Design Feast Series: Quotes

“Ultimately, we found that, especially in the beginning, you have to be willing to look past the initial bottom line and focus on building the best team you can build who can put out the best product possible. The profits will follow. We’ve now been focusing all our efforts and dedicating profits back into the studio for four months … and now there are monster clients knocking at our door. We’ve raised our prices twice since starting and we still turn away more work than we take on. We’re on the cusp of innovating things that could change the way the world interacts with the internet as we know it. All of this, I attribute to building a great culture where people can take ownership of the studio, enjoy coming to work and are pushed to put out better work than the last time.

So how do you know if you’re building a great culture? Well, what I have learned from my experiences, the experiences of those I trust around me, my life and business mentors and movies … you know it in your heart, you can feel it … and for those of you who are less sentimental, it’s instinct.”

Roman Titus, Founder and CEO of Nelson Cash

“Photography is one of the most popular hobbies on the planet, but you’d never know it by reading most photography blogs, podcasts, books and tutorials. It’s mostly treated as a profession, where the goal is either making money or collecting more equipment. But that’s just not realistic for the vast majority of photographers.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with making money, but that mindset has led an entire generation of photographers to concentrate on what sells, not what moves them.

An entire generation is being led to believe that the features on their cameras are more important than the photos they produce.”

CJ Chilvers, Independent Writer and Publisher

“I was always a big fan of Francis Bacon’s paintings, and much more of Robert Frank’s later work, his collage and how he’d do things with Polaroids. …

I love photography, and I love where it takes you, but there’s got to be something else here.

So, I started researching and looking around. I started going out and seeing more of painting exhibitions, because I felt photography was just becoming a little bit stale and no one knew where to go.

When I went to a painting exhibition of the old artists and you saw how they looked at light, I wanted that light more than I wanted the light of somebody else who was a photographer because I understood it more. That painter spent hours making that one little piece of light. Just that subtle gradation of light bringing you right to what he wants you to look at in the picture and then you look back into the shadows. I saw that more in paintings than I did in photography. And since I couldn’t really do that, I started doing more journals and keeping journals.

It was more writing at the beginning. And then I would start using more scattered ink pens and gluing things into the book. And, all of a sudden, I went through this whole thing where they were very, very overly done and now I’m back to the point where they’ve became much more simplified. …

It was completely done with that whole irreverence, in the sense, I don’t care if you like my collage work or not. I don’t do it for you, I do it for myself.”

Frank W. Ockenfels, Photographer

“The best content curators, I think, are able to see beyond the popular content and the wisdom-of-the-crowd heuristic, and bring to their audiences content that is compelling and interesting and culturally significant and, yes, sometimes uncomfortable—because the death of curiosity is the confinement to comfort zones—and engage people with it.”

Maria Popova, Founder and Editor of Brain Pickings

“I like autonomous people. I want people who can take a project and figure out how to do it themselves. I don’t really care about how things get done. Only that they get done.”

David Karp, Founder of Tumblr

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege—my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I love. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw, Playwright

“When asked, “The Post Family represents a lot of things. It is a haven for new talent, a space for creative inquiries, and a playground for your ideas. What would you say is the most important facet and mission for The Post Family?” Designer Alex Fuller answered, “The most important thing is that we support each other the way a real family does. If somebody wants to make something happen, we all help make it happen.””

Alex Fuller, Designer

“Some collectors are content to simply own the object but for us that falls short. To appreciate and understand graphic design history is a combination of collecting / organizing / cataloging and seeing / thinking / reading. It’s not enough to own the object—it’s also about what the object can teach us. Learning from our collection has made the experience of collecting worthwhile.”

Kind Company, Independent Web and Print Design Office

“Actress, Comedian, Producer and Writer Amy Poehler: “What I have discovered is this: You can’t do it alone. … As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life. No one is here today because they did it on their own … You’re all here today because someone gave you strength. Helped you. Held you in the palm of their hand. God, Allah, Buddha, Gaga—whomever you pray to.””

