Design Matters, the popular internet radio show hosted by MPS Branding Department Chair Debbie Millman, has returned for its seventh season. Featuring one-on-one conversations with some of the biggest names in design and culture, Design Matters is recorded live at SVA, using a specially built booth in the MPS Branding studios. The new season kicked off on September 16 and featured the architect Michael Arad who, at age 34, was selected from 5,201 competitors as the winning designer of the World Trade Center Memorial. An archive of their conversation can be found here.

“Design Matters began in February of 2005 with an idea and a telephone line,” said Millman. “I thought it would be a great way to ask my heroes everything I wanted to know about their lives and their thoughts and their careers without seeming stalker-y. In the process, I gleaned the most magnificent view of some of the greatest design thinkers and practitioners of our time. I realized the opportunity to share the brilliance of my guests with an audience I never expected was the gift of a lifetime.”

Regular broadcasts of the audio interviews continue on September 23 with illustrator Jessica Hische, who was named one of Print magazine’s New Visual Artists (20 under 30). Future guests include designers Alex Bogusky and John Bielenberg (September 30), Fast Company Senior Editor Linda Tischler (October 7), design anthropologist Dori Tunstall (October 14), The Takeaway’s John Hockenberry (October 21), gardener and writer Margaret Roach (Oct 28), design firm Design Army ( November 4), architect James Biber (November 11), designer Martin Venezky (November 18), book cover designer Peter Mendelsund (November 25) and designer and MFA Design for Social Innovation Department Chair Cheryl Heller.

New episodes air weekly on Design Observer, which also features the complete archive of past shows.

Image: Courtesy of Debbie Millman.