Working Girl, directed by Mike Nichols, stars Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, with Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack. Tess, played by Melanie Griffith, ascends the corporate ladder using her book smarts and street smarts, and by pretending to be somebody she's not. Tess strives to do big things, and has plenty of good ideas to get her foot in the door until she's caught, accused of being an imposter. With Sigourney Weaver as her boss Katharine, and Harrison Ford as Jack Trainer the love interest, the movie has plenty of laughs, and lessons too. Professor Karen Cheng joins the show to talk about what makes Working Girls such a fun, rewatchable movie.

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Professor Karen Cheng is the author of Designing Type, a comprehensive, systematic guide to the design of letters, published by Yale University Press. Since its initial publication in 2006, Designing Type has been translated into German, Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and it has been ranked #14 on a list of "Top 50 Typography Books of the Last 50 Years" in the journal Visible Language. As a researcher, Cheng has investigated how scientists can collaborate with designers to aid public and interdisciplinary communication. She is co-author of the widely referenced "A Brief Guide to Designing Effective Figures for the Scientific Paper" and has published on the positive impact of visual design on scientific communication and the role of visual design critiques in research practice, in the Information Design Journal. Cheng holds a Master's Degree in Design from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning and an Honors Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Penn State. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Washington in 1997, she worked in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble.

https://art.washington.edu/people/karen-cheng

https://vimeo.com/52861172

Designing Type

https://amzn.to/4dZeNYv

Type Directors Club book discussion

https://youtu.be/uEMtKyn1aGA

"A Brief Guide to Designing Effective Figures for the Scientific Paper"

https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.201102518

Positive Impact of Visual Design on Scientific Communication

https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/idj.23.1.09che

The Role of Visual Design Critiques in Research Practice

https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/idj.22008.sem

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Working Girl (1988)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTlPpI8knqN

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/working-girl-remake-selena-gomez

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Other movies and shows discussed:

Anchroman 2 (2013)

Freaky Friday (1976, 2003)

The Intern (2015)

Murderbot (2025)

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

Shrinking (2023-)

Ted Lasso (2020-)

Trading Places (1983)