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Join host, Diana Varma, as she explores the wonderful world of design and printing, typography and branding, books and publishing. Diana loves nothing more than getting creative with Creatives about all things creative. Ready to have some fun? Let's Talk Paper Scissors!
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Send us a text Welcome to the Brave Creative Humans series! This is the fourth of 6 episodes featuring some of the many past Talk Paper Scissors guests who exemplify brave creative living: Allison MacKenzie, Kevin Shaw, Vincent Wanga, Meg Lewis, Emad Saedi, and Justine Abigail Yu. In this episode, the 6 answer this question: “What is your approach to maintaining sanity and humanity in a hyper-connected world, particularly as it relates to comparison with other creative folks?” This series is ...
Send us a text Welcome to the Brave Creative Humans series! This is the second of 6 episodes featuring some of the many past Talk Paper Scissors guests who exemplify brave creative living: Allison MacKenzie, Kevin Shaw, Vincent Wanga, Meg Lewis, Emad Saedi, and Justine Abigail Yu. In this episode, the 6 answer this questions: “When is a time when you failed, what did it mean to you and how did you move forward?” This series is inspired by Diana’s recently published book, Brave Creative Human:...
Send us a text Welcome to the Brave Creative Humans series! This is the second of 6 episodes featuring some of the many past Talk Paper Scissors guests who exemplify brave creative living: Allison MacKenzie, Kevin Shaw, Vincent Wanga, Meg Lewis, Emad Saedi, and Justine Abigail Yu. In this episode, the 6 answer this questions: “How do you sense failure: literally, how would you describe how you see it, feel it, hear it, smell it and even taste it? This series is inspired by Diana’s recently pu...
Send us a text Welcome to the Brave Creative Humans series! This is the first of 6 episodes featuring some of the many past Talk Paper Scissors guests who exemplify brave creative living: Allison MacKenzie, Kevin Shaw, Vincent Wanga, Meg Lewis, Emad Saedi, and Justine Abigail Yu. In this episode, the 6 answer these questions: "What are your thoughts on perfectionism in creative work? Is perfect necessary or even possible?" This series is inspired by Diana’s recently published book, Brave Crea...
Send us a text Surprise! Brave Creative Human is here one month early. In this episode, I share the serendipitous story behind the book, why it exists, and who it’s for. There's a special guest appearance by Creativity Professor and Drag Queen, Guy Anabella, who wrote the book’s foreword and joins me to talk about brave creative humanity. Themes include embracing failure, reframing imposter syndrome, and finding belonging in creative work—plus what’s next for the Brave Creative Humans p...
Send us a text It’s the final episode before Talk Paper Scissors takes a break until September and we have one of the best with us today, talking all about accessibility in digital publishing. Laura Brady is an accessible publishing expert who works with eBound Canada, the Accessible Books Consortium, the International Publishers Association, and Adobe among other organizations. She teaches, she consults, and she advocates for accessible publishing on a global scale. In this conversati...
Send us a text Let’s make magic! In this episode you’ll hear about Diana’s latest collaborative making project (that could involve you!) called Making Magic; a collection of creativity kits that anyone can use to experience a bit of everyday joy and wonder. You’ll hear about the first batch of kits ready to share (Upcycled Zine Kits), as well as the three alternative creative economies on which this project is built (no money need be exchanged!). You’ll also hear about the three nodes o...
Send us a text A home for zines! From makers near and far, with small and large publications, you’ll hear about the exciting medium of zines where anything can happen at the intersection of art and independent publishing. This is the 4th and final episode in the series, featuring the Toronto Zine Library. The Toronto Zine Library & Archive (TZL) is a physical library space run by a collective of zine readers, zine makers and librarians who strive to make zines accessible for the Toronto c...
Send us a text Yesssss zines! From makers near and far, with small and large publications, you’ll hear about the exciting medium of zines where anything can happen at the intersection of art and independent publishing. This is the 3rd of 4 episode in the series, featuring Sisley Mark. Sisley is a Chicago-based artist and creative. She primarily works with acrylic or ink on canvas and paper. Her work is deeply rooted in the belief that art isn't about the polished end result. It is about...
