Adelina Shaidullina: I’m happy to have you and I was really happy to hear that you read our journal.

Elizabeth Goodspeed: I do! There’s not a lot of writing about type that suits my perspective. I’m not a type designer, so some of the stuff out there is too technical for me — on the other hand, there’s a lot of design writing that’s not focused enough on type specifically. I’ll read Alphabettes sometimes too, they’re interesting. But I feel like it’s hard to get type writing right.

AS: How do you choose the people you commission the articles for It’s Nice That from?

EG: I get a commissioning budget from It’s Nice That which is enough to work with four writers per year, around one per quarter. Sometimes a commission comes about because I have an idea for a story, but I’m aware that I’m not the right person to write it — either because it’s a subject area I’m not knowledgeable enough about, or, because I don’t have the right cultural background or technical skill set. Other times there’s simply somebody who I think is a great writer, and I’ll just ask them: do you have any ideas you might want to work with me on? So far I’ve commissioned two pieces.

AS: Which ones?

EG: The first was with Julian Posture, an amazing writer and anthropologist studying designers and illustrators as an anthropological group, about creative labour. He’d written about labour politics before in his newsletter, On Looking, and I reached out to him because I really wanted to have him cover the same topic for our audience.

Сaricature by Julian Posture illustrating the work of an illustration studio

The other story I commissioned recently was by Roshita Thomas, called Bitter Aftertaste. For a long time I had the idea to do a piece about how cultural food brands use design to market “ethnic foods” in the West, but, but I felt the subject might be better served by a writer who had personal background with the cultures that were being commodified for the American market. Roshita is an Indian writer and had recently pitched us a story about how the Air India rebrand was not adequately tapping into the cultural legacy of Indian design (it ended up getting published in PRINT magazine), so I thought she’d be perfect for it.

I’m a big reader not only of design publications. Most of the time, I feel that if someone is a good writer, even if they’ve never written about design before, they can do it with a little bit of support. Design is everywhere — if you’re someone who’s culturally aware, I think you can have something interesting to say about design. I hope to have a higher commissioning budget in the future so I can commission more people!

AS: Does being a big reader make you a better critic?

EG: Absolutely. I think being a reader has helped me be precise with my vocabulary, which I’ve found to be very important for critical writing. I don’t have an exact number of words I try to learn per year or anything, but I’m always encountering new words and make an effort to seed them into my work where appropriate. I read a wide range of genres — criticism, sci-fi, academic journals, and a lot of older fiction — which especially helps with expanding my lexicon. My partner recently gifted me a publication from the 1880s called The Aldine, which, as far as I can tell, was basically an art magazine from the 19th century. It’s full of wild words I’ve never encountered before, and the way they talk about art is so different from how we discuss it today.

A lot of what makes a good critique is the skill of looking closely at things and parsing out their components. Good writing does that too, especially non-fiction. I think being able to see how other people are breaking ideas down helps me to pick up those strategies for my own writing.

The Aldine, Volume 4, 1871

AS: Does reading and writing criticism help you be a better designer?

EG: Absolutely. I’ve only been writing for about three and a half years. I wrote my first piece for AIGA Eye on Design in 2020. I started writing partly because I had always felt like reading made me a better designer, but I wasn’t always finding design articles I wanted to read.

A lot of writing is about trusting your gut. You want to make sure everything is thoughtful, but you also just have to go with it sometimes. It’s like Hemingway said — “Write drunk, edit sober.” It’s easy to get caught up in wondering, “Am I doing the right thing?” In both design and writing, being able to say: “I’m turning off the critic and just creating,” and then assessing it later is really helpful.

Partly because I write about design trends, I’m also always paying attention to what’s happening in the visual world — what typefaces are being used, what colours, what design systems. This makes it easier when I do my job as a designer. It’s like I’ve already done the research for myself! For example, I’m working on a mediaeval inspired brand right now, and since I already wrote an article about medievalism recently, it makes it really easy to know where to start.

