Rob Walker is an American journalist, author and educator, whose primary interests include design, business, technology, consumer culture, and the arts. He is the author of ''The Art of Noticing'' (2019), ''Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are'' (2008), and co-author, with Joshua Glenn, of ''Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things'' (2012). He writes a regular column in Fast Company Magazine, and has written for Design Observer, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Atlantic. From 2013 until 2018, he wrote ''"The Workologist"'' column in the New York Times, and between 2004 and 2012 was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, for which he wrote the ''"Consumed"'' column. He serves on the faculty of the ''Products of Design MFA'' program at the

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

, in New York City.

Career

Walker has written for and worked as an editor at such publications as the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, New York Times Magazine,

Slate.com ''Slate'' is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former '' New Republic'' editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2 ...

Money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

Design Observer Design Observer is a website devoted to a range of design topics including graphic design, social innovation, urbanism, popular culture, and criticism. The content of the site includes essays, articles, reviews, blog posts, and peer reviewed scho ...

, and

The American Lawyer ''The American Lawyer'' is a monthly legal magazine and website published by ALM Media. The periodical and its parent company, ALM (then American Lawyer Media), were founded in 1979 by Steven Brill."The Anti-Consumerist"
The Alcalde, by David Menconi
Archived at the Internet Archive
/ref> in 2019, Walker published "''The Art of Noticing"'', a book about distraction, attention, and finding inspiration, with

Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...

. As an addendum to the book, he publishes a biweekly email newsletter about "creativity, work, and staying human" on

Substack Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...

. In 2008, Walker published a book exploring themes similar to those in his ''"Consumed"'' columns called ''Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are''. It was reviewed favorably and received much attention for its discussion of the term " murketing", which Walker had coined."Branded"
review of ''Buying In'' by Farhad Manjoo, ''

'' Sunday Book Review, July 27, 2008. Walker's 2005 book, ''Letters From New Orleans'', was compiled from essays emailed "to interested parties" about life in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

, where he lived in the early 2000s. All author proceeds from ''Letters from New Orleans'' went to relief organizations such as the

Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and ...

and others working with victims of Hurricane Katrina."'Letters From New Orleans': Before the Flood"
by Kate Sekules, '' New York Times Book Review'', October 23, 2005. Retrieved May 10, 2010. Walker has written a number of

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

stories published under the name R. Walker. A collection of his satirical stories of the business world was published in 2001 together with artist

Josh Neufeld Josh Neufeld (born August 9, 1967) is an alternative cartoonist known for his nonfiction comics on subjects like Hurricane Katrina, international travel, and finance, as well as his collaborations with writers like Harvey Pekar and Brooke Gladsto ...

, as ''Titans of Finance: True Tales of Money & Business''.

Projects

Walker has participated in or led a number of artistic projects including the ''Hypothetical Development Organization'' (together with Ellen Susan and GK Darby), which explored renderings of purely hypothetical possibilities for blighted buildings in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

, and was part of the official U.S. presentation at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. He also started the ''Unconsumption Project'', which tracks mindful consumption and creative reuse, and the ''"MLK BLVD"'' open source journalism project, which looks at the streets sharing that name all over the word. The ''Significant Objects'' project, where writers are paired with an interesting object curated by Walker and co-founder Joshua Glenn, about which they write a fictional story, later to be sold on eBay.About the Significant Objects Project
''Significant Objects''. Accessed April 6, 2010. A book compiling 100 of these stories was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2012.

Personal life

Walker is a 1990 graduate of the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

, and is married to photographer and designer Ellen Susan.

Publications

* ''The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday'' (Knopf, May 7, 2019) * ''Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things'', edited, with Joshua Glenn (Fantagraphics Books, August 6, 2012) * ''Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are'' (Random House, June 2008) * ''Where Were You?'' (self-published

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

, 2007–present) * ''Letters From New Orleans'' (Garrett County Press, 2005) * ''Titans of Finance: True Tales of Money & Business'' (with artist

) (Alternative Comics, 2001)

References

Sources

"Brian Lehrer Show" interview
on

WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that ...

radio
Gothamist interview

Core77.com interview

External links

*
Video discussion/debate with Walker
and

Will Wilkinson Will Wilkinson (born 1973) is an American writer. He was born in Independence, Missouri, and grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1995, received an M.A. in philosophy from Northern Illinois Univers ...

Bloggingheads.tv Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast on ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, Rob 1968 births Living people American male journalists American bloggers American comics writers Journalists from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni The New York Times columnists 21st-century American non-fiction writers American male bloggers