and I were subletting from was rather than paying the rent with the rent money that she was getting from us, was keeping it and not paying the rent.
16:25
So at the end of the summer, we all got evicted. And Surprise.
16:30
Yeah, I ended up appealing to the um the landlord to please please help me find someplace else to live because I really didn't have any place else to go and he ended up um being able to rent me another one of the apartments he had in another building he owned on 16th Street, which was a fourth floor tenement walk-up, a railroad flat that I couldn't afford on my own and ended up living with um a couple a room my roommates were a couple.
16:59
Because it was a railroad flat, I had to walk through the apartment which meant through their bedroom to get to mine, which often meant I was stuck on one side or the other depending on What was going on? Their nocturnal habits.
17:14
Or afternoon delight depending on, you know, what they were doing.
17:16
Um and and lived there for about 5 years before I ended up um moving back into the Village for a short period of time.
17:26
Um so that was the one thing I knew that I wanted to live in Manhattan.
17:29
I did not know that I could be a designer, that I would be a designer and or that design was even a discipline um until my senior year of college.
17:40
I had worked my way up to be the uh editor of the arts and features section of the student newspaper at SUNY Albany where I went to school and um realized very quickly that as much as I loved assigning articles and coming up with themes for this section of the newspaper I was endlessly fascinated by putting the paper together, by designing the paper and thus um a baby designer was born.
18:11
I took all of one class in design while I was in in college and really learned almost everything I knew at that time working in the newsroom, putting the paper together.
18:23
Everything was done old school layout, paste-up, compugraphic machines, stat cameras.
18:27
And then when I graduated was both doing freelance editorial and freelance layout and paste-up um for the first couple of years of my career.
18:38
When did you start at the student newspaper?
18:42
Was that something you you started at the very beginning and uh followed throughout your I guess undergrad experience?
18:51
Interesting and perceptive question, Tim.
18:55
I wanted to write for the student newspaper, I think the very first issue I saw when I got to SUNY Albany freshman year.
19:04
And went up to the student newspaper, which was on the third floor of the campus center and approached the editor at the time and asked if I could be a writer or offered my services, volunteered my my my services.
19:18
And he looked at me and asked me if I had any clips.
19:27
And I was like you know, I didn't say what I was thinking, but like hair clips?
19:30
I mean, I didn't know what he was talking about.
19:34
And I didn't have anything and I didn't know what to do and I was embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed and sort of squirl you know, scurried away and didn't go back until my junior year.
19:45
I was so um intimidated by the talent and the work that was coming out of that newsroom and it was at the time and very well may still be one of the best student newspapers in the country.
20:00
And I came out twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays and I would I was just enamored with this newspaper.
20:08
And I fantasized about writing really pithy erudite letters to the editor-in-chief that would then get published in in you know the letters to the editor section and they would realize what a great writer I was and then invite me to be a reporter and I'd sort of walk around like Rosalind Russell with a pencil behind my ear and my heels click-clacking in the newsroom and of course that never happened.
20:35
Um I I never wrote one letter to the editor and um for some reason and I guess an aberrant moment of courage I went back up to the newsroom my second semester junior year and there was a women's uprising at the student front of the student health health food store and they were like could you go cover that and I was like yeah absolutely and I went and did it and and that was how I started writing for the paper.
21:03
I then wrote a piece about an exhibit in the art center and by the end of my second semester junior year only because I didn't know one else would take it I was offered the job of being editor of the arts and features section and and began that that summer.
21:21
Um that senior year in college was one of the most exciting and best years of my life in that for the first time ever I felt like I had purpose.
21:35
Suddenly working on this paper I felt like I was something I was part of something bigger than myself.
21:41
I felt like I was I had some reason for being and I loved learning about design.
21:50
I loved being able to work with writers and I felt for the first time in my life really excited about something.
21:59
I want to talk about that aberrant moment of courage and dig into that a bit.
22:03
So you were rejected from or maybe you rejected yourself or both initially when you approached the paper then years later you have this aberrant moment of courage. What precipitated that?
22:15
Was there a conversation, a realization, you watched a movie? What triggered that? Do you remember? Um I actually don't.
22:24
I I wish that I did it would make it for a much better story and certainly a better interview.
22:30
Um but I what I can tell you is that all these years later I have noticed a pattern in my life of being very easily hurt by an initial reaction or an initial rejection so much so that it forwards any other attempt at making something like that happen for a very long time.
22:55
I am extremely sensitive and any rejection sort of takes me off of that path for quite a long time.
23:10
Takes me a while to recover.
23:11
Could you give any examples of that?
23:11
I would say my entire life.
23:13
I will give you I can give you 43 examples. Get get comfortable Tim.
23:18
I'm I'm I'm I'm Yeah I'm definitely settling in with my water. I'm ready to go.
23:23
Um well there I was rejected that first year of college took me then 3 years to to go back again.
23:30
I might have been feeling confident about something else that had gone well in my life and thought what the heck why not go back and try um and and then took those steps up to the campus center and went back up to the third floor and asked again.
23:47
I am somebody that has a very hard time taking no for an answer but it takes me a long time to recalibrate and get my courage back to continue to keep trying and when I graduated because I had such a hard time finding a job initially that I really loved and because I was having so much trouble
24:16
figuring out what I wanted to do with my life I kept bouncing around from opportunity to opportunity and every time I would try something new and would ultimately get rejected I used that first rejection almost as a permission slip to avoid having to try again. So when I
24:35
So when I graduated I I started working at a couple of different newspapers I'm not magazines.
24:43
I worked for a cable magazine and I worked for a rock magazine doing layout and paste up and some editing.
24:49
And at the time thought oh I'm really enjoying this but I don't really feel qualified to be doing this.
24:52
Maybe I should go back to school and get a master's degree in journalism.
24:58
And I um lived in the neighborhood of a very good journalism school the Columbia School of Journalism and my dad had gone to Columbia and studied pharmacy and I thought why not apply to the Columbia School of Journalism.
25:12
But that was the only school I applied to.
25:14
I thought you know I want to consider getting a master's degree in journalism.
25:17
There are a lot of good journalism schools in New York City but for some reason I had my heart set on this one school.
25:22
I didn't get in I got rejected and abandoned my hopes or dream of of going to get a master's degree in journalism.
25:30
Shortly thereafter because I also am a painter I had been accepted into a show at Long Island University the Brooklyn campus and got some good reviews and thought hmm maybe I should become an artist. I I love doing this.
25:47
I'm I'm getting some good response from it but I don't feel qualified or or educated enough.
25:51
Maybe I should get an advanced degree in art and I applied to the Whitney School um the Whitney Museum of Art had an independent study program that would allow me to continue working during the day. I applied for that.
26:02
I had really good references wonderful clips at that point you know some good reviews and um got rejected to that and then abandoned that dream.
26:12
And so it's been a a long history of making an attempt getting that early rejection retreating and then finally sort of licking my wounds re sort of knitting my confidence or hopes and dreams together and then trying to do something else or trying again. So a few questions.
26:36
The first is what would you have or what would you say to your college self after that first rejection at the newspaper?
26:50
Or what advice would you give someone who had the near identical experience and was hardwired the same way?
26:59
Well it's an interesting question Tim because I have the benefit of hindsight and looking back on those years yes I certainly could have tried again sooner and maybe had more of a runway to experiment and grow and learn in that newsroom and in that environment but I also think that those years in between learning and growing in other ways
27:35
contributed to my ability to then when appointed the editor of the arts and features section I somehow had a lot more to pull from and maybe this is my own sort of synthesizing happiness or or calibrating to my own set point or looking back and thinking well it all sort of worked out so why give somebody advice that I wouldn't have necessarily taken at that point. What I what I would say is
28:09
What I what I would say is don't accept the first rejection ever. Give yourself options.
28:17
The timeliness of those options or the timeliness of those retries do at your own pace.
28:27
You don't you're not in competition with anybody but yourself.
28:34
So if you are rejected to something that you want then think about what it is that caused that rejection and work to better understand how you can present your best possible self when you try again.
28:54
And your your clips mention where you're like clips hair clips remind reminded me of a story I heard when I was a student.
29:01
So you work with a lot of students and we're going to come back to that.
29:05
Oh Tim can I add one more thing? Of course.
29:08
I I but this is this is an interesting you can add many things. Please.
29:10
So one thing that I that I haven't shared about this particular story is that that man that the young man that rejected me that first year is somebody that I have that I then befriended in that experience of working at the paper that junior year. And I graduated in 1983. It is now 2017.
29:41
And I have been friends with that man.
