With a career that fuses rock and roll, corporate identity creation, and impressionistic geography, Paula Scher is a master conjurer of the instantly familiar.

The tag “rock star” is recklessly applied to everyone from bloggers to biochemists, but in Paula Scher’s case it couldn’t be more appropriate. As a rock star designer, she’s cooked up everything from Boston album covers to Elvis Costello posters, pausing somewhere in between to trash the ubiquitous visual authoritarianism of Helvetica. She’s also created some of design’s most iconic images, like the Citibank logo. She is a partner in the renowned design firm Pentagram, and in 2001 received the distinguished AIGA medal.

As a fine artist, Scher has also become increasingly well known for her microscopically detailed map paintings, densely latticed with hand-lettered text, that evoke not only place but the varied political, historical and cultural meanings (and preconceptions) brought to the world by the viewer.

Great design is a never-ending journey of discovery – for which it helps to pack a healthy sense of humor. Sociologist and surfer-turned-designer David Carson walks through a gorgeous (and often quite funny) slide deck of his work and found images.

David Carson is the “grunge typographer” whose magazine Ray Gun helped explode the possibilities of text on a page.

“You have to utilize who you are in your work. Nobody else can do that: nobody else can pull from your background, from your parents, your upbringing, your whole life experience.”

Neville Brody is perhaps the best known graphic designer of his generation. He studied graphic design at the London College of Printing and first made his way into the public eye through his record cover designs and his involvement in the British independent music scene in the early 1980s. Later he was able to put these ideas into practice and to set new precedents through the innovative styling of The Face magazine (1981-1986). It was his work on magazines that firmly established his reputation as one of the world’s leading graphic designers. In particular, his artistic contribution to The Face completely revolutionised the way in which designers and readers approach the medium.

Though Brody rejected all commercialisation of his graphic style, his unique designs soon became much-imitated models for magazines, advertising and consumer-oriented graphics of the eighties. His pioneering spirit in the area of typography manifests itself today in such projects as FUSE, a regularly published collection of experimental typefaces and posters which challenges the boundaries between typography and graphic design. Often referred to as a “star typographer”, Brody has designed a number of very well-known typfaces

In this video interview filmed by Dezeen for the Design Museum’s 2009 ‘Super Contemporary’ exhibition, graphic designer Neville Brody talks about the key people, places and cultural movements in London that have defined his life in London.

Michael Bierut is a partner at Pentagram and a leading voice in the world of design.

Michael studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, worked at Vignelli Associates for ten years and, as I learned from watching him host Command X: Season 3 at the AIGA Pivot Conference, has a charming stage presence and warm sense of humor.

Michael’s take on design thinking was thoughtfully laid out. He responded by highlighting two trends he was seeing in design.

A backstage interview intermingled with video fragments at the Design Thinking Foundations project.

The Geography of Design is a two-part interview with Paula Scher directed by the filmmaker Nicolas Heller and produced by Brian Collins for the Art Directors Club. In the first part of the film, shot at Scher’s home and studio in Connecticut, Scher discusses the influence of New York City, its architecture, and especially its noise (the yelling!) on her design and typography.

In part two, she talks about the development of her map paintings. In the film, Heller (son of Steven) takes viewers on a journey through Scher’s work, from her groundbreaking “Best of Jazz” poster to a new painting commission for the city’s Percent for Art program.

‘Many years ago, in one of our previous interviews, I asked you what kind of project you’d like to work on that you hadn’t yet had an opportunity to do. You said it would be the redesign of a global identity. You have now accomplished that with EDP. Was it everything you hoped it would be?’ Sagmeister speaks about his work for EDP, the Portuguese electricity utility.

‘In case you have been hiding under a rock for the past 18 years Rudy is the co-founder of Emigre. Along with the Macintosh in 1984, Emigre revolutionized Desktop Publishing, Graphic Design and Font Publishing and Design. Today they strive to voice their own and unique views on Design through their magazine and typeface design.

On this interview I harped a bit on my impression that Emigre’s changes reflect a need to please us [designers] to continue subscribing to their publication and purchasing their fonts. Rudy cleared that matter, and put my concerns to rest that Emigre was “selling out.” ‘

Interview with Under Consideration’s Speak Up.

‘Looking at the design field generally in the period between 1980 and 1995—there’s the “vernacular” stuff that’s just kind of there. At the other end, there’s the esoteric avant-garde. In between there’s the corporate design. Citibank in the 70s—that was an example of the avant-garde slipping into the corporate world.’ Michael Beirut spaeks about what’s going on in corporate design. Interview with Ellen Lupton, June 16, 1994.

Interview, Ellen Lupton with Tobias Frere-Jones, November 1, 1995.

‘I think it is one of the paradoxical conditions of design authorship, that you have to be both producer and critic simultaneously. I can maintain a kind of double life.’

Canadian Bruce Mau, 40, exemplifies a new breed of design auteur. His current book, Life Style, a 627-page manifesto, monograph and virtual museum is, according to New York Times design critic Herbert Muschamp, a ‘strip tease performed with an endless variety of veils.’ The book, he says, ‘tantalises readers with glimpses into the thinking of one of the most creative minds at work in design today.’ But note that the word ‘graphic’ does not appear in this statement. Mau’s career, though rooted in graphic design, has spread into the realms of architecture, film and landscape design, often in equal collaboration with professionals from other spheres, notably the architects Rem Koolhaas, with whom he co-authored the monolithic S,M,L,XL and Frank Gehry, for whose Walt Disney Concert Hall he designed the signage and typographic identity. Interview with Eye Magazine.