Jens Bringsjord
You're listening to. Design. Atlas season four.

Jens Bringsjord
Welcome to design outlast season four. We've got a recap episode today for you on everything season four, and in this episode, we are going to delve into some exclusive insights and behind the scenes details from this past year.

Megan Luedke
But before we proceed, it's crucial to highlight an important disclaimer for this episode. There will be spoilers for all of season four.

Megan Luedke
If you haven't already, we encourage you to revisit the beginning of season four and listen to the previous episodes to fully enjoy the journey. Before listening to this final episode of season four. And now that we've got that out of the way, let's dive in.

Jens Bringsjord
Yeah. So season four, it all started back at the end of 2022. Shocking, right? Megan. Yeah. This is a while ago.

Jens Bringsjord
Hard to believe. And I feel like there were a lot of things that we learned. you know, every season we get better, we improve in a lot of things, and we definitely streamlined a lot of our processes this season. I felt where we learned a lot from our last seasons, of course, and we brought that into this fourth season.

Megan Luedke
Yeah. And I think, like for our listeners, you don't get the full behind the scenes, like how much work we really put into the outreach to guests. The organizing our folders, our content, the transcripts, the, audio files, just making sure that everything is sort of running smoothly. And over the last two seasons, we've really like dialed into our a really like, streamlined process to make sure that we are efficient and quick and I think just, you know, we've been we've had lots of practice at this point.

Megan Luedke
We've been doing this for four years that we were able to really, when we were able to work on things, make it efficient and quick in, in what we were doing.

Jens Bringsjord
Definitely, definitely. And I felt like even just getting, you know, one of those big things, I think that takes a lot of our time and effort is to find like guests for a season and also create that entire story that goes with all of those guests. So it really goes to this storyboarding at the beginning that we do it to kind of both find our guests, of course, but also understand from a larger, greater, higher point of view vantage point, so to speak.

Jens Bringsjord
It's the theme that we're going to bring, within the season. And then like hitting all the different points that we want to in the season and finding a guest that kind of matches with that sort of connectedness that we're trying to bring to the to the show.

Megan Luedke
Right. And then just the overall process of finding guests, I feel like this season was maybe a little bit harder than what we've had in the past. but at the same time, I think the guests that we did reach out to were significantly more responsive. And so we were able to, like, get guests the first time we outreach versus, you know, I think in previous seasons, we have to reach out to five people before we get like one, yes, back or whatever.

Megan Luedke
I think this season, those statistics are probably a little bit better and more in our favor, but it felt like it was harder to find people. I think we spent more time researching who should we bring out and like, who should we reach out? but then everybody kept saying, yes, I was great people.

Jens Bringsjord
I felt like we're much more responsive, as you said. So I found that, you know, maybe it could have been the people that we reached out to. You know, we just got lucky, because, yeah, like you mentioned in the previous seasons that we've been, you know, creating, it has been a lot harder to get guests, of course.

Jens Bringsjord
And so I potentially that was just kind of reflecting on this now and thinking like potentially we're seeing, it being becoming a bit easier on this. yeah. Guests hunting kind of thing because we have a, a bit more of an established show. we're on our fourth season. We, you know, we now have a lot of episodes that kind of are our journey in this Design Atlas podcast is really showing and people can see it.

Jens Bringsjord
And I find that, you know, we I mean, we even get people that reach out to us now if they, you know, to be on the show as well, which is I think we we're definitely seeing a different twist in that realm. versus like when we were just starting out, we were like hunting for people, like trying to connect with a bunch of people, like asking people if they wanted to be on the show.

Jens Bringsjord
And when you don't really have many episodes, to show before, it's really hard to get them to say yes. So I find that maybe it's like a couple of different factors that kind of influence that for this season, but without a doubt it's been a lot easier and hopefully it will just get even easier as we go.

Jens Bringsjord
The one other challenges, although I think we'll still keep coming up as the, you know, next season, you know, season five, as we are looking to that, it's more about thinking about how we connect all of those guests, how we tell the story of the season. And, you know, you can get a lot of different people. That's that's the easy part.