29:42
His name is Robert Edelstein.
29:45
I have been friends with him ever since.
29:48
So, just because somebody rejects you doesn't mean that they don't like you.
29:53
First of all, he didn't even reject me.
29:55
He asked me for a very reasonable um He asked me for something very reasonable.
30:02
He asked me for some examples of my writing.
30:04
I was so intimidated and was so embarrassed by not knowing exactly what he meant and the fact that I didn't have anything other than some things from high school, which I didn't feel were appropriate, that I was the one that rejected myself in many ways.
30:18
Um one of the interesting things that I have found is and and Rob is not the only person that I can point to as being somebody that initially provided some sort of obstacle or roadblock that was a a reasonable one and then ultimately I befriended and we've become we are now lifelong friends.
30:41
Um he didn't even remember rejecting me that freshman year and is mortified now by the notion that he might have done anything to hurt my feelings.
30:53
So, one of the other things that I would suggest that people consider if they believe they are being rejected is consider what the perception from the other person doing the rejection or the supposed rejection might be and that sense of empathy might be really helpful in understanding where you're coming from and what you're bringing to that specific example or that that specific experience.
31:20
And I'd like to underscore this because it's such an important point and I in some respects like you have been very sensitive.
31:29
I still am in some respects very sensitive and my particular brand of that or my particular type of response is to uh feel a a a a a a a a a a a a some type of sense of injustice and and so I will get rejected and looking back at what I see as a rejection either when I did this perhaps 10 years ago I looked at a number of instances where I felt like I'd been rejected via email and so on that A, it wasn't a rejection for all time. It was a not now.
32:03
It was it was a it was a very temporary uh impossibility due to logistics and I took that as a no not ever and felt very hurt by that and didn't try a second time in many cases. Yeah, absolutely.
32:21
know, so number one, a no may just mean no, not right now.
32:26
And you can even clarify that, right?
32:27
You can ask that as a clarifying question.
32:29
Uh number two is that at some point someone said to me and this doesn't apply to your particular instance, but don't don't ascribe to malice what can be described what can be explained by incompetence and Mhm.
32:41
that didn't cover it all for me though, but it would it really made a profound impact on me when I when I was told this and uh cuz I would read email with uh inserting if I were doing an audio book of the other person's voice some type of really angry or upset person and nine times out of 10 that wasn't the tone at all.
33:02
It was just I was misreading it.
33:03
And uh so I I started to assume for myself don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence or just busyness. The person is busy.
33:12
If they send you a really short response to your mini novella of an email, it doesn't mean that they think you're worthless or not worth their time.
33:19
It could just mean that they have 10 times more to do than you do and it's sometimes hard to have that perspective when particularly you're starting out and you're you're a bit fragile and you're on wobbly legs and you send this huge outpouring of your emotion to someone you respect and then they respond with sorry kid, not right now and you're like really? That's it?
33:37
And then you know, I I'm not going to name names, but there was someone who I now I'm very close friends with.
33:42
Extremely well-respected writer and I got one of these one-line responses in 2000 five or six when I sent an early manuscript of the Four Hour Workweek to this person via email and the response was effectively thanks, but sorry don't have time to read this right now.
34:00
Um no dear Tim, no signature just one line and and I felt so slighted by this that I held this subconscious grudge for years and now we're really good friends and the whole thing is ludicrous in retrospect.
34:13
One thing that that I find about human nature is that ambiguity is always perceived negatively.
34:20
So, there might be nothing in that one-line email that would be in any way um disparaging or insulting or or anything, but because we as humans perceive ambigu- ambiguity negatively, we tend to read into things that aren't there in a way that makes us feel bad.
34:41
But I also think that a lot of that for me comes from having a a very sort of fragile center and not necessarily thinking that they are specifically um upset with me because of something that I've done, but just because everything that I do is is sort of bad.
35:08
They're just real they're just they're just cognizant of that so it's not something specific, it's just something all-encompassing and so that's been something I've been struggling to overcome over the decades.
35:18
So, I have a few questions about how you came to find your niche or the first time you clicked into place so to speak doing something that resembles what what you ended up doing uh up to this point, but before I get to that just to to just to put a button in the the anecdote related to clips.
35:44
You mentioned clips uh clips hair clips.
35:48
I was told this story by a professor in college about Nantucket Nectars when it was just getting started and there were I believe two guys who were really faking it until they made it in in a lot of respects and at one point they're meeting with this distributor because they'd been selling these these concoctions via boats in Nantucket from
36:08
boat to boat to boat and they wanted to go into retail and they met met with this uh it was either a retailer or distributor, but it was early on and and uh they were really nervous and the muckety-muck they were meeting with at least in their eyes said are you do you do you have a lot of POS materials? And they looked at each other like oh
36:28
And they looked at each other like oh and they said oh POS, we're all about POS.
36:33
And he's like good good good and then they walked out they're like what the hell is POS?
36:39
Point of sale which of course you know plenty about, but the I wanted to to before we get to when you sort of first clicked into your your niche and how that happened.
36:54
You mentioned knowing that you wanted to be in Manhattan.
36:57
And I've been thinking a lot about the components of and this is a dangerous word sometimes, but happiness and that often times we think of the let's say the the the journalist W's, right? The interrogatives.
37:11
The the why, the what, the where and so on of happiness and I think humans tend to at least put why at the top then maybe what somewhere lower and then where is often an afterthought, but I've I've started to believe that the where is more is much more critical than we give it credit for and that you can you can actually start there.
37:31
So, I I I I've I've thought about this a lot for myself, but really the how important the geography can be because it determines in large measure who you're surrounded with all the time and what you're surrounded with all the time, but uh I guess it's more of an observation than a question, but how do you if you've ever if if you think about that, how do you think about sort of the components of of happiness or or well-being for yourself?
37:59
That's a big big question, Tim. Oh, yeah.
38:02
Um well, there are sort of two parts to the question I think and the first is this notion of New York sort of being the place that I wanted to be and what I told myself at that time and then ultimately how that leads to happiness or fulfillment and one of the things that I struggled with when I first moved to Manhattan or when I first graduated really was what was I going to be? What was I going to do?
38:36
I didn't have a lot of money.
38:38
I didn't have any network and I certainly didn't have any type of connection to any ins for apartments or jobs or anything like that.
38:51
And I wanted very badly to be in Manhattan.
38:57
That was something that I knew for sure.
38:59
In thinking about what I wanted with my life I knew that I wanted to do something creative.
39:04
One of my big hopes and dreams at that time was to work at Condé Nast and I did apply and I did get a call back and I got rejected and then never tried again. Another example of that.
39:17
But one of the more high altitude aspirations was either being an artist or being a writer.
39:27
So, being more of a of a fine artist and not a commercial artist.
39:29
But at the time I did not think that my chances of success at that would either be possible and certainly if it were possible not fast.
39:47
And because I wanted to live in New York City, because I wanted to live in Manhattan, I felt that I needed to be able to get a job that would pay my rent.
40:00
And because I didn't want to be a waitress and because I didn't want to be a bartender, I needed to make some type of reasonable income in order to pay that rent.
40:14
And so I have been telling myself for decades now that I decided that I needed to work as a designer because I needed to have some sort of income that would give me some sense of self-sufficiency.
40:34
Self-sufficiency has been enormously important to me and I've said that for years and years and years and that being safe and secure and being able to manage the course of my own life, having financial stability was something that was a bit of a lead gene for me in making the decisions that I did.
40:52
And back in that summer of David Bowie and The Police, I remember coming home from a club one night and I was on the corner of Bleecker Street and 6th Avenue and it suddenly occurred to me that I had to make a decision and the decision was what was I going to do?
41:14
And I realized that if I wanted to be an artist or a writer that I would likely have to take some type of job that would not necessarily be able to safeguard what I considered to be my financial future and therefore made this little pact with myself in my head that I would become a designer so that I could make enough money to be able to be secure.
41:44
And I've been telling myself that for decades.
41:45
What I realized in the last couple of years was that I was unbeknownst to my psyche, my my consciousness, I was lying to myself.
41:54
I was absolutely, positively lying to myself because more than the self-sufficiency was the desire to be in Manhattan.
42:09
I could have easily become or more easily become an artist or a fine artist or a writer if I didn't want to live in the most expensive city in the world.
42:18
I could have gone and lived with my mother in Queens.
42:22
I could have lived with friends in Albany.
42:25
I could have had seven roommates in in a little commune in Bed-Stuy.
42:30
There would have been any number of things that I could have done if my lead gene had been artistic purity.