Amy Poehler, Comic Actress

“Staying alive and coming to work every day and still being capable of producing good work; being active in the world.”

Milton Glaser, Graphic Designer—His answer to “What are you most proud of?”

“The immediate popularity of the Mac App Store, and the iPhone App Store before it, reinforces my belief that in a world of infinite software choice, people gravitate towards the products with the best overall user experience.”

Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote

“Seth Godin, Author: “In the battle for attention or market share, the market makes new decisions every day. And the market tends to be selfish. Often, it will pick the arrogant market leader (because the market also tends to be lazy), but upstarts and new competitors always have an incentive to change the game or the story.

Brand humility is the only response to a fast-changing and competitive marketplace. The humble brand understands that it needs to re-earn attention, re-earn loyalty and reconnect with its audience as if every day is the first day.””

Seth Godin, Author

“First, I always write a script. It’s easier to write than to draw. I can write lying in bed, or on the subway—but I can’t draw in that condition. Once the thing is written, I begin drawing it directly in ink, and painting out things that don’t work. As you start to stage the spatial drama of a picture story—which is like a piece of theatre—you realize either which parts of the text are useless or which parts of the text are necessary. You can’t really know until you see it happening spatially, in front of you.”

Ben Katchor, Cartoonist

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one’s lifetime.”

Mark Twain, Author, Humorist

“Shea and Raan Parton, Founders and Partners of Apolis, on Relationships: “Since we’ve started, we’ve always seen personal relationships as being so important. And with any retailer we work with, we always see it as being an extension of our brand. Ryan and Sam [of Context Clothing] are just the best example of people that we consider our closest friends. They’re our first retailer out of Madison, Wisconsin. Ryan and Sam really take time to storytell about where products come from, also about the hands that produced those products.

Our philosophy for this idea of a global citizen basically comes down to the foundation of quality, and taking a part of a story of craft, whether it’s domestic or global. It’s a human story, and it’s taking a part of that story, then carrying it with you as you go.”

Shea and Raan Parton, Founders of Apolis

“We try to keep the traditional handcrafting techniques alive in our company, to preserve them not only for our company but also for society in general. Certain techniques would be lost to [humankind] if they did not have the chance to survive here in our workshops, where they are put to good use, to create not-so-traditional things but still using traditional techniques.

The preservation of the skills happens in the hands of our [craftspeople] who are glad to pass them on to their younger colleagues, and the younger [craftspeople] eagerly pick up the techniques, the theoretical part and the small tricks that go with the techniques. So it’s not only the hard facts of this-is-the-technique, but you also have to know the soft skills that only the actual [craftspeople] know and pass on as small hints and tips. With some techniques, for example, you have to listen to the noise that the tools make, or to have the feeling in your hand when the vibrations reach a certain pitch. It’s nothing that can be taught by books or the spoken or written word. It’s really about the hand and the whole body being thrown into the production process.”

Johannes Rath, Managing Partner at Family-Run and Glass-Making Company Lobmeyr

“It’s got to be good storytelling, great visuals, and consistency. The ability to have an opinion. I believe that nobody should go to a meeting without an opinion. You don’t go to a meeting to be a decoration. You go to a meeting to have an opinion, to have a point of view, and to talk that through. That’s what our clients are paying us for.”

Doreen Lorenzo, President of Frog Design

“Empathy—the driving force behind good listening—is the number one requirement for anyone who wants to create a good experience. Not a long list of methods, not a scholarly knowledge of one’s niche field—but empathy. Anyone can learn a method; but people who can listen, can pay attention, can see the experience from someone else’s perspective, are rare and valuable.

Writing a book, for example, requires the author to constantly read and re-read the text from the perspective of the readers: will this make sense to them? Not to me, the author, but to someone who’s coming at this fresh?

Creating a website, or application, or any sort of product, requires the developer to consider: what will the user think of this? Not me, the developer, but someone who’s not me.

It’s a difficult skill, and some people are better than others, but it can be developed. Listen. Pay attention. Think about the experience from someone else’s perspective. That’s the basis of creating good experience.”

