COVID Check-In with Steven Heller

Virtual Memories Show
COVID Check-In: Steven Heller

Design scholar, teacher, and author Steven Heller checks in from New York City. We talk about the anxiety & stress of pandemic life, and why he’s thinking of designing a watch that just tells you the day of the week. We also get into his upcoming 70th birthday, and why that number is a big rubicon for him, his reread & revised opinion of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, the relaunch of PRINT magazine (he and partners bought the title a few months ago) and the how he sustains his Daily Heller blog there, the weird comfort of walking through a protest this week, and his recent binge of Shtisel on Netflix, and more. Give it a listen! And go check out the new PRINT!

You can listen to all these COVID Check-In episodes at The COVID-19 Sessions.

Listen to the conversation! Then check out the archives for more conversations from The Before Times.

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About our Guest

Steven Heller, former art director of the New York Times Book Review, is the cochair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur Program. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of more than 190 books on design, social satire, and visual culture, including Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State. He writes the Daily Heller for Print magazine and contributes to Design Observer, Eye, Wired, the New York Times, and the Atlantic. He is the recipient of two honorary doctorates, the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and the Smithsonian National Design Award for “Design Mind.” He lives in New York City. His most recent book is the new edition of The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today, from Allworth Press.

Follow Steven on Twitter and Instagram, check out his blog at PRINT Magazine, The Daily Heller, and listen to our full-length podcasts from 2018 and 2019.

Credits: The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Steven by him. It’s on my instagram.

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