Teenage Engineering: EP–1320 Medieval synth. Image: Teenage Engineering, 2024 Teenage Engineering: EP–1320 Medieval synth packaging. Image: Teenage Engineering, 2024

I’d say that being a designer has helped me write about design on a deeper level. Partly this is just because I’ve been on the ground in the industry for ten years, which means I have access to a lot of designers and usually know the right person to talk to for an article. But also, as a designer, something I struggle with in some design writing is that many writers have never actually designed anything, and miss important context or details as a result. They might understand the larger cultural or creative side of a visual trend, but may not realise the influence some niche software or design software had on the emergence of that trend.

I didn’t expect my writing to help my design work as much as it has. One unexpected thing that writing has opened up for me in my career is a lot more creative consulting. Now, people reach out to me asking for help with visual research and creative direction. For example, they want to create a brand inspired by a specific era, like the 1940s, and I guide them on what aspects or images to focus on. Or, sometimes it’s more conceptual, like when a Dutch company asked me to help incorporate elements of “Dutchness” into their design. All of it exists at the intersection of words and images.

Inka lunchware brand. Brand identity, packaging, art direction, prop styling, campaign graphics, digital oversight, copywriting, strategy by Elizabeth Goodspeed. Photography by Ian Shiver

Inka lunchware brand. Brand identity, packaging, art direction, prop styling, campaign graphics, digital oversight, copywriting, strategy by Elizabeth Goodspeed. Photography by Ian Shiver

AS: Don’t you miss designing the things yourself when doing consulting?

EG: Well, I only work at It’s Nice That two days a week. I don’t want to give up designing. I still love designing and I certainly think that if I ever stopped designing my writing would get worse, too! I’ve always been someone who likes to do a lot of things. I write, I teach graphic design, I design myself, and I direct other designers. I like that when my brain is exhausted from writing I can take a break by designing and then when I have no creative energy, I can go do some consulting.

I think everyone who starts to become more senior has to deal with how to balance the non-creative work — management, talking to clients, making pitches, and writing scopes of work — with the creative stuff. I’m in the process of trying to grow my studio (I have two part-time designers who work with me) but I’m still figuring out how I can maintain my creativity even when I’m not the person always designing. I’m sure that’s something that’s going to be a process over the next couple of years for me to figure out. But, yes, I love designing and I think I’ll never stop doing it even if it’s just for personal projects!

Riso-printed collage, 2019. Design: Elizabeth Goodspeed. Image: Elizabeth Goodspeed, Instagram

AS: I’ve been reading your articles, I’ve been looking at your website and your Twitter and you appear to love both contemporary illustration and paperback pulp romance typography. So I’ve always wondered what your real personal research interest is?

EG: I think this is both the blessing and curse of my personality — I’m always drawn to the next shiny thing. What I think might be unique about how I approach things is that I’m a big pattern seeker. I love finding similarities across different areas. For example, in that article I mentioned about medievalism, what I loved most was how it allowed me to explore film, television, fashion, historic design, contemporary design, and illustration all at once.

How to Live on Love publication
Lettering, editorial design, art direction, research, writing: Elizabet Goodspeed
Photography: Dylan James Nelson. Prop styling: Emma Ringness

I go to a lot of flea markets, and when you’re at a table, the person selling stuff — usually an older man — will ask, “What are you looking for?” I never used to know what to say because I liked everything! But over time, I’ve started to describe what I’m interested in as visually and culturally rich materials. It’s very broad, but it covers what excites me.

I love cookbooks, especially vintage ones, because they tell me so much. What were people cooking at the time? What kind of printing methods were they using? There’s so much to extract from that. I feel the same way about children’s books. I guess, simply put, I just love looking at things. It’s a bit of a silly answer, but it’s true.

