(Picture: Rainer Gehrisch)
BEHIND THE SCENES
DDCAST, the DDC’s podcast, has been published since 2020 – and on a weekly basis. A conversation with team members Georg-Christof Bertsch, Anna Kirchner and Helge Aszmoneit about the recipe for success, podcasts as a research tool and how the DDCAST is created.
The DDCAST is the most successful design podcast in Germany. What is the secret recipe?
Anna Kirchner: That’s because of the exquisite ingredients. The interesting interview partners, who come from different design fields, from different regions of the world. That is what we see as diversity. The DDCAST is always clearly structured: At the beginning there is the informative and entertaining intro by Rainer Gehrisch, in which he also refers to the previous DDCAST. And then comes the good-humoured, eloquent and talkative Georg-Christof Bertsch.
Helge Aszmoneit: Very important is the continuity, the regular publication. There is a new episode every Monday.
Georg-Christof Bertsch: The mixture of very young and well-known people is what makes it. For example, we deliberately published the young designer Stephanie Hobmeier between the issues with Konstantin Grcic and Mike Meiré – that naturally pulled Hobmeier up. That way we can push young, still unknown people.
Why does the DDC publish podcasts at all?
Georg-Christof Bertsch: It all started with the DDC’s new competition, WAS IST GUT, which was launched in 2020. Two of the DDC board members at the time, Nicolas Markwald and Rainer Gehrisch, thought it would be good if a podcast accompanied the competition – and then approached me because they knew that I had published a lot on design. But above all: the DDC simply has a lot to say. Because the club is very dynamic and is currently getting younger and younger. Podcasts are a great medium for our audiences.
Helge Aszmoneit: In the design library of the German Design Council, we received more and more requests for podcasts and also produced some ourselves with the Council. That’s how we came up with the idea of using podcasts as a research tool. The start of the DDCAST fell in the Corona era, when meetings were difficult. And podcasts became popular. And then Georg approached us and asked if we could archive the DDCAST. So we added the DDCAST to the library’s scientifically structured catalogue. Now all episodes are continuously added to the catalogue and indexed.
How does DDCAST accompany the DDC’s WAS IST GUT competition?
Georg-Christof Bertsch: At the first WAS IST GUT competition, we made individual programmes with some of the protagonists and prize winners. For example, Friedrich von Borries and Nils-Holger Moormann had their say. In the near future, we will produce two or three episodes for the next WAS IST GUT competition.
Anna Kirchner: But the DDCASTs have broken away from the competition and become more independent. Nevertheless, at the end of a DDCAST, Georg always addresses the question WAS IST GUT (WHAT IS GOOD). And the DDCAST also introduces many people to the DDC. It is by far the DDC’s format with the widest reach.
Podcasts are not visual, and in design we are dealing with the object and the visual...
Georg-Christof Bertsch: Nicolas Markwald designed the elegant, robust and very characteristic visual appearance of the DDCAST. That in itself explains something. It creates a certain atmosphere. The visual appearance is very important, especially for an audio format. But more specifically to your question: You really have to explain things and also point out to the guests, please describe this or that. In the programme “Designlesen” I have made an effort to really describe a book by Klaus K. Loenhart as an object. Or on DDCAST with Nina Sieverding and Anton Rahlwes, the chief editors of form design magazine, who reported that they discovered racist objects at Milan Design Week. You also have to see that in recent years, the purely theoretical examination of the discipline has increased very, very strongly in the design scene.
What role and importance do podcasts have for design education in general?
Helge Aszmoneit: Podcasts generally have the advantage that you can listen to them, even while doing other things. Many people are not aware that they can also be sources for research or open up contact with experts.
Anna Kirchner: To hear designers speak, you used to have to go to conferences. Today you can listen to DDCAST. Because the design industry has fewer and fewer forums in which specialist publications are made.
And how can I use podcasts for my research?
Helge Aszmoneit: The design library of the German Design Council, which I manage, includes the DDCASTs in its catalogue, which is part of two large Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs). You can find the DDCASTs formally and under keywords that we assign to the individual DDCAST episodes. In addition, one can of course search specifically for audio documents or the DDCASTs. So if you search for information by and about Konstantin Grcic, the DDCAST with Konstantin Grcic will also be displayed. This also works with thematic searches.
How do you go about keywording?
Anna Kirchner: I listen to all the episodes and take notes, I have my own book for that. The good thing is that the DDCASTs are not that long – between 25 and 45 minutes. I then pass the keywords on to Helge Aszmoneit in a structured way.
Helge Aszmoneit: I look at the keywords and check whether they make sense, whether one should perhaps use English terms or other spellings. Keywording as a way of indexing content is very important.
There is a whole DDCAST team. How did this cooperation come about?
