Design Better

Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with inspiring guests across diverse creative fields, to help you hone your craft, unlock your creative potential, and learn the art of collaboration.

Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”

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One of the great things about being a dad is getting to watch your favorite movies again with your kids and experience them through a new point of view, and also to watch new films together and see how things like animation evolve and create new ways of telling stories. 

One of the best examples of this from the past decade is Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, which used innovative techniques to pay tribute to the comic-book origins of the stories but add new depth and excitement without feeling forced. Aarron and I both loved watching the original—and the sequel— with our kids.

Visit our Substack for bonus content, transcripts, and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/yashar-kassai

So you can imagine how excited we were to chat with Yashar Kassai, Production Designer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and artist on The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and more. We learned about the tools he uses, how he thinks about developing a fresh look for a familiar franchise, and what the future of visual storytelling might look like.

Yashar Kassai is a production designer and artist, who has worked on animated films like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, Angry Birds, Book of Life, and more. You can find his work on Artstation, Instagram, and on his personal website.

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This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, access to our (small but growing!) library of books and participation in book giveaways, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. 

Upgrade to paid

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Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Incogni: Every year, both the number and scope of data breaches worldwide are rising. According to the 2022 Annual Data Breach Report by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of victims has gone up nearly 41.5% from 2021. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf, requests your personal data removal, and deals with any objections from their side. Use promo code DESIGNBETTER at https://incogni.com/designbetter to get 60% off an annual plan.

On Set With: The HGTV and Max On Set With podcast explores the sets and world building of beloved films and TV shows produced by Warner Bros. Discovery through conversations with art directors and set designers. Each episode highlights a different iconic set from film or television. Through a constellation of voices (set decorators, production designers, directors, and showrunners) our audience gets a first-hand account of the creation of the environments that became a part of our collective, global iconography — and actionable tips to bring the power of scenic design into our listeners’ own spaces.

Listen to On Set With on Spotify

Listen to On Set With on Apple Podcasts

LinkedIn: Design Better is supported by our pals at LinkedIn—our favorite social network. It’s hard to get your B2B marketing to land with the right audience. Let’s face it, the web can be a very noisy place! If your message isn’t targeted to the right audience—it just disappears into the noise. 

With LinkedIn Ads, you can precisely reach the professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. With LinkedIn's targeting capabilities, you can reach people by job title, industry, company, and more. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. To get a $100 credit on your next campaign go to LinkedIn/designbetter to claim your credit.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Costume design plays an important role in filmmaking. Films like Austin Powers, Lala Land, Boogie Nights, Black Panther, and Malcolm X transport us to a different time and place through costume. Have you ever wondered how the concepts for costume designs come together? We have—that’s why we’re talking today with Mimi Haddon, author of Palace Costume, a book about the most important costume house in Hollywood, and costume designer Shirley Kurata who was nominated for an Oscar for her work on Everything Everywhere All at Once.

We speak with Mimi and Shirley about the origin story of Palace Costume, how it's organized and how costume designers use its vast collection. We also talk about how working with a limited budget inspires creativity, how costume designers think about color in their work, and how they collaborate with directors and other colleagues to execute on the vision for the film.

For bonus content and more, visit our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/shirley-kurata-and-mimi-haddon

Mimi Haddon is the author of Palace Costume, a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Palace Costume & Prop Co., an exclusive Los Angeles film-industry haven of dresses, gowns, garments, accessories, props, and jewelry featured in countless movies for more than fifty years. Acclaimed designers such as Sandy Powell (Carol, The Aviator, Shakespeare in Love), Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther, Malcolm X, Frankie and Alice), Arianne Phillips (Once upon a Time in Hollywood, A Single Man, W.E.), Shirley Kurata (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and Mary Zophres (La La Land, Babylon, True Grit) and Mark Bridges (Boogie Nights, Licorice Pizza) each share insightful anecdotes about the importance of Palace Costume as their go-to creative resource, especially for historic period films.

