Christian Solorzano [00:00]

Hello, you are listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host Christian Solorzano, and today I am joined by my guest Craighton Berman, a designer, educator, illustrator, and founder of Manual, a company devoted to making objects designed for slow living. He joined me a few days ago from his new studio space in Workshop 4200 in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood of Chicago.

And we talk about his origin story going from an interest in illustration to eventually finding home in engineering, which eventually led to industrial design. A practice that he continues to this day in the form of making objects for tea, coffee, home, and most recently, he's been devoted to making a collection of clocks, which happen to be featured in the Design Club's upcoming publication, Faculty 3, which will be released in mid-November of 2026.

He walks us through his thought process and his research in the way that he creates educational environments, both for his clients and his students. And we spend a little bit of time talking about AI and its implications both in the future of design and also in the individual and the way that we perceive and engage with the world. It's a great conversation. As always, if you enjoy conversations like these, we really appreciate your support when you leave us a rating wherever you listen.

Thank you so much. And we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Welcome to our show.

Craighton Berman [01:50]

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Christian Solorzano [01:52]

I know we've been kind of trying to make this happen for some time now. And finally, on October 20th at 3 PM, we are sitting here at a distance via technology to finally have a conversation.

Craighton Berman [02:07]

But it took seeing each other in person to make it happen, I think. The fact that you were in the same room as me last week or week before, and I looked over and I was like, hey, I think we need to connect.

Christian Solorzano [02:16]

Well, it was, it was funny because when I saw you, I was like, damn, I owe him an email. And then you told me that you owed me an email.

Craighton Berman [02:27]

Well, there, it felt like there was something owed somewhere. You know what I mean?

Christian Solorzano [02:30]

There's like, we were, we were in some kind of debt to each other. So. So here we are. So thanks again for being on our show. For the person that is listening to this and can't see, the recording. Can you tell us, can you paint a picture for us of where you are right now?

Craighton Berman [02:46]

Oh, sure. I'm in my new studio space in this really interesting building called Workshop 4200. It's just west of Logan Square in Belmont Cragin, and it's an old Hammond organ factory that they chopped up into a bunch of interesting spaces. So I've got a little 600-square-foot space that's sort of half prototyping and shipping stuff, basically, and the other half is like design studio, which is still kind of coming together.

But yeah, and right off of a massive lobby with a coffee shop and all these other small entrepreneurial businesses moving through. So yeah, the vibes are good. If I look up every once in a while, there's little windows I have at the front of my space that looks over that lobby. So it's quieter now in the afternoon, but sometimes people walk by and wave.

Christian Solorzano [03:26]

Yeah. And as someone that is a designer of objects and things that occupy space, what makes a good space for you? What are some of the ingredients that go into that?

Craighton Berman [03:38]

Oh, that's a great question, man. And I love thinking about space too. Ever since I signed the lease for this place, like back in August, I've just been thinking, I'll fall asleep thinking about how I could lay it out. I just love— I'm not a big, interior design person, but I love studio as a physical manifestation of my brain, right?

So the first thing was like this I have in front of me that this— that we're talking to you on is this 4 by 8 foot table that I just built. It's basically a couple sheets of plywood on top of a metal structure that I figured out how to build, and I'm just so happy to have that back up and running.

I've been between studios for the last year and a half or so, and not having this like space where I can spread everything out in front of me and kind of see it all the projects and things that I'm thinking about, like that to me is huge. I love in my studio space, and I'm gonna be building a custom bookcase for this, a way to display all my books and objects and projects. And I think just having things on display is so massive for me.

Obviously, like most people probably listening to this podcast are visual thinkers. So this is probably not just me, but I just need, I mean, maybe it is also my product design background, but like I need to have physical manifestations. Like I can work digitally, but I really am much happier when I have things on walls, things on surfaces. Boxes on floors. I want my physical things surrounding me. So, but I mean, yeah, I have so many. I've had probably 10 different studios in Chicago.

And so I can tell you some have this and this and others have this and this. And so every new studio I'm in always feels like the best iteration because you're always changing. But in this case, I do feel like this is the best iteration so far. I have all the different zones of clean, dirty, social, private. And then this time I have much more of a community, which is nice. I haven't had that in quite a while.

So working out of various storefronts and stuff was nice, but kind of lonely sometimes when there weren't a lot of people around. So this is so much more social. I'm bringing my— I have a teaching a class at UIC and bringing them through tomorrow. And we're gonna tour a couple different, just pop into a couple different businesses.

And it's just so nice to be able to like be connected to a bunch of different creative, the creative community like that and be able to share that with the students so easily.

Christian Solorzano [05:51]

Yeah. When we had that exchange a few weeks ago at the 230 space, where a lot of designers got together to define what design is or talk about the state of design and the future of design, I know one of the things that you brought up that really stood out to me and that I resonated with was this idea of this abundance in Chicago of community and design.

And I think sometimes it's, one of the things that always bugs me is when people still talk about COVID and like kind of the impact of COVID And I'm like, it's almost been, it's been almost 7 years now. And I think over the last couple of years, to me, Chicago seems like it's such a thriving place with so many different art forms just exploding with this orchestra of magic?

And I know one of the things that you brought up was how you tend to participate or you are just, kind of immersing yourself in a lot of multidisciplinary spaces. Yeah. Which I think was a really great thing to counter sometimes the negativity that people might say when, they're talking about like everyone's so isolated and things are so dreadful and sad. Right. When in reality, I think we have so much in this city. So.

Craighton Berman [07:10]

I think we do. And I think, I mean, I don't think that's what, I don't wanna speak for the people that were running this session. Yeah. But I think, it was, I think the intentions are solid that like,

Chicago does have so much going on. How can we bring it together? How do we support each other more? I think all of that is valid, but I think, yeah, I think what you're referring to, and I still was bouncing around in my head after that kind of session, was like, why are we whining? We actually have it pretty good. I think between your organization, the Design Museum, and world-class other museums, and interesting art spaces, and design spaces, and bookstore, we have so much stuff.

Honestly, sometimes I feel kind of bummed out that I'm busy with life. I don't hit these things as often.

I make time for some things, but not all, right? And so it's like, I feel like we have a wealth of a plethora of that kind of culture. And, I think, I think sometimes it's like, in this case, a lot of the people at that, at that meeting were older. And I do feel it. Like when I first moved to Chicago in like the early 2000s, like it was different. Like it was a different scene, like especially where I was coming from industrial design.

Like there were dozens of firms, like small agencies, like that were doing all kinds of cool stuff. And there were like parties and events. And there was a lot more of that. And then industrial design has shifted. It just has. And that happened prior to COVID. And so it's just different now.

But I feel like there's— if you're interested in creativity and not just like specifically a specific genre of creativity, I feel like this city still is like— I've been here almost 25 years and I feel like it's still like an untapped wellspring of inspiration, past, present, future. You know what I mean? Like, the music scene here is legendary, right? It doesn't, people oftentimes think, oh, LA, New York for music. And of course they're not wrong. That's where the industry is.

But a lot of the most creative collaborations and the synthesis in the music world are happening, have happened here, and still happen here. And that's super exciting. I just, I go to like a lot of these like experimental music events, and there's like literally a dozen different people throwing those kind of or whether you wanna call 'em shows or performances or whatever.

There are so many that it's like, I, like last weekend there were like 4 different things going on that I wanted to go to and I made it to none of them. So it's like, I don't think I can ever complain that we don't have a creative community happening here. I just think there's so much and really it's time. It's time and energy that is what's holding us back more than anything.

Christian Solorzano [09:29]

I tend to move through the world with a lot of FOMO just because there's always things that are like going on like this weekend as well. There is there are some events and I am just I don't, I can't go to them, but I appreciate them being there. And I know that.

Craighton Berman [09:43]

Oh yeah. My calendar, my calendar's looking stacked for this week. I literally, there's 4 different events from the far South Side all the way north that I want to hit on Saturday. We'll see if I can do that, but they actually, ironically, they kind of lay out in a nice kind of like geographical way. So it might actually work out that but I will be, I'll be everywhere from like far South, not far South Side, but fairly deep South Side, south of Hyde Park.