42:42
But no, I told myself that it was because of X, Y, and Z, but really what it was was the most important thing to me at that point in my life was being in Manhattan.
42:52
And I lived in a fourth floor fourth floor tenement walk-up.
42:55
I had to walk through somebody else's bedroom to get to mine.
42:59
I was living on a floor with people that were constantly, the other tenants, um, in in the building were locking each other out.
43:07
It was an elderly couple and they were always fighting.
43:10
Um, there were a a a whole family of pigeons living on the fire escape outside of my window in my bedroom, which was so decrepit I couldn't even open the window in the summertime and there was no air conditioning in this apartment.
43:24
I mean, the conditions that I lived in were deplorable, but yet that was the most important thing to me.
43:34
So when I talk to people now about what do they want to do when they first graduate, I ask them to think about what is the one most important thing to you?
43:44
What is the one most important thing to you?
43:47
Because if it is truly the one most important thing to you, you will likely do whatever it takes to get it.
43:57
And the most important thing to me was not being a writer and it was not being a and not being an artist.
44:01
It was living in Manhattan and I did whatever it took and lived in whatever conditions that I needed to in order to make that happen.
44:12
I think that's a really important realization. Oh, definitely.
44:13
And so you so you've by hook or crook, you're living in Manhattan.
44:23
And so that is the the outcome in part, uh, of all of these decisions and the lead gene as you put it.
44:33
Where does the the need for for stability, security, or the desire for that come from?
44:40
Well, I do think that it's it's certainly in Maslow's hierarchy of needs a really important one. Yeah.
44:45
For me it takes on a I think any an extra level of of significance in that I grew up in a really, really, um, challenging environment.
44:59
So, um, my parents got divorced when I was, um, very young. I was about 8 years old.
45:05
And, um, I I've I had a very, very complicated relationship with my father.
45:12
My father died last year unexpectedly.
45:16
My father, sort of in my daughter eyes, was brilliant, charismatic.
45:22
He was an incredibly well-spoken man.
45:27
He was also extremely turbulent.
45:27
He had, um, a lot of anger issues and over the course of our lives together, um, I had five different experiences with him where he rejected me and decided that he didn't want me in his life.
45:48
Um, and so, uh, one of those periods was, uh, about 9 years.
45:51
So we had a very, very turbulent relationship.
45:57
When my parents got divorced, I told myself at the time that I was really happy about that because I was so scared of his anger and so scared of the anger that they had for each other.
46:10
Um, about a year after my parents got divorced, my mother married again, um, and she married a man who was, um, physically and sexually abusive to me, uh, physically abusive to my brother, and also sexually abusive to his two biolo- well, to one of his two biological daughters.
46:36
Um, and was, uh, and and severely, severely, um, beat us for for 4 years.
46:43
During that time was one of the times, the first time actually, that I I was estranged from my biological father and so, um, I had a lot of, um, brutality, uh, in my life and after they got divorced, um, I was 13.
47:03
My father came back into my life.
47:03
My mother then, uh, got involved with another another man who was, um, 10 years younger than her, so therefore only, uh, 10 years older than me and was also, um, I guess I'll put it sexually provocative with me and also emotionally abusive.
47:20
So for the first like 18 years of my life, I lived in a state of constant terror and, um, compensated or self-soothed but with art, with a lot of extracurricular activities in school.
47:38
I was always an overachiever, probably in an effort to prove to myself and to my family that I wasn't worthy of of the abuse that was being inflicted on me.
47:51
I wanted so much more for my life even back then.
47:55
And, um, grew up thinking that, um, if I had the resources to take care of myself, that I would never allow anything bad to happen to me.
48:07
Not not quite, um, realistic, uh, expectation, but but was something that I felt was possible to do. Of course, it's not.
48:17
That takes decades to also figure out.
48:19
Um, but at that time, I wanted very badly to be able to live in my own home, to be able to take care of myself, and to be in a position where I would never be vulnerable again, you know, sort of Scarlett O'Hara.
48:33
I'm never going to go hungry again.
48:36
Um, yeah, it doesn't always work out that way, but it was definitely the the the journey that that I've been on.
48:44
Well, thank you for sharing that. I had no idea.
48:45
And It's not something I talk about a lot, um, mostly because I've had an enormous amount of shame about it and and that's a very normal thing and I still do and it's still very, very hard for me to share these types of things, um, but I do think it's important that people do see that there is hope for a better life even when you are the victim of these types of situations.
49:23
Um, I've spent a lot of time working on better integrating those experiences into my life in a way to not only understand what happened, why it happened, what the aftermath then caused, but also how I can use that empathy and that understanding to try to help the world.
49:49
And and that's a lot of the reason that I've started to do the work that I do with uh Mariska Hargitay and the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is uh a foundation that Mariska started after she um started working on Law & Order SVU.
50:07
Shortly after she started um working on that television program, she started to receive a lot of letters from people that uh the very the very victims she was trying to find justice for on the television show and realized that this is way more than a television show.
50:24
This is a a a huge opportunity to make a difference in our culture and shortly thereafter started the Joyful Heart Foundation, which is an organization to help eradicate uh domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse.
50:38
Um and I've been working with Mariska and Maile Zambuto, the CEO of the foundation, now for the last 5 years.
50:47
Um and this work, I believe, the branding work that I've been able to do with them, taking into all the expertise I've had in repositioning and branding some of the biggest CPG companies in the world and now Dove telling that with my own background really truly makes me feel like my whole life makes sense, Tim. That's beautiful.
51:15
That's beautiful. And I'm really glad you're talking about this because I can imagine uh a very different experience, but I've had my own battles with darkness of different types and it's very easy to believe that you are alone or isolated
51:33
or that things will never change and I'm sure there are people listening who have had similar experiences to yours who have never talked about them or have never found a way to perhaps integrate or reconcile them and this might be an incredible catalyst for them. I I
51:51
I I would love to ask, if you're open to talking about it for yourself, have you found any particular avenues or types of work uh to be particularly helpful to you?
52:01
Uh Of course, the the the work that you're doing with the Joyful Heart Foundation, but apart from that, is there are there any particular types of exercises or or work or anything really that has helped you to be more at peace with your experience?
52:25
I think that the work that I've done in therapy has saved my life.
52:31
Um I have always been really um dedicated to my therapy and have been in therapy with the same analyst now for over two decades.
52:49
What type of therapy is that, if you don't mind me asking?
52:52
I know very little about Um she, I think um well, she she is the the person who I work with is a PhD.
53:00
She um was very involved in the psychoanalytic community in New York City.
53:08
She's now living in Santa Fe.
53:11
Uh I think that it's a combination of a number of different philosophies and and theories.
53:18
Probably at its foundation um psychoanalysis, but but certainly with quite a lot of uh variations. Um it's talk therapy.
53:28
Um I started back in the early '90s 5 days a week um and then uh moved down to 3 days and now I'm usually two to three days.
53:41
Um and it is enormously helpful to help me try to um make sense of of these experiences that I've had.
53:50
Um for anybody that is either in the midst of experiencing them or experiencing the aftermath, um there is a lot of there are a lot of resources.
54:06
One of the things that I experienced when I was in the midst of of these experiences was a sense of profound aloneness.
54:14
Um the experiences that I had, the worst experiences I had, were in the '70s and at the time the topic wasn't one that was as um understood.
54:25
I didn't know what was happening to me.
54:33
I thought I was the only person in the world that this was happening to because it seemed so surreal and unnatural and punishing.
54:49
It didn't that this was pervasive, that this was a cultural epidemic and I was told at the time by um the perpetrator that if I told anybody that um he had the resources to um hurt my brother and my mother, that he would kill them. Horrible. And I believed that. I was a little girl. I believed that.
55:19
And I was protecting them.
55:19
And I didn't know that I had any other resources. None.
55:29
And didn't even tell my mother until after they got divorced because, Tim, I didn't want to be the reason.
55:34
I didn't want to be blamed and I also didn't think anybody would believe me and I didn't want my mother and my brother to be harmed.
55:42
It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that this was pervasive.
55:51
And so for anybody that is listening, if you feel alone, know that you're not.
55:58
You can go to the Joyful Heart Foundation, joyfulheartfoundation.
56:00
org and there are resources and phone numbers.
56:05
You can also go to nomore.
56:05
org, which is another organization that I've helped and there are resources and people that are there to help and listen and get you out of the situation that you are in. Thank you for that.
56:19
Uh to insert some levity, I'm not sure how to segue from here.
56:26
But I will I Well, let's talk about some of the really really important things that that people are doing now to not only eradicate this type of violence, but also to change the world.