Cookbooks created by the Determined Productions publisher. From Elizabeth’s newsletter called Casual Archivist

There’s a famous U.S. court case about pornography where the judge said, “I can’tdefine it, but I know it when I see it,” and I feel the same way about the things I collect. Like, right now I’m sitting at my desk, and I can see a soap I bought in Mexico, an old soda bottle, a purple pencil, and a tape cassette. All of them just spoke to me for some reason! I guess the one commonality is that I’m really into tactile things. I’m not that interested in digital stuff — not that I’m against it — it just doesn’t grab me the same way physical objects do.

Elizabeth’s desk. Image: Elizabeth Goodspeed

AS: You mentioned your article about mediaeval aesthetics. Why do you think it came back now?

EG: I think there’s a few reasons. We’re definitely in a period right now where we’re looking to the past a lot more. In the last 10 years, there have been so many visual trends that are just broadly historic. I think in some ways we’ve exhausted the 20th century and we need to start looking at the more distant past for inspiration. I also think there’s a lot of nostalgia running through culture right now. I’ve been seeing a lot of interesting conversations around the fact that a lot of fashion at the moment is all about like archival pulls and referential kind of dressing and how that’s also getting a little flat.

Dior sketch, 1948. Image: The Met Digital Collection Prada FW 2024. Image: Prada

I think the mediaeval period specifically, as I mentioned in my article, feels like a mirror for our time. We’re coming out of COVID, dealing with massive income inequality, and AI is threatening to upend everything. There’s something about seeing parallels in a society recovering from the Black Plague, where feudal serfs felt powerless and asking themselves, “How can we push back against our oppressors?” It feels a bit like our situation, wondering what we, the lower classes, can do against the Elon Musks of the world destroying our climate and politics. It can feel like there’s nothing to do but endure, almost leaning into that suffering and embracing a sort of goth vibe.

Dargon by Daytona Mess. 2024 Gerard Unger Scholarship recipient

The Green Knight, blu-ray edition cover, 2023. Design: Sophy Hollington. Images: A24

On the other hand, considering the technological focus of today, where we’re so alienated from labour and production, there’s something romantic about the mediaeval period for us. Obviously, setting aside the fact that people were starving and ate meat maybe twice a year, it feels like a time when the humanity of life was more authentic. That’s part of the appeal, I think.

Aesthetically, too, there’s this pendulum swing. We’re coming out of a phase of 70s-inspired “dopamine dressing” with soft, rounded, squishy designs. Medieval, on the other hand, feels like the opposite: it’s sharper, with Blackletter typefaces, harsher ornamentation, and a moodier, darker vibe.

Memes by the Suffering Medieval project

I’m always intrigued by what’s next — since we’re in this mediaeval trend now, I wonder what’s coming after. I’ve been thinking about movements like Arts and Crafts or the Viennese Secession, which feel adjacent to medievalism but haven’t quite surged in popularity yet. At the same time, we’re seeing a bit of a 40s revival with a futurist twist in branding. The internet’s tendency to amplify everything into a micro-trend is part of this. Whether or not medievalism is as big as it seems, anything that catches on now spreads so quickly and intensely that it feels massive. One person adopts mediaeval influences, and suddenly it feels like everyone is doing it.

AS: It’s a weird question, but don’t you think Christianity is now also some kind of digital trend?

EG: Absolutely. I just wrote an article for a new publication called Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, launching in October, about the aesthetics of online Catholicism. There’s definitely something strange happening with the trad wife and Christian woman movements, where there’s a real fetishization of this arcane, ornate style of Christianity — specifically Catholicism — and its super maximalist aesthetic.

Rick Owens, SS25 collection

AS: Most people in Georgia are Orthodox, but my family is Catholic, and we have these kinds of fashionistas at the local church.

EG: My college roommate was from Ukraine, and while there’s not a direct parallel to Georgia, I think I see some of the same cultural touchpoints. I spent a summer with her in Ukraine, and I remember visiting Orthodox churches. To me, it was like an even more captivating version of Catholic aesthetics because there was this added layer of, I don’t know, almost paganism. That’s the best way I can describe it.