Shirley Kurata is an Academy Award-nominated costume designer who has worked on films like Everything Everywhere All at Once. As a stylist, Kurata's clients have included celebrities such as Billie Eilish, Lena Dunham, Pharrell Williams, Zooey Deschanel, Beck, Mindy Kaling, and Tierra Whack. 

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Premium Episodes on Design Better

This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you’d like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you’ll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, early and discounted access to workshops, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show.  

Upgrade to paid

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Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Incogni: Every year, both the number and scope of data breaches worldwide are rising. According to the 2022 Annual Data Breach Report by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of victims has gone up nearly 41.5% from 2021. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf, requests your personal data removal, and deals with any objections from their side. Use promo code DESIGNBETTER at https://incogni.com/designbetter to get 60% off an annual plan.

Methodical Coffee: Join us for a coffee break with our friends at Methodical Coffee. In this segment, Methodical Coffee co-founder Will Shurtz discusses options for the best brewing gear, depending on your budget.

Select your own preferred roast at methodicalcoffee.com, and use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eli first met Brendan Boyle when Brendan was his instructor in the undergraduate Product Design program at Stanford, where Brendan has taught for many years. Brendan is also a toy inventor, and one of the assignments in his class was to design a toy—now that Eli has kids, he realizes how bad his toy project was, which made Brendan’s justified criticism of his idea that much more bearable. Brendan, however, has a unique gift for retaining the curiosity and playfulness that has made so many of his toy designs successful.

We spoke with Brendan about the importance of play in the creative process, testing new toy concepts with kids, how decoupling innovation and metrics can create judgment-free creativity, what’s wrong with LEGO today, and the eternal optimism that drives inventors.

Find bonus content, a transcript and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/brendan-boyle

Brendan Boyle is a toy inventor at Fuse London, Adjunct Professor at Stanford University’s d.School, and the Founder of the IDEO Play Lab. He believes that play is the key to innovation and has spoken to creative leaders, entrepreneurs, and students about the importance of playful exploration and risk-taking.

He founded the Play Lab to uncover kid-centered solutions to the challenge of boredom. As Brendan says, "The opposite of play is boredom." Under his leadership, the Play Lab has invented and licensed hundreds of toys and apps, including the best-selling Jumperoo and Elmo Calls, respectively.

Brendan also consults with companies about redesigning their organizational behavior to include space for play, wrote (and teaches) the Design for Play at Stanford’s d.School, and co-authored the award-winning encyclopedia of never-before-seen inventions, The Klutz Book of Inventions.

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This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, access to our (small but growing!) library of books and participation in book giveaways, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. 

Upgrade to paid

***

Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Incogni: Every year, both the number and scope of data breaches worldwide are rising. According to the 2022 Annual Data Breach Report by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of victims has gone up nearly 41.5% from 2021. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf, requests your personal data removal, and deals with any objections from their side. Use promo code DESIGNBETTER at https://incogni.com/designbetter to get 60% off an annual plan.

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

LinkedIn: Design Better is supported by our pals at LinkedIn—our favorite social network. It’s hard to get your B2B marketing to land with the right audience. Let’s face it, the web can be a very noisy place! If your message isn’t targeted to the right audience—it just disappears into the noise. 

With LinkedIn Ads, you can precisely reach the professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. With LinkedIn's targeting capabilities, you can reach people by job title, industry, company, and more. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. To get a $100 credit on your next campaign go to LinkedIn/designbetter to claim your credit.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes from our 6th season, with Vicki Tan. Vicki is a designer and author, who is now a staff product designer at Pinterest. When we spoke with her, Vicki was an associate principal product designer at Spotify, and Earlier in her career, she was a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google and product design at Lyft.

Find full show notes, bonus content, and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/rewind-vicki-tan

Original episode description

Vicki Tan has worked at companies that change the way we travel, think about our mental health, and access music from around the globe. To each of these roles she has brought her background in psychology, to better understand the needs of the people using these products.

