Welcome to season three of Climify! This season, I'm talking to women across the globe who are at the forefront of climate science and climate action. Each guest is a thought leader in one or more of the Drawdown.org climate solutions sectors. What you may ask are the Drawdown.org solution sectors? Well, important topics like renewable electricity, soil and agriculture, architecture, oceans, health, education, and so much more. 

The goal of this season is, of course, to continue to help design educators incorporate a foundation of sustainability and regeneration into their courses, and in turn, inspire more climate designers.  

The new season of Climify drops April 12th, 2023 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You can learn more on how to get involved at www.climatedesigners.org/edu or join the discussion over on Instagram @clmiifypodcast. 

Season 2: Episode 14 – Carissa Cabrera

How important are oceans to our climate? How vital are they to our general health? Did a video of an injured turtle really change the world? Marine Biologist and educator Carissa Cabrera joins Eric and explains it all through her work in media, science, and activism. You’ll learn from this episode that indeed there is an ocean of opportunity for designers for climate action; dive in.

Links mentioned on the show:

• Eric’s Mutant Fish prints

• Plastic straw removed from turtle’s nose (YouTube)

• Kiss the Ground film

• Pique Action

Carissa Cabrera is a marine conservationist and sustainability educator based out of Hawai'i working on ocean climate solutions through media. She co-founded The Conservationist Collective to make ocean climate action accessible to everyone and encourage people to find their place in the movement.

The Conservationist Collective

tiktok.com/@carissaandclimate

Sustainability & The Sea Podcast

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

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Season 2: Episode 13 – Gianna Romero & Michelle Ngyuen

What is it like to be a freelance designer who cares about the climate crisis? What are the challenges? What are the best practices to thrive? Recent graduates from the Univ. of Illinois graphic design (Michelle Nguyen) and SCAD industrial design (Gianna Romero) programs share their stories of trying to “design for good” while paying the bills. They also explain what ways their design education could have better prepared them for this journey.

Michelle Nguyen is a multidisciplinary designer passionate about creating effective design solutions for the common good. She especially takes an interest in exploring the intersection of design and sustainability.

Gianna Romero is a multidisciplinary Industrial Designer who specializes in humanizing products and building great brands. Her expertise includes product branding and package design, consumer research and interpretation, and the development and implementation of everyday products/brands. With her love of design diversity, she aims to make impactful decisions for brand values, the environment, and for good. Eco-conscious design is good design.

michellenguyen.design

giannaromerodesigns.com

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

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Season 2: Episode 12 – Krishnaa Nair, Colin Chan, Meredith Bond, Noah Ahrens

How well are we preparing our design students for a career? Do we talk about climate and sustainability enough or effectively? What are our design students thinking and feeling about their education and future? Marc O'Brien guest hosts and learns from four California College of the Arts (CCA) design students about their insights into those questions and ideas to improve design education in part two of this two-part series called Climate Design in the Big World.

Krishnaa Nair is an Indian digital artist from Haryana, born in Gujrat. She attends California College of the Arts and lives in the Bay Area. She enjoys art directing, creating visual identities for brands, collaborating with other artists, and finding unique, exciting new ways to solve problems.

Colin Chan is a product designer and an advocate for good. Based in San Francisco, CA. He traveled far from his home in Singapore to pursue the ability to inject his enthusiasm for technologies and human-centered interaction into a force of change. He believes in designing experiences in the way we want to treat others and ourselves. Colin’s philosophies guide his practice of learning, engaging, and re-learning again in the field of user experience while continually informing his values in applying truth, empathy, and compassion to problem-solving. Moving from communications to art, he is currently pursuing a BFA in Interaction Design at California College of the Arts with a minor in Computational Practices. He’s open to opportunities to learn, grow and serve meaningfully in this field and, more importantly, be part of a force for change.

Meredith Bond is a mixed-media artist and designer who loves scavenging for hidden things, trying out every idea, and being unrestrained in her work. She loves taking new routes, whether that be in her sketches or on the bus exploring the city, where she can find a good cafe or a funny hat shop. Where will she go next?

Noah Ahrens is a graduating interaction designer from San Francisco attending California College of the Arts. He grew up around California, mostly living in San Diego where he enjoys surfing when he's offline. Noah has previously worked at Capital One as a user experience designer and currently works for Heymarket on the design team. From a young age, Noah developed a passion for design on both visual and systemic levels. He aims to design by exploring and solving problems by focusing on improving individual lives as well as society as a whole.