Italian Catholicism, on the other hand, feels very much rooted in the Renaissance, with a focus on technical and scientific precision, like the work of Da Vinci. But Orthodox Christianity felt more connected to something historic, almost Joan of Arc-esque — more raw and earthy, which I really enjoyed on a purely aesthetic level.

AS: I love this topic! But since we are a media about typography, I have to ask: how do you choose typefaces for your projects? Do you have a collection you choose from, or a list of foundries you follow?

EG: I am such a type person! I feel like most of my design work is very type-driven. A good typeface can really drive the whole project. I follow a lot of foundries that I love and save new releases as they come out. I also really enjoy following independent type designers, because they often post sketches of what they’re working on, which helps me stay tuned to what’s happening in the type world. I like to stay aware of trends when picking typefaces, especially for branding, but I’m careful not to pick something that’s too trendy, so the brand doesn’t feel dated by the time it’s launched in six months.

I use the FontBase font organiser, and I have a pretty rigorous tagging system. The folder names aren’t technical — they’re more aligned with how my brain works. For example, I have a folder called Bookish Typefaces for fonts like Didone or Garamond, and modern takes on them like Henry from 205TF. Then there’s a folder called Oddballs, which is for the weirder experiments you might see from ABC Dinamo or Radim Peško.

Lÿno by Karl Nawrot and Radim Peško

Henry by Matthieu Cortat

I don’t think of myself as an eclectic type selector but the last five projects of my own that I’ve uploaded to Fonts In Use got labelled as typographic eclecticism because I tend to mix a lot of typefaces. I’m not excited by systems that use just one typeface, I always want to mix things that aren’t expected. I worked on a book called The New Antiquarians, and I used six typefaces because I just couldn’t help myself.

Since I’m always researching, saving, and keeping up with trends, by the time I sit down to choose a typeface, it’s actually a pretty intuitive process. I just keep trying things out until I hit that moment where I know it’s right. I can’t always explain it — it’s not about technical details like X-height or ligatures, although those matter — but it’s more of a gut feeling.

The New Antiquarians. Design: Elizabeth Goodspeed. Photography: Fujio Emura

AS: You know it when you see it!

EG: Exactly! I also maintain a folder called Favourites for new typefaces I really like. When something new comes out, I’ll keep trying it on different projects, hoping it’ll fit somewhere. Sometimes it’ll take a few projects to find the right one (or to get client approval) but eventually I’ll usually find a good spot for them.

For my personal studio work, like proposals or my resume, I use Rongel from Feliciano Type, which has a nice balance of formality and prettiness (great for paperwork!) I pair it with Roobert because it makes for a good contrast — quirky but still somewhat historic leaning.

AS: By saying you get the typefaces and put them in the Favourites folder you mean you are purchasing them or downloading trials?

EG: Well… I formed an LLC a couple years ago which means I have a business bank account and that technically any typeface I buy can be written off. I do have a ton of trials, but if there’s a typeface that I really love, I will often just buy it and assume I’m gonna find a reason to use it. There are also some type designers whose work I really love like Elliott Grunewald. He’s never made a typeface that I didn’t like, and pretty much whenever he launches a new one I’ll buy it, and find a reason later. Especially when I’m doing things like posters where the client isn’t really gonna pay me, I just like not having to worry about the licence.

Onyx by Elliott Grunewald
Leto by Elliott Grunewald

So my Favourites folder contains both trials and licensed typefaces, but I also have a folder that has all my licensed fonts, and there are 469 typefaces.

AS: That’s a lot!

EG: I should mention that not all of them are crazy expensive! I collect a lot of old books, and often I’ll see a typeface in one of them that I really like, I’ll try to find it on Fonts in Use. While I have mixed feelings about MyFonts as a business (given their relationship to the larger monopolisation of type design), some older weirder typefaces are only available there and I can usually snag them for a pretty low price, maybe $12-20.

AS: Sorry, my internet connection is really bad now, I have to reconnect. I was actually about to switch providers, but they got rebranded by this great Georgian studio that used fonts from our collection. So, I ended up feeling a personal connection to them and couldn’t bring myself to change providers.

