Christian Solorzano [00:02]

Hi, it's Christian Solorzano, host of Underscore and founder of the Chicago Graphic Design Club. Our guest on this episode is Heather Snyder Quinn, somebody that I've been looking up to for a few years now. I don't know how she does all that she does, but I'm always amazed by her commitment to design and education. Her roles are difficult to pin down because she does just about everything. She is a writer, educator, consultant, futurist, lecturer— the list goes on.

Her work focuses on the future of design, emerging technology, ethics, fiction, interdisciplinary practices and theories. And her work has been recognized by NASA, the World Economic Forum, MIT Press, and the Yale Law School. In 1996, She graduated from RISD with a BFA in graphic design, and in 2018, she earned an MFA in graphic design from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She's been an educator for over 2 decades, most recently teaching at Washington University in St. Louis and DePaul University in Chicago.

In this episode, we speak about her early love for phone books, the future of graphic design, education, AI, the value of interdisciplinary approaches to creative problem solving, and much more. And as always, if you wish to learn more about the Chicago Graphic Design Club, visit our website at www.chicagographicdesign.club. Hi, Heather. Nice to be speaking with you today. It's Saturday and it's summer— well, it's almost summertime in Chicago. Not quite yet, although it feels like it. How are you doing?

Heather Snyder Quinn [01:53]

I'm good. I was so happy that you asked me to do this.

Christian Solorzano [01:57]

Yeah, as I was mentioning, I wanted to— I, I've been, I've been wanting to interview you for a while, and I knew that you recently moved, and— but you, to me, you were still sort of Chicago-based.

Heather Snyder Quinn [02:09]

And then you found out I was moving back, so it was serendipitous. It's kind of like the perfect Here I am back in Chicago on the Chicago Design Podcast.

Christian Solorzano [02:17]

Yeah, exactly. This is your welcome back, welcome back episode.

Heather Snyder Quinn [02:23]

Perfect. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [02:24]

So I, I'm very fascinated by all of the things that you do. It's hard to keep up with you on social media because you're always traveling and you're going all over the world. So I'm very curious about— just walk us through what a day in the life of Heather looks like. How do you, how do you how do you manage to do so much?

Heather Snyder Quinn [02:45]

Why is that? That's the funniest question. It's so accurate. I'm actually really trying hard to not do so much. So what, and what does a day in the life of Heather look like? Because we just moved back literally a week ago. That's a funny question right now. Trying to think of how to, okay, we'll do, we'll do like a Generic average day. I wake up at five. This is gonna sound super annoying. I wake up at five and I pound a bunch of coffee.

I set the thing the night before. Then I usually go to the gym, and that also sounds annoying. But my father owned a gym growing up, so I kind of grew up in a gym. And so waking up and going there and being active and really playing and joking around with people and connecting has always been a nice way to start my day. And so I feel like people don't know that I grew up in a gym.

And once they do, it kind of makes sense because I have a habit of like wanting to go behind the desk and answer the phone. And then, depending if I'm teaching, I scramble into the city on the Metra or whatever, or I'm, working at home, getting my kids to school. I mean, my daughters now are both teenagers. So it's a little different. When they were little, it was more of, running around. They're pretty independent now.

But obviously parts of my day are occupied with them doing different things, their softball practice or school or what have you. And then teaching, working, researching, sometimes things at night. And I tend to go to bed pretty early, like 8 or 9, read a book and pass out. So kind of an average day. I'm a textaholic, so I always texting people, probably to a fault. I think I could offer lessons in professional voice texting.

My OP/AL students wanted to make a zine of all my bad messages, full of typos. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [04:52]

Yeah, I recently started to— I realized that I make typos all the time when there's no assistant, like on my phone, when spell check is not there. So what I recently did is I turned off spell check because I felt like I was forgetting to spell like very simple words, because I don't know, I feel like sometimes technology makes us so handicapped.

Heather Snyder Quinn [05:15]

Oh gosh. Well, I mean, that could get into a lot of things that we probably both think about, the homogenization of language, even things on Google or LinkedIn when you can just do the auto thanks. Thank you or congratulations. And in all this talk about AI, we had this symposium at WashU about AI. And I said this thing that I felt like no one understood, but then they just wrote it up. The editor wrote it up and I thought, oh, at least somebody was listening.

And I said, I feel like with AI making everything perfect, and I have that in quotes, like the beauty of a typo or an error sort of reminds me of craft. Like the beauty of a mistake in content and language, I think is gonna be something that we desire.

So I think it's really interesting that you turned off the way the computer is fixing you, because it's kind of nice for you to write it in your own way, or have a typo, or decide not to have a typo, or use a different word. So I'm gonna do that too. I like that.

Christian Solorzano [06:12]

Yeah, I personally really respect typos in text messages, because it lets me know that it's— yeah, someone is—

Heather Snyder Quinn [06:19]

Can you imagine a historian in the future looking back and having to read our nonsense? And make sense of an emoji or slang or like letter abbreviation. I mean, think about stuff like that, like having to archive my text messages. I pity whoever was ever gonna have to do that, my grandchildren.

Christian Solorzano [06:38]

So part of the way that you describe yourself on your website is as a design futurist. And I want to hear you expand on that a little bit more. What does that mean to you?

Heather Snyder Quinn [06:51]

Yeah, that's such a great question because I didn't really realize that was a thing that I did until I went to graduate school much later in life. I think I started at 41, graduated when I was 44. So I went and got an MFA so I could, continue to pursue a tenure track in academia. And as part of that work, I really spent that time trying to unlearn a lot of things, trying not to be perfectionist, trying to be in a process of discovery.

And not worry about the results, and so I was really just like revisiting my past and my interests and my inner self. And I realized that as part of my youth growing up and trying to find my way amidst a kind of a challenging childhood, I was always imagining different futures and building different worlds for myself, whether in make-believe or art or stories or— and so I think futuring was kind of naturally always part of who I am as a means of survival.