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

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Season 2: Episode 11 – Sadeen Alhalabi & Adam Dziaba

How well are we preparing our design students for a career? Do we talk about climate and sustainability enough or effectively? What are our design students thinking and feeling about their education and future? Eric learns from two University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign design students Sadeen Alhalabi & Adam Dziaba about their insights into those questions and ideas to improve design education in part one of this two-part series called Climate Design in the Big World.

This podcast is sponsored by Dreamhost.

Sadeen Al Halabi is a Sustainable Designer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She believes in the power of empathy and learning from nature to create spaces, experiences, and products for people today and 100 years from now. Her aim is to be part of the movement that decouples economic and societal growth from environmental degradation. Sadeen wants to implement her digital and practical design skills/experience to help create built environments that restore nature and bring communities together.

Adam believes in designing with nature to create a better world, both for humans and for nature. He maintains that it is essential to understand the world differently in order to make the necessary change and that sustainable design should be inherent in every aspect of life. He is interested in revealing ways that we can still do the things we love without hurting the planet that still somehow loves us. Adam is interested in utilizing digital design and practical, hands-on work to present and actualize his ideas.

linkedin.com/in/sadeen-alhalabi

linkedin.com/in/adam-dziaba

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

« Back to episodes

Season 2: Episode 10 – Brooke Havlik

The need for effective climate communication and storytelling is paramount to reach a public tipping point on important individual and political action. Good design and communication can shape any worldview and influence change. That is the good work Brooke Havlik had done for over a decade. In this episode, Brooke shares her vast experiences working in climate communication and effective strategies designers can use to turn the tide toward a better climate future.

This podcast is sponsored by Dreamhost.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Yale Program on Climate Communications

• Clean Creatives

• Covering Climate Now

• Data for Progress

• Climate Nexus

• DRILLED Podcast

Brooke is a strategic communications expert with over a decade of experience creating and executing global campaigns for human rights, climate, democracy, and science-based organizations. Through her consultancy business, Brooke Havlik Communications, Brooke works with nonprofits, philanthropy, and media outlets that are focused on impact.

Brooke is experienced in pursuing policy levers, narrative and culture change, storytelling, thought leadership, earned, owned, and paid media in order to achieve communications goals. She has advised philanthropy directors, influential nonprofit leaders, human rights advocates, and helped to conceptualize, design, and launch successful communications strategies. She has a keen ability to initiate, shape, and implement projects, using her network of relationships in key media markets, like New York City, D.C., and London. Brooke’s work shaping narratives has been featured in more than one hundred national and international news outlets, ranging from The Guardian and BBC to The Washington Post.

Prior to founding Brooke Havlik Communications, she served as a Communications Officer at Open Society Foundations, where she worked across several human rights programs. She served as the lead communications advisor for the Open Society Justice Initiative, often collaborating on complex legal campaigns in regional and international courts on issues such as press freedom, corruption, crimes against humanity, and ethnic discrimination.

At WE ACT for Environmental Justice, she served as the Communications Director, supporting climate communication and advocacy campaigns at the federal, state, and municipal level, as well as advising senior leadership, including Peggy Shepard. She began her media career at WGBH-Boston, writing, editing, and directing digital content for the award-winning science documentary series NOVA.

She is a judge for the Shorty Impact Awards, an international awards program created to raise global awareness around the positive impact that brands, agencies, and nonprofits can have on society. In her spare time, she coordinates Brooklyn Neighbors for Refugees, a volunteer-led community sponsorship program for Afghan refugees. Brooke lives in Brooklyn, NY..

brookehavlik.com

linkedin.com/in/brookehavlik

twitter.com/BrookeHavlik

Theme music by Casual Motive

At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

« Back to episodes

Season 2: Episode 9 – John Jennings

What media(s) could we use to tell better climate stories? What is the message that we should send to increase not only climate awareness but climate action? John Jennings, professor, comics artist, author, and design theorist shares with Eric a brief history of social justice in comics and why he thinks they are a valuable resource and medium to inspire climate activism for all ages.

This podcast is sponsored by Dreamhost.

Cli-Fi Comics mentioned in the episode:

• Climate Changed

• World Without Fish

• Trashman

• The Great Pacific, Vol. 1: Trashed

• The Great American Dust Bowl

• The Massive, Vol. 1: Black Pacific

• Snowpiercer

• Parable of the Sower

• The Leak

• The Rime of the Modern Mariner

• AD New Orleans After the Deluge

Teaching Comics to Designers Resources

• Comic Book Design

• Understanding Comics

• Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist

John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture.