Georg-Christof Bertsch: In the absolute first place is Rainer Gehrisch. I am in constant contact with him, even at night. Without him the programme would not be possible. His technical knowledge, his sensitive director’s work during the recordings are the best you could wish for in a podcast. He brings decades of experience as a film producer and cameraman. We both got professional support right away in 2020: Philipp Ostermann, who acts as webmaster, Lasse Nielsen for social media and Dirk Buro, who mixes the sound at his professional audio-studio and who brought his son Daniel with him. By the way, Daniel, as the youngest member of the team, has recently been doing entire production lines. Rainer, of course, brings in his experience from film production. Claudia Laufs, as DDC office manager, coordinates the schedules. Anna Kirchner joined the editorial team last year. And Helge Aszmoneit from the German Design Council takes care of the integration into the OPACs of the libraries. One must emphasize: Rainer and I in particular put a lot of time into the project completely free of charge. Anna also works purely on a voluntary basis.
Helge Aszmoneit: When Georg approached us, it was quickly clear that we would support the format as the German Design Council. After all, the German Design Council, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, is committed to design education as a whole. I suggested that the catalogue entry of the DDCASTs link directly to the DDC website. There you can find a lot of information about the individual podcasts. There you can also listen to them directly, because it is permanently stored there – or just on the other platforms like Spotify, Deezer or iTunes.
Anna Kirchner: I applied for the DDC call for volunteering in November 2022. Besides keywording, it’s also about finding, tracking down and contacting interview partners. I have always enjoyed listening to the DDCAST to expand my design knowledge. Now I’m directly involved. My network is growing. This also has an effect on my actual work as a designer.
Georg-Christof Bertsch: It’s a great team with a smooth work flow. It should also be mentioned that we invite guest presenters in some episodes, such as DDC members Bettina Knoth, Katja Lis and Nicolas Markwald. Or Thilo Schwer in “Designlesen” and in future Christoph Grünberger on AI topics.
How do you choose the interviewees?
Georg-Christof Bertsch: We look for people who do something cool. Or there are topics that interest us and we choose suitable interview partners. For example, the young designer Michaela Leitner, who we introduced in episode 131. I find it incredible what she presents in her book “FemFacts” about gender gaps and sexism. It is also important to be well-prepared so that the interviews can be conducted stringently. I call the interview partners beforehand. That is an enormous effort.
Anna Kirchner: How we came to Tobias Trübenbacher, for example, who will soon be on DDCAST: He took part in WAS IST GUT 2020 and was awarded the German Design Award 2023. Then I got involved with his product, a light that works without electricity, using conventional oil. We talked and I realised that he had a lot to say.
Georg-Christof Bertsch: It goes without saying that we make sure that our selection is as diverse and gender-appropriate as possible. I try to conduct the conversations in such a way that the interviewees can shine. And finally, there are also very personal approaches to the interview partners. Erik Spiekermann, for example. We have been congratulating each other on our birthdays on 30 May for 28 years. For Erik’s 75th birthday, we published the episode “TypoErik 75”. That itself sounds like the name of a typeface.
How come it’s not just designers you talk to?
Georg-Christof Bertsch: We want to perforate the tiny design-bubble from the inside, simply because it is far too small and needs opening in all directions. That’s why there are also economists or natural scientists on our shows, but we always intersperse two or three questions that go in the direction of design. In Podcast 52, Dr Fritzi Köhler-Geib, the chief economist of the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, talks about how design can build bridges between industries. That’s a great macroeconomic view.
Anna Kirchner: Or we look further out into the world, for example to South Africa, where we talked to Mrs Keneilwe Munyai in DDCAST 143, who, as a design scientist, deals with social interaction processes on the ground. If it were just designers, I think that would be pretty poor for the approach we take at the DDC.
Which episodes can you highlight that are special to you personally?
Helge Aszmoneit: I find DDCAST 97 very exciting: physicist and professor Joachim Curtius talked about trace gases, aerosols, clouds and climate. So much concentrated knowledge. The episode with Konstantin Grcic is also one of my favourites.
Anna Kirchner: For me, it’s DDCAST 62 with Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, the publisher of Hermann Schmidt Verlag and CEO of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels. She shows with her programme that print is far from dead. And the books from her publishing house are simply great in design, too. She also shows a humility and openness that impressed me. By the way, she wrote to us about the first episode of “Designlesen”: “I have rarely or never heard design books discussed with this intensity and competence.” That’s what makes us proud.
Georg-Christof Bertsch: The meeting with fashion designer Bitten Stetter, who came to palliative design through her mother’s terminal care, was also intense. A topic I had never thought about before. A few days ago, we recorded three episodes with Hartmut Esslinger, which we will broadcast shortly before his 80th birthday in spring 2024. For this, Helge provides a super bibliography to me and I read or reread about 200 pages of texts. Admittedly, it was quite a lot of work, but it’s worth it for conversations like this. Listeners can already look forward to that.
Finally, a personal recommendation in one sentence: Why should you listen to DDCAST?
Helge Aszmoneit: In order to get to know design in as many dimensions as possible that have to do with the challenges of our time, it is worth listening to the DDCAST, which also encourages very personal changes of action.
Anna Kirchner: Because it presents a positive view and concrete solutions for the challenges of our time. The question of WHAT IS GOOD conveys the optimistic and constructive attitude and the future-oriented perspective with which all the topics in the podcast are examined.
Georg-Christof Bertsch: Because it is the DDCAST.
The interview was conducted by Martina Metzner.