Mark Hurst, Founder of Creative Good and Good Experience; Host of Gel conference

“Creativity is both an opportunity and a responsibility. My frustration is that we often see it for the former, not the latter.”

Scott Belsky, Founder and CEO of Behance

“Creative Director Michael Cina of Cina Associates: “Bad design is not knowing why you do what you do and the history behind it. Bad design does not move you.

Here are more thoughts. There is a difference between illustration and design. Design is not art. Design involves a client of some form.  Great design takes risks. Great design understands color, form, imagery, and typography. Great design uses composition/layout and implements hierarchy. Great design uses negative and white space well.””

Michael Cina, Creative Director at Cina Associates

“In my own ‘Tao of Travel,’ the fact that a place is out of fashion, forgotten or not yet on the map doesn’t make it less interesting, just more itself, and any visit perhaps more of a challenge. But travel maps have always been provisional and penciled in, continually updated. The map of the possible world being redrawn right now—parts of it in tragic and unsettling ways—might soon mean new opportunities for the traveler who dares to try it. Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening.”

Paul Theroux, Author of “The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments From Lives on the Road”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

David Foster Wallace, Author

“To me, the whole thing was the doing [not the display].”

Norman Gorbaty, Advertising Executive, retired, and Artist

“There was no real model or precedent for what I liked to do, but when you realize that you just have to do what you do and not worry about whether or not it fits the mold or a model of what art is, then you’re truly making innovative or breakthrough—and at the very least honest—work.”

Ryan McGinness, Artist

“What I mean is that the line by which I travel from one place to the next is always sinuous because it must accompany the development of the narrative, which might require something here or there that was not needed previously. The narrative must be attentive to the needs of a particular moment, which is to say that nothing is predetermined. If a story were predetermined—even if that were possible, down to the last detail that is to be written—then the work would be a total failure. The book would be obliged to exist before it existed. A book comes into existence. If I were to force a book to exist before it has come into being, then I would be doing something that is in opposition to the very nature of the development of the story that is being told. …

I think this way of writing has permitted me—I am not sure what others would say—to create works that have solid structures. In my books each moment that passes takes into account what already has occurred. Just as someone who builds has to balance one element against another in order to prevent the whole from collapsing, so too a book will develop—seeking out its own logic, not the structure that was predetermined for it.”

José Saramago, Author

“Although I find merit in every keyword listed, I’ve distilled my core values to their simplest form:

‘Make awesomeness. Do good.’

How do you make awesomeness and do good? You need ambition, balance, collaboration, commitment, fun, and you need every keyword listed to support these actions. Again, there are no rules: your core values can be one sentence or a bulleted list. What matters is being true to yourself and creating core values that others can understand. Before I start any project I ask myself: is there a way to make awesomeness and to do good? If the answer is ‘yes,’ I embrace the endeavor because it aligns with my core values. If the answer is ‘no,’ I move on to a project that supports my core values.”

Leslie Jensen-Inman, Web Educator and Author

“I want to bring pleasure with everything I write. Intellectual pleasure, emotional pleasure, linguistic pleasure, aesthetic pleasure.”

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

“I am self-financed, because I want to design my destiny. I don’t need to kiss ass or pay interest.”

Horst Rechelbacher, Founder of Aveda Corporation

“The people who successfully start independent businesses (franchises, I think are a different thing) do it because we have no real choice in the matter. The voice in our heads won’t shut up until we discover if we’re right, if we can do it, if we can make something happen. This is an art, our art, and to leave it bottled up is a crime.”

Seth Godin, Author

“Working with the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity.

The use of the grid system implies the will to systematize, to clarify
the will to penetrate to the essentials, to concentrate
the will to cultivate objectivity instead of subjectivity
the will to rationalize the creative and technical production processes
the will to integrate elements of colour, form and material
the will to achieve architectural dominion over surface and space
the will to adopt a positive, forward-looking attitude
the recognition of the importance of education and the effect of work devised in a constructive and creative spirit.”