And then all the way up sort of northwest side, then out to Oak Park. And it's like, this is a lot of distance and I live on the far north side. So it's a lot of distance to cover, but yeah, it's exciting to me. It's like, yeah, there's so much going on and that's what's kind of always made me— I'm into all kinds. My background's industrial design, but the types of design and creativity I'm interested in are super broad and all across the spectrum.

And I think it's exciting. There's tons going on here always.

Christian Solorzano [10:30]

So going back to your industrial design background. Can you talk to us about the origin story of you choosing to become an industrial designer? Are there any objects that you grew up with that left an impression on you that made you want to pursue this?

Craighton Berman [10:51]

Yeah. Yeah. There's so much there. Well, I mean, I discovered it in the late '90s, so like industrial design was, I think, pretty, at least to me, it was pretty obscure growing up in like the DC area, like the Virginia suburbs of DC, like not really a design capital of any sort, especially not industrial design. So it wasn't something I was aware of, but I did like physical things growing up. I liked making stuff.

I would make speaker boxes for my car in high school, or, I would do physical things fairly often like that. I love drawing comics, and my parents were supportive of that kind of, that kind of stuff. And video, just doing video work in high school. So I was always interested in making things and telling stories and all that kind of stuff.

But yeah, I went to school for engineering and, 'cause that's what I thought, that's what you did if you wanted to make things, you studied engineering 'cause it was the '90s. And that's, I have practical parents who were like, engineering is a great place to go. And it's, they weren't wrong, but I quickly realized that was wrong for me. And I always say like my origin moment was I was in, I guess I made it through a year of engineering school, was miserable, but kept going.

And then my first like mechanical engineering class sophomore year, the teacher's like, oh wow, you can draw. That's usually what industrial designers can do. It was like a needle on the record moment where I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Who? And then quickly found out there was luckily an industrial design school at Virginia Tech. So that was, I mean, I can't even imagine what would be different in my life if it didn't have that.

So that's one of the beauties of a big state school is there's lots of things going on, right? So yeah, I quickly found a friend that was in the program and had her tour me around and fell in love instantly.

Honestly, the thing that hit me most is that Virginia Tech, everybody had their own workspace in a massive room, like this massive room or multiple stories really, but just the idea again of working physically, working visually, like I just was like, oh, that's what I want to be doing. Transferred into the program and yeah, never looked back. And it was just, once I got in, like I knew that was right, like right away it was like felt locked in and I had to work.

I had to do a summer lab to get into the program. And actually I wasn't even accepted when I initially applied to the program. They didn't accept me, which I'm definitely not still bitter about 25+ years later. But I had this one teacher, one professor. I was taking a history of industrial design class. This guy was absolutely— I mean, he's still like a total amazing professor, one of those guys.

He had like a Model T Ford he would drive around town and a car that he designed in the '70s that he would drive around town. So he was just like an absolute eccentric, and he vouched for me and got me in. So yeah, I ended up doing 5 years to get— I was in school for 5 years, which luckily back then college wasn't as expensive as it is now.

So it wasn't as big of a deal, but yeah, discovered industrial design and from Virginia moved to Chicago for my first job. So been here since 2002. Yeah. But I've been in Chicago longer than I've, I think I've crossed that line that I lived in Virginia, which is wild.

Christian Solorzano [13:39]

And what were you drawing as a kid? You mentioned comics, but what was it? Characters? What was, what about drawing?

Craighton Berman [13:46]

I was never, yeah, I was never a character guy. I was, I was definitely like into like, I mean, it's this, I mean, it's like such a stereotype. I was like inventing things. I definitely did like lots of like drawings of crazy inventions.

I would oftentimes— I had this— I remember I had this ongoing drawing, which I think is long gone, but I was creating these worlds where this little character would like run through almost video game style and go over a bunch of like things they had to surmount, pits they had to jump, fire, whatever. And I remember I would, I'd get to the end of a page and I would glue a new page on and keep it going. And this thing rolled out like 30 pages.

So it was like an ongoing project, which also says a lot about me because, yeah, I love long-term, long-going projects that you continue to go back to and hit. But yeah, I was drawing a lot of— I mean, I did draw some cartoons and some characters. I mean, I definitely was into like comic books and, would draw some of those characters.

I would remember I would like get enough comics to fit in like one of those large 9 by 12 envelopes, and then I would draw, the cover would be like this beautiful— what I thought was beautiful pencil rendering of like the Punisher or Ghost Rider or something like that. So it'd be the cover was definitely like character-driven, but I was never, I was never a huge like character. I wasn't like drawing Superman or Spider-Man or whatever.

Like it was just like the couple comics I was into. But yeah, it was always kind of drawing stuff. And, I loved the Far Side growing up. I actually have right over there a couple of the anthologies of the Far Side. It's still like a high watermark for me. So it's sort of this like absurdity, this like one-panel joke idea, which obviously I still have a whole practice of sort of one-panel humor. So I definitely think that was a huge influence on me.

I read a lot of Mad Magazine, so a lot of like kind of like biting cultural critique and, some juvenile humor, which I still love all of that.

To this day, it makes me happy. I saved all my '90s Mad Magazines, and then I inherited my grandfather's '70s Mad Magazines. And so I have them all still and My kids read them. Like just last night, my 12-year-old was sitting in bed reading Mad Magazine from, laughing at jokes about Bob Dole or something like totally like culturally, like not even relevant anymore, but kind of hilarious that he still has this archive of out-of-date jokes about society. But yeah.

Christian Solorzano [15:58]

That's cool. I remember Mad Magazine. I would, I would, they'd be available in my neighborhood sometimes at Walgreens. And I would always go to the back page to do the a/B thing.

Craighton Berman [16:08]

Fold in. Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

I mean, it's a longer story, and it's not my story to tell, but I had a studio mate at a studio I was at over 10 years ago, and he now does the fold-in for Mad, which— it's a long, amazing story where he reached out to Al Jaffee, the original guy who was doing it well into his 90s, I think almost 100, and he was passed the torch, which is— I remember the day he got a letter back from Al Jaffee.

We were all in the studio working. We all had— it's like 6 of us that had different kind of creative practices. And he just suddenly started like freaking out and we're like, what's the matter? And he's like, I just got a letter from Al Jaffee. It was like, yeah, the fold-in is, the fold-in is historical. And there you go. Now it's got a Chicago connection. So I think that's pretty rad.

Christian Solorzano [16:47]

As we, begin to close 2026, how has this year been for you?

Craighton Berman [16:54]

How could you say that? Yeah, I guess we are getting close.

Christian Solorzano [16:58]

You recently moved into a new space. Yeah. That we were talking about. Yeah, just talk to us about your year and sort of how it's been treating you.

Craighton Berman [17:07]

Man, the last, the last year and a half, 2 years have been just a roller coaster for me and my practice. I've been independent now for 14, 15 years, something. So it's been a while, been doing this a while, and I do a lot of different things. And this past year and a half, 2 years have been just disruption across all of it, starting with, when a certain someone got into office, was that about 2 years ago? And instantly started enacting tariffs.

And a lot of the physical objects I designed for Manual, my housewares brand, are made overseas. And so I instantly like pulled the brakes on that and basically was like, well, I can't, I'm not gonna make this stuff right now while a tariff war is going on. I'm too small. I don't have massive coffers of cash to just throw at this. So I kind of pulled the plug on that business, not fully, but shifted. I did a bunch of local projects, which were great.

Using local manufacturing and experimented and did some kind of odd, bricolage, like combining a bunch of old things to make new things, and kept the company going and kept the project going, I guess, more than anything. Because Manual is less about— I mean, it is a company and it does make real money, but it's also sort of a project in my mind of, an ongoing exploration of what it means to design for slowness and for embracing ritual and all those kind of things.

So it definitely felt like a big hit financially to not be able to make the things that I could sell, but to still keep the project and keep the idea going. That was interesting. So it was both a defeating couple years because— or a year and a half, I guess— because yeah, I had to like let go of my studio.

I mean, it just— the lease was up and I kept the studio because I had a lot of physical goods I needed to ship and work on. And if I wasn't doing that, then I didn't necessarily need the full studio and also could obviously financially save some money. And I was ready for something new. So that was a big disruption. And then on my client side, again, with all the uncertainty right now, a lot of what I do is helping companies think about design futures, basically.