EG: Do you feel that in Georgia, you know everyone doing design, so that whenever a project comes out, you know who designed it? I remember hearing Chi-Long Trieu speak at a conference, and he said that in Switzerland it’s like that there because there are only a few major cities and all the designers basically live a 10-minute walk from each other.I found it very funny, because I would think, “Oh, it’s Swiss design. It’s this big thing”. But it’s really just forty people who live on the same street.

The Lucerne Theatre identity by Studio Feixen

AS: It’s actually the same in The Hague. I wonder whether there are people who do not work in type design living there.

EG: It is surprising how many people from so many different countries have spent time there. I’ve never been to The Hague, and I’m sure it’s beautiful, but it is just sort of a funny place to have so many people end up.

There was a period in my life where I thought about applying to KABK, but then I did the Type@Cooper programme and realised I was probably not meant to be a type designer — I didn’t have the personality and patience for it, I always loved typography, and at the time thought it might be interesting to try type design. I figured if I’m not going to be someone who does web (which I still don’t do!) I need to be really good at all the other stuff. But at the very least, I know enough to draw a bit of type when I’m doing a brand project, like a logo from scratch. If I’m just doing like five letters, I don’t have to do any kerning, or any weight changes!

Thorlo sock brand logomark by Elizabeth Goodspeed

AS: I wanted to ask whether your ability to choose the typeface by just feeling is a sign of having a taste?

EG: It’s funny — I wrote this article about taste, and now everyone is asking me about taste. Honestly, I don’t really know the answer. It feels weird to say “I have good taste,” because my good taste could be someone else’s bad taste. But for me, it’s always been about trusting my opinion. I struggle with a lot of things, but one thing I’ve never struggled with is feeling confident in my own opinions. If anything, I’ve had the opposite problem.

When I think about my career in design, which I’ve been doing in one way or another for 10-12 years now, I feel like my taste has improved over time. Looking at things professionally for that long has helped me at the very least identify a typeface that is better crafted, a better fit, or just doing something interesting. But a big part of developing taste is learning when to trust your gut and when to second guess it. Sometimes, going with your gut is the right move, but there are also moments when you need to pause, do some research, and think more critically about your choices.

To me, taste is an expression of my experiences, but I also think that’s true for anyone. That’s exactly what makes one designer different from the next. I teach graphic design at RISD now, and I work with sophomores who just declared their major. It’s their first real design class, and something I notice a lot is they want someone to tell them what the right answer is. They’ll pick a typeface and then ask me if they chose the right one.

I usually tell them that the right typeface is simply the one you want to use. Sure, if you’re designing a cookbook and the typeface doesn’t support fractions, it might not be the best choice. But beyond that, there isn’t a right or wrong answer. Conventional choices are great, but unconventional ones can be interesting too.

AS: When I was a sophomore, I purchased the Font Starter Pack from Pangram Pangram. There were something like 25 typefaces at that time, and I felt like I didn’t have to go to a foundry website for another four years.

EG: That’s funny. I worked at Pentagram with Michael Bierut, and he used to work for Massimo Vignelli. Vignelli always said they only needed a few typefaces for the entire studio. And of course, Massimo Vignelli was a legend, and his work was amazing even with just a few typefaces. Some people, like him, find what works for them and stick with it. And I think there are designers who do that, too — find one foundry they love and just keep using it.

Posters for Tredicesima Triennale. Designed by Massimo Vignelli

Michael himself never explicitly forbade us from using other typefaces, but you could always tell he was trained by someone who believed in sticking with what works. He was always drawn to workhorses typefaces, or typefaces from foundries like Commercial Type that had a strong historic connection. He liked the old classics, but with a modern, clean approach to them.

But for me font choice is very project-specific. In 2022, I worked on a kid’s magazine where I did the creative direction and design. I used ABC Repro, the Dinamo typeface, because it had this feature where you could put text in a bubble. Even though it wasn’t drastically different from Dinamo Sans or any other sans serif I had, that one feature saved me a lot of trouble.