We chat with Vicki about some of the things she has learned over the course of her career, from Lyft to Headspace to Spotify, how her creative process has changed over the years, and how her team does research. 

Vicki also talks about why she regularly takes a sabbatical from her work, and why “finding umami” is important to figuring out the core mission of a company. 

Vicki Tan is a Staff Product Designer at Pinterest. Earlier in her career, she was an Associate Principal Product Designer at Spotify, a senior product designer at Headspace, worked on communication and UX design at Google, and product design at Lyft. According to Frank Yoo, design director at Lyft, Vicki “is positive and thoughtful and puts as much care into people and teams as she does creating the artifacts themselves.”  

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This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you’d like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you’ll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, early and discounted access to workshops, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show.  

Upgrade to paid

***

Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Methodical Coffee: Join us for a coffee break with our friends at Methodical Coffee. In this segment, Methodical Coffee co-founder Will Shurtz teaches us how to select the right roast for our preferred flavor profile. Select your own preferred roast at methodicalcoffee.com, and use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order.

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

LinkedIn: Design Better is supported by our pals at LinkedIn—our favorite social network. It’s hard to get your B2B marketing to land with the right audience. Let’s face it, the web can be a very noisy place! If your message isn’t targeted to the right audience—it just disappears into the noise. 

With LinkedIn Ads, you can precisely reach the professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. With LinkedIn's targeting capabilities, you can reach people by job title, industry, company, and more. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. To get a $100 credit on your next campaign go to LinkedIn/designbetter to claim your credit.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sound is the unsung hero of interaction design. The iconic chorus you hear as you boot up your Mac, the double knock of an arriving Slack message, and the ascending notes Airpods make as they connect to a device all provide context and feedback without visual interactions. Without sound in our design toolbox, interacting with technology would be much more cumbersome.

Connor Moore has helped companies like Tesla, Uber, Peloton, and Youtube shape their brand and enhance the user experience through sound design.

We spoke with Connor about how he found a career in sound design, his creative process and the tools he uses, and how sound shapes a brand experience.

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This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you’d like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you’ll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, early and discounted access to workshops, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show.  

We’re also hosting a monthly welcome call on Zoom, where new subscribers can say hi, meet other members, and let us know what you are most excited to learn about and be inspired by.

Upgrade to paid

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Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Methodical Coffee: Join us for a coffee break in this episode with our friends at Methodical Coffee. In this segment, Methodical Coffee co-founder Will Shurtz teaches us how to select the right roast for our preferred flavor profile.

Select your own preferred roast at methodicalcoffee.com, and use code "designbetter" for 10% off of your order.

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

LinkedIn: Design Better is supported by our pals at LinkedIn—our favorite social network. It’s hard to get your B2B marketing to land with the right audience. Let’s face it, the web can be a very noisy place! If your message isn’t targeted to the right audience—it just disappears into the noise. 

With LinkedIn Ads, you can precisely reach the professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. With LinkedIn's targeting capabilities, you can reach people by job title, industry, company, and more. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. To get a $100 credit on your next campaign go to LinkedIn/designbetter to claim your credit.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Becoming a better communicator is one of the best ways to level up your career. Being able to think on your feet and communicate ideas effectively is critical, no matter what role you have right now, or where you’d like to be in the coming years.

Our guest today, Matt Abrahams, is just the guide you need to help you improve your communication skills. Matt is a leading expert in communication with decades of experience as an educator, author, podcast host, and coach. He lectures at Stanford’s Graduate School of business where he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting. 

Last year Matt wrote the book Think Faster, Talk Smarter, which aims to teach you how to speak successfully when you’re put on the spot. We talk with Matt about how to become a better presenter, how improv can help your speaking skills, and the winning formula for an impromptu toast.

Matt Abrahams is a leading communication expert with decades of experience as an educator, author, podcast host, and coach. He lectures in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he teaches strategic communication and virtual presenting. Recognized with Stanford GSB’s Alumni Teaching Award, Matt's influence extends beyond the classroom as a sought-after keynote speaker and consultant.