And then I would, like many kids born in the '70s, I mean, there was just like parts of the things I read or watched or engaged with that were pretty sci-fi. And then into the '90s, loving the X-Files. My grandfather was a cryptographer. And so sort of this. I guess I was always fascinated with science fiction.

And so in graduate school, I ended up realizing I had an advisor who said, I think you're doing this thing called design fiction, which is a way of like thinking about the future in design. And I mean, there's, it's— you could say it's a new field of study, but to me it's really not, because it's just a little extra push on what we all do as designers, which is to build things that don't exist yet, right?

And for me, the futuring will always have like, how can we imagine these, the ethical implications of it, or how it affects the world? And you could talk about this for kind of a long time. So I mean, I guess that's the short answer to it.

Christian Solorzano [09:06]

And with design fiction and narratives and speculating, I think it could be easy to get a little bit frightened by the possible, outcomes of a lot of these new technologies. But to me, you come across as a very optimistic person. So is that a correct assumption? Are you— do you consider yourself an optimist?

Heather Snyder Quinn [09:28]

Funny.

Christian Solorzano [09:29]

I—

Heather Snyder Quinn [09:29]

Yeah, I really am an optimistic person. My husband said that yesterday. We had our wedding anniversary. It's June 8th. We were out at dinner, and I said, all right, what do you, what do you— what do we— we've been together for 32 years, ups and downs, and married for 21. And we do the question like, what do you take for granted about each other? What do you still love about each other? And he said, I'm so glad I'm with an optimist. He said, you're always positive.

And I don't, I don't really think that's true, but I'm generally pretty positive. I think I get it from both my mom and my dad. And so, yeah, it is true. But the funny thing about design fiction is I do really like doing dystopias. And I've kind of practiced it in my teaching imperfectly, oh, let's make a utopia dystopia or something in between. And I think there's a lot of people trying to use design fiction or futuring to do utopic things.

I don't know if utopic is a word, but it's harder for some reason. And also, frankly, if you want to stay, we're in late-stage capitalism. I think the companies position everything already as utopias. And so there aren't enough people critically looking at things. So the irony of, yes, I'm an optimist, but I think in my work I really like looking at dystopia because I think it's kind of more fun, more interesting, if that makes sense.

Christian Solorzano [10:54]

Yeah. And in what, areas or domains do you find yourself being, currently being the most critical of? Do you bring in a lot of criticism into a lot of your approach to what you do?

Heather Snyder Quinn [11:08]

Yeah, it's so interesting because I really live in a lot of different worlds. So I worked in industry for years, and now I'm very much being asked to come back and like train people in AI or talk about the metaverse or talk about design ethics. And I still do some consulting, although it's with a different lens. And it's just the worlds are so disconnected. I mean, because you work in industry and it's, it really is profit and growth at all costs.

And then you're in the academy or in research conferences, and they're in the total other extreme, and there's no one bridging those gaps. And so I've really— I'm trying to figure out ways I can, or help students, or find other ways to bridge these worlds, because I do really think you can have innovation and ethics together. And it's just sort of like— I mean, sometimes I really feel like in industry they're just not aware. Really unaware of the implications of what they're doing.

We're still talking about human-centered design. You say, people are positioning it as humanity-centered or earth-centered. How do you think about the implications of the product beyond the human, right? And not— and if you're smart about it, you know that Gen Z especially wants to be buying products that are generous or protective of the planet. So that's also really serving the benefit of the company, right? But just like there's they're not, the worlds are so disconnected. So I don't know. I don't know if that makes sense.

Christian Solorzano [12:45]

No, that makes sense. And what sort of like when you have those conversations with the people that, let's say you're consulting, what are some like, do you, do you notice that you get pushback or what do you see as some of those barriers of?

Heather Snyder Quinn [12:59]

I mean, I think it's like, this is when I wish I was more, I just want to study the humanities and I really feel like it's sad to me that the humanities are being squashed in lieu of STEM. Because, of course, the world revolves around tech, and it's great for people to understand tech, because no matter what field you're in, you're gonna be engaged with technology.

But you can't really be a good doctor, or a good whatever educator, technologist, if you don't understand history and philosophy and all these things. And so I just, I feel like, when you're consulting, I mean, for example, you ever go to like a big tech conference? They are just like invention at all costs with so much excitement, oh my gosh, I can make a COVID passport, and, or I can facial recognition, use facial recognition and buzz you through to your gym in 2 seconds.

And you wanna be like, but have you thought of all the implications of that? Have you thought about, and As a lot of historians will say, the Dutch were collecting data on their citizens in an analog way, and they thought it was safe until World War II came and Nazis got all that data and used it against them, right?

It's like a perfect example of studying why we need to study history, because you can't just be excited about an invention without pondering all the various implications of it, right? And more often than not, people are not ill-intended. They're just not taking the time to study it, or working on an inter or multidisciplinary team of people with different backgrounds to understand how it affects different populations, not just white privileged, how does it affect various futures of people in society?

And what happens if, everything melts down, or I don't know, you know what I'm saying? So I think sometimes it's just not an awareness. And of course, I mean, people just want to make money. Everything is about money, like more, greater, better, buy more stuff, have more stuff, have the biggest house, money. And I think some of that is because that's like how we're filling the voids of our happiness.

But also people have a lot of fear, like our basic needs aren't protected in a lot of ways anymore. And so money provides an illusion of safety.

Christian Solorzano [15:25]

So how do you, how do you bring in some of those conversations, let's say, into the classroom? And how do you see perhaps, students that are perhaps a little bit younger, how do they comprehend that? Or like, how do they understand or respond to some of those conversations?

Heather Snyder Quinn [15:41]

It's such a good question. I was on a conference this week that I think it's— I don't know how to pronounce it. It's called the HasTech Conference. It's happening at Pratt. It's a social justice and making conference. And I was on this panel about feminist pedagogy. It was a really long title that I can't remember, with a bunch of amazing women. And her— so we were talking about— I have this project I do with Ayako Takashi of RISD.

