40,000,000,000,000 DPI

This week we’re joined by our friend, Holiday Black. Holiday is a concept-forward art director with a passion for youth culture, creativity, and their two cats. They’ve been art directing for the past four years, and have had the opportunity to work on alcohol, fast food, cars, fashion, and footwear. Outside of work, Holiday can be found crafting, looking for hot springs, reading a book, or googling whether or not mercury is in retrograde. You can find Holiday’s work at www.holiday.black.

We talk with Holiday about their work, royal photoshop fails, corgi eugenics, and design as a portal to spiritual ego death and ultimately enlightenment.

Thanks for listening! Ciao!

This week we spend our life savings on numerological sports betting meal deal life hacks at whop.com; and we quit school to work on our sports betting meal deal life hack startup with a grant from Molly Mielke’s Moth Fund; and then we bathe in the bisexual lighting cast by a full screen view of Monotype’s neuroscience type reports. Turns out we were right all along!

This week we bring fine art to our fine faces with Marina Abramovic’s new line of spiritually-invigorating skincare products. We get a head start on our 2024 thumb fitness goals with T-9 in our TV at CES. AND we go into existential crisis mode in a post-creator world with whatever Metalabel is.

This week we talked to David Chathas: a graphic designer, type designer, educator, sometimes artist who would have rather been a UFC fighter. We talked to Dave about lots of things you can and cannot drink: Bud Light (comma) the history of, high end baby skin care products, energy drinks that look like automotive fluids, and automotive fluids that look like energy drinks—we also discussed the etiquette of lurking online, AND the woke Kansas state license plate fiasco (brought to you by Canva)!

You can find a breakdown of this episode with images and further digressions at: 40trilliondpi.substack.com

AND you can find Dave’s work at: bestgraphicdesignerintheworld.com

This week we delve into the odd history of fax memes; we try and see if there is any there there in the Figma state of the designer report; we learn about the weird things people are trying to do to sea slugs; we visit Kim K in her 7-11/office at the top of the Empire State Building, and we try and get our dating-app eggs to hatch before they're cooked. It is so confusing! Thanks for joining us!

This week we look into the medieval street scene that is the internet and ask ourselves, where did all these jesters come from? And why are several of them named Brian Jordan Alvarez? AND we take a trip to the best of all possible techno-optimistic worlds with Marc A-seven-n.

NOTE: We accidentally swapped in the wrong audio on this, so we're reposting!!!

Hey baybees! We're back! In this week's episode, we pour one out for Burkey Belser, the designer of the original Nutrition Facts label, and how raw information can compete with raw obfuscation. It's a rabbit hole! Also we talk for way too long about Humane AI's AI pin and what a future without screens, apps—or desire itself—might look like!

This week—we dodge the floating pharmaceutical logo lockup with medical spokesperson, lady gaga, we liquidate our savings buying virtual ice cream for Pinkydoll, we compare tactical battle strategies with I Can Talk Barbie, we stick our arms into tiny black suits to visit the puppet pet cemetery—AND we also might have talked about the glassdoor drama! Only one way (for us) to find out!

This week we wait for a flight in Meta’s shiny new Threads lounge, we are led by Gilbert the floating head through a very special video essay about the state of Graphic Design, we are led by an AI chat-panion we’re calling “Figgy” through Figma’s annual IRL conference, CONFIG, and we see what happens when you put an obscure piece of film history in the Magic Chef.

Check out some visual references and an episode breakdown at

https://40trilliondpi.substack.com/

This week, we take our rightful place as characters in the Sanrio Cinematic Universe, we embrace life on the grid at a digital nomad spreadsheet cafe, and we head to the abandoned SEARS in Second Life to try and buy a hat.

Bay Area friends! Or people who are really into traveling! We're releasing a broadsheet poster/publication called: “Go Deep/What Your Favorite Photoshop Tool Says About You” and to help usher this poster into the world, we've asked a few friends to give short presentations/talks/performances/visuals on the theme of “Odd Pedagogy.” We will also introduce the publication, maybe show some strange educational movie montages, and DJ YNG GMA will play far out PBS-core tunes to round out the evening.

Suggested dress code is “NOVA/Ways of Seeing/Encarta97/BYOT(Bring your own turtleneck)"! We hope to see you there!

Reception at 6pm, program at 7pm, hanging out afterwards with DJ YNG GMA.

Friday, April 7th • 6-9pm Eternal Now, 2419 San Pablo Ave, Oakland

This week, we travel to the mid-Pacific garbage island created by $30 Million worth of Funko Pops; we raise all kinds of wrenches in salute to Tradeswoman magazine; we contemplate Spotify's recent efforts to TikTok itself to death, and we sit down with America's hottest invasive species: Copi!

Follow us at

https://www.instagram.com/40000000000000dpi/

and check out:

https://40trilliondpi.substack.com/

This week: we get into the erotic fiction compilation, Look Homeward Erotica and the history of marketing the lives of "real housewives;" we take trip into the surreal hellscape that is the Goth Target inside Horizon Worlds; and finally, we time travel back back back to the origins of FABRIC as clothing and as tool and technology! Thanks for joining us! 

LINKS TO THINGS WE DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

VIKINGS: https://hakaimagazine.com/features/no-wool-no-vikings/
medieval.eu/viking-sails/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/specialprojects/interactive-assets/nggraphics/vikingsettlements-graphic/build-2017-03-27_16-28-31/
https://www.linseedjournal.com/

TARGET: https://www.oculus.com/vr/5710500479007618/
EROTICA: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2729107M/Look_homeward_erotica

This week, we look wistfully back at the recently passing summer of cyclopean fast food, negative-freedom-algorithm-training, and artificial artificial intelligent rap-fluencers. Summer’s almost over! Let’s get into it!

