Scratching the Surface

Scratching the Surface is the kind of design podcast you put on when you want to actually think, not just passively listen. Hosted by Jarrett Fuller — a designer, writer, and assistant professor of graphic design at North Carolina State University — the show has featured over 200 long-form conversations since 2016 with designers, architects, writers, critics, and academics. The guest list reads like a syllabus for an advanced design theory course: MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, architecture critic Paul Goldberger, Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, and Reinier de Graaf from OMA have all appeared on the show. But Jarrett does not limit himself to big names — he regularly features emerging voices and academics whose work might not make mainstream design blogs but is shaping how the next generation thinks about the field. The conversations are wide-ranging and intellectual without being stuffy. A typical episode might explore how graphic design intersects with political movements, why design criticism matters, or how architecture firms think about public space. In 2023, Jarrett launched Scratch, a companion publishing platform for experimental writing on design. The show fills a specific gap in the podcast world — it treats design as a cultural practice with real intellectual stakes, not just a set of tools and trends. If you studied design in school and miss those conversations that connected your work to bigger ideas about art, politics, and society, Scratching the Surface picks up right where those seminar discussions left off.