She's also worked in industrial design for a long time. And because I think because we both worked in industry and academia, we both have this method where we will teach students the ways to get a job. What are the things they need to know? How do you build a style guide? How do you understand artificial intelligence? How do you learn to experiment, be adaptable, be improvisational on a whiteboard, right? Like all these things. How do you build a PowerPoint deck?

Like all the things you think, how many of us went to art school and realized we spend 50% of our time building pitch decks, right? Or slide decks, right? It's me. So you have to teach the students these things. But what you can be sneaky about is the content that you layer into the project. So I always do this fictional nation-building project, so students can even either imagine their own nation, or they can study micronations that exist, or we build big tech nations.

So what would it look like if Amazon was actually a nation? And then they start to look around, or Google, and they realize, oh, they kind of already are. They have more money and power than most governments. You see more Amazon trucks than postal trucks. And then they build a style guide or a nation book that shows like the flag, the currency, speccing the colors, the typography. So I love that project in particular because they're sort of digging into power, corporate power, America versus other places.

They're looking at history, they're imagining histories or futures. And but at the same time, they're learning how to build something that you have to do in a job.

So my feeling is it's like that tricky, do both things and then immerse these students into the world with that knowledge so they can thrive and have a job, which is, and make money, but hopefully also have a voice within the context of, these comp— it's the best I can— it's the best solution I've come up with so far. So, just, yeah.

Christian Solorzano [18:14]

Yeah, no, I love that because that's one of the— when I first started working fresh out of college, that's one of the things that I think took me a few years to figure out. And a lot of it is the storytelling aspect of it and like building out those slides and like figuring out how to contextualize what you're designing Within, this broader thing.

And yeah, I think it's, I think it's interesting. And I think it's good that people, especially like younger people, just figure out how to like ask better questions and think critically and like consider the consequences of what they're creating.

Heather Snyder Quinn [18:52]

Yeah, I love, I love that, ask better questions, because I actually have a book somewhere. My grad advisor, again, she's teaching a grad seminar somewhere in Europe, and they were ready to teach whatever the topic was for the seminar, and then they realized the students didn't know how to ask questions. And so they reframed the whole course to be about how to ask questions. And it got put in this publication. I'll come, I'll look for it in a second.

And it's just brilliant, and I would love to teach that, ask her for her syllabus and teach the same class. Because I mean, I really feel like people who ask questions are comfortable. And, when you're in a client meeting, really a lot of it is just asking questions. Like client has a, an RFP, wants you to respond. I mean, really, you don't just respond. Usually you ask questions and reformat because you usually— they're asking for the wrong thing a lot of the time. So.

Yeah, I don't know. It's, yeah, it's interesting.

Christian Solorzano [19:58]

So I want to go back in time a little bit, and you were covering a little bit about this. You grew up, your father owned a gym, and I want to understand, what were your interests growing up, let's say, as a teenager? And if so, how do you bring in that, I find myself in a lot of the work that I do, I don't do it consciously, but subconsciously, I— parts of me feel like I'm still drawn to the same things that I was drawn to.

Heather Snyder Quinn [20:29]

Oh, that's so true. Yeah, it's amazing how it's just embedded in us, right? Yeah, it was funny because I, as we were packing, I think I texted it to Nate and Lee at DePaul. I found like this report I made in 5th grade that was called the Career of an Artist. And in it I said I wanted to be a commercial artist slash graphic designer. And they paint pictures with words. I must have found it in an encyclopedia because this is 1985.

And then it said, my dream was to be the art director of Sports Illustrated, which of course makes sense. My dad owned a gym. My mom encouraged us in the arts. So it's not what I'm doing, but interesting. And so I was— I kind of knew what I wanted to do at a pretty young age. And then the town I grew up in had something called MOP. It was Marian Occupational Program, which I think is the most genius thing ever.

It should exist in every school because you got to talk about not like, oh, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer. You talked about your interests and then they kind of talked to you about careers and then they assigned you with a mentor for a day and they couldn't find me a graphic designer. So I sat with an interior designer for the day and she kind of— I remember her being kind of bitchy and ignoring me, which is fine.

She was probably a very busy entrepreneur on her own. But she— I sat in the corner and she gave me like these books of color swatch paint swatches and fabric, and I don't even know, and I just sat there staring at them for hours. I thought it was— must be the best job ever to just have all this material. And the other funny thing that I rediscovered in grad school is I used to be obsessed with phone books.

And so I remember when the phone book would get delivered to your front steps. I remember this from like first grade. I thought it was the most amazing thing. All I wanted to do was color in the Yellow Pages and look at all the names and collage it and cut it, and then, learn about Tobias Frere-Jones and all the typography made specifically for phone books.

And it— so it wasn't until I was like 40 that I realized, I was inspired by phone books, but it actually totally makes sense, right? One, because it's texting, it's communication, it's looking up people's names, it's understanding a town or community, typography and ads and all these things. So, and then add in like all my science fiction love, it kind of, kind of makes sense.

But I think, I think the one thing I haven't talked about that I'm also coming to understand is that I've had a lot of people say I would be a good game designer. I think that's because of the gym. Thing like that. I like to play everything's a scavenger hunt or improv or jokes. And so I think that sort of thing is something I want to fold more into my teaching.

Design improv, design and improv class is something I've been thinking about, or just more playful humor and things like that. So that also comes from the way I grew up. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [23:30]

And do you remember the first thing that you ever designed?

Heather Snyder Quinn [23:33]

Oh, I do. Well, I mean, there was probably things before it, and I wish— God, it's in a bin here somewhere. In high school, so this is what I think is— I took this human physiology class, and the guy who taught it almost went on the space shuttle when the teachers went. And then anyway, he was just like a brilliant Mr. Pottle, and He— I had to watch a hip replacement video on VHS and document it. And I was just like really all or nothing.

