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Underscore: Daily Summaries Delivered
by The Chicago Graphic Design Club
Underscore is a podcast by the Chicago Graphic Design Club that brings you conversations with Chicago’s creative community. On this podcast, host Christian Solorzano explores the craft, theory, and practice of graphic design, plus discusses ideas that cultivate a more inclusive and thoughtful creative community.
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- 1 weeks ago1h 10m
115 • ALISA WOLFSON
Our guest is Alisa Wolfson, EVP and Head of Design at Leo Chicago, where she built the agency's design department.Alisa grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and found design sideways. Her dad was in the wine import-export business, and she kept asking if she could design the labels — she didn't yet know that what she wanted to do had a name. She taught herself design history and layout, made projects in her garage, shot her portfolio on slide film, and applied to a program a friend had gone through. She still has the Kodak Carousel that portfolio came back in. She got to VSA by calling until somebody finally picked up.In this episode, Alisa speaks with host Christian Solorzano about being a generalist among specialists, and about what it took to figure out how she actually wanted to work. She describes the stretch she spent working for herself and finding it lonely, and walking into Leo expecting a short freelance project.The conversation turns on a question about polish. Alisa argues that almost nothing made for a brand reaches us unedited — that the images built to look like someone's bathroom have been edited too — and that designers have been standing right next to that since the beginning of advertising. She doesn't think that's cause for despair.She also talks about what makes collaboration work, why she thinks happy is a weird word, the Chicago designers she came up around, and a project she once made about her own hair, with a line in the corner she remembers as "I take myself wherever I go."
- 3 weeks ago1h 3m
114 • ANNE H. BERRY
Our next guest is Anne H. Berry — designer, writer, educator, and Director of the School of Design at the University of Illinois Chicago.In this episode, Anne speaks with host Christian Solorzano about her path into design — how a middle school visit to a publishing house sparked something in her, and how that spark took years to find its footing. She's candid about the periods of doubt, a toxic early work environment, and the graduate school experience that finally brought everything together.Anne discusses her two books — The Black Experience in Design and her upcoming Guiding Principles for Inclusive Design Values — and why both feel more urgent now than when she started them. She speaks directly about what design owes to democracy, the chilling effect of anti-DEI legislation on creative work, and why she believes designers cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.The conversation also explores what brought Anne to Chicago, what sustains her on the hard days, and what it means to build a career rooted in service — to students, to the community, and to the people coming up behind her.Anne will also be featured in the upcoming issue of Faculty, a publication by the Chicago Graphic Design Club.Music by the band Eighties Slang.
- Aug 17, 20261h 13m
113 • COBY REGEHR
Our guest is Coby Regehr, son of Carl Regehr (1919–1983)— a graphic designer, educator, and community builder who helped shape Chicago's visual identity.In this episode, Coby speaks with host Christian Solorzano about his father's life, work, and philosophy — from a Mennonite upbringing in Kansas to building a design practice in Chicago rooted in ethics, relationships, and an unrelenting drive to create. Coby shares what it was like to grow up inside that world — weekends spent in his father's studio, Summers at the Indiana Dunes alongside the designers who defined an era, and a father who was up at four every morning with Coltrane on the stereo.The conversation explores Carl's role in reframing Chicago's image through the 1963 Chicago magazine — his uncompromising ethics in business, his teaching philosophy at the University of Illinois, and his participation in the 1971 Aspen Design Conference.Coby also reflects on the boxes of journals, collages, and unfinished work he continues to discover — and what it means to be the keeper of a legacy still unfolding.Music by the band Eighties Slang.
- Aug 3, 20261h 5m
112 • DANA ARNETT
Our guest is Dana Arnett, Co-Founder and Chairman of VSA Partners — one of Chicago's most celebrated and enduring design firms.In this episode, Dana speaks with host Christian Solorzano about a career that began in the cornfields of Morton, Illinois and grew into four decades of work with some of the world's most iconic brands. He reflects on the sophomore portfolio rejection that redirected everything, and the three serendipitous mentors — Robert Vogele, Rick Valicenti, and April Greiman — who each shaped his creative courage in a different way.Dana traces the building of VSA from a storefront on South Dearborn to a firm of 375 people, and the landmark client relationships — including the Chicago Board of Trade and Harley-Davidson — that defined an era of Chicago design. He speaks candidly about what it means to lead without getting in the way, the fragmentation happening across the design industry today, and the questions he still asks every time he picks up a pencil.The conversation closes with a genuine reckoning with AI — not as a technology conversation, but as a craft and labor conversation — and VSA's three-word design philosophy that has guided the firm from the beginning: empathy, optimism, and intent.Music by the band Eighties Slang.
