“Make what you want to make. Don’t wait for people to ask you to do it. There are no barriers to it now.” — Elana Schlenker

Elana Schlenker is an independent graphic designer and art director based in Brooklyn. Print magazine honored her on their 2013 New Visual Artist list - a prestigious annual distinction that recognizes the industry’s top 20 creative talents under the age of 30. Schlenker is the publisher and creator of Gratuitous Type, a pamphlet of typographic smut.

This episode, we ponder the phrase “unspecialized practice” and try to decide if it’s a positive description for one’s work. We consider the differences between zines and magazines, the contemporary state of magazine publishing, Helvetica vs. Comic Sans, and the virtues of collaboration compared to DIY. Elana Schlenker tells us about studying marketing and studio art, rather than graphic design and walks us through the process of designing It’s Time to Move – writer/cartoonist Peter Wieben’s and photographer Dominic Nahr’s harrowing first-hand account of the Egyptian revolution through their text, drawings, and photos.

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