I was like, if I was going in, I was gonna go in hard. Then it was— I was like crazy perfectionist. And I'm really trying to unlearn that everything doesn't have to be like amazing. But this project, I watched the whole surgery for hours and I made all these medical illustration videos. And I remember typesetting Setting it, really thinking about the organization of this report. But it was on a word processor or typewriter or something.

But I was like re-finessing the type, and I handed it in thinking this is pretty good. And I like remember leaving space to do pencil drawings. This is again like 1991 or something, right? So, and then I handed it in, he turned it, it's like a plus. Never seen anything like this. Best I've ever seen. You should do something with this. And I remember thinking, oh, I should be a medical illustrator. And so I thought about that for a little while.

But again, really what I was doing was communicating with type and space and, right, like taking up one piece of media and translating it in another way. So yeah, so that would have been maybe my junior or senior year of high school, which—

Christian Solorzano [25:12]

What kind of like visual culture you were growing up in? What were you drawn to? I know you're a fan of the Cure because you mentioned—

Heather Snyder Quinn [25:20]

I do love the Cure. I love, I love all alternative music. My husband says I'm really trapped in the '90s, like '90s gangster rap and alternative pretty much, and a little bit of bossa nova jazz. But visual culture, it's funny, I really love bodies of water or the sea. And so if you think of like Maine or Ireland, and that's— this doesn't really speak to visual culture, but, in an alternate life, or when I would really like to carve out more time to do landscape painting.

I used to draw a lot when I was in college, sketchbooks, and do a lot of painting, and it's just like one of those things that I think about all the time, and I never carve out time to do. And so, I like love the paintings of Turner, Helen Frankenthaler. And so, and so I remember, I mean, My mom was really great about exposing us to things.

So she was a single mom, or my parents were divorced, but she would like— we would ride the bus into Boston. She would have museum day or take us, to the Pops, the Boston Pops. And so I feel like I was lucky in that she always— our art was always part of our lives, art and creative, creating, potholders or stick figures or whatever. So Does that answer your question?

Christian Solorzano [26:44]

Yeah, no, that answers my question. And then what about today? Is there anything happening now that sort of excites you or you're drawn to, like visually, culturally, even technology-wise?

Heather Snyder Quinn [26:55]

It's so funny. The irony is like with all the AR and AI stuff I'm doing, everyone wants a piece of me to do something with that. But really right now, all I want to do is step back and use my hands and not be on the computer. And I have designers say that a lot, but I feel that Nate, our Nate at DePaul has been talking about slow design because he's been talking about that since— he's always way before his time.

It's almost like, and now I'm kind of seeing that. And so I feel like I'm really excited about— not that I mean not using these, all these new technologies, but almost stepping back from them, I guess, and just returning to using my hands and my body to engage with making, practice of making. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [27:51]

Yeah. The other day I was in a waiting room and I didn't have like my phone, or I just didn't have any technology. Were you ticking? No.

Heather Snyder Quinn [28:00]

I feel like you're always like ticking?

Christian Solorzano [28:03]

And I had a, I had a notebook with me, and it's been such a long time since I've just been without like my devices.

And I try to like prioritize like, screen-free time and all that stuff. But knowing that my computer and my phone are always at arm's length sort of like does something to my brain. And being in a place where that stuff wasn't there and just having this piece of paper in front of me and a pen. I don't know, it was frightening, but it was also really beautiful.

And I don't know, I feel like there's so much value and preciousness, and it's almost like it felt like a luxury.

Heather Snyder Quinn [28:42]

Like a luxury. I mean, really, that's so— and I do say, if I could go back to life, I mean, my another advisor, Ian, always, he talks a lot about nostalgia and how we always think it was better, but was it? But I really think life was better before the smartphone, because I can't not track my kids. I just can't. I can't like the— or I can't— I always like, oh, do I need to respond? Is there an emergency? Really, nothing is ever an emergency.

But I miss the days of being truly disconnected, and it's almost impossible. And really, the book Radical Technologies by Adam Greenfield, he talks about how Even if you wanted to not have a phone, you can't, because the— I mean, and really, that's smart on big tech, because your bus pass, your money, currency, like everything is inherent in the phone. It's really a problem. You can't, and it's a— who can afford a $1,000 phone?

So it's now a necessity to navigate life, but it's a pretty expensive necessity. So. It's just interesting to think about that.

Christian Solorzano [29:51]

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up the phone book because I used to also love the phone book. And I remember, I remember getting it. I love how it smelled.

Heather Snyder Quinn [30:00]

It's everything about it.

Christian Solorzano [30:01]

It just, and it just felt like you were holding something. It was like a secret. You need, in this book, there was things that you couldn't find anywhere else.

Heather Snyder Quinn [30:11]

You could look up all the boys you wanted to go out with in your high school. I mean, and we, in the '90s, we used to prank call people, which was that was just the thing you did. You'd look up people names, funny name. I mean, it's like kind of terrible, but that was what you did in the '90s. You weren't on TikTok. So yeah.

Christian Solorzano [30:28]

I remember prank call, like my friends and I like prank calling like pizza places and just always those poor pizza places.

Heather Snyder Quinn [30:36]

They probably miss it now though, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [30:39]

But yeah, it's like some of those, some of those little things that it's difficult to do now. I was, I was reading an article the other day, and it was referencing all the tiny tasks that we have to do throughout our day, whether it's logging in, changing passwords. Putting a photo, and it's just like hundreds of little tiny tasks that we're doing every single day. And for me, it just feels like it just takes such a mental toll on me.

Heather Snyder Quinn [31:06]

It does. My mom always talks about, back in the day when they talked about the computer coming, that it was gonna make life easier, and people wouldn't have to work, and there'd be like common income for people because we would not be able to work, and it was gonna make life easier. And that is, I think that is definitely not the case. Now we're just— and so, right, that's like an interesting mindful practice or historical thinking about history.

