Nika Simovich Fisher is a Serbian-born, American-raised graphic designer, writer, and educator based in New York. Her written work explores how design and identity overlap, and highlights underreported voices in internet and design history. Her words have appeared in publications including The New York Times and AIGA Eye on Design. In 2018, she co-founded Labud, a design studio specializing in strategy, branding, and web design for clients across fashion, art, and tech. She is an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Parsons School of Design, and previously taught at The University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University. Nika holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Journalism School, and a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design.

Join us as we discuss teaching web design and how the rise in user experience design and accessibility needs have shifted the way we think about the internet.

Please also check out some of Nika's latest work including a lecture at Parsons and a story on AIGA Eye on Design.

Bobby Joe Smith III is a Black and Lakota (Hunkpapa and Oohenumpa) graphic designer and media artist. Design, computation, performance, writing, and lens-based image-making are mediums of expression and inquiry he turns to often. His creative practice is rooted in the ongoing decolonial and abolitionist movements led by Indigenous communities on Turtle Island and across the Black diaspora. His research draws from the decolonial, abolitionist, and post-apocalyptic strategies of Black and Indigenous people to construct a poetic vernacular of "unsettling grammars"—gestures, methodologies, and utterances that deviate, disrupt, and dismantle settler-colonial systems. By rearticulating these "unsettling grammars" through the disciplines of media art and design, Bobby Joe seeks to reveal vectors leading toward decolonial futures and generate work that resonates with the people and movements that comprise his community. He currently is pursuing an MFA from UCLA’s Design | Media Arts department and holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Middlebury College.

In this episode, listen as we discuss how Bobby Joe utilizes design to uplift his community and how we can encourage students to think about design in a way that is meaningful to them.