“Covering design on the radio can be a challenge for obvious reasons, but being audio-only is a constraint that generally works in my favor,” says Roman Mars.
The hugely inventive podcast 99% Invisible treats the design of everyday things like a forensic science. In each episode, creator and host Roman Mars highlights some nearly invisible design process that you had no idea was incredibly interesting and then tells you why it is. The show is on our must-listen playlist, and season three is our Kickstarter of the Week.
If you don’t know the show, here are the basics: Episodes run 5-10 minutes, and cover some undersung element of design: from the shape of tugboat hulls to the carefully engineered clicks that keybaord keys make to the work of a blind architect. “I like that it’s an ongoing series of short episodes because there’s no pressure to answer every question or touch on every topic in each installment,” says Mars. Instead, themes and characters re-emerge over the course of the show.
If you do know the show, you’ll be delighted to learn that Mars’ Kickstarter has been funded. Now he’s looking to knock it out of the park. To do this, he’s added two new metrics.
First, he has a series of stretch goals, with commitments ranging from hiring a part-time collaborator to building a smartphone app. Second, Debbie Millman‘s Design Matters Institute has agreed to put up $10,000 if Mars can achieve 5,000 backers.
Stretch goals are becoming commonplace on Kickstarter, but Mars’ second goal that counts backers at any level is something new. Since the show began, Mars has gotten offers from fans who wanted to donate. So, for Mars, Kickstarter is only partially about filling the coffers. He posted the campaign with an eye toward long-term funding and wanted nothing short of a spectacle. “I wanted … everyone to feel like we really accomplished something incredible, instead of the constant call for donations where you don’t know if your couple of dollars matter.”
For his Kickstarter campaign, Mars wanted to create rewards that were so cool, you’d want them even if you weren’t a fan of the show.
Using Kickstarter as his call to arms, Mars has created a flurry of PR, which has resulted in new listeners. It’s also creating a strong case for sponsors and granting agencies that the show has a large and slavish fan base. “Good metrics are hard to find when you’re not like a normal radio show, so this gives a potential funders a little more to go on.”
But Mars has set his sights much higher than a single campaign. He wants nothing short of a sea change in public radio. Because it’s cheaper for local radio stations to play national content than to produce original programming, the projects that get funded are hour-long, weekly, high-production value shows. That leaves shorter, indie blasts like 99% Invisible to fend for themselves.
But the growth of the Internet as a distribution channel is beginning to level the playing field. “Radiolab could never be a weekly production. It’s too labor-intensive, but as a podcast and short run, regular series, it’s a phenomenon,” he says. “Small productions driven by a singular voice can make it…. They just need a significant initial investment, freedom to experiment, and time to find an audience.”
Mars’s Podcast had all of those elements at the start. It began as a collaboration between KALW and the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects to make a series of ‘architecture minutes’. “I signed on to produce the pilot, lobbied to expand the running time, and ultimately found this world of design and architecture was the perfect lens to view all kinds of stories that I loved,” says Mars.
There’s a special kind of madness involved in making a radio show about a traditionally visual discipline.
There’s a special kind of madness involved in making a radio show about a traditionally visual discipline. Mars says that this constraint is a source of strength. “When the images are secondary, the parallels between all the thought that goes into designing a flag and all the thought that goes into designing a public square are easier to fit into the big tent of design.”
Design documentaries for screen are often full of shots that pan worshipfully over high-end objects. “When you can’t rely on that, you have to stick to the objects that have the best story, but aren’t necessarily the most beautiful,” says Mars. In many ways, the show is living proof of Steve Jobs’ famous dictum that design is “not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
The key to making this all work is finding the right people to talk to, says Mars. “By definition the episodes are about the design of things that most people don’t notice, so I need my subjects (or me, in some cases) to exhibit a kind of infectious enthusiasm for the topic to rope people in who otherwise wouldn’t care.”
Mars admits that the format means he struggles with some stories. He says he’s obsessed with — but unable to cover — the design change of highway sign W4-2. “It’s the sign with one straight line and a one line that runs parallel for a bit then angles away like Angelina Jolie’s leg.” Mars hates the old design, and discovered that only 17 percent of drivers could correctly name it. The new version adds a dashed line to try to clarify the meaning, “but it’s almost impossible to describe it in words and have people understand, so it just doesn’t work on the radio.”
The one that got away. The intricacies of highway sign W4-2 don’t lend themselves to explanation over the airwaves.
Just like Mars’s material, each show is a crafted object, with carefully chosen music and tightly edited content, chock-a-block with interesting asides and digressions. “When I edit a story for someone else, I always have thoughts and random asides that I say out loud when I’m working with the tape. With 99% Invisible, I record all that stuff and put it in the show.”
The 99% Invisible Kickstarter campaign has raised $87,536 (more than double his funding goal) with 21 days left to go, Mars may have more of a “spectacle” than he bargained for. His success may end up opening the floodgates for other independent radio producers eying Kickstarter as a funding source. “I want to further blow up the idea of what a public radio show is, how it should be distributed, and how it could support itself,” Mars says.
For one of the rewards, artist Woody Leslie will hand make 5 books on tape. Side A features an episode. Side B features the episode without Mars’ narration. With the included booklet you can do podcast Karaoke.
- Episode 43, “The Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators,” co-produced by Sam Greenspan, it’s about the soundscape of Washington DC’s metro stations.
- Episode 18, “Check Cashing Stores,” which reveals how much more user-friendly and well designed such stores are when compared to banks.
Each one is a perfect example of Mars’ ability to find genius in unnoticed details.
Images courtesy of Roman Mars except for the unradioable highway sign W4-2, which is courtesy of the U.S. government. For more about the Kickstarter project, click here.