Why did I, why did we invent this thing to begin with? If it was to make life easier, it's not really the case, is it? I don't know. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [31:45]

And that's the, that's my concern with, some of the way that AI is, or just a lot of this technology that's aiming to optimize and make everything more productive and faster, is that it isn't framed as if it's gonna make us have 3-day work weeks or 4-day work weeks. I think if that was the case, I'd be super excited. I'd be like, yeah, bring it on. But it seems like it's actually quite the opposite.

Heather Snyder Quinn [32:14]

It's so funny, right? You met— did you graduate anywhere near Will Wright? I'll have to tell Will to listen to this. So he took a couple of my design fiction classes, and he was in the Exhibition of the Nation thing we did at Typeforce. But he would always say, why does nobody ever ask why? Why AI? Why do we want it? And of course, you can say, oh, there's innovation, it's helping hearing impaired people, or it's helping surgeries. And sure, all that is true.

But why do we really not want to be able to write anymore? Do we really want it in our life like anyway? And so I think there's always like, of course, a place for everything and a million good reasons that this technology can do. But humans. We like challenge. We like to write. We like to work. I mean, I use, I use ChatGPT. I'm not opposed to it, but I don't use it for everything.

So it's just like no one— we're just so bad at having balance, right? Or asking why, or think, yeah, I don't know. I mean, certainly companies think ahead, they use foresight for projections for income, but they don't use it for anything else. It's really just about capital.

Christian Solorzano [33:32]

So, and I know you're working on a book. Can you tell us a little bit about this book that you're working on?

Heather Snyder Quinn [33:39]

Yeah. So I'm surprised my editor hasn't fired me at this point because with moving and everything, and, I started the job at WashU right when I was like soon to go up for tenure. So my research was really taking off and I would not recommend anyone move to a new job during that part in their trajectory because it was just challenging to learn a new institution while like having all these projects. So the book is great.

I did this conference at Yale Law School last year called Technologies of Deception, and I was presenting this metaverse project called Moriah, where my colleague Adam Delmarcel and I hacked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and augmented Sackler-donated artifacts with statistics about the opioid epidemic. So it was this really amazing project, and it premiered at a film festival yesterday, and it's just like a very significant project for me. So I presented at this really amazing conference.

It was mostly lawyers and policymakers, and there were a couple of artists. And then usually after a conference like that, they'll make a conference proceedings. But the conference chair and a couple other people realized that they couldn't really do a law journal or a typical conference proceedings because All the presenters were from such different backgrounds. And also there wasn't enough to it quite yet to make a book.

So long story short, Winifred Poster, she runs the Labor and Technology series at MIT Press and opted to turn all this stuff from the conference into a book. And then she asked me to co-edit the book and add more art, design, and things to it. So it's a pretty meaty book at this point. The manuscript is about 80% complete and will go out to reviewers in about a month. So it's first of its kind.

It'll have everything from, really meaty law chapters on AI policy to provocative and speculative artworks from some of the leading artists in the world that are looking at these technologies and really understanding some philosophers talking about deception. But it's the first book. I've had book chapters, but I've never, done a whole book on my own. So it's a pretty challenging book to start with. But I'm excited about it. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [36:09]

And when is it expected to be released?

Heather Snyder Quinn [36:11]

2024.

Christian Solorzano [36:12]

2024.

Heather Snyder Quinn [36:14]

Yeah, it's interesting, I think, or I think what's challenging about the book is Tech, I mean, technology is different every day. And so how do you create this book in a way that's— that, maintains the integrity of the chapters but keeps them evergreen? So you can— I mean, and no book is gonna be— well, I mean, some books are timeless, I suppose. But so how does— how is it like a relic of its time?

It's like capturing what's happening in these years, but also is somewhat evergreen. And so I think that's where the future is. Lens really helps. And also, it'll be really one of the first inter-multidisciplinary books. So it's pulling together really different practitioners that are working and analyzing these spaces. And it's organized now. So it's— we don't have the organization totally down, but it's really like women, gender, children, surveillance. I can't even remember what the other sections are, but there's like 7 sections.

So hopefully it'll be as evergreen or timeless as it can, even with technology moving so fast. But I think the idea is that it's going to show the power of futures thinking and of the importance of multi and interdisciplinary work. So if we really want to think about writing tech policy about AI, we need a lot of different people at the table.

It might, it might be, as broad as you have an artist, you have an ethical, philosopher who works in ethics, you have a technologist, and you have a lawyer, right? And if you've ever worked on a truly multidisciplinary team, it's challenging. People speak very different languages. And so, and I do really think that designers in particular serve as great bridges in these spaces, right?

Because we tell stories and we're good at improv, being improvisational and moving into different spaces and helping people talk to each other, especially graphic designers, because we live between content so, the developers, the writers, the art directors, the— and we're like always connecting all these people. So anyway, yeah, so it's called Technologies of Deception. Nice.

Christian Solorzano [38:31]

I love the title. Yeah, I was gonna ask, and you sort of covered this right now, but as far as the role of a graphic designer, I feel like the term graphic design has shifted so much over the past, couple of years, and even today, I work as a product designer, but I still want to identify as a graphic designer.

Heather Snyder Quinn [38:51]

Yeah, hence the Graphic Design Club, right?

Christian Solorzano [38:54]

But then there's like, I'm a product designer, but then underneath that I'm a UX designer, but then I also do UI. So, there's like all these different roles that I have.

Heather Snyder Quinn [39:03]

But I kind of hate the titles, and I feel like I try to tell my students that too. Okay, there's graphic designer, industrial designer, product designer, UX designer, UI designer. What are we forgetting? And there's like graphic designer, communication design, visual communication design, and so on and so forth, right? And you can't really be a designer because, if you go out and you say you're a designer, people are always like, oh, interior designer? And you're like, no.

It just sounds too— I know, I— yeah, both my degrees are in graphic design, but I'm not really a graph— I don't know what I am. What are we? This is an existential crisis.

