Design Matters with Debbie Millman · Design Matters Media

20th Anniversary celebration with typographers and lettering artists Marian Bantjes, Oded Ezer, Jessica Hische, Tobias Frere-Jones, Matthew Carter, and Kris Holmes

December 15, 2025·47 min·4 clips

Marian Bantjes designed a secret chapter in her book that is written in a cipher, making it nearly impossible to decipher.

Twenty years gives the episode its frame. The anniversary special moves through earlier conversations with typographers and lettering artists, and it keeps the old-interview texture intact. The opening is tactile: a professor asks about calligraphy, a family questions typography, and someone studies curves closely enough that a tiny adjustment can change the feeling of a form. Debbie Millman gives the guests space. Her introductions name the artists, place the interviews in time, and then step back so the memories can do their own work. Oded Ezer's segment has a searching quality. He talks about tearing letters apart and trying, almost naively, to understand what is happening inside them. The work sounds physical, odd, and serious. Debbie calls one piece especially powerful, but the praise does not flatten the exchange into admiration. It stays with the labor of experiment. Jessica Hische arrives through routine. In the 2011 interview, Debbie returns to Daily Drop Cap, the daily lettering project Hische began after leaving a more regimented schedule. It started as structure: first an alphabet a week, then one letter a day when ambition ran into real life. That rhythm changed how people saw her work. Hische says the project took off, inspired young designers, brought work, and helped people know who she was. Debbie gently pushes on how posted letters became something bigger across the design community. Kris Holmes closes with vocation, remembering a class, a rough patch in modern dance, and the moment lettering design looked like a place she might succeed. The episode keeps circling back to becoming. Art sounds less like sudden genius and more like attention, repeated until a private fascination finds other people.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Design Matters with Debbie Millman