- Jul 20, 202653 min
111 • JARRETT FULLER
Our guest is Jarrett Fuller, a designer, writer, educator, and host of the long-running podcast Scratching the Surface, based in Raleigh, North Carolina.In this episode, Jarrett speaks with host Christian Solorzano about how conversation became the organizing principle of his creative life — from growing up surrounded by a large, talkative extended family, to a journalist grandfather who taught him the difference between a closed question and an open one. He reflects on ten years and nearly 300 episodes of Scratching the Surface, what he's learned about listening, and why the questions keep multiplying rather than resolving.Jarrett shares his evolving relationship to graphic design — how he still claims the title even as the work has shifted toward writing, teaching, and podcasting — and why he believes the field has always been more expansive than the industry gives it credit for. He talks about the tension between design as a commercial discipline and design as a cultural practice, the homogenization of aesthetics in the age of AI, and what it means to make work that actually moves someone.The conversation also explores Jarrett's photography — his interest in the friction between the natural world and the built environment, returning to the same places over time, and the design sensibility that shapes how he frames an image. And he gives a preview of his forthcoming book, Graphic Designers After Graphic Design, a celebration of designers around the world redefining what the field can be — due out September 29th.Music by the band Eighties Slang.
- Jul 6, 20261h 4m
110 • JO-NELL SIEREN
Our guest is Jo-Nell Sieren, a photographer, designer, and educator who spent fifteen years at Columbia College Chicago before moving into her current role at Northwestern, where she focuses on industry strategy and connecting design and engineering students to employers.In this episode, Jo-Nell speaks with host Christian Solorzano about her path from studying photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York to building one of Columbia's most ambitious student programs — Agency Columbia, a studio that placed students in real client engagements with real deadlines. She shares how that experience of learning through doing, not just observing, shaped her entire philosophy as an educator.Jo-Nell talks candidly about what it actually takes to build confidence in students who don't yet believe in their own work, why she considers networking a design skill in its own right, and what a cohort of exhausted, overcommitted, fully present students taught her about resilience. She also reflects on the anxiety she feels watching AI reshape both the creative landscape and the job search — and what she hopes the next generation of designers holds onto.Music by the band Eighties Slang.
- Jun 22, 202657 min
109 • DANIEL SWARTZ
Our guest is Daniel Swartz — a letterpress designer, printer, and writer based in rural northern Indiana, where he runs Hoosier Type Company out of the back of his garage using antique wood type, vintage presses, and hand-mixed inks.This episode, Daniel sits down with host Christian Solorzano for a conversation that moves between his winding path from aspiring illustrator to graphic design educator to letterpress printmaker, the serendipitous gift of a printing press that started it all, and what it took to rebuild a creative practice from scratch after 2020. They talk about the relationship between digital and analog, the beauty of working within constraints, faith and humility as creative foundations, and what it means to make something that lasts beyond a file in the cloud.Music by Eighties Slang.
- Jun 8, 20261h 5m
108 • CASS POKORA
Our guest is Cass Pokora — a photographer, artist, and designer who has been a familiar face in our community for years. Cass recently exhibited at Typeforce in Bridgeport, currently has work showing at New Wave Coffee in Logan Square, is featured in our upcoming issue of Faculty 3, and recently co-designed a poster for the Chicago Paper Show at the Chicago Cultural Center.This episode is a little different. Cass sat down with host Christian Solorzano on a Saturday afternoon for a conversation recorded in the car, between the Chicago Pottery Market in Wicker Park and David Byrne's Theater of the Mind at the Goodman. The conversation moves between Cass's design practice, her process and return to working with her hands, her childhood obsession with sharks, the imaginary city she's built in her head, and her dream of someday designing a corn maze.Music by Eighties Slang.
About Underscore
Underscore is a podcast by the Chicago Graphic Design Club that brings you conversations with Chicago’s creative community. On this podcast, host Christian Solorzano explores the craft, theory, and practice of graphic design, plus discusses ideas that cultivate a more inclusive and thoughtful creative community.
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