As a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, comics, and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. His research interests include the visual culture of Hip Hop, Afrofuturism and politics, Visual Literacy, Horror, and the EthnoGothic, and Speculative Design and its applications to visual rhetoric.

Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University.

johnjenningsstudio.com

twitter.com/JIJennings

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

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Season 2: Episode 8 – Laney Siegner

Feeling down? Anxious? Stressed? Try getting your hands dirty in the soil. California-based soil expert Dr. Laney Siegner shares with Eric the amazing power of healthy soil and its fascinating story about how it can lessen the impacts of hurricanes, increase our overall health, and sequester carbon to decrease the impacts of climate change. Tune in also to learn the five principles of regenerative farming and how those can be translated for designers to create more responsibility to combat the worst of climate change.

As mentioned in the episode:

• GreenBrownBlue

• The Ants and the Grasshopper

• Drawdown.org

• Biggest Little Farm

• Soil Health Assessment worksheet

Laney recently completed her Ph.D. at the U.C. Berkeley Energy and Resources Group. She researches sustainable, agroecological food systems and climate change education, and completed several summers of sustainable agriculture work while researching for her dissertation. She is the creator and director of the Climate Farm School program at Terra.do that offers a deep-dive hybrid learning experience, both online and on-farm, on topics ranging from soil health and regenerative agriculture to building a more equitable food system.

She has published book chapters on teaching climate change in U.S. K-12 classrooms and on conducting participatory agroecology research. Prior to attending graduate school, she worked as a middle school teaching fellow for 2 years in Boston, MA as part of an AmeriCorps National Teaching Fellowship.

When she’s not teaching or learning, she enjoys being outside for a variety of physical activities – farming, worm composting, trail running, bird watching, or swimming in the ocean. Originally from the East Coast, she now lives on a farm in Sonoma County, California.

laneysiegner.com

Terra.do's Farm School

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

« Back to episodes

Season 2: Episode 7 – Gabrielle Merite

What convinces someone to commit to climate action? Why isn’t the terrifying data enough for some? Politics? Religion? Geography? Culture? Do we need better design? All of the above. Scientist and information designer Gabrielle Mérite explains why if you want to help convince people to act on the climate you want to connect to their culture and community, and maybe not mention the word climate at all.

Originally from France, Gabrielle Mérite is an information designer specializing in empathetic data visualizations for truth-seeking, ethically driven organizations. Deeply passionate about social justice and humanity’s responsibility for one another, her work breathes life into numbers so people can genuinely feel their importance. After receiving an M.S in Biology and working for several years as a scientific journalist, she exchanged words for illustrations, to communicate analytic findings visually, with honesty and compassion. Since then, she has worked with ethically-driven and creative organizations like the United Nations, UNICEF, Pentagram, and WeTransfer, to help uncover truths and share them with intention.

On the web

gabriellemerite.com

twitter.com/data_soul

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At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

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Season 2: Episode 6 – Stephen Nesbitt

Did you know low-lying clouds cool the climate or that communities designed in a grid can limit extreme weather events? We didn’t, and it’s likely fair to say you might not have either. In this episode, Atmospheric Scientist and Professor Stephen Nesbitt shares his expertise in clouds, meteorology, and climate technologies illuminating ways designers can create more climate resilient communities and engaging climate stories.

Prof. Nesbitt leads a research group in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, where his research and teaching interests reside in the remote sensing of precipitation using radar and passive microwave sensors, mesoscale meteorology, cloud dynamics, and microphysics, land-atmosphere interaction, numerical simulation, data science, and high-performance computation. He has taught courses in synoptic and mesoscale meteorology and weather forecasting, remote sensing, radar meteorology, tropical meteorology, mesoscale modeling, and geophysical data analysis. He has participated in 21 field campaigns on 5 continents and was the principal investigator of the international NSF/NASA/NOAA RELAMPAGO field campaign to study high-impact weather in Argentina in 2018-2019, which studied the intersection of weather, climate, hydrology, high impact weather in subtropical South America.

twitter.com/70_DBZ

swnesbitt.com

illinois.edu/profile/snesbitt

Theme music by Casual Motive

At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.

« Back to episodes