Jens Bringsjord
But are those people like, going to help the story that we're trying to, to connect with?

Megan Luedke
Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say, is that I think the reason that we had a harder time finding people was because we wanted to connect them to the story that we had. And so that's what is taking longer now versus before. It was just, you know, reaching out to as many people as we could and not getting responses.

Megan Luedke
And now it's reaching out to the right people that fit what we're trying to say in the message and story that we're building for the season.

Jens Bringsjord
So the guests, on the guest side, it was it was great. We we got, you know, we got everybody pretty quickly, actually. It wasn't it didn't take too much time. But you might be wondering why it took so long to get season four out there. I don't know, it felt like an eternity for both Megan and I.

Jens Bringsjord
We were just like.

Megan Luedke
An A list a year.

Jens Bringsjord
It was more than a year. I think it was like crazy. it was. Which we unfortunately. I mean, we have kind of set a standard for ourselves. You know, in within the year, we want another season. So, like, you know, we maybe start in January and by the end of the year or something, it's ready to go.

Jens Bringsjord
Right? We give ourselves, you know, some months in the year to kind of make sure that we have the time we need to create the season. But we tried to like within a 12 month cycle, whenever we start to finish, we want that season launched. So, I found that it was, you know, did take a lot of time this season.

Jens Bringsjord
And why did that happen? Megan, can you explain?

Megan Luedke
Well, a lot of things have happened since. What? I think season three ended probably June or July 2022. I mean, let's pull up that timeline. Fall 2022. We were planning and starting this season, and we were getting finding the guests, getting the story ready, doing, even doing some interviews. And, eventually closed out those interviews in early, January of 2023.

Megan Luedke
But 2023 brought a lot of changes to both of our lives, that we were not anticipating in any sort of way.

Megan Luedke
So, long story short, life got in the way of the podcast. I, I found a new job, and that new job brought me, from Florida to California. And so I had to up and move across the country in a matter of just a few months, on top of starting a new job and, new career path, which has been pretty crazy.

Megan Luedke
And I had lots and lots of travel as well, over the course of 2023. And if you know anything about trying to make a podcast and do side projects while you're just, life is super, super busy. It's very, very difficult. And if you're traveling all the time, it just makes it even harder to do so. we had to put a pause on on some work over the summer while I was moving in, you know, June through August.

Megan Luedke
Yeah, that's what what was going on in your life at the time?

Jens Bringsjord
You know what? I just before I mentioned things going on, in hindsight, it's like, it's always funny how I don't know, every season there's something and I don't know if it's the longevity of us, like creating the season or whatnot, but I just find it that it's like there's always something and it's always like both you and me, like.

Megan Luedke
The same time.

Jens Bringsjord
Like at the same times, or like a few months on or off, but like, it's very it's very odd in a way that there's it's like coincidence on this or I don't know, we're just like connected back and you know, and but but yeah. So this is really funny. So for me, I also had some kind of shift that was going on in my life, where I was transitioning between jobs and basically I, landed a new job, around November.

Jens Bringsjord
So, or a few months prior, I was like, looking for, for a new job. And basically I needed to kind of dedicate my life to finding, that new job. So, in that moment, I just did not have any capacity to work on the episodes. while we did have everything recorded, which was a relief, we didn't have any, like, guests, pending at that point.

Jens Bringsjord
it was just kind of the post-production. And to be fair, I find that the post-production takes even longer than just the interviews with our guests, because the interviews you just you create a list of questions, we speak and it's like over, but then it's thinking about that longer term story. As I mentioned earlier on, it's about how do we connect everything that everybody has said into a season.

Jens Bringsjord
And that is by far the greatest challenge of podcasting, especially in this sort of set up that we've created for this show. It's it's stuff like the hard part, but also the most rewarding, because I find that we can connect so many things between people that don't even know each other, you know?

Megan Luedke
And that's like the most fun part about doing this show and doing it. I mean, I love, love, love talking to the guests and stuff, but like you said, that that part of the process is so small in comparison to what we do for this season. We spend months, and weeks just like researching the topic itself, the guests, and then, coming up with a story, and throughout this whole time of interviewing guests and coming up with the story and getting those and doing the post-production, we're thinking about the story.

