DESIGN, BUILD, AND MODIFY

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In his mid-20s, Scott Dadich told his editor at Texas Monthly, Evan Smith, that he wanted his job.

A move like that is a combination of arrogance, youth, and frankly, balls. But you should also know that Dadich is an engineer. And what do engineers do? Well, according to one definition in Merriam-Webster, they “skillfully or artfully arrange for an event or situation to occur.”

Of course, you probably know Dadich as an art director and editor, but beyond the titles, he’s the kind of guy who builds things, re-engineers them, re-configures them or, more importantly, thinks differently about them.

To date, his life’s work has been building magazines—marrying words and pictures and combining his love of math and engineering with an eye towards new, unforeseen outcomes in a long career that includes stints at the aforementioned Texas Monthly, and also Wired, Condé Nast Digital—yes, we’ll talk iPads—Wired (again) and then on to his own agency, Godfrey Dadich Partners, where he is trying to engineer a new approach to advertising.

As a rare creative who has helmed a magazine as an editor-in-chief and art director, Dadich has ideas about how to better create everything, from where digital and print sit in the ecosystem, to the makeup of an actual magazine, and even how teams should fit on the masthead. He has put these ideas to practice on the page, on the web, and also on the streams, in his award-winning Netflix series about the creative process Abstract: The Art of Design, which premiered in 2017.

Our conversation with Scott, a rather long one for us, starts right now.

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Mountain Gazette, Commercial Type, and Lane Press.

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