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Design Better

Design Better

De: The Curiosity Department sponsored by Wix Studio
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Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with guests across many creative fields, helping you hone your craft, unlock your creativity, and learn the art of collaboration. Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”© The Curiosity Department, LLC 2025 Arte Economía
Episodios
  • Cecilia Brenner: Moving beyond design theater to measurable impact

    Cecilia Brenner: Moving beyond design theater to measurable impact
    Nov 18 2025
    We’ve talked to many design leaders who have burned out after a decade or more of corporate work. But after 17 years at Philips designing health innovations, Cecilia Brenner wasn’t burnt out…she loved it. And she wanted to find a way to scale her sense of purpose, so she joined Design for Good as Managing Director, and found a way to work with hundreds of designers who want meaningful impact without leaving their day jobs. This is a preview of a premium episode, find the full episode on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/cecilia-brenner Design for Good mobilizes what Cecilia calls a “radical global action collective”—1,600 designers from companies like Philips, Lloyds Bank, and others—to tackle UN Sustainable Development Goals through focused, two-year cycles. Their first cycle addressed clean water and sanitation. Now they’re working on quality education. And here’s the twist: everything they create is open source. In our conversation, Cecilia explains how Design for Good measures real impact (not estimated future impact), why they chose to focus on one SDG at a time instead of spreading resources thin, and what it means to design for “all life,” not just human life. If you’ve ever wondered how to find more meaning in your design work—or questioned whether purpose-driven projects actually move the needle—this episode offers a surprisingly practical model. Bio Cecilia Brenner is the Managing Director of Design for Good, a global alliance dedicated to creating lasting, measurable impact for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since joining in May 2024, Cecilia has successfully led the charity in mobilising hundreds of creatives to design in close collaboration with NGOs and affected communities worldwide. With over 25 years of international experience in design and leadership, Cecilia is a catalyst for inclusion, innovation, and impact. She previously served as an Experience Design Director & Business Partner at Philips, where she spent 17 years improving people’s health and well-being through meaningful innovation, building high-performing, engaged global design teams and communities, as well as leading transformational programmes with a unique blend of network leadership, team-building excellence, and strategic insight. *** Premium Episodes on Design Better This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. Premium subscribers also get access to the documentary Design Disruptors and our growing library of books: You’ll also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, and our monthly newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. And subscribers at the annual level now get access to the Design Better Toolkit, which gets you major discounts and free access to tools and courses that will help you unlock new skills, make your workflow more efficient, and take your creativity further. Upgrade to paid
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    23 m
  • Video Rewind: Jordan Mechner: Pioneering game designer on creating Prince of Persia, Karateka, and a new graphic novel memoir

    Video Rewind: Jordan Mechner: Pioneering game designer on creating Prince of Persia, Karateka, and a new graphic novel memoir
    Nov 14 2025
    This is a preview of a premium episode. You can find a video version of the full episode on our YouTube channel: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dvoGPZEY1g⁠ We’ve been on the road this week, recording some in-person episodes in Portland Oregon, with Ryan Coulter—co-founder of The James Brand, and the wonderfully hilarious graphic designer Aaron Draplin. We’re excited to bring you this episodes soon, and in the meantime we’re rewinding to one of our favorite episodes this year with Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner. You may have heard that we’re publishing more video from our episodes, and you can now find a video version of this episode on YouTube. Enjoy! *** As a kid in the 80’s, Eli fell in love with games on computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and later the Amiga and Macintosh. One of the very first games he played was called Karateka, which was inspiring for the realistic movements of its digital karate antagonists, even on a black-and-green Apple II monitor. Our guest today, Jordan Mechner, created Karateka while an undergrad at Yale University in 1984, and it went on to be a commercial success. He followed it up with the game Prince of Persia (you’ll hear a clip from the soundtrack in the introduction, which Jordan’s father composed and which Jordan invented a way to transpose onto the Apple II’s tinny speakers before game soundtracks were widespread on the machine). Jordan documented the creation of the game in a wonderful published version of his diaries called The Making of Prince of Persia, and we spoke with him about how he taught himself the skills to build successful video games in a pre-internet era, why he journaled about his work process (and what it taught him), and about his new graphic novel Replay, a memoir recounting his own family story of war, exile and new beginnings. Karateka on the Apple IIPrince of Persia on the Apple II (play the Mac version online here)
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    25 m
  • Ben Swire: Author of "Safe Danger" on the hidden reason team building efforts fail

    Ben Swire: Author of "Safe Danger" on the hidden reason team building efforts fail
    Nov 5 2025
    As educators, we’ve grown wary of the term “safe spaces,” especially when what many students really need is a space to engage with “dangerous” ideas. But true dialogue doesn’t begin with risk—it starts with trust. Our guest today, Ben Swire, wrote the book Safe Danger, which offers a thoughtful, practical approach to building the psychological safety that allows curiosity, connection, and even productive disagreement to flourish. Find bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/ben-swire-former-ideo-design-lead Ben’s career took him from the buttoned-up world of financial marketing to IDEO—a shift he describes as going “from Kansas into Oz.” At IDEO, he discovered that world-class work could be fueled by something radically different than what he’d experienced everywhere else. That discovery led him to spend years exploring a deceptively simple question: How do you get people to fail but enjoy doing it? The answer became the foundation of his book and his work—a concept he calls “Safe Danger,” that sweet spot where people feel safe enough to leave safety behind, but challenged enough to grow. In this conversation, we’ll explore why team building desperately needs reclaiming, how an introvert ended up running a team building company, and why the quality of your relationships at work matters way more than you think. Get the book Bio Ben Swire is an award-winning designer and writer, and former Design Lead at IDEO. His work spans design thinking, philosophy, cinema, and psychoanalytic theory, driven by curiosity about the hidden factors that shape our lives. At IDEO, Ben created Make Believe Time, a bi-weekly creative play date where colleagues learned, created, and meaningfully connected. When interest spread beyond IDEO, Make Believe Works was born—now helping organizations from Fortune 500 companies to startups build the creative and emotional muscle memory that leads to healthy, innovative, collaborative cultures. *** New tools in the Toolkit We’ve just upgraded the Design Better Toolkit, with new tools and other perks (now worth almost $2K in total). Here’s what’s new in the Toolkit: TextExpander (a wonderful productivity tool, 6 months free) Kittl (tools and templates to support your creative process, 6 months free) Subatomic: The Complete Guide to Design Tokens (20% off) Design Better Coffee & Tea (fuel your creativity, 15% off). Some of these perks are very limited and will sell out quickly. Get the Toolkit
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    50 m

Featured Article: The Best Design Podcasts for a Fresh Creative Perspective


There’s no shortage of wonderful design podcasts spanning every aspect and kind of design—from how-to graphic design podcasts to podcasts that blend history and culture with design theory. Whether you’re looking to learn a new skill or you want to stay up to date on the latest design trends, we’ve got you covered. Aspiring designers, interested amateurs, and professional creatives alike are sure to find their next listen, full of new ideas and practical advice.

Featured Article The Best Design Podcasts for a Fresh Creative Perspective
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