This week we lose composure over the new Gmail compose button, we vigilante-creep on anono-racist hackers, and we share a newly redesigned six pack (or ten) with a very sweet Japanese businessman who seemed perfectly fine when we left him to catch his train home.

SF Art Book Fair Edition

This week we take a trip to the SF Art Book Fair, a three-and-a-half day book party in a tent—and in the Minnesota St Project. The fair brought out like, hundreds of publishers? Basically it was overwhelming. In this episode we talk SF Art Book Fair, fairs in general, the riso-coil industrial complex, micro-capitalism—and we accost a small number of fair participants with an even smaller microphone in a very busy room. 

Thanks to everyone we talked with at the fair:

Kaming and Shannon from Inventory Press, Mo and James from Fisk, Danielo from Open Projects Press, Josh from Fulcrum Press, Jemimah from Laguna Collective, Kate and Steph tabling for Gender Fail, Hallie from Mouth to Mouth, Mollie from Irrelevant Press, Sahra and Andrew, current students in the CCA MFA Design Program, Lena and Pete from Night Diver, Chris of Unrealized Archive, Alec from Endless Editions, Renee from Blum and Poe, and Luca and Heather from SFABF.

In this week's episode, we jack into the surreal muppet matrix of AI generated image grids—and we take a lo-fi time-trip to the 19th century creation of the world’s first dating app, the acquaintance card. Thanks for listening! 

Welcome to another episode of 40 Trillion DPI! This week, we warm the bench for the social design competition, 36 Days of Type, we dust off our tube tops for the arrival of peak bimbo, we get real at the same time every day for exactly two minutes with the new social app, BReal—and we summon the Sagmeister Tamogotchi from behind a rack of weird infographic Target clothes. 

Thanks for listening!

What does 2022 hold for design? On today's episode, we take a look at trend forecasts from around the internet. Is the 90s revival going strong, or going away? Will the much-hyped Metaverse honestly have any impact on anything? How do designers and so-called amateur content creators affect one another's aesthetics? And, what exactly is "Frasurbane?" Plus! We try and make some predictions of our own.

Visit designfreaks.cafe for more episodes, and/or follow us on Instagram at @40000000000000dpi or Twitter at @40TrillionDPI. 

Thanks for listening!

Hello friends! This week, we wander Costco with Chinese influencers flexing their institutional-size muffin hauls; we explore the strange, crumbling metaverse of Neopets; and we gaze deeply into the MLM/DAO, Mirror.xyz. It's a wild ride as usual! Thanks for listening! 

Find us on instagram at:
@40000000000000dpi

Or on Twitter
@40TrillionDPI

Articles mentioned in this episode:

CHINESE INFLUENCERS
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypzny/pose-costco-influencer-photos-china

NEOPETS
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/03/arts/design/neopets.html?searchResultPosition=3

MIRROR.XYZ
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypzbq/surprise-the-future-of-media-involves-a-crypto-based-popularity-contest-mirror
https://decrypt.co/83041/mirror-daos-and-the-exclusivity-problem

Hello! On today's episode, we visit US Government websites in search of pharma-bro Martin Shkrelli's one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang IRL NFT, we think about how design can align or misalign incentives—and we somehow travel through the holes in the giant letters nailed on the side of a suburban house/barn into some kind of utopian/dystopian beige metaverse. It's kind of a Magic (design) School Bus situation. Also, it is a JOURNEY. Thanks for tuning in! 

ARTICLES WE TALK ABOUT / REFERENCE

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sells-pharma-bro-shkrelis-unique-wu-tang-clan-album-2021-07-27/ 

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2340210950922/a-q-a-with-the-woman-who-installed-these-2-foot-tall-address-numbers-on-her-house

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eqbb/the-metaverse-has-always-been-a-dystopia

We hope this podcast finds you well! 

On today’s episode we talk about the sharing economy’s attempt to commodify accessibility, Tim Berners Lee selling out the world (wide web), the Lesbian Avengers re-avenging themselves against corporate greed, and we apply for barista positions at Bumble’s brick and mortar cafe. Wish. Us. Luck. 

Shout out to Sarah Schulman, author of (most recently) Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, for her article on design and protest: "When Protest Movements Became Brands" which we encourage you to check out here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/t-magazine/1980s-protest-movements.html

In this episode, we also give shout outs to some of our recent faves—including Zine Co-Op HK (@zine_coop on instagram) and the Scott Summers, cartographer-graphic designer of Sonoma's Mountain cemetery walking tour (https://sonomaoverlooktrail.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/2.jpg). Follow us on Instagram at @40000000000000dpi and visit our website at designfreaks.cafe for more episodes! 

See you in a couple weeks! —Helen + Justin

Yes! What's up everyone! This week, we're looking at the history of the Parental Advisory sticker design (via Olivia Rodrigo's Sour), we're putting our names into the hat to win the California vaccine lottery, we're thinking about perverse incentives, and we're tripping out on how to create a better, more closely knit social reality. As usual, it's a whole thing! Thank you, thank you, thank you, as always for joining us! 

This week, Helen + Justin spend the entire 42 minutes trying to figure out what's going on with Microsoft's quest for a new default font. Along the way, we talk about obsolescence, the extreme skill of type foundries (respect!), the weirdness of corporate PR, and the totally un-neutral process of constructing various neutralities. It. Is. A. Journey. We hope you actively enjoy it (and are not just having it on as a sort of default noise)! Thanks for listening!