Megan Luedke
We're thinking about what the messages that we're trying to say. And then when it comes to that, post-production is when we get to really, like, dial into every single episode. We go back and forth on the script, we do the recordings, we we listen to the episodes over and over and over again. And, I feel like that's one of the funnest parts of the whole thing.

Jens Bringsjord
Definitely. And, and even, like, even though life got in the way, for both of us.

Jens Bringsjord
We did pick up where we left off eventually. and we did get back into things once, kind of both my going to my jobs kind of stabled out again. and, and I think it was a, you know, there was a side challenge, though, I think on top of that, because there had been so much time kind of elapse between both from the first recording of our first interview that we did to like actually beginning to post produce that episode, I had to literally relisten to some of those initial conversations that we'd had in like 2022, because it was like end of 2023 when we.

Jens Bringsjord
Yeah, you know, or like.

Megan Luedke
I mean, it was almost some of those interviews was a full year between when we began the post-production. Right. And yeah. And so that just was like, it's difficult. We had to address that, and just work through those, challenges. But we, we did it. And I think just in general, it was very even longer since the last time we even did post-production on any season.

Megan Luedke
We did post-production for season three. How long ago? I don't even remember. Like, well, and during during that I think, going even looking better for that far back. We were going through pretty similar life changes as well. I had moved from New York to Florida, and you were moving from Norway to Spain at that time. so I think it's just, trend for us to be moving across the country when we're trying to host produce the season.

Megan Luedke
Let's not make it happen again next year.

Jens Bringsjord
I mean, five is like, we can make a full hand like, this season is better be big because. Yeah, I mean, we've gone I mean, we've started in 2020 now. I mean, it's pretty crazy to think we're in like season four is already done. season five is on the cusp of getting started. Like, it's it's really exciting.

Jens Bringsjord
And we've got a lot of exciting things coming up that I'm sure we'll share on socials and things like about our just to highlight a few. This is sneak peak stuff, but like our website and very exciting things happening there and our community revamping that a bit more, flag. So yeah, stay tuned for a lot of those announcements of course.

Jens Bringsjord
But yeah, very excited to share. Sure that as we as we keep going here. So yeah. So I think all of season four went, went really well. And I think now that, you know, we're kind of closing season for thank you for the time we had together. Number four. let's you know, give a tribute to our final ten episodes in the season.

Megan Luedke
Yeah. So let's take a moment to recap the insightful perspectives shared by our guests throughout this past season, and highlighting some of the impactful quotes that resonated with us.

Megan Luedke
Florent episode showed us that the ocean cleanup is not only focus on the problem directly in their organization, but focusing also on the issues at hand on a more geopolitical scale. And here's what he had to say.

Florent Beauverd
It might be that, you know, in five years time, ten years time, the organization has grown into into a place where we have and also, and when we say a seat at the table to change things, how they, how they work. And this is actually already happening because since since a couple, since a year almost, we have like, more in ten intense focus on governmental affairs and trying to.

Florent Beauverd
Okay, okay. We found something. Our research team figured out something. How do we make sure the results of a study is, you know, being watched by the right people in the right countries to change it? So I think, yes, ultimately, you know, I think Boyan says that all the time. He says, like, we want to put ourself out of business, you know, that's do.

Florent Beauverd
And he says, he says something, says something funny, I think is he thinks like not nonprofits in general should have this goal to be to put yourself out of business. Because if you fixed a problem, then you have no reason to exist anymore. but of course, and right now, I think the fastest has to impact feels like removal and kind of interception because because of how much inertia there is to changing a system, a country, a place, a city, waste management, these things kind of have like very long response time, for, for change to be effective.

Jens Bringsjord
Next we have, Ambica Prakash, which she was focusing on educating her clients about the importance of design as a tool for communication, while at the same time educating herself on the specific issues or the concepts she was working with to help her clients get to the best possible outcome. And here's what she had to say.

