See my daily Fast Company bylines.

Previous Work:

Design

Design Career Advice from Pentagram Partner Eddie Opara, Willy Wong + more. “Keep a sense of purpose, and bring it wherever you go.”

Gere Kavanaugh’s “Radically Upbeat,” Distinctly West Coast Style Didn’t Just Come Out of California. California designer, American spirit.

Jon Burgerman, artist, illustrator, and purveyor of doodles. For Jon, imperfection is much more interesting.

How to Judge a Book by its Cover. Inside the judging of AIGA’s annual book and cover design competition.

Industrial designer Ti Chang is disrupting the sex toy space. As the co-founder of Crave, Chang is rejecting taboo and designing high-end, modern vibrators a person might actually want to leave out of the drawer.

Rebeca Mendez: (im)migration. Mendez works every day to find design solutions that ebb the momentum of one of the world’s pressing environmental problems—climate change.

Seymour Chwast on How to Draw Backwards + Why We Need Humor in Even the Most Serious Posters. The revered designer and co-founder (with Milton Glaser) of Push Pin Press explains how he breaks down heavy subject matter (God, sex, war, for instance) to get to the point.

Stefan Bucher’s Letterheads: A Zany but Totally Methodical Take on Reinvention. The designer explains why humor is a good tool, how to overcome artistic fears, and what he means by saying he’s a “Victorian gardener of the mind.”

This is the world’s worst UI—and it speaks volumes about design today. The Antwerp design agency Bagaar built an impossible form for you to fill out—and it puts all your design assumptions to the test.

Politics

How Pete Buttigieg’s Branding Went from Traditional to Opensource. The story behind the presidential hopeful’s open “design toolkit” and the public-facing political design efforts that inspired it.

Can Design Bring Clarity to the Other, More Provocative F-word—Feminism? With so many definitions, has “feminist” lost its meaning in the design space? And does that matter?

Can political posters still make a difference? The role of the humble poster in a social media-driven election cycle.

Flipping the script: How two progressive organizations are using open-source data for more strategic voting.

When design comes second. Sometimes we need to remember that our role has limitations, too.

Why are Political Campaign Identities Generally So Forgettable? Like almost everything else, it seems you have to follow the money.

Culture

New Album, Old School: Branding The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach: Art director Perry Shall on why his less-than perfect approach made him the perfect match.

Empathy—Honest Design Process or Hollow Sales Pitch? What happens when you mix business and compassion.

Emmett McBain: Art Direction as Social Equity: How the Chicago designer built his legacy on the line between art director, artist, and activist.

Nancy Skolos + Thomas Wedell: Connectivity Through Aesthetics: 2d approaches to 3d problems.

Recipe for success: A newly unearthed cookbook by 20th century art director Cipe Pineles reveals more than how to make the perfect borscht.