Mike Schnaidt: Fast Company Creative Director on typography, creative endurance, and designing for the long haul
About this episode
Mike Schnaidt discusses the importance of typography and creative endurance in design.
Typography is often treated as a detail — the thing you finalize after the real design decisions are made. But for our next guest, it’s closer to the foundation everything else rests on. He’s spent two decades in editorial design at some of the most iconic American magazines — Men’s Health, Esquire, Popular Science, Entertainment Weekly — and he’s now the Creative Director of Fast Company, where he recently led a redesign that does something pretty unusual: the magazine gets a completely new typeface every single issue. His name is Mike Schnaidt. This is a preview of a premium episode. Visit our Substack to listen to the entire interview: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mike-schnaidt Mike’s also a professor, a runner, and the author of Creative Endurance — a book that maps the principles of physical and mental endurance onto the creative life. It’s built around 56 rules for sustaining a career in design, drawn from interviews with ultra-marathoners, astronauts, and designers who’ve pushed way past the limits most people set for themselves. And as you’ll hear, he’s already working on book two. We chat about the nuts and bolts of typography (utilitarian vs. expressive, food…
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