Wear Many Hats Episode 21 — Renald Louissaint — Medium

Hey everyone it’s Rashad and this is Wear Many Hats presented by Dahsar where we talk about your main gig then we talk about your side hustle.

Renald Louissaint is a Brooklyn based designer and illustrator who balances the different approaches required for both practices to inform all of his work.

He describes his work as lush and detailed, carefully researched and composed with typography.

You may have seen his playlist covers for Lichen NYC, our good friend David You’s recent cover for ‘Beautiful, Like Pyramids.”

Renald is also an illustrator and currently holds a role as a brand designer at Medium.

Please welcome Renald Louissant.

Playlists

On the Lichen playlist what was your favorite song on there?

Mine is “Houston We Have a Problem” by Genius of Time. Miss the club days and that reminds me of Nowadays.

“N SIde” by Steve Lacy

Who curates the music for the playlists? Off of L’avion ASP 7, my favorite is Popeye by Quelle Chris, off of Gruv ASP 5, Baby by Ariel Pink always

How To Make It In America

• You put out a poster based on How to Make it in America. First time I ever saw those posters were at Lichen NYC shout out to Ed and Jared. Tell me about the concept. Who did the type?
• When was the last time you watched How to Make it in America? I just rewatched the series again for the 5th time an it always boosts me to create more. Too inspiring.
• NYC Eats its young. I loved that T-Shirt. One of the best to ever do it. With the subway doors coming for you.
• I love the “Aloe Blacc” “I Love The Dolla” lyric hit

Medium

• Interesting that when you got a job out in New York, it reminded you of How To Make It In America was that job Medium?
• The covers that you do for Medium are dope. Medium has these stories and you do the covers?
• Medium is where we write all the Wear Many Hats scripts so I love that Medium was invented.

Typefaces:

Rella Sans is fire. What made you come up with this typeface?

Brutal is sick as well.

I just watched your Typographics 2019: Insights through introspection that was at the Great Hall at Cooper Union

You talk about how you love pink and you dyed your hair pink because it was a dark time.

I feel ya, I wanted to dye my hair blue so many times because I was going through a tough time.

And it features many heavy hitters in the design world who uses type like Braulio and my good friend Jerome Harris

In your spare time when you’re not designing what else keeps you busy?

How we end the podcast is that if you were to get a chest tattoo quote in olde english what would your phrase be?

Till next time this is Wear Many Hats with your host Rashad presented by Dahsar. Peace.