56:38
One of the other things that Joyful Heart is doing that I am so proud of is ending the backlog.
56:44
There are hundreds of thousands of rape kits that are not being um investigated that are sitting in shelves in police departments all over the country.
56:56
And so the Joyful Heart Foundation, along with Vice President Joe Biden, has been very involved in getting funding to help analyze those rape kits to be able to analyze the DNA and get serial rapists off the streets and get and get justice for the victims of those crimes.
57:15
So that's a really really important thing that they're doing and something that I feel can ultimately change not only um the sort of rape culture that we're living in, but also the blaming of victims.
57:31
So we can change culture by doing this work together.
57:37
It's something I'm super proud of.
57:37
And to those people listening, all of these uh resources that are being mentioned throughout this episode will be in the show notes, so you can certainly find the links to nomore.
57:48
org, the Joyful Heart Foundation and so on uh at 4hourworkweek.
57:53
com/podcast, all spelled out.
57:57
Deb, we'd love to ask you to shift gears just a little bit or perhaps a lot uh to speak up story.
58:08
That's one of my favorite stories.
58:11
I will I will let you run with it.
58:11
I I would love for you to I would love for you to share. Okay.
58:16
So so I want to start this story by letting people know that this was something that while it was happening, I thought was the worst professional experience of my life.
58:31
And it's turned out to be the most important and life-affirming of my life.
58:37
So so let me tell you a little bit about the speak up story.
58:41
So um the the year is 2003 and the time um of of in the world was was quite different than it is now.
58:50
So we were we were online, but we weren't quite online in the way that we are now.
58:56
I think YouTube was just just just beginning.
58:58
Um it was a a video sharing site more than anything.
59:01
We were online, but we were playing games and we were ordering from the J. Crew catalog.
59:07
I I don't know if people remember when the J.
59:11
Crew catalog went online, people's heads exploded.
59:13
You could buy things online and they could be shipped to you and you don't have to leave the house.
59:19
Oh my god, this is so amazing.
59:19
And we were playing like we were playing games and we were emailing and and reading the news and and there were forums where people would congregate, but they tended to be more niche uh forums and and not so much mainstream cultural forums.
59:37
Prior to that, um, leading up to to that time in my life, um, I had joined Sterling Brands in 1995 and this was one of the first moments of that click that you had mentioned earlier where suddenly, um, without even realizing it, I had, uh, joined a firm where I was, um, hired to help grow the business via the acquisition of new clients in branding.
1:00:08
And the job was one of the first times in my life where I was almost effortlessly successful.
1:00:16
I think because of my early childhood in my father's pharmacy, being surrounded by brands, I had and my own sort of obsession with things like Lay's potato chips. Lay's potato chips. Exactly.
1:00:34
Um, I had this almost, um, magical ability to understand why and how people chose the objects that they did to be part of their lives, mostly the brands that they chose.
1:00:52
So, I started working at Sterling Brands and, um, had this heretofore un- believable level of success financially and I really enjoyed it.
1:01:06
I am also endlessly fascinated by the choices people make for the objects in their lives, what they choose to surround themselves with, the kinds of things they buy and share and eat and wear and so forth.
1:01:19
And, um, inasmuch as I loved what I was doing and inasmuch as I was relishing the level of success that in my early 30s I was finally, finally getting, um, I also was still sort of longing for that artistic, creative sort of part of my life that, um, I felt was was deeply missing.
1:01:45
At that point, what department were you working in?
1:01:49
I was working in marketing and sales. Got it.
1:01:52
So, I wasn't I wasn't at that time doing very much design work.
1:01:55
I was doing some work freelance.
1:01:57
Um, I had been appointed the off-air creative director at Hot 97, which is a whole other sort of story to share at some point.
1:02:07
Um, but I was I was working, um, to develop the identity and the graphics for the first ever hip-hop radio station, which happened to be in New York and was called Hot 97.
1:02:16
That was the only thing that I was doing on the side.
1:02:20
I started working at Sterling Brands and was longing for a design community and was longing for a feeling of being part of something bigger than I was on my own, but something that was much more creative and had, um, no commercial, uh, implications.
1:02:40
And I found the AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and they had a special interest group within AIGA called the Brand Experience Center. And I was so excited.
1:02:51
I thought, "Oh my god, this is the Venn diagram of my life.
1:02:54
I can do branding and they they have designers and and all these famous designers are on the board and I could meet them and I could be part of this great community."
1:03:08
And so, I went and I volunteered and I became a member of AIGA and I was working with this Brand Experience group and I loved it and I was appointed to the board and I felt really, really part of something.
1:03:21
And, um, the board term was, I think, two years.
1:03:23
And at the end of the term, uh, we if we wanted to be on the board again, we all had to reapply.
1:03:28
And in that two years, I was very active.
1:03:31
I went to all the meetings and we weren't funded by AIGA.
1:03:36
We had to self-fund and so, I made cupcakes for bake sales and we had a flea market and I was very, very involved in the sort of day-to-day runnings of this little special interest group.
1:03:48
At the end of the two years, we all had to reapply if we wanted to be on the board again and every single person reapplied.
1:03:53
And every single person was appointed on the board again, except me. Oh. I I was rejected.
1:04:02
I was Oh, you set me up with the cupcakes. I know. I know.
1:04:04
They were really good cupcakes and brownies.
1:04:10
And and I was devastated. I was just devastated.
1:04:14
And, um, Ric Grefe, who was then the executive director, um, he had been aware of how much I wanted to be in in AIGA and how much I wanted to do and my aspirations.
1:04:26
And I think he felt really bad for me.
1:04:28
He asked me if I wanted to have lunch and he took me to a very expensive lunch at Eleven Madison and over the course of lunch, yeah, it was super wonderful and generous of him.
1:04:38
Over the course of lunch, he said, "Please, please don't give up on AIGA.
1:04:42
We need people like you and don't give up.
1:04:44
We'll find a place for you, I promise."
1:04:46
And I guess as a bit of a consolation prize, he asked me if I would be a judge in the upcoming annual competition that AIGA had called 365.
1:04:59
And he asked me if I wanted to be a judge in the package design category.
1:05:05
This to me was almost worth being kicked to the curb by the special interest group of the Brand Experience Center.
1:05:11
This was like the biggest honor of my career at that point, to be a judge in the country's biggest design competition was unfathomable to me. It felt like a miracle.
1:05:24
And so, I went to the judging and there were two other judges with me.
1:05:29
We had 700 entries that we needed to look at in one day.
1:05:33
And when I got to the, um, to the judging at AIGA headquarters, I met with the other two jurors.
1:05:41
One was a very well-known designer who had a bit of a boutique agency, very posh. She was very stylish.
1:05:50
I did not feel nearly as stylish.
1:05:52
Um, another guy was there from Apple and this was shortly after the iPod had been released and he was on his iPod the whole time and really didn't spend a lot of time paying attention to the judging.
1:06:04
In any case, this other juror, the other juror a dick. Yeah. Yeah, anyway.
1:06:08
The other juror Sorry, guy. I don't know. Yeah.
1:06:13
The other juror looks at me when I get there and she's like, "Just so you know, I don't intend to have any mass market packaging in this competition get an award." Wow.
1:06:23
And I was like, "Oh oh okay."
1:06:27
And and I didn't agree with that.
1:06:27
I mean, I understandably had come I was working at a CPG package design firm and we had recently designed the Burger King logo and the Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones packaging and merchandising and the Hershey bar and so, you know, I was coming from a completely different point of view.
1:06:44
Um, we ended up disagreeing so vehemently that at one point I thought we were going to actually come to fisticuffs, but Was this Was this behind the scenes or is this while you're on the panel?
1:06:58
while we're on the panel and there's somebody that's trailing us writing notes for an article that's going to appear in the annual. It was mortifying.
1:07:08
In any case, we were only able to agree, I think, on seven things that would go into the competition journal, which is not a way to encourage future applicants to apply for the competition.
1:07:24
So, AIGA was not particularly happy with us.
1:07:26
This juror of mine, the fellow juror, hated me and I felt at the end of that day that I would never, ever be asked to do anything with AIGA ever again.
1:07:38
And I remember walking back to my office, which was at the Empire State Building at the time.
1:07:40
It was sort of dusk and I felt like, "Oh, this is never, ever going to work out."
1:07:47
And and resigned myself to that.
1:07:47
Rick asked for some work of mine to be included in the journal as evidence of my credentials for being a juror and the two biggest projects that I had done at the time were the Burger King identity and the Star Wars identity.
1:08:04
And so, I sent those in as my credentials.