Ambica Prakash
You don't have to blindly believe in what we're doing, but at the same time, they need to know what has been the trajectory. What if we research? What have we tried? What is the solution, and why do we think that this is a good solution? Right. And so I think that that is part of what I do is try to educate our clients.

Ambica Prakash
And, and earn their trust so that they feel safe and they feel challenged in, in a safe suite, in a safe space, in a safe way, so that we're all sort of working together to shift the needle on these causes that we're working on.

Megan Luedke
Up next, we have Chrissy Levett. what really stood out to us in Chrissy's episode is that she talked about how getting a diverse community of creatives helped paint a broader picture, and how they solved the design challenge for the specific competition in the organization she founded called Creative Conscious. Here's what she had to say.

Chrissy Levett
What happens with that is you get someone who's married, mother was abused or his father was an alcoholic or someone who suffered from racism or someone who's seen the facts of the climate crisis or, you know, geopolitical refugee ism or, you know, so it's led by our community.

Jens Bringsjord
So definitely recommend checking out Chrissy’s episode. The next episode we had was, with our guest, Margo Stoney and Margo's courage to step out of her own to start her agency called High Mountain Creative, really helped her to solely focus on what she was passionate about, and that's not something that is easy for everyone to do. So here's what she had to say.

Margo Stoney
I need to go longer. I need to see more. And that was sort of the catalyst to, want to quit my job and start pivoting creative full time. I started highlighting creatives. I mean, probably back in, well, you could say when I started freelancing in 2005, but officially, I think I trademarked turning in like 2011 or something. And so all this time it was sort of in my back pocket. But it wasn't until 2014 that I left my job at the ski resort to to do it full time and, and just really focus on it. And the rest is history.

Megan Luedke
Up next, we have Dr. Rebecca Green. Dr. Green brought a broader picture to the season, highlighting clear statistics about how we as consumers are becoming more of a throwaway society versus a society that wants to reuse items or extend their life. Here's what she had to say.

Dr. Rebecca Green
There's a really great study that I cite a lot in my lectures, and that concerns a given sort of example 700 page report that a printed version use 85g of CO2. But reading that same report online, for one hour uses 226g of CO2, which is almost three times as much, and that's per hour. Whereas this printed one can be re read by, you know, countless people for a century or longer.

Dr. Rebecca Green
In fact, there are some books bound well, that have lasted, you know, two centuries. So so you know, obviously the, you know, something like the magazine industry is going to churn through and it's not really is it's better to read that online. but even newspapers are better to read, the actual printed version, because it uses that heavily recycled paper and has done for years.

Dr. Rebecca Green
So that it is a problem. the digital space uses a lot of energy. in fact, before the pandemic, there was another great study that that showed that if you consider the internet as a country, it is the third biggest user of energy in the world after China and the USA.

Jens Bringsjord
Next up we had Kristian. Bjørnard and Kristian made us think about what sustainable graphic design should look like in a world that focuses so much of our time on marketing materials that might not have as much of a direct impact on society. And so here's what he had to say.

Kristian Bjørnard
Bruce, now, when he was working on Massive Change, it's kind of like a similar way that they defined it was like, the welfare of all life was the goal of the massive change project. And so if we use that kind of idea that, like all life on Earth, has to succeed together as what we want to sustain, then like sustainable graphic design has to account for, like, not just what this ad banner needs to look like, but like, what does this ad banner need to look like?

Kristian Bjørnard
All life is flourishing? you know, again, it might beg the question of like, do we need to make this ad banner at all? But it might change also what how you make the ad banner or what the ad banner also tries to look like.

Megan Luedke
I think Kristian’s episode really made us think about, all of the questions we should maybe be answering as designers or thinking about as we go. But, next up we have Jasmine Hortop and Jasmine made us realize that how big projects, big and small, can have their own impacts on society in many different ways. So here's what she had to say.

Jasmine Hortop
One of the things I love about a mural project is that you do the design, and you might go back and forth with that with the client for a bit, but then you start painting and after however many days it's done.

Jasmine Hortop
It's done, it's done. You don't, you don't go back.