Matt has guided presenters for IPO road shows, Nobel Prize, TED, and World Economic Forum presentations, and consults for the United Nations’ Secretary General’s Strategic Planning and Communication Office. His popular podcast, Think Fast, Talk Smart, has garnered millions of views, and his books, Think Faster, Talk Smarter and Speaking Up without Freaking Out, provide practical techniques to help individuals communicate confidently and manage speaking anxiety.

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This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, access to our (small but growing!) library of books and participation in book giveaways, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. 

Upgrade to paid

***

Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds 🤓. We have our very own Design Better roast at Methodical, grab some here to fuel your creativity: https://methodicalcoffee.com/products/design-better-coffee

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Design has the potential to help us solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. But few designers and entrepreneurs recognize that potential. 

Paul Lambert, co-founder and CEO of Quilt, sees design as a tool to drive the adoption of climate change mitigation technologies. That’s why he’s partnered with industrial designers Maaike Evers and Mike Simonian who are helping the team at Quilt rethink how we heat and cool our homes, a major contributor to the average home’s carbon footprint.

We spoke with Maaike, Mike, and Paul about how they approached the challenge of designing a process as well as a product, bringing fresh eyes to familiar problems, and how they collaborated with engineers to create a product that is both beautiful and highly functional.

Find the full episode, transcript and bonus content on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/quilt-mike-and-maaike

Mike & Maaike

Mike & Maaike is a progressive industrial design studio led by Mike Simonian and Maaike Evers.

Formed as a design laboratory, the San Francisco studio works both independently and with clients to create new opportunities through products, technology, furniture, environments and transportation.

Maaike Evers is Dutch, Mike Simonian, Californian. These distinct backgrounds inform a diverse body of work marked by experimentation, substance and strong conceptual narratives.

Collaborations include: Google, Sonos, Headspace, Haworth, Artifort, Incase, Belkin, Xbox, Blankblank, Council, Coalesse, Quilt, Steelcase, and the City of San Francisco.

Paul Lambert

Paul founded Quilt after committing himself to designing a company that he could spend the rest of his life on. A breakthrough came in 2022 after realizing the answer was working on whatever problem was most threatening to the next generation of humans and that the problem today is climate change. Paul built his first internet business as a teenager, founded Learndot, an education platform, and was a Partner at Google’s Area 120.

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This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you’d like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you’ll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, early and discounted access to workshops, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show.  

Upgrade to paid

***

Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Methodical Coffee: Roasted, blended, brewed, served and perfected by verified coffee nerds 🤓. We have our very own Design Better roast at Methodical, grab some here to fuel your creativity: https://methodicalcoffee.com/products/design-better-coffee

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

Greenlight: Years ago, Aarron and Eli set up their kids with Greenlight, a debit card and money app made for families. Their allowance is automatically deposited into their account and is divided into three buckets: spending, saving, and giving. With Greenlight’s investing tools, we’ve helped our kids learn how to invest in stocks and mutual funds and they can see those investments grow. Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free: http://greenlight.com/designbetter

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi folks!

We hope your summer is going well. Aarron and I are traveling and spending some time with our families this week, so we thought we’d rewind to one of our favorite episodes, with Julie Zhuo. The episode came to mind because one of our listeners asked us what episodes we’d recommend to someone who is growing their team, and Julie’s book The Making of Manager has a lot of helpful advice. 

Find the full episode, transcript, and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/rewind-julie-zhuo

We also suggested Tony Fadell’s episode to our listener…the inventor of the iPhone and iPod has some great tips about hiring people who are skilled but don’t necessarily have the experience that ticks all the boxes of the posted job description.

We first aired the interview with Julie back in 2019, when she was the VP of Product Design at Facebook. Since then, she’s gone on to found her own company called Sundial, with the mission to help teams make faster, smarter decisions with data.

Original episode description

Listen as Julie Zhuo, former VP of Product Design at Facebook and author of The Making of a Manager, recalls some of her earliest professional experiences at one of the fastest growing companies on the planet. She reveals how she got her start and grew to be a highly influential design leader renowned for building top-notch teams. Julie talks about the difference between leading and managing, and shares personal examples that can help you advance your career.

Julie Zhuo started building products as employee ~100 at Facebook and went on to head up product design for the Facebook app for many years. She’s kept a blog called The Looking Glass, about design, technology and leadership for much of that time. In 2019 she wrote a bestselling leadership book called The Making of a Manager. Currently, she’s living the entrepreneurial journey with her start-up Sundial whose mission is to help teams make faster, smarter decisions with data.

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This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you’d like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you’ll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, early and discounted access to workshops, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show.  

Upgrade to paid

***

Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

Greenlight: Years ago, Aarron and Eli set up their kids with Greenlight, a debit card and money app made for families. Their allowance is automatically deposited into their account and is divided into three buckets: spending, saving, and giving. With Greenlight’s investing tools, we’ve helped our kids learn how to invest in stocks and mutual funds and they can see those investments grow. Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free: http://greenlight.com/designbetter

Babbel: Babbel’s quick 10-minute lessons are hand-crafted by over 200 language experts to help you start speaking a new language in as little as 3 weeks. Here's a special, (limited time) deal for our listeners: Right now get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription by visiting http://babbel.com/designbetter. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the years, Eli spent a lot of time diving and doing photography—from designing underwater photography equipment, to running an underwater photography magazine in the early 2000’s, to doing research work using towed underwater camera systems. And both he and Aarron have a huge amount of respect and admiration for folks that are at the top of their craft. After watching the Academy-award winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, both of us knew that we needed to learn more about the cinematographer Roger Horrocks

Visit our Susbtack for the full episode, transcript, and other bonus content: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/roger-horrocks

Roger is an award-winning wildlife cinematographer with over 15 years of experience filming behavioral sequences for the BBC, Netflix, Disney and National Geographic, in addition to his work on My Octopus Teacher. There’s a lot of overlap between photographic work and what it takes to be a good designer, and we talk with Roger about how he shapes the story and collaborates with the directors and editors, cultivating patience, and how generative AI fits into his creative workflow. Plus we also ask what it was like to swim with 🦈 great white sharks and 🐊 Nile crocodiles!

Roger Horrocks has worked from the frozen poles to the tropical equator and is experienced in documenting both open-water and benthic-based stories and behaviors.

During this period he narrated and co-directed three documentaries with Craig and Damon Foster. The first of these "Into the Dragon's Lair", was nominated for an Emmy for best Cinematography in 2010, and the sequel, 'Touching the Dragon" was selected as one of the feature shows for National Geographic's 125th centenary year celebrations. Roger was also nominated for Best Narration at Jackson Hole.

***

This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, access to our (small but growing!) library of books and participation in book giveaways, and our new enhanced newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. 

Upgrade to paid

***

Visiting the links below is one of the best ways to support our show:

Zeplin: Few things frustrate designers quite as much as seeing the UI they’ve meticulously designed, botched when built out. But Zeplin can help you make every design-to-dev handoff efficient and accurate so you nail every release on time and on budget. Design Better listeners can get their first month of the Basic Plan free. Just go to zeplin.io and use code DESIGNBETTER to get your first month of the Basic Plan free.

Greenlight: Years ago, Aarron and Eli set up their kids with Greenlight, a debit card and money app made for families. Their allowance is automatically deposited into their account and is divided into three buckets: spending, saving, and giving. With Greenlight’s investing tools, we’ve helped our kids learn how to invest in stocks and mutual funds and they can see those investments grow. Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free: http://greenlight.com/designbetter

Babbel: Babbel’s quick 10-minute lessons are hand-crafted by over 200 language experts to help you start speaking a new language in as little as 3 weeks. Here's a special, (limited time) deal for our listeners: Right now get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription by visiting http://babbel.com/designbetter. Rules and restrictions may apply.

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