Send us a text Zines! Zines! Hooray for Zines! From makers near and far, with small and large publications, you’ll hear about the exciting medium of zines where anything can happen at the intersection of art and independent publishing. This is the 2nd of 4 episode in the series, featuring Hannah and Sarah of Feels Zine. In this episode, you’ll hear how Feels Zine came to be, as well as hear more about the interdisciplinary nature of the Feels Zine team duo, Hannah and Sarah. You’l...
Send us a text Welcome to a 4-part publishing series all about the world of zines! From makers near and far, with small and large publications, you’ll hear about this exciting medium where anything can happen at the intersection of art and independent publishing. First up we have Ioana Simion, who is an artist-educator and facilitator based London. She runs community workshops under the artistic identity of Artizine. In this conversation, you’ll hear how to Ioana’s zine making evolved f...
Send us a text Meet emerging typeface designers, Paulina Marin and Darrab Qureshi! Paulina designed a typeface called Funky Pants and Darrab designed an Arabic typeface called Qalam in GCM 806 Advanced Typography at Toronto Metropolitan University. In the following conversation, you'll get to hear about each typeface. You'll also hear their perfect type pairings, sensory descriptions of each (sight, smell, touch, sound and even taste), as well as what was easy and difficult about the process....
Send us a text Welcome to a thought-provoking and paradigm-shifting conversation with James McCrae, author, poet, and teacher who empowers creators to live with purpose and turn imagination into reality. In this conversation you’ll hear how James’ career has always been rooted in both art and writing, including his navigation through various facets of the design industry. You’ll hear why James believes that social media is an art form in its own right and how making mistakes have been some of...
Send us a text Today we have educator, storyteller and Toronto tourism go-to, Alex Sein @BeardedProf416. In this conversation, you’ll hear Alex’s story of becoming a Torontonian, including his link to graffiti culture in the city and how he accidentally became intwined in this community. You’ll hear about the history of graffiti, why it matters and how graffiti is often a collaborative process. You’ll not only hear about physical infrastructure of a place (including the idea of a 15-minute ci...
Send us a text Today’s conversation features Paige Deasley, photographer, storyteller, and creative strategist passionate about helping people reconnect with nature. In this conversation, you’ll hear about Paige’s life that exists at the intersection of nature and creativity. You’ll hear how she handles working remotely while immersing herself in nature, how she found her photographic voice, as well as what about the natural world inspires her and what it’s like to swim with an octopus....
Send us a text Today we have the one, the only, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., an American printer, book artist and papermaker who has been puttin’ ink on paper since 1949. He is a citizen printer, which you’ll hear much more about very soon. In this conversation, you’ll hear about Amos’ incredible book, Citizen Printer, including how it came to be, what it means to be a citizen and Amos’ vision for citizenship today and tomorrow. You’ll hear about activism, humanism, materialism, capitalism, enviro...
Send us a text Today’s guest is internet artist, Nolen Royalty. He's interested in getting strangers to interact over the internet in unusual ways and in pushing mundane technology to its limits. Projects of his include stranger video (a website that shows you live, silent video of a stranger's face until one of you blinks), One Million Checkboxes (a website with a million global checkboxes), and games that run inside Google Calendar, MacOS Finder, and your unclosed browser tabs. And he...
Send us a text Could you collaborate to make an award-winning professional short film with a team from start to finish in just 48 hours? Our guest today has done just that! James Rowan is a technologist, educator, and researcher working at the intersection of film, television, and emerging technology. You’ll hear James talk about the ways in which both creativity drives technology and technology drives creativity. He provides advice about how to develop both creative thinking skills, paired w...
Send us a text Elliot Jay Stocks is a designer and musician, known in typographic circles thanks to his time as Creative Director of Adobe Typekit, founder of typography magazine 8 Faces, and for his recent collaboration with Google that lead to the creation of Google Fonts Knowledge. In this conversation, you’ll hear about Elliot’s prolific career in type. We talk passion projects and opportunities to broaden skills sets and unique opportunities that can happen from following one’s gen...
Send us a text Welcome to 250th episode of Talk Paper Scissors where I celebrate YOU the listeners, chat about podcasting milestones and share info about the upcoming release of my book called Brave Creative Human: Reframe imposter syndrome, embrace failure and be unapologetically you, with the foreword written by the one and only Drag Artist & Creativity Professor, Guy Anabella! Release date: September 28, 2025! Here’s to the celebrating the small successes that turn out to be not ...
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