User Journey w/ Sevy

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. ...

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 D...

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 fro...

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’ ...

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 archi...

Bud Rodecker explores the space between logical constraints and formal play. He is founder and design director at Span, a Chicago-based studio crossing the boundaries of communication design in all mediums. He is a former president of the Society of Typographic Arts, and he is a board member of the Chicago Design Museum.

Bud joins Sevy to talk about how an old Photoshop demo changed his life, the role designers play in social and e...

Nermin Moufti is a Syrian-born, Saudi-raised designer and creative director who works in both English and Arabic, re-invigorating local to global brands while leading boundary-breaking campaigns for clients like Planned Parenthood, the Type Directors Club, Netflix, StockX, and more. Currently, Nermin is a co-founder of Field of Practice, a women- and member-owned creative studio founded in 2020 that designs for change.

Nermin joins...

Ryan Ken is an actor and two-time Emmy Award-winning television writer at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver who uses an unconventional comedic perspective to comment on social issues, film, television, politics, and pop culture.

Ryan joins Sevy to talk about lessons learned from collaborations with designers, life before (and after) going viral online, and how to nurture your creative practice, and protect it, without burning out...

Alex Belardo Kostiw gives shape to stories. She is a Visiting Artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a 2023-2024 Hatch Artist-in-Residence, a Teaching Artist at Spudnik Press, and she makes at her self-publishing practice Tenderly.

Alex joins Sevy to talk all things bookmaking and then some, including how her creative development began as a child growing up in a crowded Bronx, her discovery of the intentionally ambig...

Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. She serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.

Ellen joins Sevy to celebrate the third edition of her classic guide to typography: Thinking with Type (Princeton Architectural Press, 2024). They d...