User Journey w/ Sevy

Sara Soskolne is a type designer who, for over 16 years, cut her teeth, and her serifs, at the iconic Hoefler & Frere-Jones type foundry, working on such hits as Gotham, Verlag, and Chronicle. Today, she is an Executive Creative Director at Monotype, where she just published Gotham Variable — an update and transition completing the typeface’s 25-year journey from the cover of GQ Magazine to the facade of the new Obama Presidential Center.

Sara received her MA from the University of Reading with a focus on 19th century sans-serifs, and she’s taught at the Yale School of Art, the Book Arts Institute at Wells College, the School of Visual Arts, and Cooper Union, where she co-founded the Type@Cooper Condensed Program. She lives and works in New York.

Sara joins Sevy to discuss zigzagging through her design career, from North America to the United Kingdom and back again, as well as the “behind-the-scenes” of putting the finishing touches on one of the world’s most popular geometric sans-serif typefaces.

Ian Lynam works at the intersection of graphic design, design education and design research. He is faculty at Temple University Japan, and he operates the Tokyo-based design studio Ian Lynam Design where he works across identity, typography, and interior design. Ian writes for IDEA (JP), Modes of Criticism (PT/UK), Slanted (DE) and he’s published numerous books about design including, most recently, Fracture: Japanese Graphic Design 1875–1975 out now from Set Margins’ publications.

He is founder of the hybrid foundry Wordshape, proprietor of the subcultural boutique Sailosaibin, and part-owner of craft beer bar Neighbors. Originally from New York, Ian has a BFA in Graphic Design from Portland State University and an MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts. He is a three-time winner of an STA 100 award, in addition to many other accolades.

Ian joins Sevy to discuss the zeitgeist or whatever you call it: the role of design labor — and design criticism within the increasingly globally connected, late-stage capitalist world of abstract but life-or-death numbers, including how the history and technology of Japanese graphic design uniquely tells this story.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

Goodtype, from Katie Johnson and Ilana Griffo, is a platform for creative education, resources, and inspiration. Katie is a lettering artist who lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and pets. Her clients include Penguin Random House, Trader Joe’s, and Logitech. Ilana is a designer and author who lives in upstate New York with her husband and children; her clients include Lululemon, Microsoft, and Homegoods. Together, Katie and Ilana oversee a community of over 1M+ followers, and they also host The Typecast, a podcast where the dynamic duo talks all things creative business.

Goodtype joins Sevy to get practical: the tools and instruments, the hardware and software, and how creative entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a race — especially on social media. Passive income? Have fun with that.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

James Edmondson is a San Jose-based type designer who, in 2015, started OH no Type Co., the foundry for the fonts that no one wants; and in 2018, he co-founded Future Fonts, a platform for experimental type-in-progress. His new book, The OH no Book: A Serious Guide to Irreverent Type Design, is out now from Princeton Architectural Press. James studied graphic design at California College of the Arts (CCA) before graduating from the Royal Academy of Art's Type Media program in The Hague, Netherlands. He has taught type design at CCA in addition to Type West at the Letterform Archive and Type@Cooper Union.

James joins Sevy to talk about his journey from ice cream scooper to typography guru — the luck, the failure, and the lessons in between: from accidental pay-what-you-will success to those fabled corporate licensing deals.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

Paula Scher is a designer, painter, and educator. Since 1991, she has been Partner at influential New York City design firm Pentagram, and she’s the creative mind behind some of America’s most iconic brand campaigns. She’s made more than 2,000 album covers for artists like Billy Joel, Leonard Bernstein, and Bob Dylan — while her celebrated map paintings have inspired books, screenprints, and exhibitions. Her work’s been shown worldwide, with a new major exhibition, Type Is Image, on view through April 2026 at Die Neue Sammlung in Munich.

Paula joins Sevy to trace the arc of her groundbreaking career, from doing things in college that you shouldn’t discuss on podcasts to how designer intuition runs the show at Pentagram — and why. Hint: it has something to do with needing a vision.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by ⁠the Society of Typographic Arts⁠, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at ⁠userjourney.show⁠.

Season 01's finale is made in partnership with The Hopkins Review (THR), the award-winning journal of literature and culture from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Follow along with a selection of images from the conversation, and pre-order Volume 18 now, at hopkinsreview.com/john-waters. Listener discretion is advised.

John Waters is a filmmaker, actor, artist, and writer. Crowned the “Pope of Trash” by William S. Burroughs, his cult films include Pink Flamingos (1972), Desperate Living (1977), Polyster (1981), and Hairspray (1988). He is the author of eight books, including his recent debut novel Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022). For over 30 years, John’s visual art — his photography, sculpture, prints, and installations, have re-contextualized art, pop culture, and life as we generally know it.

Dora Malech is the editor in chief of The Hopkins Review and a professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems appear in publications that include The New Yorker, Poetry, and the Best American Poetry. Her fifth book of poetry, Trying × Trying, is forthcoming from the Carnegie Mellon University Press in Fall 2025.

To celebrate John as ⁠The Hopkins Review⁠’s next featured cover artist, he joins Sevy and guest host ⁠Dora for a freewheeling conversation through the people and themes that have defined the American iconoclast’s career. From playing “car accident” in junkyards as a child to re-trying LSD in Provincetown at 70, hear John’s stories as told through a selection of his own creations.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

Jill Gage is Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing and the Bibliographer for British Literature and History at the Newberry Library, Chicago’s independent research library, founded in 1887. In addition to conducting research, conserving artifacts, and teaching classes, Jill is preparing her next exhibition, Making an Impression: Immigrant Printing in Chicago, which is free and open to the public from December 12, 2024 to March 29, 2025. She holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from University of London and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Jill joins Sevy to talk about filling the gaps of print history with artifacts spanning 15th century incunables to 21st century artist books. They also discuss what the Newberry’s vast archives can offer both students and professionals today, including the stuff you can’t learn online. So, you know — the good stuff. Just don't try to check out Popol Vuh.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

Elaine Lopez is an independent designer and educator who is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the BFA in Communication Design program at Parsons School of Design in New York City. At her studio, LoPress Press, Elaine collaborates with cultural and academic institutions to explore the intersection of culture, identity, and equity within the field of design. She holds a BFA from the University of Florida and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design — both in Graphic Design.

Elaine joins Sevy to talk about navigating the industry as a first-generation Cuban American woman, what a design education can offer students in our technological age, and why the current state of human-centered design is… complicated.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

Caryl Pagel is a poet, editor, and author of four books, most recently Free Clean Fill Dirt (University of Akron Press, 2022). She is co-founder, editor, and publisher at independent American house Rescue Press, as well as director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s NEOMFA program. Caryl holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Caryl joins Sevy to talk about the (mostly) invisible art of editing — including her philosophy of "generative publishing," book-making as a social practice, and what haircuts have in common with design.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.

David Wallace Haskins is an interdisciplinary artist using the elements of light, space, time, and sound to create experiential interventions. He is founder and principal at DWH Studio, where he collaborates with specialists and technicians to create his work. Since 2021, David has been an artist-in-residence at Edith Farnsworth House, where his exhibition Landscape + Light re-contextualizes Mies van der Rohe's celebrated architecture as a study of immediacy.

David joins Sevy to talk about communicating without language, finding his way as an autodidact creative from Blockbuster to his first museum show, and how we can supercharge our awareness by embracing the silence around us — in form and in function.

User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.