It's like, what do we make next? What do we do next? What are we thinking about? What are we saying? And I think there's been some real uncertainty in that space, obviously. So that was— so my client work took a few— had a few weird bumps over the last year or two. So luckily the last year has been actually pretty good. Like the last, especially 6 months have been— both of those things are firing back up.

I have new projects for Manual that are being produced overseas and, a couple of projects that have just— I can't even keep up with how fast they're moving and preorders and things like that. And then client work, especially this summer, like we talked, I think, this summer about doing this and I was just slammed with work and client work. So all good things.

But yeah, it was coming into the fall was just, I had a very busy summer and I was going to be moving studios, moving into this space. I actually signed the lease in August, but then took off on a family road trip. So I just like moved a bunch of stuff in here and then couldn't even get out of my old space.

And then on my way back on the family road trip, got a call from UIC about teaching an adjunct class that was going to start a week after the phone call. So that was like, oh my God, like. I mean, I wanted to do it and I love, I love teaching and it had been a while since I'd done it. So I agreed to do it, but that was definitely intense.

So I was shutting down my old studio, trying to get everything out of it, setting up the new one, trying to get a new product off the ground that was pre-ordering like crazy, starting a new class, which as someone who teaches as well, like it's a lot of work the first time you teach a class. It's just there's a lot to figure out. So yeah. And then of course client work going that whole time. So it was just a lot. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [20:38]

And you're teaching a really important class, Senior Thesis Design Research, right?

Craighton Berman [20:43]

Yeah, I think it's— yeah, I think it is an important class. I think it's the right one. I've said before, I've taught a handful of times over the years, and each time it like gave me a chance to kind of go deeper on the topic just for myself as well as obviously for the students. And this was the right one at the right time. So it's like, yeah, it was a lot about framing. These senior industrial design students are coming in and it's their senior year.

They have a thesis project, which I don't know if graphic design does it exactly the same way, but, a lot of creative, majors, you have that 1-year thesis right at the end. And it's like, I think one of the most important parts of it is the definition. Rarely have they had a chance to define their own project, right? Throughout most of school, you're told, oh, it's going to be— the project's about this, the brief is this.

And so the freedom that they have to like, it's almost overwhelming, I think, for a lot of them. It's like, I don't— I'm not being told what to do. And I think if I look at my career, that's been the most exciting thing for me is when I'm kind of creating my brief in a way, or even if I'm working for a client, there's obviously a brief involved, but a lot of it is so exploratory.

It's like, for them, they're like, what are we trying to figure out? What is the product? What is the thing that we should care about? Then obviously for my own projects, that's— I'm always answering that question is, what do I want to make? What matters to me? What do I think? What do I think is going to fulfill me, fulfill financially, spiritually, all these things, right? It's like you have to figure that out. So it's been fun framing that class out.

Luckily, there was— it's not like I had to do it all from blank slate. There, this class has been taught before. There were old syllabi that I can look at. There's a co-teacher— not a co-teacher, but teaching the other branch of the class that we got to meet and chat. So glad to have that. But still, fun to think through, one of those frameworks. What should you be thinking about as a student? You want this project to represent you but also push you.

You want it to, be intensely personal probably, but you also want to make it relate to the world, right? So it's like all these tensions of, you don't— I think a good project can do all of that. It's just hard to find, you know what I mean? So we ran them through— I had them go through a lot of different exercises and explore a lot of different kind of ways of kind of thinking about all those factors.

And I think there's some really cool research going on right now. They're in the research phase now, so they're getting deep into their topics.

Christian Solorzano [22:59]

And how do you define your fulfillment when it comes to, let's say, your work with Manual?

Craighton Berman [23:06]

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it for me is like, I really want the projects to kind of be part of a larger kind of story. And so that's why I ended up making the brand Manual at all was like, I was making a lot of different one-off products and ideas and projects under my own name. And it kind of felt like, I don't know, I needed something to unify it.

And so creating a brand, but the act of making a brand is the act of defining what you are and what you're not. And it's kind of the same way, obviously, for what you're making too, right? Like what's in bounds, what's not. I love that act of like, and obviously I'd set this brand up a while ago now. It's been at least 10 years, maybe more. 2014. So yeah, over 10 years.

And so it's interesting that some of the tenets that I had originally kind of set up for what this was and what it isn't, I've played with some of them and stretched a few, but others I've stayed very steadfast to. And yeah, I think that's— I don't know, I think you asked kind of like what makes a good project for me.

So I think it's like if it kind of relates to that, to those original tenets in a way, and kind of furthers the idea of like, yeah, like I said, like slowness, ritual, ideas around like not necessarily like anti-tech, but what if tech wasn't a part of this? What if we relied on our own skills to do something? So a lot of it's around like food and drink rituals, like making— hand-making coffee or tea or cocktails or things like that.

So also playing with like production, like some of my stuff is produced in China or overseas, other things are produced here in Chicago. So I'm very satisfied when my projects play with different manufacturing methods and like glass is one that I've done a lot of projects in glass, so I know it. So it's fun to go deep, but then every once in a while it's fun to go into something new that I don't know at all and explore a new material.

And so I think it's like a lot of those things. I mean, obviously financial. I want, I want these projects to sustain themselves. I, I'm a big believer that like, I'm an early Kickstarter user, so that kind of logic is like lodged in my brain that like if I can fund this to get it off the ground, like that's a success. I don't need to make a lot of money off of the first run of a line of products.

But I've found that if you can get it off the ground, you can get it into people's hands, like it takes on a life of its own, or it doesn't and you move on, right? And but you're not losing any money. Whereas like in the past, I would spend my own money to like make prototypes of things. And, you just kind of do it for the love of the game.

But I think it's somewhat exciting to be able to be like, I want to make, like the latest thing I launched is like a series of accessories that you put onto an existing coffee maker that has been made it for over 60 years in the Netherlands. And it's like, it's kind of a cult coffee maker, electric coffee maker. I wanted it for myself. I was working from home for the last year and a half. I was using that coffee maker.

So I just started to tinker and make my own kind of thing that got rid of a lot of the plastic and allowed me to control it more and basically wanted to pay for my own R&D. So I just ended up putting out, I'd made, I only needed to make one bracket for me, but I made 25 and put 'em out there to see what would happen. They sold out. So then I made 100, they sold out. So then I made 500, they sold out.

You know what I mean? So it's like, it's fun to like organically discover through my own passions. You know what I mean? Like my passions are around a lot of food and home goods and natural materials.

So it's like, it's nice with that logic of being able to make what I want and find the audience, whereas when I was in design school, and I still think this is valid, especially for large companies, but it's all about like find out what people want and then make what they want. But I think it's interesting that the tools have made it possible to flip that and be like, no, make what you want and you believe in.

And now with the internet and all these other things out there, you could find the people who care about that, or you could tell the story and make them care about that. Whereas I don't know that, unless you were a Nike or a Pepsi, you weren't convincing people that what you did mattered to them 30, 40, 50 years ago. It was hard. So it's, to me, that's exciting that we're in an age where you can do that.

Christian Solorzano [27:00]

And when it comes to slow living, a few years ago I read an article. I forget who it was by, but the article was something along the lines of In Praise of Slowness. And it was about this notion of this radical idea that to combat or to push back against the status quo, we simply slow down. So when you started to explore this idea of slow living, were you responding to something that you were experiencing in your life that maybe felt a little bit too fast?

Craighton Berman [27:34]

Yeah, for sure. No, I mean, I think everything feels like it's accelerating. I think it's, there's plenty of books that you've probably read, that I've read. There's all kinds of things talking about, the kind of acceleration of everything. And obviously with like more tools, more access, like that enables speed, right? Like the world was a very small place in a way 100 years ago because like you couldn't really talk to someone on the other side of the world. You couldn't communicate, you couldn't transfer goods.

Like a lot of the things that we take for granted now, the transfer of ideas and money and everything is so much more accelerated. And obviously that lineage goes all the way into the current movement with AI. And the more layers you get on that, right? Those like outer layers that we keep adding keep moving faster and faster. So. Yeah. Yeah, I think Manual is a bit of a reaction to that. Obviously, I live within this world.

