Francisca Monteiro is a typographer and book designer based in the United Kingdom. While I was working on my MFA thesis on design criticism in Baltimore, Francisca was also working on a thesis, at the University of Reading, on Emigre and the relationship between design and writing. I was struck by the similarities in our projects which we use to frame a discussion about the history of design criticism, the role of magazines in creating a discourse, and how the design writing has changed over the years. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm.