Design the summer you've always wanted. In this Blueprint For Living summer edition, let's help with some of our favourite conversations about design. 

XX, XY, sex, letters and stereotypes

For Marie Boulanger, a type designer and scholar based in London, it's time we started being critical about the ways that gender influences the way we draw, describe and think about typography.

Her curiosity has turned into the book, XX XY: Sex, letters, and stereotypes, and she joins Jonathan to tell us more about why we persist to gender type.

Bill Bensley's world of escapism

Hotel designer Bill Bensley lives by the motto, if it’s worth doing, it's worth overdoing. The California-born designer has studios in Bangkok and Bali, and book More Escapism: Hotels, Resorts and Gardens features some of the region’s most extravagant resorts.

Waterworks — the origins of little boys peeing in fountains

Little boys peeing. It's a motif that repeats in neo-classical statues, bas-reliefs, and fountains the world over… officially called the Puer Mingens motif. But did it come from? Amy Boyington, is an architectural historian who has researched the motif's opaque origins.

Colin Bisset's Iconic Designs — the Lazy Susan

Whoever Susan was, we're sure she didn't appreciate being called lazy. Especially when the device named the Lazy Susan does such a fine job of ensuring everyone gets a decent stab at the dishes on offer.