1:08:06
They were printed in the journal and that was the end of that. Or so I thought.
1:08:12
May 2nd, 2003, I get I get a link from a friend of mine.
1:08:19
She sends me an email and she's like, "Read this in the privacy of your own home, preferably with a big drink."
1:08:26
Oh boy, what is that about? I know, right?
1:08:29
And I am not one that likes surprises or anticipation.
1:08:34
I need instant gratification.
1:08:36
So, I don't wait to go home.
1:08:38
I don't wait to get a drink.
1:08:38
I click into the link at my desk in my office and come to a letter, an open letter to AIGA written by a designer named Felix Sockwell on this thing called Speak Up.
1:08:50
And Speak Up was one of the first weblogs and the first design blog.
1:08:58
And the letter chastises AIGA for including me, Debbie Millman, as a juror in their annual competition, what is supposed to be the most prestigious competition in the country, and accused me of not only being a corporate clown, but also, because of the work I do, they called me a she-devil. A she-devil. Wow.
1:09:30
And proceeded to take my entire career down. And it was a pile-on.
1:09:33
So, not only was the open letter quite harsh, but then there was the pile-on of comments that happened in the early days of blogging. Remember that? Oh. Oh, yes.
1:09:43
So I'm so glad that that hateful comments are a thing of the past. But yes. Oh, yes.
1:09:50
Intimately intimately familiar.
1:09:55
And I'm reading this and my jaw is agape and I am just in a state of catatonia. I couldn't move.
1:10:08
I was ashamed, embarrassed, terrified that people in my office would see it, that the reputation of the firm was being sullied by me.
1:10:19
And I didn't know what to do. I was despondent.
1:10:23
I remember walking home from work that day, crying, thinking that I had to quit.
1:10:28
I had to leave the design business and I my career was over.
1:10:30
This career that I had finally found for myself was now officially over.
1:10:39
And I I honestly did not know what to do, Tim.
1:10:42
I felt like if I wrote in that it would seem defensive, that it would bring more attention to this story.
1:10:49
I felt that if I didn't write in that I would be um missing an opportunity to at least contribute to the conversation with a point of view that might be different than theirs.
1:11:03
I didn't know what to do.
1:11:04
And looking back on it now, I'm actually really ashamed of what I did because it was disingenuous, but at the time it was the only thing that I felt I could do.
1:11:13
And so, a few days after the story broke and the comments piled in, I contributed and my first comment was and you're going to you're not going to approve of this. And Oh, we'll see. We'll see.
1:11:28
I wrote "What a cool discussion. I love I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
1:11:37
I you know the the book Cool Girl had not come out at that time, but had it been out, I would have said, "That's what I was trying to be.
1:11:45
I was trying to be the cool girl. Nothing matters.
1:11:47
I can eat five chili dogs and I don't gain weight, you know." Um I'm quoting the book. Um So, yeah.
1:11:56
I I came in and that's what I said, but I ended up having the the best possible back and forth I could muster.
1:12:07
I tried to talk about how we had constructed the Burger King logo and the amount of testing we had done around the world and how consumers really seemed to like it and who were they to sort of declare that it wasn't worthy.
1:12:20
And I I tried to be as as open and as defenseless as possible.
1:12:31
And um ultimately, they they continued to pile on some more insults and made fun of the practice that I that I had.
1:12:39
And then a couple of people weighed in otherwise and the final comment was from a a man named David Weinberger who I'm since who I've since become friends with as well, who at the time worked at Landor and Landor?
1:12:54
What is Landor is a one of the world's biggest and and most respected uh brand consultancies.
1:13:01
Um started by Walter Landor about 80 or 90 years ago.
1:13:04
Um and and he wrote in, you know, "Let's see what Felix could do with that Burger King logo and great work over there at Sterling."
1:13:11
And that was sort of the end of that conversation.
1:13:15
Um nobody else came in with another comment.
1:13:17
And what I thought was over really wasn't because the Felix is the the It was the original writer of this open letter.
1:13:25
Felix the illustrator and designer.
1:13:28
Um and then um they I thought it was over.
1:13:31
I thought it had ended with some sort of a compromise in viewpoints.
1:13:34
Um but to um my chagrin, the writers at Speak Up kept writing about me.
1:13:43
And the next article was called Is the Dark Side Prevailing? So subtle. So subtle. Very subtle.
1:13:51
At that point, Tim, I was obsessed.
1:13:53
I was going to the site 15, 20 times a day, constantly refreshing, seeing what they were writing about me.
1:14:00
And finally gave up and went to my IT person and said, "Put parental controls on my computer at work.
1:14:05
I don't want to be able to see this site." And he did.
1:14:13
Sometimes you need a helpful pair of handcuffs, yeah. Well said.
1:14:17
Um and and but I still, you know, I'd go home and and look, but whatever.
1:14:19
Um a couple weeks later, the founder of Speak Up, a young man about 23 years old named Armin Vit reached out to me. He wrote me an email. And he apologized.
1:14:34
He didn't apologize for calling my work a pair of turds, which is what he did.
1:14:39
I didn't realize turds came in pairs. Shows what I know. Ah, youth.
1:14:46
And and but he he So, he apologized for the bullying and for the unprofessional way in which um the conversation ensued as opposed to he made it very clear that he still thought my work was a pair of turds.
1:14:58
Um but he didn't feel that it was right the way that I had been um spoken to.
1:15:06
And I took a lot of care in responding to him. I accepted his apology.
1:15:08
But at the time, I was really fascinated by this whole blogging thing.
1:15:13
It was really interesting to me, this sort of real-time communication, holding people accountable.
1:15:20
And I wrote him this sort of diatribe about it.
1:15:23
And he responded and said, "Well, would you like to write for the site?" And I was like, "Whoa. Didn't expect that one." And I So, I said yes.
1:15:32
And I started writing for Speak Up.
1:15:37
Um and I Vader the Darth Vader column.
1:15:39
Well, what was so interesting about the experience, Tim, was that the sort of what they were what the Speak Uppers were calling the precious design world, the AIGA world, they had already rejected me.
1:15:51
And now the renegades, the anti-AIGA contingent, they were rejecting me.
1:15:57
So, at that moment, I actually felt like the most hated woman in graphic design.
1:16:04
Masterless samurai, where to? Exactly. Exactly.
1:16:06
So, what what happened after that was it was really surreal.
1:16:11
And this is why I say that what felt like at the time in May of 2003 to be the lowest point of my professional career actually became the catalyst upon which everything else has been built.
1:16:23
And so, I started writing for Speak Up.
1:16:26
And all of a sudden, I started to have that sense of what I had been originally searching for in my efforts with Speak Up.
1:16:34
I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself.
1:16:35
I felt like I was part of this sort of renegade group of misfits that were trying to change the world through graphic design criticism and online conversations.
1:16:44
We all decided that year in the fall of 2003 that we were going to go as a group of sort of guerrilla Speak Up writers to the upcoming AIGA annual conference in Vancouver and we were going to give out this little brochure that Armin had put together called Stop Being Sheep, which was a riff on the great typographer Erik Spiekermann's book Stop Stealing Sheep, which is about letter spacing.
1:17:16
You know, thin slicing here to the very best of our ability.
1:17:18
And so, um we went with this little brochure en route to the conference.
1:17:26
And so, so these people then ended up accepting you?
1:17:29
The the people who had previously vilified you?
1:17:31
You were that had previously vilified me not only accepted me, but over the years, Armin and his wife, Bryony, and I have become such good friends that I am now the godmother to their eldest daughter. Wow.
1:17:50
So, sort of similar to that Robert Edelstein story back when I was in college in in college where he rejected me or what I thought was a rejection of me then ultimately became um one of my lifelong friendships.
1:18:01
And now Armin and Bryony um are also uh family at this point. Family. Amazing.
1:18:07
So, I I I I interrupted there.
1:18:09
You're So, you're en route with this group of heretics and a and a pile of brochures or pamphlets.
1:18:13
Right, cuz brochures change the world. You know that.
1:18:18
And I'm sitting next to people um that are also at this one There was at that time one direct flight from New York to Vancouver.
1:18:25
The flight is filled with design luminaries, Michael Bierut and Paula Scher.
1:18:30
And I'm sitting next to a woman who is beautiful and elegant and I'm wearing sweatpants and carrying a a bag of McDonald's breakfast, you know.
1:18:41
And the only people that like the way McDonald's breakfast smell are the people eating it, not the people smelling it. So True fact.
1:18:50
That's that's You know, I don't know why I didn't think that I would see people that I knew on this flight. I was Well, in any case.