I use the internet as much, if not more, than anybody else. I'm not an advocate of like, go live in a cabin and like kind of the aesthetic of slow. I mean, that could be real too. I mean, obviously there are people who live off the grid and fully are living that world. But for me, it was a bit of a reminder, we can do things right.

I was working in kind of the innovation space prior to going independent, and a lot of the projects that we ended up doing for food brands especially tended to really focus on convenience. Like what was truly innovative for these companies was making things so convenient to eat, and I just felt like deep down, like I don't know that that's truly innovation. I mean, it is a metric; it is a way to measure something.

And sure, sometimes it is nice that there's a convenient way to get dinner on the table and. 10 minutes. But is that really— is that the only goal? Is that the only metric? So that's kind of the early days of me thinking about Manual. I had— it didn't become a thing till years later, but it was sort of like, if I ever get to do my own thing, I want to, I think about like a camera, like a real like SLR camera.

It takes time to learn it, right? You don't get it right away. You don't understand aperture and shutter speed and how they work together. It there is a bit of a gate to jump over, not like gatekeeping necessarily, but like tools are like that, right? Like they're complicated and sometimes you have to put the time in to learn them and that's worth something, right?

And so that was kind of early days of Manual being like, yeah, like sure, we can make it really easy to get a cup of coffee in your hand by just using, going through a drive-through or using a machine that can spit it out with no thought at all. But isn't it interesting that like— Yeah. If you treat it like cooking, you can learn about the process. You learn about what it takes to make it good.

You understand all the variables, and it's something you do every day, so you get to play with it every day and adjust those variables and in the pursuit of a perfect cup, which is not possible, right? There is no perfect cup of coffee. It's a grown, it's a, it's something that comes from the earth, right? Like every day a bean grows differently, and the way it's roasted and the way it's prepared by you changes, and that's kind of cool, right?

Like it's I think it's like a chef with their going to the market and they get what the market has and then they make what they can from it. And those constraints are interesting. So that was sort of the angle I was coming at was like, what if I made things that were like all about process and like the process was good, that process was ritual, that process is exciting, you learn about something.

So yeah, my first big project was a coffee-related product because I was got— I got really obsessed with coffee at the time and kind of that All, controlling all the variables to kind of make coffee. And after that, I did, I did a tea project with a tea company, and they taught me all about like sort of a similar idea that like traditional Chinese and Taiwanese teas and other things in that region, like there's process around it, right?

There's obviously like the Japanese tea ceremony is a well-known thing, and even the Western culture, that thinking about that ritual, about that process, and about how it's actually worth something, like it's not about Getting the drink in your body as fast as possible. It's actually about slowing down, taking the time to be present, aware of what you're doing, in control of a process. I think that's exciting, especially in these times where it could— you could feel so out of control.

You just— not out of control necessarily, but like you're using all these great new tools, but you— do you really know what you're doing? Like. I always think the metaphor I think about a lot is like turn-by-turn map directions on our phones, right? If I'm riding a bike through the city, I look over and almost every person is on their fricking phones, looking at their phones. Best case, they're looking at mapping. Worst case, they're watching YouTube or whatever.

But they're so not present in the current moment. Not only could they probably not tell you where they're going without that turn-by-turn, they have no idea where they're going, but they're also not even seeing where they're passing through. And to me, that's like a double crime. It's like you're passing through, I think Chicago, any city is an amazing place. There's so much to see.

I love— I mean, I drive more than I want to, but I love passing through the city on a bike because that speed is just fast enough that you can take in what's around you and see amazing things. You're just slow enough, I guess, to do that, but fast enough that you're not like, you could see a lot, right? That speed, I think, is perfect. But even when you're driving, you can see a lot and appreciate a lot.

And a lot of people are like— So I think that's what I'm reacting to, is this sort of like, yes, these tools exist and turn-by-turn directions are great, of course. I'm not saying throw that out the window, but like having spatial awareness is also great, right? So it's like, that's the skill side, right? Like living in Chicago for, the vast majority of my adult life, I have a general sense of where things are. Like I can kind of get anywhere I need to go.

It's also really easy here because it's a grid. Like it's hard to get lost here. To me, that's empowering. And so it's that kind of, those kind of ideas that I think go back to manual. Like it's not that I'm a Luddite, although I have Luddite tendencies, but it's more of I'm interested in not forgetting what got us to where we are, right? And like appreciating craft and the act of doing something and not always indexing off of convenience at all times.

I think there's a real risk in making everything in your life friction-free. And so that's kind of what Manual is a reaction to, is a little bit of friction, but it's good friction?

Christian Solorzano [33:39]

When I was a kid, I think many people probably had this experience where they'd be sitting in the backseat of the car and it'd be raining and there'd be like 2 raindrops on the window. Yeah.

And you'd kind of see which one would race first to the bottom, or like you'd just be watching like this race of raindrops. And I probably, I have not done that in like a long time, like many years, but the raindrops are still there. So why not, pay attention to those kind of things?

Craighton Berman [34:05]

Totally.

Christian Solorzano [34:06]

Yeah, it's, I love, I love hearing this and I, and I think that As more things become automated, I think these slow moments are gonna become even more and more precious.

Craighton Berman [34:18]

Yeah. I mean, I think in some ways they're kind of a foil to that. Again, I don't, I'm not saying run away from all the speed. I mean, it's somewhat inevitable, right? It's just what it is. We have to live in the moment we're in and, you can, you can be a wrench in the machine sometimes, but you probably aren't gonna do it all the time.

And so it's like, how can you find ways to like every once in a while short circuit things and remind yourself you're human? And that like evolutionarily, like we've been doing this a very long time living as humans. Like yes, all these new tools are great, but like at the end of the day, like doing something with your hands, which is why the company's called Manual. It's like doing something with your hands is exciting, right? It's like you realize like, oh, I have ability.

Like I have, I just read something recently talking about how like the interaction of a phone is actually like one of the biggest, kind of not— they didn't say letdown, but that's my takeaway. It was kind of a letdown because like the interaction we do is mostly tapping on a screen, tapping and swiping, and it's just like very 2-dimensional glass.

But like we've evolved to do so many amazing things with our fingertips and just like forgetting that is a real tragedy because it's, yeah, that's what makes us who we are. I mean, part of what makes us who we are from all our primates is our ability to like really get in there and weave things or cook things or whatever. Our ability to do things with our hands is magical. And yeah, I think Manual's— the idea of slowness there really is that.

It's about being willing to do things and learn things. And the other reason why the company's called Manual is it's sort of like a user manual, right? I love sharing information and diagramming and breaking things down and understanding them. And so, the company was also— I just love the word, the name, because it had to do with hands. It has to do with like zines and manuals and printed goods and even digital and video and obviously anything where you explain things to people.

I think these are all like concepts that are sometimes easy to forget in our hyper-digital age where we just don't really think about that sometimes. We don't really think about what we can do. Whatever's laid out in front of us sometimes is what we do.

Christian Solorzano [36:21]

And amongst the things that you've made, you've mentioned things for coffee, things for tea. You've made lamps. You also made a clock.

Craighton Berman [36:30]

I made a bunch of clocks. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [36:32]

Yeah. A bunch of clocks.

Craighton Berman [36:33]

That was a fun project. So that was one of the ones that happened because of the tariff situation, to be honest. I knew that I wasn't gonna be making goods the way I was before, which is sort of like designing something, finding the factory, making a lot of them and selling them. It was gonna be, it had to be something else.

So I knew I had, access to— there's all these like cut-on-demand sites now where you can like upload a file and they'll cut it out of any material really. And so I was like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder if there's some way I can do like small batch products where, the parts are cut on demand and then I'm assembling them or finishing them in some way. And that project came about where I was like, well, what if, I was thinking a lot about time.

And so the goal was, and it's actually sort of in the midpoint right now, so I need to pick the project back up, but the goal was to design 12 clocks for the 12 months of the year, basically, and limited batches of 12. So it was like this 12 thing. And I got— I've gotten all the way to 7 different clocks, and I've remade a few. And so it's— but yeah, it's been really interesting to try and like work within those constraints.

For the first 6, I was— they were wall clocks, so I had to kind of define the system and how they kind of— it was sheet material that was bent and riveted together and I was able to kind of create a bunch of different takes on time through it. So there was some like concepts. Each design had like a concept to it around how you interpret time. So that was fun. I mean, it was almost impossible to make one clock a month.