Josef Müller-Brockmann, Graphic Designer, Teacher, Author

“I have a rather systematic approach to photography. To me, photography is a set of tools that were designed to satisfy our need to archive and index the world. The origin of the medium is as much scientific as it is artistic.

I think that in all my works, what I’m trying to do is arrange phenomena in a way that proves that some kind of hypothesis is true.”

Mårten Lange, Photographer

“You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can’t put things off thinking you’ll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will. So I’m very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.”

Nora Ephron, Filmmaker and Author

“I write by hand because I lost everything due to a zip disk error while in undergrad. I lost the paper I was writing at the time. I lost all previous coursework. I lost every essay I wrote in high school. I lost every terrible poem, every awful short story. That loss taught me to never put complete trust in a computer again. Everything I write now is handwritten first. Everything. This includes blog entries, emails and even Twitter updates. And there’s nothing for me to "get over,” because this method, this outdated, time-wasting method of writing by hand, works. I make it work.

‘Writing by hand doesn't mean you are irrelevant to yourself, your colleagues or your students. It means you understand what technology works for you and in what capacity. …’

My Moleskine notebook is a working file cabinet and it’s with me wherever I go. A single notebook isn’t burdensome, no matter the book bag, briefcase, etc. All the ideas and information I need fit in one notebook, which lasts about nine months before it’s full and I need to start a new one.

I don’t need an Internet connection or even electricity when writing by hand. A pen and paper are all I need. These physical materials aren't the end in itself, of course, only the beginning. Together, they are a beginning I want to never lose.”

James Schirmer, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Michigan-Flint

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

Chuck Close, Painter and Photographer

“Square intends to bring immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the financial world. We want to enable all people to accept payments instantly, with access to all the information they need, in a way that feels amazing and engaging.  When you think about it, paying someone is just another form of communication, an exchange of value that deserves to have the same design and product considerations that every social service prides itself on maintaining.

We started in February 2009 with what we thought would be a simple task: open a merchant account to accept payment cards. This proved surprisingly difficult for us, and as we asked around, similarly challenging for countless others. Once we were approved for our account, it was unclear how much we were paying, to whom, and why it cost so much. Before us was an industry and a process in dire need of simplification.

Evolving something down to its essence isn’t easy (or instant). In Square’s case, it requires the identification, coordination, and navigation of many massive and forward-looking organizations. Square seeks to build an amazingly beautiful experience; every pixel, piece of plastic, rate, detail, word, policy, partner, and decision is considered, debated, and improved constantly.”

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square

“There are two reasons why it’s important to market your in-house creative department:

1. To get work.
2. To tell everyone about it.

It’s that simple. The first thing you need to do is to advertise your services, explaining exactly what you do. Next, do good work. Better yet, do outstanding work. And then, finally, tell everyone about the great work you’re doing. If you’re doing it right, the cycle
will feed itself.”

Glenn John Arnowitz, Director of Global Creative Solutions at Pfizer

“Memory is where my passion for baking comes from, it is the core value of why I bake. I remember my Grandmother’s corn starch pudding, my Mom’s apple pie, a doughnut that I had when I was little. I think about those memories and try to recreate and idealize them. If you went back in time, that doughnut probably wouldn’t taste as good, so the idea is to match or surpass the memory.” Whether drawing on family recipes, recalling a croissant eaten in Paris, or conversations about food on a recent trip to Ireland, Craig has honed his ability to evoke past experiences through taste. ‘I wouldn’t make anything that I didn’t love. When I develop something that stays with me, I can go back to it consistently. I’m also honoring my Mom and Grandmother.’

His own memories have translated into new traditions for his patrons, many of them making ritual visits to his booth at the Pakatakan Farmers’ Market. A customer recently commented ‘I had your pie last week and it was so delicious, but what I loved most was that it was perfectly imperfect.’