Anyway magazine. Full creative direction: Elizabeth Goodspeed

AS: You once wrote that classical typefaces like Trajan and Optima symbolise a return to a form of femininity that is both elegant and assertive. Do you think typefaces can be gendered somehow?

EG: This is such a good question and something I talk about a lot! I don’t really like that we use words like “masculine” or “feminine” for describing typefaces, but they’ve become so common that sometimes they feel like the quickest way to communicate an idea. These days, I lean toward terms like “butch” or “femme” instead, which to me reflect a gendered aesthetic without assigning that aesthetic to a specific gender.

The issue with calling a typeface “feminine” is that when someone asks what that means, you might say it’s delicate or curvy, which can imply that women are delicate and curvy. But if I say something is “femme,” I’m referring to an aesthetic traditionally linked to femininity without assigning a human gender to it.

In the article you’re referring to, I was specifically exploring the idea of “girl design” and the gendered aesthetic of “coquette.” In that context, using “feminine” felt fitting because it aligned with the world I was discussing — this hashtagged, meme-ified, “I’m just a girl” kind of aesthetic.

But, as I was writing it, I ended up thinking about typefaces like Trajan or Optima, which despite not typically being seen as “feminine” (they’re more often aligned with Roman capitals and a kind of stoic aesthetic) actually have a lot in common with typefaces that often get described as feminine in terms of their level of contrast, roundness, and tapered end strokes.

Inscription on the Trajan Column

I think moving away from the assumption that “feminine” means ornamental, or decorative, or thin, opens up a more thoughtful conversation about what we’re really describing. It’s not that I’m completely against using gendered language for typefaces. I just want to be intentional about which words I use and in what context. We’d all benefit from thinking carefully about whether gendered language is necessary or if other words would be more precise.

AS: We have this problem in Russian, because in Russian every word has a gender, and a serif is feminine, and a sans serif is masculine.

EG: That’s so interesting. I actually studied cognitive science in college, which involved doing a lot of linguistics. There’s a theory called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is the idea that the language you speak and the words you use affect how you perceive the world. I remember there being something specific about Russian having words for light blue and just blue, but no word for dark blue. So according to this theory, people who speak Russian will sort the colour blue differently than those who speak English.

One of the things I love so much about working with students is this idea of the beginner’s mind, and seeing how people who don’t have all the years of associations around type think about design. In one of my intro design classes, I gave everybody two words that are opposite pairs (like night and day or young and old) and asked the students to choose a typeface for each word. And even in an exercise as simple as that, there were many ways people interpreted it. One person typeset day in a super bold, heavy typeface, and night in a delicate script. They said: “Oh, night feels elegant, like going to a gala, while the day is big and energetic.” Meanwhile the next person will say: “For night, I went with a heavy, bold typeface, because it felt dark, whereas daytime is light and airy, so I went with something super light and italic.” Same words, exact opposite interpretation.

To me, the same is true of gender and type. I mean, if you don’t already have the association of scripts as feminine, maybe you might actually look at typefaces very differently. Maybe you’d say Helvetica is feminine, because it has lots of round forms, or maybe Blackletter is feminine because it makes you think of old embroidery stitching. I just think there are so many ways to think about typefaces and genders that I just want to always be pushing that button to make sure we’re not just letting the default take over.

AS: I’ve listened to the OH no Radio episode with you. And James said you use are.na like crazy, and you really do. How much time do you spend on it daily?

EG: I don’t know, I don’t have an answer. I never thought of myself as being a crazy are.na user until I realised I had only used it for a year and in that time, I had saved around 20,000 things.

I don’t think I intentionally spend a lot of time on are.na, it’s just always in the back of my mind. I’m always bookmarking things on my Instagram and Twitter, or DMing links to myself. I tend to collect little snippets here and there, and then I’ll sit down and save them in a big batch on are.na.