That's like— to design one, sure, but like to find a way to manufacture it and get all the parts together and then assemble it and then sell it was like one month is just not enough time. So it's stretched out, but I think that's actually kind of beautiful. It's like kind of almost like supports the idea of the project even more that like this is a long-term project and right now I'm on number 6. Number 7 is in pieces. It'll eventually come out.

This is just gonna happen over time and that's just the way it works. So yeah, sorry, I think I derailed you though. You were saying I've made a lot of different things.

Christian Solorzano [38:23]

Well, I'm glad that you're talking about the clock because one of the clocks that I've seen was the one that was in the Alexander Girard Columbus exhibition. And I don't know if you know this, but there is a, in our upcoming magazine, there is a page that is about the exhibition and it features your clock, like, pretty prominent.

Craighton Berman [38:46]

I didn't know that. Thank you.

Christian Solorzano [38:48]

I'm trying.

Craighton Berman [38:48]

Yeah, that was a cool show. That was a really cool show. I mean, I don't want to weigh this down with talking about Columbus, Indiana, but it's such an interesting place, right? Have you been down there?

Christian Solorzano [38:58]

For anyone that can't— well,

Craighton Berman [39:01]

Oh, look at that. Nice.

Christian Solorzano [39:03]

This is one of our, one of our proofs. So

Craighton Berman [39:06]

Beautiful.

Christian Solorzano [39:06]

So that's like a world exclusive.

Craighton Berman [39:09]

That's awesome. That's cool. And the magazine will be out by the time this goes live, right? So that's kind of—

Christian Solorzano [39:15]

Well, the magazine will be out. So this episode will be going live before the magazine, but the magazine will be available for preorder. So for the people that are listening to this, you can now preorder the magazine.

Craighton Berman [39:26]

Nice. Okay. Well, I definitely gotta get on that. No, that was really cool. I was— this, the exhibition itself, Columbus, Indiana, if you don't know about it, is just— you got to look it up. Like Cummins Engine is based there, and the CEO Cummins back in the mid-century was like, hey, I'll pay any architect fee for any public building if you use like my shortlist of modern architects. And he had, the shortlist of all the best, Saarinen and all those folks of that time period.

So it's like this little know-nothing town an hour and a half south or maybe an hour south of Indianapolis, but like the architecture there punches way above the belt, or above their class, I guess, not above the belt. It's just an amazing place. But yeah, every couple years they do an exhibition there. And yeah, I guess a couple folks here from Chicago put that show together. And Alexander Girard was a personal friend of the Cummins founder and designed the interiors of their houses.

And so this project, this exhibition, brought all that together. It was like, what are the modern threads that go from Girard into the future? And I was honored to be seen as one of those threads. So because Girard's work is— speaking of multidisciplinary and designers, he just did so much in his life. And everything from, obviously, we— a lot of his modernism we all know, but even like the fact that like he collected folk art and has a massive— I actually haven't been.

I need to get back to Santa Fe. His collection's in a museum there. It's like the Folk Art International Folk Art Museum. And it's like I think the vast majority of it's his personal collection, which is wild. But just what a cool career and life.

Christian Solorzano [41:01]

You said the word future several times in this conversation, and that's something I've been thinking a lot about recently as well. With all your, knowledge and the work that you're doing and everything that you're seeing both in your practice and in the classroom, what do you— how do you feel about the future?

How do you see kind of our discipline or our profession or Design, or whatever we want to call it, how do you see it shifting and turning with everything that's happening in the world, whether it's technology, politics?

Craighton Berman [41:33]

Oh my God. Yeah, I'll try to keep it positive because I can get into a negative headspace.

Christian Solorzano [41:37]

You can be negative.

Craighton Berman [41:37]

Well, I probably will be a little bit. I could be critical. I probably won't be negative. I'll probably be critical. But no, I think yeah, man, things are changing fast, right? And radically, and in some interesting ways and some less interesting ways or less positive ways, I guess. I mean, I think, I think I am concerned, like having 2 children, one, they're 12 and 16. The 16-year-old especially is like starting to find his interests and starting to get into things.

And, he's creative and, obviously he's got parents that are creative. So I imagine he'll be interested in something in the periphery of maybe not design, but, in the periphery of creating things or creating ideas or software or whatever he wants to do. But I want him to have a— I want him to be able to work, you know what I mean? I want him to be able to find a space.

I still remember, and this was a while ago now, we were sitting on the front steps of his piano lesson at a local neighborhood person's house, and we were waiting for his time. So this must have been like 4 or 5 years ago. He was younger, and we were talking about AI, and he was just Dad, am I going to be able to work in design when I'm older? And it broke my heart because the reality— the realist in me was like, I don't know.

I don't know what our field's gonna be, especially for entry-level creatives. But of course, as a father, I wasn't gonna say that. And also as like a person who believes in the scrappiness of like, if you believe in something, you'll find a way to do it.

I think that's just the reality of like I've, my whole crazy mix of things that I do in my practice is partly because I'm interested in a lot of things, but it was also partly because not all of them can, work independently. They kind of need each other to support each other. There's plenty of times where Manual is pursuing something that's not economically lucrative. Maybe it's not losing money, but it's not going to pay my mortgage either.

But I feel like the fact that I do client work allows me the freedom to do that work. And that's, I think, typical for a lot of creative folks, is they have many different practices that don't, that work together and they inform each other, but they also financially need each other. So my point in saying that is like, I think the reality is a lot of the things that we enjoy doing as creatives in the future may just like the music industry, right?

Like it may not be that lucrative to record albums like anymore, right? Like nowadays it's pretty well known that like you take brand deals, you go on tour or whatever you do, get your music into commercials. But like the act of making an album is not necessarily gonna make you anything unless you're in that top 1%. I think it's gonna be similar probably with the creative fields, with design, I think.

Unfortunately, like a bunch of the most fun, creative, interesting parts of it are gonna be automated or gonna be consolidated. And so you're going to have to create your own opportunities to do those things. The cynic in me says that's just horrible for labor, right? Like the whole way that we get new creatives into the design field is they do the grunt work that a lot of people look down upon.

But I remember and this is quaint now, but I remember my first job out of school, like clipping photos to cut the backgrounds off them for a catalog. Like just like low level, not exciting work, but like I got really good at it. Like I understood the Bezier curves, right? Like I don't, using AI to select that is way more efficient now. And you probably don't even need a junior designer anymore. You can just make a prompt and have it get all your images ready.

But that means that junior designer is not learning the tools. And so. Yeah. That's okay. But, if there comes a time for them to understand what they want to do, they don't even know what they could do. You know what I mean? Those tools are unknown. And I don't want to be like totally Pollyanna about that. I came of age in a time where like I didn't know what all the icons in Photoshop meant, right?

I didn't understand what a crop— what a traditional crop tool was, and that's okay. So I'm not saying it's like the end of the world that someone doesn't know how to clip something by hand using Bezier curves, but At the same time, yeah, I just, that is traditionally the way a lot of junior designers come into the field is you're doing production work? And as we pull the ladder up on that stuff, I do worry about that. I don't know.

There's lots of also like, to be optimistic though, I think there's like so much future aesthetic that's coming out that like, I'm inspired by my 12-year-old. Well, we went down a rabbit hole on YouTube last weekend or weekend before where he was showing me all this like slop. These slop videos that people are making and the specific stuff he's into. And it's like this rapid-fire data moshing, distortion, absurdism. I mean, they're just they're just so out there.

But it, and obviously it's not meant for me, but I actually like appreciate like, oh, this is a, this is an aesthetic. This is a future aesthetic of like collage and mashup and meme. And there is an aesthetic to it. It's not traditional like Western ideals of mid-century Swiss modernism and design. It's none of that, right? It's a totally new language that could only exist in this era of what we have. So I think that's exciting.

I mean, also as a parent, I'm like, good God, this is like— your mind is melting watching this stuff. But I don't know. Again, I don't want to, freak. I mean, my parents probably thought the same thing about MTV. I mean, I know they did because they— I'd come in the room and I'd quickly turn it off.