Christian Solorzano [39:42]

Yeah. But what do you— what would you say to, for instance, like a student that is going to undergrad for graphic design, and let's say their ambition is to become a graphic designer and to do advertising and to do— Your design and packaging. How do you—

Heather Snyder Quinn [39:58]

How do you—

Christian Solorzano [39:58]

Oh, yeah. That graphic design is like a much more complicated, nuanced I still think it's the best major because it—

Heather Snyder Quinn [40:11]

Because, well, at least for me, I've been able to pivot my career so many times because it teaches you to tell stories. And so at least all the graphic designers and industrial designers too that I went to RISD for undergrad, they do so many things. Some are illustrators, some are photographers, some are entrepreneurs, some are pastry chefs, some, the folks from Airbnb came out of there.

It just teaches you to think in such a creative, innovative way that you can kind of— you use storytelling to do anything, business pitches, right? Reinventing how we see and frame the world, systems thinking. And so, especially when, people are like, should I major in UX or design? Well, I hate that they're even separate, because really you should kind of study both.

I mean, most of the jobs are going to be in UX, but really I still think the graphic design degree serves you better in the end, because a lot of times when you study UX, you're studying— it's more of like a scientific, limited mindset and not the breadth of storytelling that allows you to do many different things. And so I think, though, maybe if you study graphic design, you're struggling a little bit more in the beginning to get your feet in the door.

If you haven't studied, taken enough UX classes, and you can't get that, first job, in the long run, I think it's gonna serve you better because you can pivot to more things, and you're not just oh, let me make templates, for Google, or do systems thinking for big tech.

Christian Solorzano [41:44]

I don't know.

Heather Snyder Quinn [41:44]

I don't know if that makes sense.

Christian Solorzano [41:45]

But how do you encourage your students to sort of look beyond their domain of just graphic design. That's something that I— that's something that I feel like for me, I tend to be a pretty curious person. So I'm always asking a lot of questions and just wanting to be in like everything's— like everyone's business. And like—

Heather Snyder Quinn [42:07]

Me too. Yeah, I totally get that.

Christian Solorzano [42:10]

Yeah, but I try to encourage, for instance, like my students to do the same. Yeah, because it doesn't help to just be looking at like what's right in front of you. I think there's so much that happens on the margins. So how do you have those, again, how do you have that conversation with your students where you're, telling them to look at history and science and technology and—

Heather Snyder Quinn [42:34]

That's such a good question because I feel like I do that pretty naturally, but I've never thought about how I do that naturally. And I mean, it's interesting too because I When I think about— I started teaching pretty early in like Y2K, a long time ago, because I knew how to do web stuff. So I started teaching web pretty young. But in the early days of my teaching, I was super pragmatic. I taught basically like an art director. This is what we do in industry.

So we just do the same thing in the classroom. And I teach really differently now. Sometimes I think I've gone too far away from the practical thing into the theoretical. But yeah, I mean, and it's also like changes too. So anyway, what I'm getting at is students today are very perfectionist, and they're very grade-focused, and they're afraid to ask questions, and they just want to get to the answer before they've even begun.

And so almost even more so than getting them to think about things beyond the realm of design, so instead of just like we're studying typography, or we're studying color, or we're creating a website or whatever. It's almost like what you were saying earlier. So it's almost not even like, how do we get them to be curious and think about history? It's like, how do we get them to be experimental, curious, and ask questions and not be results-focused? Because they're just so trained.

My daughter's 2, I mean, live it every day. Standardized testing, quantified self, like everything is data-driven. They just want to get to the answer instead of being in the mess part process of learning and discovery, which is what college is really for, right? So it just, it's just like we're a society that's just end results driven now instead of enjoying the process along the way, which is what true learning is. So I don't even know if I answered that question. That was a good one.

Christian Solorzano [44:37]

That was a good answer. And what were you like in school? I know you mentioned that you were a professor. But were grades something that mattered to you?

Heather Snyder Quinn [44:46]

I'm laughing because I just had to give a talk to where I was. So I got my master's degree at Vermont College of Fine Arts, which is this new, pretty innovative low-residency program. And I went there because the dean, Matt Monk, was my teacher at RISD. So he's my first graphic design professor ever. He taught typography. And so I found my report card from him. To give this talk.

And it— and both— I found a bunch of report cards, and RISD was cool because you got grades, but mostly you got this comment sheet that evaluated your experimentation, your craft, visual language, and then you had comments. And my comments always said, she's too quiet, which is— my kids are always like, what? So I'm not quiet anymore. She's too quiet. She should have more confidence. She should take risks and experiment more. And I was super grades-focused, like had all a's.

I was all about the grade, and part of that was the way I grew up. I, again, I grew up when it— what felt like sometimes a chaotic environment. So having good grades was a way to feel safe, like I was gonna be okay, right in the future, and I was— I had control over my, myself.

But that's why when I went to graduate school so much later, I was really focused on the discovery of self and staying true to my own process and not worrying about where it was gonna end up. And, I feel like that kind of journey is, probably similar for a lot of people. If you're grades-focused, it's hard to let that go because, you're a people pleaser. You look for external validation to know you're doing okay. And that's not entirely wrong. It's part of the peer review, right?

Feedback. But it's just different for me now. So yeah, I mean, I mean, and there's a huge part of me, Nate and Lee and I used to talk about like, and Shiro, because SAIC, I don't think they had grades. Just how do we re— what are the metrics for really reevaluating students today beyond grades? Because I think grades, they're just so flawed. And I don't really believe in them very much. So yeah.

Christian Solorzano [47:00]

Yeah, I'm very glad that, one of the reasons why I like design is that grades aren't as important. And if my career depended on grades, I would not be here. Yeah, because like, I just all throughout, I mean, up until 5th grade I was a pretty good student, but then like from 5th grade on, and then college was good too, but like middle school and high school, just grades were—

Heather Snyder Quinn [47:31]

Middle school and high school, and their curriculum is so problematic. I mean, let's face it, like high school is so dated and it still expects a kid to feel successful only if they are an at, they are well-rounded. They're an amazing athlete. They have perfect grades in like very regimented classes. Really, my most successful friends that are both financially successful and happy, many of them didn't go to college, or they went to a trade school, or they went to college, but they weren't the best students.

