“A man is sitting in a room, all by himself. He’s lonely. He’s a writer. He wants to write a story. It’s been a long time since he wrote his last story, and he misses it. He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right—something out something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But when it’s something out of something, that means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.” —from “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door” by Etgar Keret Faber & Faber publisher and editor Mitzi Angel writes: “Etgar Keret’s short tales have always resisted classification. Are they fables? Are they forays into the Israeli unconscious? How can they be so funny and so devastatingly sad at the same time? Can you even call Suddenly, A Knock on the Door (Spring 2012) a ‘story collection’? We thought it would be fun to see what his vivid, shape-shifting narratives might inspire in other people, especially given that Etgar has always been interested in blurring the boundaries between different artistic media.”

Greg Lindsay is a journalist whose writing has appeared in publications like Time, Fast Company, and recently the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. His new book Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next (co-written with John D. Kasarda) is a fascinating look at the future of cities in an increasingly connected world. To mark its publication this month, Lindsay hopped on Skype with Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG, to talk about Aerotropolis, global urbanism, the role of the architect, and the internet's place in architectural criticism today. Work in Progress is bringing you the second part of this conversation; you can head over to BLDGBLOG to read the first part. Geoff Manaugh is the founder and author of BLDGBLOG, one of the best architecture and design blogs out there today. He is a former senior editor of Dwell magazine, a contributing editor at Wired UK, and the author of The BLDGBLOG Book, one of Amazon's 100 Best of 2009.

I sat down with three designers over coffee and muffins to talk about how they came to their jobs, and where they think the industry is headed. Susan Mitchell is Senior Vice President and Art Director at FSG; Charlotte Strick is Art Director, also at FSG; and Henry Sene Yee is Creative Director at Picador. —Ryan Chapman, Online Marketing Manager "I’m not just here to create something beautiful. Sometimes I’m here to be a plumber."

Susan Mitchell selected a few designers from the past she considers iconic: Paul Rand, George Salter, and W.A. Dwiggins. Here's a quick look at their work: