Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, August 26, 2025 : Debbie Millman, an American designer, author, educator, curator (#2349)

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Artist of the Day, August 26, 2025 : Debbie Millman, an American designer, author, educator, curator (#2349)

Debbie Millman is a designer, author, educator, curator, and host of the pioneering podcast Design Matters.

Named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, “one of the most influential designers working today” by Graphic Design USA, and a “woman of influence” by Success Magazine, she has built a remarkable career at the intersection of design, storytelling, and cultural commentary.

Millman is the founder and host of Design Matters, one of the first and longest-running podcasts in the world. Over the past two decades, she has interviewed more than 700 of the world’s most creative thinkers and makers. The show has earned a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, multiple Webby awards and Ambie nominations, and numerous accolades from Apple Podcasts, which named it one of their “All-Time Favorites” three times.

She is the author of eight books, including How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits, and Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People, which won both an iF and a Graphis award. Her most recent book, Love Letter to a Garden, was published in April 2025.

Millman is also Editorial Director of PrintMag.com, which she co-owns. In 2019, she and her partners rescued the publication from bankruptcy, preserving its 80-year legacy. She and her wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay, recently acquired TheRumpus.net, which will relaunch in late 2025.

In 2010, Millman co-founded the first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Now in its 15th year, the program has earned international acclaim, with student work spanning collaborations with MoMA, the Joyful Heart Foundation, Sundance Institute, and Chobani, among many others.

For two decades, Millman was President of Sterling Brands, where she helped grow the firm from a 15-person boutique into a global consultancy. She played a pivotal role in its 2008 acquisition by Omnicom and led major branding initiatives for Burger King, Hershey’s, Haagen-Dazs, Tropicana, Star Wars, Gillette, and the No More campaign to end domestic violence.

A prolific writer and illustrator, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Magazine, The Baffler, The New York Review of Books and Fast Company. She is the author of two books of illustrated essays—Look Both Ways and Self-Portrait as Your Traitor—the latter of which earned a Gold Mobius, a Print Typography Award, and an Art Directors Club medal.

A past president of AIGA (one of only five women to serve in the role in its 100-year history), Millman received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. She is a frequent keynote speaker and has delivered talks at TED (one of the Top 10 most popular TED Talks of 2020), Aspen Ideas Festival, Inbound, Design Indaba, Web Summit, and universities and design festivals around the world.

Millman is a long-time board member of Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation, working to eradicate sexual assault, domestic violence, the rape kit backlog and image-based abuse.

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