They were in a process of discovery, or they were figuring out the path that was right for them. And I think high school does a Tremendous disservice to students because they just don't look at different types of learning or different types of kids. Success can be defined in so many different ways beyond that nonsense. So, yeah, it's— so I think a lot of that happens to a lot of students, middle school and high school. Just, they're like, well, I must not be good at school.

Or, I mean, God, it's so interesting to think about that too. I had a I mean, a teacher— I always been a really creative writer, and I had a teacher in high school who booted me from honors English. It devastated me, being like a high achiever, because he said I had terrible grammar. And so for years I didn't write, and then I went back to graduate school, and Ian, my advisor Ian, had me writing again all kinds of crazy ways.

And now, I write more than I do anything else. And even writing this book with Winnie, who's an amazing writer is like, you're an amazing writer. You write so fast and so prolific and you're so creative. Your brain never stops. But, that teacher was so focused only on grammar that he didn't tell me the parts of writing that I was good at.

And it's like a perfect example of how pedagogical damage happens in high school because it's because of a limited— let's tell the students what they are good at, because writing in the world can mean so many different things. And not— God, wouldn't it be boring if everybody was only good at grammar? I'm not saying to discount it's super important. But thankfully, now there's— now I have help or people who can review and fix the things that I'm not good at. So collaboration, right?

Christian Solorzano [49:49]

Yeah. And I'm glad that you brought up the topic of writing because I think writing is definitely like one way for designers to express and to like communicate what they're thinking. And I think sometimes when you put stuff on paper, it either validates what you're thinking or it invalidates it. Like it sort of test it to a point. So how do you see just writing in general shape the way that you process or understand the world?

Heather Snyder Quinn [50:19]

It's so funny. Yeah, I realized that I sketch a lot now with writing more so than with pictures. So I— and that's important, I think, for students too who think, oh, I must be able to draw like these amazing sketches that Writing, list making, writing thoughts, words, adjectives, collecting, written things that you see is also a process of sketching or thinking, right? And it's really interesting to tap into all of the senses, right?

Because you can write, you can write words, you can see pictures, to read out loud, or sometimes I'll orally dictate things into my phone. So a lot of my thesis I wrote when I was walking to and from DePaul. I would, and it was funny because I would think I was having, I have my best thoughts like when I'm moving, or.

And so I would think my thoughts were really good, and then I'd read what I verbally dictated, and sometimes I'd be like, what on earth was I saying? I have no idea what that was about. But yeah, and it, that's also a nice way to get unstuck, like to move the medium or the piece of your body or mind that you're using to create or get your thoughts out. Yeah, talking, being in dialogue can be really powerful for that, I think, too.

Christian Solorzano [51:43]

So. Yeah, something I do sometimes when I'm, when I'm with a client or working with my colleagues, I rewrite what I'm hearing. And—

Heather Snyder Quinn [51:53]

Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [51:54]

And it just, and it just helps me, understand what they said. And sometimes it helps me understand that what they said doesn't make any sense. And it— yeah, I wrote it down and I'm repeating it to you now. And it encourages us to like rethink and reframe what we're discussing. So yeah, I just think there's so much power in writing, but again, I don't remember it being something that in my design education was really encouraged much.

Heather Snyder Quinn [52:24]

Yeah, I do try to have my students do a lot of writing. Or like, yeah, all kinds of writing, whether it's like formal writing in a style guide or sketching through writing, or we do weird things too, like text messages from the future, or write a LinkedIn post for the, a job from 2050. Or again, I think writing really can be pretty embedded into your studies. Lewis is thinking, are you going to the Cure tonight?

Christian Solorzano [52:55]

No, I'm not, because I wasn't able to get tickets even though I was on the computer like right when they went on sale. I was on my phone and the computer.

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:05]

Oh, I should have given you— I got like the special fan thing, and then I was like, maybe I won't be back there yet, so I didn't end up getting them, but they'll be at Riot Fest.

Christian Solorzano [53:14]

I had the promo code.

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:16]

I have—

Christian Solorzano [53:16]

I had everything I needed, but like the website crashed.

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:19]

Oh, it did.

Christian Solorzano [53:20]

And I'm like, come on. So I won't be going. But the last time I saw them was in Texas in 2019. And then the time before that, I saw them the night before I graduated from DePaul. And they—

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:37]

You did?

Christian Solorzano [53:38]

And they played on a Friday and a Saturday. And I went—

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:41]

I think I was at that concert. Wait, what year was that?

Christian Solorzano [53:43]

2016.

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:45]

Yeah, Ciro and his wife and my husband and I went. Was that United Center, right?

Christian Solorzano [53:50]

Yeah.

Heather Snyder Quinn [53:51]

Yeah, we had terrible seats. But, and Riot Fest, I saw them at Riot Fest. They were better there than inside, but still secure.

Christian Solorzano [53:59]

So I remember we, after the show ended, my friends and I went out and we stayed out till like 4 AM, and then I had to wake up at 6 to like get ready for graduation. So—

Heather Snyder Quinn [54:10]

Oh, you were tired. I must— so I must have not met you when you were a student, or did I?

Christian Solorzano [54:15]

I don't think so.

Heather Snyder Quinn [54:16]

Because I started in the fall of 2015, so we would have only overlapped a year.

Christian Solorzano [54:22]

Yeah, I don't think so.

Heather Snyder Quinn [54:23]

And I was teaching a lot of what you're teaching now, like GD 105. And is that— that's what you're teaching, right? Are you teaching a bunch of stuff?

Christian Solorzano [54:32]

GD 105 and GD 215, Intro to Web.