So I think that's exciting that the new kind of approaches, and whether it be music or video or graphic design or whatever, I think there are a lot of new approaches that are happening and new aesthetics that are happening. That's really exciting. Yeah, and a lot of the work I do, on the client side is like I said, it's design futures. So it's like trying to imagine what these companies should be making or doing in the future.

And I think that kind of work interestingly enough, has enough like multidisciplinary kind of approaches that I think— I don't know that it's safe from whatever's happening in the world, but like it definitely is a mix of strategy, design, research, marketing. Like it's a mix of things going on in that kind of work that it makes, it's basically decision-making, which I think ultimately humans have to keep decision-making as part of what we do. Otherwise, like we've totally given over the reins to the robots.

But so I think that kind of— I'm not gonna say it's safe, but I'm happy that I've moved into that space, partly because I like that space, but also like, I just think that's probably a better place for me to be long term. But I didn't get there. I didn't jump into this kind of work like out of school, right? Like it took time to find my way into it.

And so I do wonder if where we're going, like I said, is pulling the ladder up on a lot of younger people. People, like I said, people get creative, they're scrappy, like the ones who want to figure out how to do creative things and express themselves in creative ways and do the work will find a way. But I do worry there's a lot of folks that won't ever find it because it's not— it's not as apparent anymore, right?

You could see certain things and understand how they were made. And as that starts to go away and you don't see the traces of how things are made at all, it becomes a black box in a way. So, we all know the black box of AI is very democratizing in a lot of ways.

Like I can type in a prompt and get exactly what I wanna see, but like in other ways I don't get that chance to explore and to screw up and to make mistakes and to have happy accidents. Like a lot of that gets lost or gets radically changed. So that to me is I don't know what that is, but it is.

Christian Solorzano [48:53]

You mentioned decision-making. I, I've been grappling with this question as well, and for me, I think it's a combination of taste and being able to have a taste that you're able to speak to. And I think when it comes to, at least from my observations with some of my students, is that the most dangerous part that I see is when they're making decisions that are based on other people's decisions without understanding why those decisions were made.

So I think that context of both taste decision-making, and I think most importantly, being able to speak to your work. And I always, I dabble a lot with AI, but I try to really encourage myself to be able to speak to what it is that I'm making in a similar fashion as if you were designing something by hand.

Craighton Berman [49:44]

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, this is an old played out thing. Like during the Tumblr days, this video got posted so many times, but like there was a video you've probably seen of Ira Glass talking about taste. And like he talks, of this American Life and he talks about how like the only, when you're young in your career, like you think you have taste, you can see what it is, but there's like a chasm between you and making things with that reflect that taste.

And the only way to cross that chasm is through making, he says. And I think that's stuck with me for a very long time because I think that is the hard part that I'm hopeful that we'll figure out a way across that chasm for younger designers. But like the only way you get there Always is, yeah, you make things and some of them suck and you find your way to that taste. I don't know that you come out of school with taste, right?

You might have some interest in some aesthetic preferences in some ways, but like, you working with AI is different than a fresh out of school grad working with AI. And I'm optimistic that there might be a way to figure that out, but I, but the pessimist in me says you work for a while, in this field. So you do have a sense of like, what you're going for and what is right and what is wrong.

And when you send that prompt, like you kind of know, you're like, oh yeah, that's what I was thinking, or no, it's not. So you can talk about why it's right or wrong. But I do worry that like folks that haven't spent the time really trying to get there are suddenly just given every option in the world. And it's very hard to know what, why you're choosing the things you're choosing. Is it just based on you've seen a lot of stuff that looks like it?

Like that's not, I mean, that's fine. That's fine for a lot of jobs, right? Like as long as you follow the trends, you're fine. And I think, the reality is a lot of work has always been that way, creative work, and will always be that way. But the best stuff isn't, right? The best stuff follows its own point of view, like you said, its own taste. The stuff that really changes things, right?

Those are the ones that, they are inspired by things you weren't even thinking about, or they were trying out tools or techniques that no one was, or whatever, you know what I mean? That's the stuff that— yeah, that's the stuff that'll really change things. But, I mean, look, I'm critical of AI, heavily critical of it, especially at a societal economic, obviously sustainability. I'm critical of all that stuff, but the reality is I use it too.

And so, partly because, I work with clients that are doing stuff in the space. I mean, I have to know it. And partly because, I live within capitalism and I hate capitalism. I critique capitalism, but I also live with it. I have a mortgage and I like to have nice things. Like I think that's okay to hold 2 ideas in your hand at the same time. I think, I think you have to exist as a modern person. And so, I used AI this morning.

I had this long-running, I have this long-running project I've been doing for yeah, I mean, it's gotta be at least 14 years of called No Commercial Value. It's an Instagram account, but I'm hopefully gonna pull it somewhere else as well in the future times. But, and it's sort of these absurd, it's essentially like concept sketches as absurd comics in a way.

It's changed a lot over the years, but like originally it was like, I wanna brainstorm absurd ideas that make no sense or just like are ridiculous or taking a current trend and pulling it to its grip, its absolute crazy ending. Over the years, it's kind of also taken on like a cultural critique element. And so I've started using some AI for that. I mean, I have used it in the past as well. It's not— it never was like the only process.

I use a lot of different processes to make these images, and they're all done on an iPad and sketching. And when it started out, it was all done on like index cards I would keep on my table and every morning come in and draw an idea. So really, the goal is spontaneity. And I do find that like AI visualization tools do allow for a certain amount of spontaneity that, realistically, I was like, part of what I think makes it funny is I'll find images.

In the past, I would Google something, find a few reference images, and find a way to kind of Photoshop them together and with a bit of hand sketching and make whatever I was thinking of. I like that kind of generic look. I think there's something about that. If I'm kind of making fun of consumer culture, it is funnier when it actually is using the language of consumer culture. And so like all I'm doing now is asking the AI to do that.

And so that to me, that's like, I don't— my 16-year-old who's very anti-AI, I feel like the man when I talk to him about this stuff. He's like, what are you doing, Dad? Which is kind of embarrassing and funny. He's very punk rock when it comes to AI. He is very opposed to it. But I just think it's interesting. Like what it's doing for me is essentially like assembling the ready-made that I was doing myself before.

And in some ways, for the concepts I'm using it for, no commercial value, it just makes more sense. I'm not trying to create slop necessarily, but in some ways, the slopification of it or the slopjack quality of it— there's a great Instagram account called Slopjacks, which is a mashup of slop and objects— but that quality of it kind of makes sense for what I'm doing. So in some ways, it's like using the medium in the right way. But anyway, I mean, I use it too.

And so, it's For some things, it's interesting. I facilitate a lot of kind of ideation sessions, brainstorms for clients, and I definitely this summer was in a couple that I was running where somebody brought up ChatGPT and was brainstorming with ChatGPT. I didn't love that. I mean, I'll just be honest, it kind of made like, to me, there's nothing better, there's nothing higher than human ideas.

Like the idea of coming together with friends or colleagues and like coming up with ideas and riffing on ideas and shaping and building. And that to me, that's like, it's almost— I won't say spiritual, but it's like a big deal to me to like— ideas are a big deal to me. And to see someone outsource that part of it kind of made me sad. It's like, well, that's the fun part.

That is the core of what we do as creative people is like come up with ideas. And if you outsource that, then I just don't know. I just don't know, and to be fair to her, and I'm not saying any names, but like she's in a marketing role. So it's not pure creative. So I get it. Like she's trying to find some efficiencies and honestly, some of the ideas weren't bad. Right.

And it's for a large company there, sometimes that kind of ideation is a little formulaic. So I don't know, like from a business standpoint, like what was wrong with doing that? Nothing really. Yeah. But like from a, the craft of ideation standpoint, like the craft of shaping ideas, which is what I've spent most of my career doing for clients. I was just oh man, that, I don't know how I feel about that one. You know what I mean? Like that one gave me pause. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [55:53]

Yeah. There's been a few instances where I've seen someone's told me that they're using AI to generate ideas and I get so like upset about it, but then I'm like, but those ideas are pretty good actually. Like there's always like at least one that I'm like, all right, that was, that was pretty good AI.