‘There’s so much value in making it honest. If it’s honest and has imperfection or irregularity, there’s so much beauty in that.’ He laments the importance placed on superficial-prettiness and the uniformity of food found in supermarkets, as it’s lead to a wave unconscious eating. Connecting through food means understanding where it comes from, thinking about what the farmer has gone through to grow it, and appreciating the scars that show it was grown naturally. ‘When things are made with beautiful product, you slow down and you savor. When you cook with beautiful fresh things, people wake up when they taste it.’”

Baker Craig Thompson, Owner of Shandaken Bake in New York

“Sketch Jam is based on the idea that everyone, regardless of skill or experience, can benefit from having a space to tinker, play, experiment and practice design sketching. Design sketches are sets of simple yet powerful artifacts designers create in order to solve problems or explore opportunities, a medium that can benefit anyone working creatively.”

Kristina Loring, Content and Community Manager at frog design

“…I really believe that inspiration and growth come from stepping outside of your ‘bubble’, your comfort zone. So I would suggest reading about other things. I think that it’s also very important to travel outside of your country. It may sound like a cliché, but different cultures and landscapes really do help open your mind. Most of my best ideas come from these moments of exploration and distance.”

Matias Corea, Co-Founder & Chief Designer at Behance

“It’s true. The energy, attitudes and effort of the people working on a product or service ultimately drive the brand’s face in public. The more you care about what you’re making and doing, the better you’re going to make it. You want the people who experience it to love it just as much as you do.”

Paul Isakson, Co-Founder of Thinkers & Makers

“We’re in a golden age of creativity. With fields cross-pollinating and blurring—it’s hard to be just one type of creative in a single medium. Many creatives, like Joy and I, are ‘slashes’ (i.e., illustrator/designer, photographer/director/stylist)—so we wanted to create a book that encompasses different kinds of creative freelancing. There is a lot of overlap across fields as well as differences you can learn from and apply to your own practice. In fact, the most interesting freelance practices I learned were from photographers.”

Meg Mateo Ilasco, Owner of Mateo Ilasco and Co-Author of Creative, Inc.

“Sharing is caring as the expression goes. And caring is rewarded through getting your product and your name out there, the comments that further the discussion of your piece, the emails you'll receive from readers, and the people you meet who have read your writing and just want to introduce themselves as readers. I blush every time.”

Spencer Fry, Business Guy of Carbonmade

“After you feel one of our bags or a wallet, you just know that it’s made right and made well. So you know it’s going to last. The design of it is timeless. We’ll be using this stuff in twenty-five years and it won’t be a trendy-looking thing. It’s not trend-driven, our product. People throw around the term ‘heirloom quality’, something you can pass down. …

Personally, I think that we’ve been in this throwaway society for a while now. …

Our product blends in with you.”

Chris Bray, Co-Founder, Billykirk

“It seems all the more imperative, nowadays, to fashion books that are compelling, because there is so much more distraction they have to resist. To me, now, to do something new is not to develop a form for the novel that has never been seen on earth before. It means to try to come to terms as a person and a citizen with what’s happening in the world now and do it in some comprehensible, coherent way.

We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we’ve created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful. The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.

There were a couple of years when I could enjoy blowing off a workday and going bird-watching, followed by some years in which I came to realize that because my purpose on earth seems to be to write novels, I am actually freer when I'm chained to a project: freer from guilt, anxiety, boredom, anger, purposelessness.

I’m already losing sleep, trying to figure out how to lock myself inside a big novel again.”

“Motivation comes from a place of respect and trust. Good creative directors will want you to do well for you, not for them.”

Felix Unger, Contributor, Ranter and Curmudgeon for The Denver Egotist

“I’ve never defined myself as a writer, or, God forbid, an author. I’m a person—someone who goes to work every morning, like the plumber or the television repairman, and who goes home at the end of the day to think about other things. I can’t imagine not going to work as long as I can. …

I try to refocus my frazzled writers on the process of writing, not the product. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself. Recently I got a letter from a young woman writer who was back home in California after her annual visit. She said, ‘Your office is a sanctuary of craft amidst the hullabaloo of publishers, editors, and agents. You have no idea how liberating that is.’

