40,000,000,000,000 DPI

40 Trillion DPI is turning 50! Our fiftieth episode is coming up and we want you to be a part of it. Have a burning question you'd like to ask us? Or, I guess, pose to the larger 40 Trillion DPI community? We're doing an AMA!

Record a question at memo.fm/40trilliondpi (don't forget to say your name) and we'll answer as many as we can in the 50th birthday episode.

Thanks for listening! We love you!

This week, we put on a stretched out vintage lacy thong, an Everlane Oxford shirt, Steve Madden heels, a Gen Z vaguely bug-like nose cuff, and… basketball shorts as we say goodbye to all the clean girls, office sirens, bubble skirts, furry boots, scene queens, and all the other dash cores as we say warmly welcome the Skibidi brain rot of automated AI films about slugs.

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Music in this episode from Human Gazpacho. Theme music by Lobo Loco. Outro by Mello C. All via Free Music Archive.

This week, we're joined by "octopus of knowledge/AI robot", Bryan Lehrer! Bryan guided us on a deep dive into gravestone aesthetics and somehow segued into an existential reckoning of what designers are capable of? It's a wild ride!

This week we navigate a treacherous path down the “ethnic food aisle” of jewel-toned squiggle packaging with the guidance of It’s Nice That’s Roshita Thomas AND we traverse the AI-generated 2024 butthole of Verse.surf and are incepted, smooth and edgeless, into the AI-within-AI generated 90s teen bedroom wormhole of our dreams.

This week, we get Canva-ified with Instagram's new creator tools, we are hot on the case of international rings of AI slop shops, and we spend an afternoon in our plague masks and corsets at the design Ren Faire!

This week—on 40 Trillion DPI America Design Carnage Edition—we get into the brief life of a briefly created logo, we consider word art in official government docs, we learn about online dating streaming services (RIP), and we consider the sartoriality of the postal service uniform!

ALSO: we made a cool new hat! It says “free fonts” on it, embroidered in an authentic hand-drawn free font. It is black. It is a “dad hat.” See the hats for yourself and find the link to buy at designfreaks.cafe or on our instagram.

Music in this episode is by Human Gazpacho, from Free Music Archive.

This week we get lost in the cursed wilderness of legalese trying to update our subscription to Adobe Bear Trap’s AI Swiss typography generator AND we get social at the design gym with the Mondo 2000 cyber phreak fractal polycule.

This week we frolic into the abundant wilderness to write poems with our tattooed hands in monochrome Notion, on our Daylight Computers and we are healed! We sip the viscous black liquid dripping from America’s Mayor, and we are healed! AND we take a five minute pit stop that takes 36 hours in the twisted metal symphony of the Helios House Speedway Express gas station concert hall, and we are healed!

Hi everyone! This week we talk about IKEA's brazen theft of artist Tim Lahan's work for their SF food hall; we celebrate weirdo interstitial illustrations in the AutoDesk "State of Design and Make 2024" report; AND we step into the path of social contract totality at the recent total solar eclipse!

Thanks for listening!

Find us on Instagram at:

instagram.com/40000000000000dpi

Or at Substack:

40trilliondpi.substack.com

Music for this episode by Human Gazpacho.

This week we’re joined by our friend, Holiday Black. Holiday is a concept-forward art director with a passion for youth culture, creativity, and their two cats. They’ve been art directing for the past four years, and have had the opportunity to work on alcohol, fast food, cars, fashion, and footwear. Outside of work, Holiday can be found crafting, looking for hot springs, reading a book, or googling whether or not mercury is in retrograde. You can find Holiday’s work at www.holiday.black.

We talk with Holiday about their work, royal photoshop fails, corgi eugenics, and design as a portal to spiritual ego death and ultimately enlightenment.

Thanks for listening! Ciao!