I do think what helps me save so much is having such clear categories already defined. If I’m scrolling through Instagram while waiting for the bus and I see an image of a woman with a dog in an editorial campaign, I know I have a folder specifically for photos of people with animals. So, it takes me just a few seconds to right-click and add it to that board. All of my boards are so focused that organising them doesn’t take much time.

I of course recognize that I’m a bit more obsessive about it than other people! But it really is like my second brain.

Alfred Hitchcock photographed by Philippe Halsman, 1962. From Elizabeth’s channel Petting Zoo Anya Taylor-Joy photographed by Jack Bridgland, 2024. From Elizabeth’s channel Petting Zoo

AS: Do you think it’s essential for a designer to spend time on Instagram and are.na to feel confident in their decisions?

EG: It really depends on the person. For instance, my partner is an illustrator who doesn’t rely on references; he’s very imaginative and tends to create from his head or from real-world inspiration. Meanwhile, I’m a cultural sponge. I’m always looking at something,reading, watching TV shows and movies — and that’s where I find my inspiration. Basically, I don’t do it because it’s essential or I feel obligated to; I just enjoy it!

I think most designers can be placed on a spectrum from inspiration-driven to imagination-driven, or conceptual to formal. There are people like Braulio Amado, who seem to enjoy exploring different tools and forms above all. In contrast, I’m very concept-driven; I start with an idea and then search for the best form to express that idea. It’s like auctioning off forms to see which works best for the concept.

Posters designed by Braulio Amado for the Good Room nightclub, 2024

AS: Can a designer also be placed on the spectrum from structured to chaotic?

EG: For sure. I think there’s a million matrices you could place people on. Structure and chaos is an interesting one for me to place myself on, because I actually hate working with grids, and I avoid doing type styles on InDesign, because I find them frustrating — but I also like things to be organised. I like to have my elements locked to corners or full-width. And compositionally, I like everything to be really aligned and have even, ample breathing room. I’m also organised in my files, but then chaotic in how I choose type or colours. So I think everyone’s a combination of those things.

A friend of mine, Natalie Shields, runs a studio with another designer named Chloe Scheffe. She’s told me that she thinks of herself as a chaos and Chloe as order. Natalie will make something fun and experimental, then pass it off to Chloe who will reign it in to be more tidy, and then she’ll give it back to Natalie to make it less precious again. I think if you don’t have a partner who you can do that with, the best way is to do the same thing internally. I try to push myself saying to be a little more messy sometimes, or maybe I do something kooky and need to reign it back. It’s always an interplay.

Graphics for NBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago by Scheffe Shields studio, 2020

AS: This weekend, we were participating in a conference on disciplinary agnosticism. And speakers from different disciplines said that no matter what you are, an architect, UI designer, graphic designer, you can do everything, the only thing that’s important is your approach. Are you discipline-agnostic?

EG: Some of my favourite designers and artists were people who did a little bit of everything. they might be a graphic designer who also designed a chair, you know? I would say I’m somewhat discipline-agnostic because I enjoy a lot of things. At the very least, I would say that is the case with my design and my writing.I’m definitely very concept-driven, so I am certainly not tied to a certain format. If my concept might make more sense as a sculpture, maybe it makes sense to a sculpture. That said, despite being sort of discipline agnostic stylistically, I will also say my skill set as a professional is quite narrow. I don’t do web, I’m not great at 3D space. I’m unfortunately very set in my ways as a print design

I think part of what allows me to be a discipline agnostic is that I’m really comfortable bringing on collaborators. So if there is something that I can’t do, but I think it’s the right format, I will bring on a person who’s an expert.

That said, I do enjoy experimenting with multiple disciplines, maybe just not professionally. I recently started basket weaving, because we had a bunch of grapevines and I didn’t know what to do with it. I have a lot of sort of crafty hobbies and I like having a creative output that doesn’t relate to graphic design. I just haven’t commercialised any of those and I want to keep it that way. Also, I doubt anyone wants to buy my baskets because they look pretty shitty!

Elizabeth Goodspeed

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