DesignThinkers Podcast

From the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, this is the DesignThinkers podcast. DesignThinkers is Canada's largest graphic design conference. Since the year 2000, the Association of Registered Graphic Designers has been bringing together visionaries from a range of disciplines to explore creativity and the design process live and on-stage. This podcast is an extension of that mission. We’re here to talk about process, creativity and the business of design with past and present DesignThinkers speakers. Join our host, Nicola Hamilton , for candid conversation with creative legends such as Erin Sarofsky, Michael Beirut, Paul Scher, Gail Anderson, Meg Lewis, Christopher Doyle, and so many more. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us on

DesignThinkers Podcast is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 68 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts DesignThinkers Podcast, a arts show with 68 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  Episode #6

  Erika Barbieri on Tasty Packaging Design

  Sep 30, 202651 minS5

  Erika Barbieri is the co-founder and creative director of OlssønBarbieri, a design studio in Oslo. The studio's ethos is built almost entirely around one idea: that packaging can be a portal into much bigger conversations about food. She and her partner Henrik met in design school in Florence, moved to Oslo in 2005, and spent years finding their footing before officially committing to the studio in 2012. In this episode, Erika talks about how for her, good packaging design lives at the intersection of economic interest, cultural and social expression, ecological complexity, and aesthetics. That balance shows up in how the studio works, too. They’re as equally committed to research and storytelling as they are to creating beauty in the world. We talk about their work on Varus 775, a spirits package that was named Best in Show at the 2026 Dieline Awards, their work on Steroescope Coffee, an early wine project and her upcoming DesignThinkers talk. This episode is for designers who want packaging that does more than sit on a shelf, for anyone curious about the research that hides behind a beautiful work, and for the food lovers who've always suspected that there's some overlap between what tastes good and what looks good. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca . Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #5

  Goldie Chan on Personal Branding for Introverts

  Sep 16, 202652 minS5

  Goldie Chan is the author of Personal Branding for Introverts , the founder of the social strategy agency Warm Robots, and the Huffington Post once called her the "Oprah of LinkedIn." She built that reputation kind of by accident. She started posting a daily video on LinkedIn as a way to push her introverted self to speak on camera. She then went on to post 800 consecutive daily videos between 2017 and 2019, long before AI made that kind of output easy. In this conversation, Goldie takes us back to her biology degree from Stanford, a failed fashion brand, and an intervention from her friends that nudged her out of a depression and into a marketing job that shifted her focus. From there we get into the real substance of her work: the five C's of personal branding, why she thinks the stereotype that introverts are quiet is a myth, how she protects her energy, and the surprisingly playful daydreaming exercise she uses to help people figure out what they actually want. We also get into her side hustles, which includes producing films and writing Archie Comics, and a candid conversation about why she chose to share her cancer journey publicly. This episode is for anyone building their personal brand or working in branding. It’s also for the introverts in the room who feel like the current playbook wasn't written for them. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca . Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #5

  Gabby Lord & Lauren Wong on Being Delusional Enough to Start a Company

  Sep 2, 202652 minS5

  Five years ago, Gabby Lord and Lauren Wong started a design studio because a friend joked that they should—and because Gabby was, by her own admission, extremely burnt out and looking for a way out of her work situation. Those aren't good reasons to start a company, and yet SUPER KEEN is succeeding by most metrics. They complete 20 to 35 projects a year, have found a work-life balance that works for them, and have built a reputation for delivering solid design and strategy work. In this conversation, Gabby and Lauren walk me through the studio's early years. It was reactive, maybe a little chaotic, and included a website that instead of showing work, redirected prospective clients to a video of Tom Holland lip-syncing. They talk candidly about why they've kept Super Keen small despite pressure to grow, why they've published their studio's financials publicly every year, and how they're thinking about success. This episode is for anyone questioning whether bigger is actually better. It’s for anyone feeling the pressure to scale—or to do things the way they’ve always been done. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca . Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Episode #2

  Edel Rodriguez on the Risk of Staying Quiet

  Aug 5, 202642 minS5

  Edel Rodriguez refuses to be small or quiet. He’s the illustrator behind some of the most recognizable political images of the last decade. That 2016 cover for TIME Magazine, the one of Donald Trump melting down: that was Edel. The Der Spiegel cover of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty. Also Edel. At this point, he's produced more than 300 images of a single, very orange, subject. As a kid who grew up in a country where saying the wrong thing about the wrong leader was dangerous, Edel has spent his career speaking up. In this conversation, Edel talks about hustling his way into an art director at just 26 years old. We talk about how that experience informed his editorial illustration process. We talk about how social media is a great place to share the kind of work you want to be making and to rally interest until someone notices. We get into how he wrote his graphic memoir Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey backwards, designing the cover years before he wrote a word. We talk about how the book's ending—a visual rhyme between the events in Havana in January 1959 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—came together at the very last minute. He talks candidly about why he refuses to self-censor, why he's not tired of the Trump-based work, and why the question he'd most want to ask himself in twenty years isn't about politics at all. This episode is for illustrators, designers, and anyone else who's been told to play it safe—and isn't sure they want to. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca . Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com .

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  DesignThinkers Podcast

  Temi Coker on Starting Before You're Asked

  Jul 22, 202647 min

  This week on the DesignThinkers podcast, I’m joined by Temi Coker. A Dallas based designer, photographer and the multidisciplinary artist behind Coker Studio . Temi’s client list includes Adobe, Apple, Google, HBO, Peloton and The Oscars. But almost none of it started with a client brief, it started with a self assigned poster a day challenge in 2016 made for no one but himself. And it led Temi to a belief that you should be making creative work just to make it. In this conversation, we trace that thread through his whole career, from a stint studying biomedical engineering to please his parents, to pursuing digital media for himself, from making a pillow because his wife thought his work would look good in people’s homes to a full fledged home collection at Walmart. From teaching photography and design at his former high school, so that students would have a model of what a Black creative professional looks like to finding the nerve to ask the Academy if he could steep his Oscars statuette artwork in Black history. This episode is for anyone with an idea sitting quietly in their mind, something they haven’t started yet. Temi’s whole career is proof that the things you make for yourself are often the things that end up mattering the most. Follow us on Instagram @rgdcanada or visit us online at rgd.ca . Purchase tickets to the upcoming DesignThinkers conference at designthinkers.com .

  ListenShow Notes

Recent guests on DesignThinkers Podcast. Study who booked and why before you pitch.

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.