Craighton Berman [56:09]

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean, the counterargument to that of course is like, yeah, but the act of like coming up with a ton of bad ideas and finally finding that good one, that is the journey, right? And like those bad ideas inform the good ones. And so that's just short-circuiting it and getting you there faster. So, but you're right, it is good. But yeah, I do. I don't know sometimes. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I've been, my wife thinks I'm crazy too.

I've been like having conversations with it and like working through ideas and just, I'd much rather sit down with a person and do this. Frankly, I would, but like there's. Yeah. I'm in a car for a half hour traversing the city. It is interesting to like, all right, let's talk about this topic. My take is this, what do you think? And just kind of working through perspectives on things.

Although my friend, my good friend of mine who I do that a lot with, talk through these kind of topics, he told me like, man, you can call me anytime. You don't have to do that. That's like, yeah, that's true. That's true. I should just call you more often. What does that say about me that I'd rather just fire up a, fire up an AI and chat with it than like call my friend. Yeah, I think that might be the most modern thing, right? Right.

Is like our perception that everyone's too busy to connect, so we connect with AI. It's like, that's a bummer. That's a real bummer. But look, I mean, it's like, it's, it is interesting to have it as a collaborator in that way. So I don't know. I don't think anything's black or white.

And I can still feel like there's some major societal issues that are not being reined in or thought about or legislated when it comes to AI, but also think that like, I mean, it's the cat's out of the bag. I don't, I don't see how you're not going to touch it as a creative at all anymore. I mean, maybe you have a practice that doesn't touch it, but there's still some part of you that will, right? It's inevitable.

Christian Solorzano [57:43]

As we reach the hour of our conversation here, I'd love to have you share with us some of the things that are bringing you joy lately.

Craighton Berman [57:51]

Oh man, what's bringing me joy? Well, I'm, yeah, I mean, I mentioned this earlier, but I'm so excited. Saturday, I'm going down to the Land School, which I don't know if you've been down there yet, but it's Theaster Gates's new project on the South Side. And it's an old— I think it's an old Catholic boys' school or something like that he purchased in a way that only Theaster Gates seems to figure out and converting into this cultural center.

And so there's a performance going on, Elliot Bergman, who's— I don't really know his full curriculum vitae. I don't know his full CV, but I know he's been in the Chicago area for a long time and is somehow also based in LA and produces music for a lot of different folks. But he builds a lot of his own instruments, like these mallet instruments, like large-scale, almost like sculptures. And so there's going to be a performance of his down at that school Saturday or Friday and Saturday.

But I'm super excited to go see that. That's bringing me a lot of joy. That space that Theaster has built is amazing. It is truly magical that we have that here. And yeah, it's got this Huge hall in it that's been very lovingly shaped, and the performances in there are so intimate. And yeah, I'm just really excited. Any of these kind of experimental music performances and getting to, Chicago's got such a scene for that kind of work.

It's really cool to be able to, I don't— I really honestly don't make any music myself. I've got synths and stuff to do that. I've always had aspirations, but I just don't. But I really love being around that kind of creativity and seeing people improvising in real time is very inspiring to me.

It's very— I don't know that I've ever— I mean, there's a few through lines back to my work, but even if there isn't, it's just exciting to see people spontaneously create, you know what I mean? In collaboration, that's just amazing to watch, you know what I mean? So that brings me a lot of joy. I'm excited to do that and see that all those various kind of performances of that kind of ilk that are happening in Chicago bring me a lot of joy.

Being in this new space, bringing me a lot of joy. I think I said this at the very beginning, but yeah, it's been a crazy year and a half of like working from home. And I had a little studio space and kind of in my old space, I felt very constrained and I felt very weighed down by like a lot of old— I don't like to throw things out.

So I had a lot of like old projects and old samples, and I had a lot of just stuff that was taking up room, and I gave it all away. Couple months ago, this weird event where hundreds of people showed up. The post went viral somehow, I guess, because free stuff. But,

Christian Solorzano [60:18]

Yeah, I saw that. There was like a photo of like a big long line.

Craighton Berman [60:21]

There was a line, there was a line of like 400 people. It was— I did not have enough stuff for those many people. I don't know how it— how that happened.

But it was— it— that itself aside, the act of getting rid of a lot of things and feeling that lightness, to me, it's just been— to go from this like constricted, I'm working from home, I don't really have a lot of room to spread out, Back to like I can I'm building back out my physical mental model here in the studio, but with less right? Like it just feels amazing. That's bringing me a lot of joy.

And like I said, like I'm not really like an interior designer. Like the space is somewhat utilitarian in a lot of ways, but like the act of like making it mine, which is just started and will go for months more before I even get anywhere close to some semblance of like quote unquote done. That's an exciting journey. That's bringing me a lot of joy, getting back into the studio and doing that. What else? Well, I mean, my kids are bringing me joy.

I gotta say it, shout out to the youths. My— they're both entering that age, 12 and 16, where like they just get really— I mean, they've always been interesting, but like they're really developing their own personalities and interests. And, especially my 16-year-old who's like really deep into like a bunch of niche music scenes and, you it's like finding all these things that he likes and he's into.

And it's just I just think that's crazy inspiring to see what he's into and what he's doing and how he navigates that stuff and how different it was from when I had to, when I was his age, it was, the internet was very young. So like getting into like subcultures and niche music scenes was very hard, right? Like you had to really do the work.

You had to go to record stores, maybe you could find a website that talked about some shows that were happening, but Probably not. So it's just so cool for him to be able to find things and swim through those worlds and connect with people. And it's cool. I think that's— it's just, it's a good reminder, as I said prior, like just seeing how the, how the youth figure it out. And yes, the world is changing fast. Yes, things are— yes, the climate is collapsing.

Yes, social unrest is getting pretty intense everywhere. But at the same time, you have to exist, you have to live, and you have to find joy. And it's cool to see how they're Doing that and finding it in their own ways. So that's very inspiring.

Christian Solorzano [62:29]

You brought up music several times. What do you listen to when you're working?

Craighton Berman [62:33]

My— I mean, honestly, with the phase I'm in now, which I never thought I would say, I listen to this one web radio service called NTS Radio. I don't know if you've heard it.

Christian Solorzano [62:43]

Yeah, I do it too. Yeah.

Craighton Berman [62:44]

It— I don't know if you feel this way, but I feel so spiritually connected to it. I love NTS. I mean, I listen to a ton of music. I Definitely the whole, I was an early Pitchfork person. So definitely like all the way from like being an indie rocker in early 2000s, but like much more like probably experimental and electronic now than previously. I can't listen to music with words while I work, pretty much not at all.

So, whether it's like jazz or ambient music or electronic or whatever it is, I kind of, I can't listen to rap and work at all. I mean, I like hip-hop, but I can't, I just can't do it. Something about words like get in the way in my head. So I love soundscapes and kind of experimental. I like drone, like really like repetitive. I'm into like extreme music in some ways.

My son is really into this breakcore, which is like kind of like the most distilled version of jungle with like insane breaks and sound. And it's so extreme, but also it's very appealing to me that it's so extreme. But I work, I mean, I'm on NTS a lot and like what I love about that, I did college radio in college and one of my favorite things is sort of that curation layer that you get.

I was a streaming music head for a very long time, starting with Rdio, which is like a predecessor to Spotify. And I did Spotify until they started funding bomb research, and then I switched to Apple Music, which hasn't really stuck with me. But I do love the infinite quality of those streaming platforms. I am obsessive. I make quarterly playlists where I drop albums in that I want to check out. I have like a favorites of the year each year I publish.

Like I have like a process and it's kind of felt good to let that go in a way. I buy vinyl and I listen to NTS. Like those are my 2 main avenues now. And then it's pretty good. Like it's pretty exciting. But like the part— sorry, I didn't close that thought though. The part of NTS that I love is like, yeah, there'll be like an artist whose music I like. Now they're DJing a show.

And that to me is really exciting to the point of what we've talked about already. It's like, yeah. You get to step into their world of taste, their point of view, and their influences. And that's, to me, that's really special as a music fan, right? I don't know if you feel that way, but it's like, I think that's great.

Christian Solorzano [64:53]

Yeah, there, there's a woman who has a show on NTS named Jen Monroe. The show is Getting Warmer with Jen Monroe. And I just play her things on loop. She's just such a great, she has such great taste.