Jasmine Hortop
You don't go back and forth and it's there. It's just painted and it looks amazing. And it pretty much it's so impactful that like, it's I think there's something that's really lost when you're sending someone to a client, a digital image, and they know that it's digital and they can see, oh, can you change this or can you change that?

Jasmine Hortop
And you can always maybe appreciate the artistry that's gone into it. But when it's so huge, like a mural, like it's people are impressed every time. And I mean, I've never asked anyone to have anyone asked to change anything. And I doubt really someone will. And then, yeah, that it's. But yeah, I love that difference in the projects.

Jasmine Hortop
I obviously love all my illustration projects as well, but it's super refreshing to get a mural project.

Jens Bringsjord
So definitely check out Jasmine. I couldn't believe that she was living out of a van that was, pretty incredible. Like living the van life, going coast to coast, enjoying her artistic endeavors, was really incredible. The inspiration she gathered from the oceans that she's she's traveling by. Next up we have Melissa Mbugua. And in Melissa's episode, she showed us how when creatives come together to collaborate, we can make a massive impact on local and global communities.

Jens Bringsjord
And here's what she had to say.

Melissa Mbugua
And so the community came together and ran a campaign very local, like was outdoor, advertising in Oakland. It was very local, and mostly offline, because it was meant to drive action around this particular law, and voting against it. and this worked. and so through collaboration with CFC members, creators or private members, they implemented this campaign.

Melissa Mbugua
it, it actually worked the, the the, the was successful in preventing what we did. What happened from from not happening. So so that's one example. but that really, really shows the power of of yeah. Of of access to like minded people who have different skill sets and who are willing to volunteer because a lot of that work was done, you know, below market rate or pro bono.

Melissa Mbugua
And then it's also so cool that you see, like, of course I described it to you, but in a way that's not detailed because I, I've never been to New Zealand.

Megan Luedke
Go check out Melissa's episode and definitely go join creators for climate. They are wonderful community of creatives around the globe trying to make change together.

Megan Luedke
Next up we have Gareth Hughes. Gareth mentioned that digital design is one tool in our toolbox as creatives, and if we're going to battle the climate crisis that is upon us as creatives, we need to be well-versed in a variety of design fundamentals. Here's what Gareth had to say about digital design.

Gareth Hughes
Digital design cannot solve this problem alone. I think digital design is just the kind of face or the tool that people use. So I think the infrastructure behind that is what really matters. who is involved? What are the materials? Where are they coming from? Everything behind the the face of what you're interacting with is what matters.

Jens Bringsjord
And last but not least, we had Elena Soterakis and Elena made us really think outside the box by teaching us about what bio design is and how it can really change the world. Here's what she had to say.

Elena Soterakis
The more I spend with bio designers who are using biomimicry and all of these different, methods and thinking about circular economies with design and and art, their art practices, I think that's made me really hopeful for the future. And, like building those communities and and ensuring in those values and just changing like, becoming like, interspecies, world building and not making it like human centric, human dominated, worlds.

Elena Soterakis
And just like kind of highlighting the beauty of things like slime molds who are is very smart and engineers, you know, follow their creativity and their designs and just thinking about alternative ways of, creating that. And still those, those values.

Jens Bringsjord
This past season, we witness a remarkable journey through the evolving landscape of design, illustrating how the industry was steadfastly moving in the right direction. From bustling metropolises to remote corners of the globe, we encountered a diverse array of creatives passionately advocating for change. Each episode illuminated the innovative spirit driving progress, showcasing designers who defined boundaries and challenged conventions.

Jens Bringsjord
Whether it was capturing video on ship in the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, teaching students in Australia, or organizing art shows showcasing some of the world's greatest bio designers in the heart of Brooklyn. This season underscored the universal desire for meaningful transformation. As we reflected on the inspiring stories shared. It became evident that the future of design was not only bright, but also profoundly promising.

Jens Bringsjord
Fueled by the unwavering dedication of individuals shaping a more inclusive, sustainable and culturally rich world. Thank you for everyone who joined us on season four. We look forward to seeing you again in season five. Until then, keep exploring the world and discover what's out there with your design Atlas.