It may seem perverse that I compare my writing to plumbing, an occupation not regarded as high-end. But to me all work is equally honorable, all crafts an astonishment when they are performed with skill and self-respect. Just as I go to work every day with my tools, which are words, the plumber arrives with his kit of wrenches and washers, and afterward the pipes have been so adroitly fitted together that they don’t leak. I don’t want any of my sentences to leak. The fact that someone can make water come out of a faucet on the 10th floor strikes me as a feat no less remarkable than the construction of a clear declarative sentence.”

William Zinsser, Author

“Fail, it’s not in my dictionary. I’ve got a good dictionary up there and the words ‘fail’ and ‘failure’ have been ruled out for years. I don’t know what people are talking about who use that word. All I do know is temporary non-success, even if I’ve got to wait another 20 years for what I’m after, and I try to put that into people, no matter what their object in life.”

Bryce Roberts, Venture Capitalist

“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be ‘beautiful’; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”

G.H. Hardy, Mathematician

“Big Think: “Can social identity exist without visual identity? Where does design fit in the way people connect with the causes and ideas bettering their community and society at large?”

Hyperakt: “Not really. Everything has a visual identity of one sort or another. The question is how effective and well crafted it is, if it is crafted at all.

Through design, we help people fall in love with brands that make the world a better place. Great design can determine whether someone is excited or not about belonging to a cause, believing in a brand or buying a product. It is a gut reaction, followed by the assumption that if a brand is together enough to present its core ideas elegantly, it is a trustworthy, high quality brand that is likely to succeed. These are the kinds of brands people are excited to connect with and tell a friends about. Apple and Nike have known this for years. The Obama campaign understood this and many grassroots organizations learned that inspiring writing and great design can be catalysts for action.””

Deroy Peraza and Julia Vakser, Founders of Design Studio Hyperakt

“Our intentions are good.

There. That’s it. Our big, sweeping, trademarkable agency philosophy. Go ahead and throw a ™ on it.

WHAT? Your intentions are good? Who the hell cares about your intentions? I want your work to be good. Your thinking. Your people. Here’s a crazy one—I want your results to be good. I’d even take your client dinners to be good. But your intentions?

Ah, patience, Grasshopper. Sure our work is great and we have tremendous passion, yadda yadda yadda, but it honestly all starts with a couple of simple intentions. Namely, 1. Do right by our clients. 2. Do right by our people.

Something incredible happens when you actively work to do right by people. You become utterly unafraid. Unafraid to have messy conversations. Unafraid to advocate unpopular stances. Unafraid to upend applecarts. Unafraid to hit reset buttons. Unafraid to simply be open and willing.

This fearlessness also leads to disagreement. Lively debate. Occasionally, even awkward silence. Because we will poke and prod and question in pursuit of doing something meaningful in the marketplace. If either the Emperor or that precious, board-approved marketing plan appears to us to be strolling down the avenue naked, we’re going to let you know. With respect, of course. We find there’s a reason why clients will actually listen and consider an opposing point of view or an entirely new direction: because our intentions are good.

We’re unafraid to be honest with ourselves, too. We all know all too well that agencies are adept at pulling the wool, adding spin, sugar-coating and just plain avoiding truth.

So we actively nurture a culture where honesty and respect thrive. We guide careers and help people grow. We simultaneously foster both collaboration and debate. Intelligence wins the day here. Egos are cut down at the knees. We value transparency: At our agency you’ll find almost no solid walls. And we happen to have a finely calibrated asshole detector, so none of those types slip through. If we had to explain the method behind all this madness, it would be this: We believe Integrity is actually a competitive business advantage. There’s a reason why we’re able to attract and retain the most talented people in the business: because our intentions are good.

The question is, Can you get to great, meaningful work without doing right by your clients, or your people? The answer is once. Maybe twice. But then you would most certainly have to go out to find some new employees to lure into your web and a new client to sell a bill of goods to.

And that’s exactly how we don’t do it. Because, well, you know. Our intentions are good.”

Venables Bell, Advertising Agency