1:18:58
So, I start talking to this woman next to me and turns out she's going to the conference as well. I ask her what she does.
1:19:04
She says she's a writer at Print magazine.
1:19:06
I tell her about Speak Up.
1:19:08
She's all interested in what we're doing.
1:19:09
She gives me I tell her that we're having this get-together, this party over the course of the conference.
1:19:15
She's I'd like to invite her. She gives me a card.
1:19:17
Without looking at it, I put it into my bag.
1:19:19
We had we talked through you know, a couple hours and then we go off into our own thing with, you know, whatever else we were doing on the flight.
1:19:27
When I get to my room uh in Vancouver, I take her card out of my bag and I see that she's the editor-in-chief, Joyce Ryder K.
1:19:37
I invite her to the party, she comes, and we start a correspondence.
1:19:40
I had this I harbored this um hope that maybe I could write for Print magazine one day.
1:19:50
And uh a couple of months later she writes me and asks me if I want to participate in something she's putting together for the upcoming HOW conference the next year in San Diego.
1:19:59
And um it's being at the time reality TV had had just sort of burgeoned into culture and there was a very popular TV show called Iron Chef about cooking in real time and the audience voting and she wanted to do a riff on that called Ironic Chef where three designers would create work on stage in real time and the audience would vote.
1:20:23
This to me sounded like the definition of hell.
1:20:30
And just to clarify for people, Print magazine is actually called Print It is called magazine.
1:20:36
It's not It is called Print magazine.
1:20:37
It's the oldest Print It's the oldest graphic design magazine in the country. It's 75 years old.
1:20:44
Um it has won I think five national design awards, general excellence awards for the not national design awards, I'm sorry.
1:20:51
Uh magazine awards um which is the highest honor an Effie I believe it's called um that a magazine can win and um it was it's it's a remarkable magazine and I I had this dream of someday writing something for it. So Ironic Chef. Yes, Ironic Chef.
1:21:10
Debbie Millman's personal version of hell. Yeah.
1:21:15
And and I I'm afraid to say no.
1:21:15
I feel like if I say no, I'm never going to be offered an opportunity to do anything with Joyce again.
1:21:20
Um so I say yes and I'm further humiliated when I get to San Diego um by real when I realize that I have to wear a chef's outfit on stage.
1:21:34
There are pictures of this by the way.
1:21:36
I'm not lying or exaggerating.
1:21:37
And um so I go through with this.
1:21:40
I um on stage with the MC Steve Heller who I'd never met.
1:21:44
Steve Heller is one of the world's foremost design critics.
1:21:48
He was the art director of the New York Times Book Review for 30 years.
1:21:53
He started numerous programs at School of Visual Arts, graduate programs.
1:21:58
Um and he's written about 170 books about design and graphic designers. He is the judge.
1:22:04
I am terribly intimidated because he is Steve Heller, one of the greatest people that has ever lived.
1:22:11
And there are three of us.
1:22:11
I come in second which is not terrible.
1:22:14
I don't win but I don't lose.
1:22:18
And in another aberrant moment of courage, I ask Steve, because he was nice to me that day, if he'd want to have lunch in New York City when we were back.
1:22:25
He lived in New York City as well. He agrees. We go to lunch.
1:22:29
I was so intimidated I had a cheat sheet that I'd prepared of topics in which I could discuss with Steve.
1:22:36
Wrote it on a paper napkin, put it in my lap, and I could refer to it if I choked and knew not what to say next.
1:22:46
In any case, I had some book ideas.
1:22:48
Steve told me they were both bad.
1:22:54
I went away a little bit discouraged but still happy that I'd met him and he told me that I'd I'd get a book just to be patient.
1:23:02
Four months later, a publisher calls at the recommendation of Steven Heller with a book that he had turned down.
1:23:06
They had wanted him to write with the horrific title How to Think Like a a Great Graphic Designer.
1:23:14
Once again, I think if I don't say yes to this, I'm never going to be asked for anything again. And I take on this book.
1:23:19
But I ask them if I could do it in a different way because I didn't believe that there was just one way for a great graphic designer to think.
1:23:27
There were myriad ways and could I interview great graphic designers and reveal how they think.
1:23:34
They agreed and that became my first book.
1:23:36
In the meantime, Joyce Ryder K, the editor of Print magazine, reaches out and asks me if I'd like to write a review about Wally Olins' then upcoming book on branding. I agree.
1:23:50
I write my first piece for Print magazine that year and I've written for every single issue since. Wow.
1:23:57
13 years later, 2 years ago, I was appointed the editorial and creative director of Print magazine.
1:24:05
Well, it seems like those brochures did play a role. Yeah.
1:24:08
And and that's just the start of it, Tim.
1:24:10
If it weren't for Speak Up and that story, I was then uh contacted by a fledgling internet radio network called Voice of America in 2004 shortly after a piece that Mark Kingsley and I wrote about election graphics that kind of went viral.
1:24:27
And they wanted me to host a show about branding.
1:24:31
Um I was worried that if I said no, I'd never get another opportunity again and asked if I could sort of do it about branding but maybe do it more about design and pitch this idea to them about Design Matters uh radio network show. Um they said yes.
1:24:48
Just when I was beginning to think, "Ooh, I might get rich from this."
1:24:52
They told me that I needed to pay them for the airtime. Surprise. Another surprise.
1:25:01
But I was really excited about this and at that time, you know, everything I was doing was very commercially driven and felt that this would be a way for me to talk about graphic design and engage with people in a way that had no commercial value whatsoever and was just all about how to satisfy sort of our souls, our creative souls.
1:25:19
And that's how Design Matters was born.
1:25:21
My podcast was born on this sort of Wayne's World-esque internet radio network called Voice of America.
1:25:29
I did the show for 4 years on Voice of America, paid them for 4 years to do it, and then brought the show to Design Observer.
1:25:35
Uh Bill Drenttel, the the late great Bill Drenttel, the founder of Design Observer, invited me to bring the show over to Design Observer in 2009 um with the proviso that I improve my sound quality.
1:25:54
I was doing my show with two handsets.
1:25:56
You know, like you you you ever you know, have have a conversation with two people on the same phone line in your house and you're on different handsets in different parts of the house and the echo and all of that.
1:26:04
Those were my early shows.
1:26:06
But I had no idea what I was doing.
1:26:09
There was there was no podcast when I started.
1:26:11
I started to upload my show to iTunes just for the kick of it.
1:26:15
Just to be able to share it.
1:26:18
And um now 12 years later, um 3 weeks I'm going to have my 12th anniversary of Design Matters. Amazing.
1:26:26
We won a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in 2009.
1:26:28
The end of 2015, iTunes and you know this cuz you're always on the list, but after 11 years, iTunes designated it one of the best podcasts on iTunes and I've I I've transitioned the show from a show about why design matters to a show about how creative people design their lives and the trajectory that people take.
1:26:50
And and even from this conversation you can probably tell how interested I am in how people make their lives, the choices that they make and how they live and what they dream about and what they become.
1:27:04
And so that's the the direction that the show has taken and I'm about to approach my 300th episode. Congratulations. That's a huge milestone.
1:27:14
And and you being interested in the in the way that you are and with the intensity that you are interested uh I think it's very well reflected in the episodes themselves.
1:27:27
And I we've spent some time in your studio. Yes.
1:27:32
one one one of the most lovely and engaging conversations I've I've ever had in interview format.
1:27:40
It was it was such such a relaxed and fun experience for me which is not the norm as as you know.
1:27:50
Uh so I certainly recommend everyone check out Design Matters.
1:27:55
But I want to talk about some of your decisions and specifically we could talk for 20 hours but I want to talk about a name that I had not heard in my life until very recently. Uh Milton Glaser. Mm. Yes.
1:28:15
as you'd mentioned, you'd done I guess brand makeovers or branding for Burger King, uh Star Wars, I think you uh Hershey's, Tropicana I think was another. Yes. Yes. Tropicana.
1:28:27
And tell me if I'm getting this wrong, but you know, at one point, if you walked into any grocery store, supermarket, etc.
1:28:30
, you had a hand in say 20% of everything that you saw.
1:28:35
Something something like that. Isn't that crazy? Yes.
1:28:38
And I mean that's that's mind-blowing when you consider the number of of different products, right? The SKUs.
1:28:42
And for people who are wondering what CPG is, consumer packaged goods.
1:28:46
And so it's at some point your hand was involved in just an incredible array uh and plenitude of of different products.
1:28:57
How did how did Milton Glaser enter the scene?
1:29:00
And could you describe for people who he is?
1:29:03
Milton Glaser is the elder statesman of the design world and is the world's one of certainly one of if not the greatest living graphic designer. Um, he's in his 80s.
1:29:18
He is responsible for the I heart New York logo.
1:29:21
He did that iconic Bob Dylan poster of Bob Dylan in profile with the streams of colorful hair.
1:29:28
He is one of the founders of New York magazine.
1:29:35
Um, the list goes on and on.
1:29:35
He's had more impact and created some of the most memorable, well-known, and iconic brands and identities in the world.
1:29:44
Um, my my relationship with Milton really began when I took a class of his at the School of Visual Arts a summer intensive uh, in the summer of 2005.
1:29:56
I had already interviewed him for Design Matters, but it was over the phone and I while I I cherish that interview, it was one of my very very early interviews, so I'm still a um, I'm I'm somewhat um, gun-shy to send people to listen to that one cuz it's so early in my journey as a podcaster.
1:30:19
Um, but in any case, I took this class with him and that that class, you know, it's interesting about how we started the show talking about my 8-year-old drawing and and you talking about your friend who had written this essay that then predicted his life.
1:30:36
Milton taught this summer intensive, I think, for about 40 or 50 years and he used to say that it was one of the most important things that he did.
1:30:43
He's not teaching it anymore.
1:30:45
Um, he um, had us do an exercise in that class where we had to envision the life that we could have if we pursued everything that we wanted with the certainty that whatever it is that we wanted, we would succeed.
1:31:04
And I I wrote an essay in May of 2000 No, I'm sorry, July of 2005.
1:31:10
Um, it was supposed to be a 5-year plan.
1:31:14
And um, he asked us to dream big and not to edit and said that it had a bit of a magical quality that he experienced with his students over and over, so to be careful what we wished for.
1:31:30
And I created this essay with these long-ranging, far-fetched goals that I can tell you now, 12 years later, um, have almost all come true. It is spooky spooky.
1:31:43
And so that's an exercise I do now with my students.
1:31:45
He's had Milton has had one of the most profound impacts on my life, aside from, you know, the profound impact he's had on the world.
1:31:52
I feel really, really lucky that I have been a student of his and have gotten to interview him now numerous times and and feel that my relationship with him is is certainly one of the luckiest things that's ever happened to me.
1:32:06
W- Can you describe the exercise as you do it with your students now?
1:32:14
Well, I teach undergrad and graduate classes at the School of Visual Arts.
1:32:17
I run a masters in branding program at the School of Visual Arts, which I was given this opportunity via Steve Heller, who I again would not have met had that whole Speak Up experience not happened.
1:32:30
So yet another thing, every single thing that I'm doing now in my life, Tim, stems from that experience.
1:32:35
Well, also, just uh, just to underscore another theme, he had in in some sense, you could interpret it as rejected two of your book ideas, even though he's nice to you and took and and went out to lunch with you, but now later on down the line, you you kept that relationship and lands you at SVA. Absolutely.
1:33:00
I mean, Steve is one of the most generous and engaging people I have had the privilege of of knowing and I I often tease Steve and say that he's my fairy godfather because he's the only person in my life, or maybe one of two people in my life now, that I could say has just been he he has this sort of generosity that is all about, here, take this, do that, make this happen. This is for you.
1:33:35
With no strings, no ties, no obligations, it's just pure generosity.
1:33:41
And he has done that over and over and over and over again for me uh, since meeting him back in 2004.
1:33:49
Um, so the exercise that I do now with my students, because they're quite a bit younger than I was when I was doing this 5-year um, essay or 5-year plan, I ask them to do a 10-year plan.
1:34:03
And so this gives them a chance to really mature into who they are in their 20s and into their early 30s and it's this um, 10-year plan for what I call a remarkable life.
1:34:13
And it's about imagining what your life could be if you could do anything you wanted without any fear of failure.
1:34:23
And they are the most life-affirming essays.
1:34:29
They are so full of hope and optimism and well-being and goodness that it gives me a sense that humanity is can be saved.
1:34:46
Um, and so I I've borrowed that exercise from Milton and now use that both in my graduate program and the undergraduate classes that I teach.
1:34:55
This is going to seem nerdy, but I'm a nerd, so I'll I'll run with it and that is do do you have any parameters for people at home who might want to try this?
1:35:06
Are recommendations, ways to start?
1:35:08
Is it bullets or is it prose in full No, it's so it's all paragraphs. end? Yeah.
1:35:13
Any any recommendations for people who would like to give this a stab?
1:35:16
So, let's say it is winter 2027.
1:35:23
What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who you living with? Do you have pets?
1:35:31
What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment?
1:35:33
Are you in the city or you in the country?
1:35:36
What are your What does your furniture look like? What is your bed like?
1:35:39
What are your sheets like?
1:35:41
What kind of clothes do you wear?
1:35:42
What kind of hair do you have? Tell me about your pets.
1:35:45
Tell me about your significant other. Do you have children? Do you have a car? Do you have a boat?
1:35:50
Do you have Talk about your career. What do you want? What are you reading? What are you making? What excites you?
1:35:59
What is your health like?
1:36:01
And write this day, this one day, 10 years from now.
1:36:06
So, one day in the winter of 2027, what does your whole day look like?
1:36:12
Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea, all the way through till when you tuck yourself in at night.
1:36:20
What is that day like for you? Dream big. Dream without any fear. Write it all down.
1:36:28
You don't have to share it with anyone other than yourself.
1:36:33
Put your whole heart into it.
1:36:38
And write like there's no tomorrow.
1:36:40
Write like your life depends on it because it does.
1:36:45
And then read it once a year. And see what happens. It's magic. It's magic, Tim.
1:36:52
It is a I love this exercise. I need to do this.
1:36:56
I'm not asking for some hypothetical listener.
1:36:58
Listeners, I love you guys, but this is this is also for me.
1:37:02
It is astounding and I do this now with all of my students and I can't begin to tell you how many letters I get from students from 10 years ago that are like, Debbie, it all came true. How did this happen?
1:37:15
And I am so thrilled that these things can make a difference.
1:37:20
And this goes back to our the earlier part of our conversation about my own fears about what I could or would or should become.
1:37:32
And the idea that at that same time in my life, that intersection on Bleecker Street and 6th Avenue, peering deep into my future and not knowing that anything was possible for me, to give somebody at that same stage in their life, or any
1:37:47
stage, really, but particularly at that vulnerable vulnerable stage when you are so worried about what you can or can't become, to give somebody that sliver of a dream, of a hope that this could happen and have them declare what they want, I think is a remarkable exercise. That's
1:38:04
That's why I call it your 10-year plan for a remarkable life. How long was your essay?
1:38:11
And is is there any uh, consistency to length?
1:38:16
Are there guidelines or is it as long as it takes?
1:38:20
And some are two pages, some are 20 pages.
1:38:22
Some are two pages, some are 20 pages.
1:38:24
I think the longer it is, the more likely it is to be affirmed for some reason.
1:38:31
I find the more care you put into it, the more the more care and detail you put in. Oh, doggy.
1:38:38
That's that's That's doggy.
1:38:38
Yeah, that's That's my Molly.
1:38:40
Sorry, she's excited about this exercise. Please continue. Clearly.
1:38:43
Um, I think that um, the more care you put into it, the likely the more success you'll have coming out of it.
1:38:52
Mine was I wrote it in a journal that I was keeping at the time, so it was about 5 by 7 and it was probably about 10 handwritten, big handwriting, I big handwriting, 10 big handwriting pages.
1:39:05
And it was the whole day.
1:39:07
And then, because I was really excited about it and because I love lists, I made a list of everything that I wanted to come true.
1:39:15
Well, I tell you I think that might be a good place to wrap up this part one, which I think we I think we may have more conversations in us.
1:39:28
I have so many questions I'd still like to ask, but I think that is a a given people have a primacy and recency bias.
1:39:35
I want them to remember this exercise as as as one of one of the the actionable recommendations that they can they can they can certainly explore from this interview. And there's so much.
1:39:49
Uh but let me ask before I let you go the the And I'll ask where people can find you and so on.
1:39:59
Learn more about your work, but before that, is there any parting piece of advice or recommendation uh question, anything that you'd like listeners to carry with them when they stop listening to this? Um well, let's see.
1:40:20
I I recently went through a pretty major um transition in my life.
1:40:28
And it was something that I had to make a a pretty big decision about.
1:40:36
And it was a somewhat prolonged agonizing decision, so much so that my friends and and loved ones were um no longer listening to my um sort of machinations in making the decision, cuz I thought they I never was going to actually make the decision.
1:40:55
And so um I can share that because I do think on the other side of that decision now is an important realization that I think can help people.
1:41:03
Um I was working um I have I've had a full-time job since I graduated college.
1:41:10
And for the last 22 years, I was working at a branding consultancy, as I mentioned, called Sterling Brands.
1:41:18
And had um been very lucky to be able to sell the company um that I was a part of and and ultimately a partner in um after about 13 years of of working there.
1:41:35
So in 2008, the two partners that I had, the man that had originally hired me, Simon Williams, and then Austin McGee, who was um the third partner to come in after me, um we sold our company to um Omnicom.
1:41:49
And at the time, I had been offered this opportunity with Steve Heller to start the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts and organized my time so that my day job at Sterling Brands wouldn't be impacted by what I was going to be doing at SVA, which was um made possible by starting my branding program as an evening program.
1:42:07
So I had two full-time jobs, a day job at at Sterling and my night job at SVA.
1:42:14
And um most people thought that I would go through my earn-out at at Sterling and and then leave and transition to um working at SVA and doing all of the personal projects that I had been talking for so long about doing.
1:42:30
And um so the five years happened, and we had a a really wonderful successful earn-out, so there was no excuse to him for me to um continue on on the same path, and it was time to make that change.
1:42:44
And the last thing I wanted was to end up like the characters in Revolutionary Road, that remarkable book where people talk about making these changes their whole lives and then never ever do. But I became terrified.
1:42:54
I became terrified that if I made this change, that I would not have financial stability anymore, that I would not be um able to fulfill all of the dreams that I had and would have to confront that.
1:43:10
And so five years turned into six years, and six years turned into seven years.
1:43:15
And just at a point where I was starting to think about really doing it, um sort of like Al Pacino in Godfather 3, I was offered an opportunity to take over as CEO of the company.
1:43:27
Simon Williams, the then CEO, was looking to become chairman and needed to appoint a new CEO, and he came to me and asked me if I wanted the job. And here it was.
1:43:36
This is the big decision of a life.
1:43:38
Do I become the CEO and have this amazing continuation of money and career and security and everything else that is conventionally um approved of, or do I say no, actually, I am not going to double down.
1:43:57
I'm going to live the way in which I have been saying I wanted to, with more freedom and more opportunity to do personal projects and pro bono projects and give back. And I had to decide.
1:44:12
And it took me four months to decide.
1:44:14
Simon Williams finally said to me, "Debbie, anything that takes you four months to decide probably means you don't want to do it."
1:44:22
And it was the hardest decision of my life, but I turned it down.
1:44:24
I turned the CEO job down.
1:44:28
And then two things happened.
1:44:28
First of all, one of the things that I realized was that I was in this trapeze.
1:44:39
And rather than just let go of the trapeze and do something else, I had every single crook of my body holding on to some other trapeze.
1:44:51
And that there was this sense of if I am not doing enough, I am not worthy.
1:44:57
If I'm not making enough, I am not worthy.
1:44:59
If I'm not producing enough, I am not worthy.
1:45:03
And suddenly, I had to not just let go of the trapeze, but let go of the entire apparatus.
1:45:10
And I have realized now two things.
1:45:15
One, most people live in a world of scarcity.
1:45:17
We think that all we have now is all we will ever have.
1:45:20
And if we give something up, we will just have less.
1:45:24
What ends up happening is that we don't think about all the possibilities of things that could come up if we give ourselves openings to receive them.
1:45:31
And so now, as opposed to having less than what I thought, I have way more because I have all these new things that I'm doing that I never would have thought possible.
1:45:42
Second, that hard decisions are only hard when you're in the process of making them.
1:45:48
Once you make them, they're not hard anymore.
1:45:53
Then it's just life and freedom.
1:45:53
And it's an extraordinary experience that I really would like to share with your listeners, with our listeners.
1:46:03
This it's such an important discussion on many levels.
1:46:06
And I I want I think it bear it's worth repeating a few things.
1:46:12
And certainly this echoes in my experience as well.
1:46:14
One, that agonizing over the decision is often harder than whatever the outcome of the decision will be.
1:46:26
And for that matter, if you make and in many cases, not all, but in many cases, if you make a decision and you decide that it's not the right decision for you, you can quit.
1:46:34
You can do something else.
1:46:36
It's not a a permanent sentence necessarily.
1:46:38
And also, this is something that I've had to learn and relearn many times in my life, which is if it's taken you that long to make a decision, it you probably don't and shouldn't don't want to and shouldn't do whatever it is that you're agonizing over with pro and con lists trying to justify in some fashion.
1:47:02
Uh it's it's And And both of those points I think are so so important.
1:47:04
I also think that if you're waiting for something to feel right before you do it, if you're waiting for a sense of security or confidence, that those things are sort of like being be satisfied with whatever it is you think you need before you do something if it's not something that is real.
1:47:36
So if you if you think, "Oh, I need this much money before I do this," when you get that much money, then you're going to realize, "Oh, I actually think I need this much more."
1:47:45
And it's just going to be this carrot in front of you that you are in agony you're that you're agonizing over trying to reach.
1:47:51
And then the other thing is I'm going to quote Dani Shapiro here, the great writer Dani Shapiro.
1:47:57
If you're waiting for confidence, and she I asked her once about confidence, and she said that confidence is highly highly overrated, and that most confident people or overly confident people tend to be kind of annoying.
1:48:11
Um And she said what she felt was more important than confidence was courage. And I fully fully agree.
1:48:18
Taking that first step, confidence really only comes from repeated attempts at doing something successfully.
1:48:26
But in order to take that first step, you need courage.
1:48:28
And that's much more important than confidence.
1:48:31
So for anybody that's waiting for the confidence to show up, take the first step in a moment of courage, even if it's aberrant courage, to come full circle in this conversation.
1:48:42
Such good advice, and it it reminds me of something that the brother, Kamal Ravikant, of another friend of mine, Naval Ravikant, told me.
1:48:52
So Naval is a very very successful entrepreneur and investor, among other things.
1:48:55
Very very good writer as well, as is his brother, Kamal, who just had a novel come out.
1:49:01
But Naval said to his brother, "If I always did what I was qualified to do, I'd be pushing a broom somewhere. Well said.
1:49:13
And I thought that was very, very encouraging. Touché.
1:49:15
Uh Debbie, I have so much fun every time we get to spend time together.
1:49:20
Where can people find out more about you?
1:49:24
Where can they learn more about your work?
1:49:26
Where would you like people to say hello on social if if if if that and I'll put all of this in the show notes for everybody listening. Sure, absolutely.
1:49:33
I'm Debbie Millman on Twitter and Instagram.
1:49:34
Um you can see more about my program at the School of Visual Arts at sva. edu. Um and debbiemillman.
1:49:43
com where you can listen to all my podcasts and see my visual essays and my books and so on and so forth.
1:49:49
For people who are not uh who who would who would be novices or new entrants into the world of say graphic design, recognizing that your podcast is about a lot more than that, which episode or episodes would you suggest they start with?
1:50:07
Uh I would suggest that they start with Chris Ware.
1:50:10
He is um an extraordinary graphic novelist.
1:50:13
It's my one of the most favorite episodes that I've uh ever conducted. you spell his last name?
1:50:20
w a r e And um from there, uh some of my favorite episodes over the last year, um aside from my episode with you which I cherish, um my episodes with Amanda Palmer, my episode with Alain de Botton, my episode with Krista Tippett, um Nico Muhly, the great composer.
1:50:41
Um those are all episodes in the last year that I'm most proud of. Wonderful.
1:50:48
Debbie, you're a rockstar.
1:50:48
Thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.
1:50:52
And to everybody listening, as always, you can find show notes, links to resources, all sorts of things that we talked about and maybe more at fourhourworkweek. com/podcast.
1:51:06
And until next time, thank you for listening.
1:51:10
Hey guys, this is Tim again.
1:51:10
Just a few more things before you take off.
1:51:12
Number one, this is five-bullet Friday.
1:51:14
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1:51:17
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1:51:24
And five-bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week.
1:51:33
That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered.
1:51:35
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1:51:43
It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.
1:51:51
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1:51:56
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1:52:12
And this is a very unique sponsor.
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Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors.
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And I'll come back to that in a second.
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That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance.
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Now normally, when I have a sponsor on the show, it's because I use them and recommend them.
1:54:03
In this case, it's a little different.
1:54:04
I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal.
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They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials.
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So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.
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But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh in the team and the company itself.
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So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client.
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There's no downside that I can think of.
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