Reader Lori Pickert was kind enough to send us an interview she recently conducted with one of our favorites, designer and illustrator, Maira Kalman. If the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, you'll likely immediately recognize her work, from covers for the New Yorker to her illustrated columns in the New York Times, or maybe you even caught her when she was at TED, giving one of those talks everyone's all excited about. If you have kids, you'll likely recognize her from her twelve children's books. We've always enjoyed her work because it often seems to cleverly mix the bright and colorful, almost to the extent of looking sugary sweet, with bits of dark humor or serious observations about the human condition (though with far less pretension than that last part sounds). While it's a short interview, giving far more room to her work than to her words, there's a batch of great material in there. Nice links to everything mentioned above too.