Heather Snyder Quinn [54:37]

Oh yeah, I've taught that too. Yeah, that's a great class too. Commercial Web or whatever it's called.

Christian Solorzano [54:41]

Yeah, it's been going great.

Heather Snyder Quinn [54:44]

Oh, it's fun. It's nice that you're back giving back to the community. Well, you do so much for the community. I love— had my eyes on Chicago Graphic Design Club for a while. I saw you got a flag, which being a nation builder, just duh, it's so cool. Yeah, I had my eye on it and like really wanted to get involved with the community, the book clubs and everything that you're doing.

And then I— and then we Moved, but now I'm back, so we have to carve out time to do some things. Be great.

Christian Solorzano [55:14]

Yeah, and I want to touch on that, the topic of community, really quick, because as a club, that's our focus— community. And I always like to ask all our guests the question of, what does community mean to you? And yeah, just what does it mean to you?

Heather Snyder Quinn [55:30]

Oh gosh, that's such a big word for me right now because, we being from New England, which is near and dear to my heart, we moved to Chicago in 2013 because we had friends here, but also my husband had a great job opportunity, and we moved here, and we were absorbed so quickly into the community here. People immediately were like, let me make you dinner, bring you a pie, and can you come out with us tonight?

I had never experienced such a loving community like in my life. And we lived, we lived here for 10 years, and just the Midwest, I feel like, is one of the best places on earth. And then when we moved to St. Louis, it felt very Midwestern. And I'm sure that if you live or from there, or if you're there for a long time, it has all the Midwestern community stuff.

But what we realized is that we left behind too much community that we had built and felt like home. And so I've been thinking just a lot about community the past year, and how community, and how my job and what I do is like, I love it, I love my work, but that I don't want to leave my community for it. That being here is really important to us as a family.

And that community is like somebody said, or in another grad school project, is like you write your obituary to figure out if you're living your life the way you would like to. And mine said something like, I wanna be remembered as someone who brought you a lasagna when you didn't have a good day. And my advisor was like, are you bringing— do you cook lasagnas a lot? And I was like, never. I haven't done it for years.

The community means like you— I'm trying to work on being a better listener. I can talk too much. I think, how can I live as a community member? How can I be a good listener? How can I carve out time for people like hold people up, hold space for them. I mean, the amazing thing about DePaul is I had like 4 students last week reach out to me, alums, for job support. Doing that kind of thing is super important to me.

That's part of the creation of a community, a safe place where we help each other navigate like the chaos of the world, right? So anyway, kind of all over the place, but community is it's a beautiful thing, and I think it's really strong here, both the design community here in the Midwest, but also just community in general. People are pretty great. So yeah, I love what you're doing. What's going to be the next book club?

Christian Solorzano [58:06]

So for the next book club, it's not going to be— it's not technically— we're not going to be discussing a book, but we're going to be discussing the entire Emigre archive.

Heather Snyder Quinn [58:15]

Oh, I saw that. Well, also, I'm a '90s girl. So that's also near and dear to my heart. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [58:21]

Because some of the, some of the books that we've been choosing lately are really dense and it's summertime, and I think people want something a little bit lighter.

Heather Snyder Quinn [58:32]

That's understandable. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [58:34]

Because, yeah, we tend to take on like pretty big topics, and yeah, and yeah, sometimes it could be a little bit intimidating.

Heather Snyder Quinn [58:42]

Nice to have a mix. And sometimes when you're doing something that feels more playful and less dense, you're actually like, it's like a, you're getting at things that are dense, but in a different way.

Christian Solorzano [58:55]

Exactly. So, but we have, we have some exciting things coming up that I won't mention on this episode yet, but I'll tell you offline. For later this year. And yeah, our team is, I'm really happy. Like the team that we have is really strong. And everyone is very committed to, yeah, to doing everything that we do.

Heather Snyder Quinn [59:17]

So that's great. It's like, feels super Midwestern. It's like very welcoming. And you're— I love the Carita Kent Sundays, and it just feels like it's embracing all the good, the good things of life and design. Yeah, like a very humble and welcoming way.

Christian Solorzano [59:35]

So, well, before we wrap up, is there anything that you want to Mention any new projects, anything that we should be looking out for in the world of Heather?

Heather Snyder Quinn [59:46]

Oh gosh. No, I mean, the book is really the big one. I also have a workbook coming out with Ayako Takashi called Matriarchal Design Futures, which really talks about you don't have to identify as a mother. It's just a word for talking about how to teach and navigate the world with nurturing and with care. And so that was what we were presenting at that HAS-TAC conference this week.

And so the workbook is being printed by Bench Press in Providence and should be coming out also, well, in about a month, I think. Which is exciting. So yeah. All right.

Christian Solorzano [60:28]

Well, send us a link when it comes out so that we could promote it.

Heather Snyder Quinn [60:34]

Definitely.

Christian Solorzano [60:35]

Well, this was a lovely conversation. If anyone wants to reach out to you, you're always pretty easy to get a hold of. So I'll include links in the notes.

Heather Snyder Quinn [60:44]

Oh yeah, that would be great. I finally have a website. The one and only Claire Rosa helped me build that. She's also a DePaul alum. So she got that together for me. And then LinkedIn and Instagram are usually good ways. So it's kind of a hot mess of my life all in one place.

Christian Solorzano [61:03]

Well, when I was preparing for this interview, I was looking through your website. It's a really beautiful website.

Heather Snyder Quinn [61:08]

Oh, good. Yeah, I've got to update some stuff, but it was, it was really like, the longer you work, the longer you've been around, it's really hard to encompass everything in one place. People say, what do you do? Or tell us about your career. You're like, well, which one? Yeah, I'm happy with the site though. It's got a lot of good stuff on there. So awesome.

Christian Solorzano [61:30]

Well, thank you so much. This was great.

Heather Snyder Quinn [61:33]

Thank you for having me. Really was so happy and honored when you asked me.