Craighton Berman [65:09]

Yeah, I've listened to that show. I think, I think that's in my bookmarks, actually. Yeah. No, there's so many good shows on there. And I love that familiar— familiarity layer as well that's in there. So this one show that's on, I think it's a weekly show, it's called Changeling or something like that. It was just when I got in the car, I looked and it was on. I was like, oh, I love this.

I already know like this DJ duo, I don't even know really who's behind it. What they do is always amazing. So I was just thrilled. Yeah. And there's some mystery in there too. There's this artist, or DJ, I guess, Sounds of the Dawn, and I can't find much information. They claim they're from Detroit. They claim that they dig up like '80s and '90s ambient and new age tapes, and that's a lot of where their stuff's coming from.

They publish a lot of these tapes to YouTube, so they seem legit, but they could easily be making this music. I don't even know. The mystery of it is very enthralling, and that kind of part of what NTS is doing, I think, is also really interesting. It's it feels less like transactional. Like it is taking out that decision layer of like, okay, what do I wanna listen to?

Which sometimes that is nice to limit yourself and be like, oh, I wanna go back to a familiar thing. But if you're an explorer, like if you love to find new things, hear new things, see new things, like NTS is like catnip. 'Cause it's like, all right, well, I'm gonna turn this on. I don't know what genre it's gonna be. I have no idea if I'm even gonna like this, but I love, I love that discovery.

And it reminds me of doing college radio back in the day.

Christian Solorzano [66:31]

It's like—

Craighton Berman [66:31]

Yeah. I'm gonna play crazy shit right after something else and you're just gonna have to deal with it. I love that.

Christian Solorzano [66:36]

I don't know if you know this, but the design club, we have a music program.

Craighton Berman [66:40]

Oh, really?

Christian Solorzano [66:41]

Yeah. Called MU Radio, named after my dog. And we have, I think we, yeah. MU Radio.

Craighton Berman [66:48]

Oh, okay. Like Planet Mu. Okay. Got it.

Christian Solorzano [66:50]

Yeah. And we

Craighton Berman [66:51]

Just, I was thinking moo like a cow, but go ahead.

Christian Solorzano [66:53]

Well, it sounds like a cow. It's like the sound is like a cow sound. Moo. But we release, we just, we had like a 1-year hiatus and we just came back last week. And basically the show is we invite Chicago designers to send us a mix and then we publish it to our, to our program and then people listen. That's cool. And that's it. So That's nice. So now knowing that you make these playlists, I'm gonna ask you to send us one.

Craighton Berman [67:22]

Yeah, no, I'd be in. I could use that rigor too to like force me to like because especially after listening to NTS for the last few years, I feel like, oh man, why I haven't really strung together a show in a very long time. It'd be fun to do that. And some of the stuff, like this artist Malibu, French artist. Sorry, I could geek out on this stuff for a long time, so I apologize.

But this French artist Malibu does this, just, I don't know how to even describe it. It's almost like ethereal music, like a lot of reverb, a lot of like wordless vocals and just cavernous sounds. She did a show recently. I think it was her. Yeah. I think it was her who did a show like of just like influences, but it was mixed with her. Oh, it might have been OK Lou, but nonetheless, an artist who like brought some of her sounds into the mixtape.

So yes, she was playing like songs that influenced her, but it was also kind of layering in between like some of her own sounds. And I recognized some of the riffs and the production techniques, and you're just that world building is so exciting. So yeah, if you— I wouldn't— there's no way I would ever be able to do that, but I could try to throw together a good string of songs, make a mixtape.

Christian Solorzano [68:22]

That's amazing. Thank you so much for being on our show. It was a delight to—

Craighton Berman [68:25]

This was fun.

Christian Solorzano [68:26]

To get a chance to get to know you better. And I think as we enter the new year, it would be great to have the club do something with you, do some kind of collaboration. The one thing that we've never tapped into is designing something that is tangible, like an object. We've done prints, but we've always flirted with the idea of if we designed a, like a pen holder or some everyday desk items that designers would love to just have, on their desk.

So I think that'd be fun. Yeah, it'd be fun to do something like that.

Craighton Berman [69:01]

I have a few ideas we'll have to rap about too, cuz like now that I have this like large kind of public space right off my studio, like my mind can't stop thinking about like, what are ways where I can like create some sort of product that is finished like by people. So people can basically come out and do like a class essentially. And finish the piece themselves, like make it theirs, however that is customized. I think that'd be a lot of fun.

And it just, yeah, the idea of like kind of making it more of an activity, I think is definitely something people are craving these days. And also just having the space right there makes it so much easier than having to like find a space and set up there. I can literally just throw the door open to my studio and let's go, let's make something. So that could be fun.

Christian Solorzano [69:39]

Excellent. Is there anything coming up for you that we should be on the lookout for? Any, anything you want to Oh man.

Craighton Berman [69:47]

What? Yeah. Well, I mean, I've got a whole bunch of new products coming. Yeah. Like I've, well, I don't, yeah, nothing I could pull out quite yet, but they basically a lot more stuff. I mean, I'm always on my, on my bullshit for coffee and tea. So I've got a bunch of new products I'm working on there. I do have like a new lighting project that I need to get my butt into gear and that could be related to what I was just talking about.

I think that'd be fun. The hesitation I always have with lighting is like, it's just hard to sell lighting. So I, I'm gonna make these lamps and we'll see like if somebody wants them or not. But I feel like the DIY part of it could be interesting. I'm working on a book hopefully with somebody, like it's a collaboration. We're just in the early stages of it, but he's an established author and I like his writing a lot.

And he's interested in kind of combining his world with the design and kind of experience design world and kind of how those two connect. Know, he's in the— he's from like the bar and restaurant world. So I'm excited about that. So that's a new thing that, obviously that's probably years out till it actually gets published, but we're just starting to talk about that, and I think that's really exciting. Yeah, those are probably the biggest things.

I mean, there's always new ideas that I'm working on for Manual, and, I do want to also get— I'm excited, I found a printer, I think it's in Southern Illinois, they do large-scale like broadsheets. And so I'm— I have this idea, and I need to get on it, of like taking— because I've got 14 years of like those no commercial value Drawings or cartoons or whatever you wanna call 'em.

I really wanna go through— first off, I need to do this anyway— download all of them, go through them, find the best ones, see what needs to be redrawn, and then create a massive zine or poster or whatever it is, like broadsheet, grid 'em out. Not all probably, but like the best ones. And I want to do that. I want to, like— I have a hard time. I love long-term projects.

I talked about this, but I think I have a hard time going back through my old work and actually like trying to like represent the time that I've spent over time working on something. So I think forcing myself to do that would be really exciting. So maybe that's a winter project.

Christian Solorzano [71:42]

Yeah. And that sounds like something that maybe AI can help with. Pull, get all the images and kind of present them to you and make it something.

Craighton Berman [71:51]

Yeah, I'll have to talk to you about that. 'Cause I, yeah, I gotta figure out, 'cause obviously it could go onto my Instagram and pull them all, but they're kind of low res. I needed to get all the high res ones, but you're right. That would make a lot of sense. And that would get me over the hump probably of why I haven't done it yet. 'Cause it's, just, it's a bit overwhelming to search through multiple hard drives and— all right. All right. Gauntlet thrown.

I've said it out loud. I have to do it now.

Christian Solorzano [72:11]

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and I look forward to having more of these conversations with you.

Craighton Berman [72:18]

Definitely. Thanks for doing all you do for the Design Club.

Christian Solorzano [72:23]

And I love—

Craighton Berman [72:25]

Not saying anything here, just saying, but yeah, I think it's great to see someone that's looking at Chicago. Like we talked about in the very beginning, like that looks at Chicago's design community in a very broad way. And yeah, it's celebrating all the creative aspects of it, not getting too myopic about what it was, right? But what it can be and what it is now, right? Yeah, I love that. And these podcasts are great. I've listened to, like I said, a bunch of 'em.

And I love that you get into things a little deeper, I think, than the average podcast. So definitely appreciate the thoughtfulness.

Christian Solorzano [72:55]

As always, thank you so much tuning in. If you enjoy conversations like these, we appreciate your support when you leave us a rating wherever you listen. Thank you.