Marking the 45-year anniversary of Pauline Oliveros’s Cheap Commissions, historic video footage explores Oliveros creating original works for anyone who approached her in Downtown Minneapolis.

For nearly 40 years, the Design Studio at the Walker has produced original posters for the annual Insights Design Lecture Series. Gathered here is a small selection of these posters that trace the evolution of graphic design at the Walker and throughout the globe.

Swiss graphic designer Julia Born sits down to discuss how she employed an intricate typographic and graphic system int he exhibition catalog Sophie Calle: Overshare.

How do we listen to the public spaces that we inhabit? Artist Max Neuhaus’s explores this question through the ring of a church bell that no longer exists, a silence in time square, and sound forms made for plants.

Quickly becoming a staple of work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the video conferencing program Zoom has entrenched itself in many peoples working and personal lives. Through a round table discussion, David Gissen, Aimi Hamraie, and Emily Watlington explore the relationship between Zoom and accessibility.

David Gissen, Georgina Kleege and Jordan Whitewood Neal discuss the fears and potential possibilities for elevators to be spaces of culture and communication.

Chicago born and based Norman Teague blends a passion for handmade design with community to discover new forms for objects and collaborations alike. With his work included in Idea House 3, Teague sat down to describe his journey from trade school to the Venice Biennale and why Chicago is the city.

Having discovered furniture design by way of a watercolor-painting class for architects, Evan Fay explores the freedom found within design constraints and what Detroit’s ghost gardens can tell us about not holding back.

Chicago-based artist and designer Cody Norman explores the possibilities of reworking robotics, pitfalls of our plastic crisis, and how to best misuse digital fabrication.

Embracing the collaborative nature of creating glass, Schwartz co-founded Hennepin Made, a Minneapolis artisan factory that brings studio-art thinking to the creation of lighting. Sitting down with the Walker, Jackson Schwartz shared his thoughts around glassmaking’s ability to give form to communities and light alike.

Guest curator Wava Carpenter reflects on the theme of Idea House 3’s inaugural Guest Room.

Since its earliest days as a public art center, the Walker Art Center included a radical concept—a working design studio embedded within a museum. We asked the eclectic team of the Walker’s Design Studio to reflect on some of their favorite projects and aspects of working at the Walker.

Born and raised in Detroit, designer Aleiya Olu explores how her grandmother’s love of patterns, exploring childhood memories through wood finishes, and the influence of the singular city of Detroit on her work.

Japanese-born, Michigan-based designer Ayako Aratani reflects on relocating from Tokyo to Pontiac, the importance of handmade design, and how wrinkles can invite us to have less anxiety.

How does Acid Communism lead to a book? Exhibition catalogue designer Žiga Testen explains.

An architect turned museum director, a few acres of land, and a bold idea for the future of design in America formed the Idea House project. Learn how this innovative design program featuring full-scale, single-family homes for public exhibition debuted at the Walker Art Center in the 1940s.

How did a rough philosophy unit in 1990’s UK herald today’s world of AI generated content? Matt Colquhoun traces the lasting influence of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit’s unorthodox mix of media theory, Jacques Derrida, Aleister Crowley, and HP Lovecraft on AI generating tools like ChatGBT.

In this previously unpublished interview from 2004, artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge discusses their most ambitious project, pandrogyny, wherein they merged two individuals into a single being.

A survey of book covers by the St. Paul Black-owned and operated bookstore, Black Garnet Books, that act as fresh, unique love letters to the Black adults who spent their entire childhoods never having picked up a book featuring a character that looked like them, and the kids who will never have to know what that’s like.

Media theorist who coined the term “viral media,” Douglas Rushkoff, discusses the dangers of storytelling in the wrong hands, whether content can be art, and how content can connect human souls.

How did an electronic dump in West Africa lead to a spiritual subculture of catfish scams? Journalist Hannah explores the complexities of Sakawa.

Designer of the exhibition catalogue for Pacita Abad, Mỹ Linh Triệu Nguyễn explores how the artist’s woven trapunto paintings, maximalism, and Philippine pre-colonial scripts influenced the creation of this unique book.

In celebration of Earth Day, Elizabeth Carls of Saint Paul based Egg|Plant Urban Farm Supply gathers a selection of books spanning multiple genres that celebrates localism, sustainability, food sovereignty, and good ecological stewardship.

A conversation with the volunteer-run music store and staple of the Twin Cities punk scene on sustaining a DIY community.

This Halloween season, Minneapolis-based DreamHaven Books and Comics gathers a selection of their favorite spine-tingling book covers from the last five decades.

From Homer to Joyce and even shards of wood, designer Ben Schwartz traces their influences and process of creating the catalogue for Jannis Kounellis in Six Acts.

The Walker Design Studio recently worked with artist Paul Chan to design the catalogue to accompany his upcoming exhibition, Paul Chan: Breathers. In this reverse interview, Paul Chan talks with catalogue designer Brian Huddleston about his beginnings in type design and the process of creating the typeface he designed for the book.

In this custom-produced lecture movie, Tracy Ma discusses her trajectory through some of the most innovative publishing design initiatives of the past decade.

Focusing on design’s relationship to labor and the means of production, Danielle Aubert discusses her design practice and how it intersects with her experience as president of her local teacher’s union.