Design Feast Series: Quotes

“I feel the reason Supreme has been able to stay relevant after 15 years is because it has never tried to be something its not. I can proudly say, since I have been at Supreme, the word ‘trend’ has never come up in a meeting.

It has to make sense. You ideally want to work with a company that is the best in their field or has a common bond with the culture. Since there had been an over saturation of collaborations in the market, it is even more important than ever for our projects to have meaning.”

Angelo Baque, Marketing Director at Supreme

“Actual bare bones development, time spent on the product, and months and years of hard work are what can be attributed to a company’s success. …

Rather than trying to invent a ‘make it big’ idea, having good instincts, foresight and putting together a team that can execute has much greater value. If you spend time putting together a group of people than can actually deliver the goods, an idea becomes nothing more than a showcase for your talents. With the ability to execute, ideas become distilled down to their essence. This makes way for knowledge and communication.

The industry needs a wake-up call, and a majority of entrepreneurs need to shift their focus. I’d much rather see world-class teams developing products they believe in, as apposed to the generic Venture Capitalist funded rapid startups that only make noise.

A team with knowledge and experience will see an idea as a means to showcase what they’ve learned throughout the years. A good team will take each project or product as a culminating adventure. Whether it be discovering new user experiences, writing faster queries, managing larger infrastructures or perfecting communication flows, every component plays an integral role into the next.

Stop trying to invent the next Google… Focus on what’s really important and the natural paths will emerge.”

Aviv Hadar, Founder in charge of Operations and User Experience at Think Brilliant

“This is a lesson I’ve learned and relearned from all kinds of companies that are winning big in tough economic circumstances. You can’t be special, distinctive, compelling in the marketplace unless you create something special, distinctive, compelling in the workplace. Your strategy is your culture; your culture is your strategy. The most successful companies I know understand that the most important business decisions they make are not what new products they launch or what new markets they enter. What really matters is what new people they let in the door—who they hire—and how they create an environment in which everyone in the organization can share ideas, solve problems, and develop a psychological and emotional stake in the enterprise.”

William C. Taylor, Co-Founder of Fast Company and Co-Author of “Mavericks at Work”

“It’s a simple old fashioned trick of a daily list. Crossing tasks off feels good. Anything not completed gets bumped to the next day. Also iCal is a huge help. …

…it’s easy to overlook (the business basics) in the pursuit of creative excellence, but the simple rule is pay attention, it will get you in the end! ...don’t neglect the nuts and bolts of business. It’s so boring but essential in allowing you to pursue your creative ideas. Also, don’t spend too much time poring over coffee table design books, nice as they are, looking for ideas to steal, find your own way to say what you need to say. …

For us, a ‘successful business’ is one that survives by doing what we love to do as much as possible. We don’t want great riches, but some Dieter Ram’s 606 shelves would be nice.”

Michael and Nicky Place, Graphic Designers at studio Build

“The relay team with the fastest sprinters doesn’t always win, and the business with the most talented employees doesn’t either. Coordination is the unsung hero of successful teams, and it’s time to start singing.”

Dan Heath and Chip Heath, Authors of “Made to Stick” and “Switch”

“Now, beyond the work, it’s not just about creating desired outcomes for clients. You’ve got to help fulfill desired outcomes for your designers too, as part of how you organize your team. If the people creating the work don’t get something out of it in the process, then it isn’t likely they’ll stick around.

This is the big mistake that most design firms make. They make awesome work, at the expense of sustaining the people making it. This rarely happens the other way around, because if you don’t do great work for your clients, you won’t have employees. You could argue that great creative direction can happen without consideration to other people’s emotions... but this is usually why design firms churn and burn. And as you hire and grow an organization, you need the full range of people, from planner to visionary, to force the necessary friction that leads to great work without rampant overtime.”

David Sherwin, Senior Interaction Designer at frog design

“To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.”

Viggo Mortensen, Actor, Poet, Musician, Photographer, Painter

“Creativity is just connecting things.

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.

The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

“It is not the means of expression and representation that count in art, but the individual in his identity and humanity. First comes the cultivation and creation of individual; then the individual can create.”

Johannes Itten, Painter, Writer, Teacher at the Bauhaus

“Theres a couple reasons I keep coming back to, the first is simply my own selfish need to create. It’s just what I have to do, and I feel lucky to be part of an industry that fulfills this need on a fundamental level. I bet a lot of designers/illustrators/makers feel the same way and are hopefully in a position that they can use their natural talents all day long.

The other aspect that I’m always thinking about is the connection that’s made through our work. This can be as simple as hearing one persons interpretation of your work or seeing the larger impact of something you’ve designed out in the world. We put so much of our time and energy into the work and it’s incredibly rewarding to see it connecting with people, hopefully in a positive way.”

Brent Couchman, Designer

“I like the idea that everything is what it is. Nothing is enclosed. If it’s a radiator, then it’s a radiator. If it’s a light fitting, then it’s a light fitting. In the end, it makes the house very easy to understand.”

Per Bornstein, Architect

“It’s amazing how, when you’re alone and things are quiet, hours can seem like days. By the end of day two, I noticed that I was relaxing into the rhythms of my own intellect in relation to the time of day. Without meetings to attend or emails to answer, I discovered that the early hours of the morning were ideal for creating, thinking, and synthesizing. Midday was great for physical exertion and a break from mental tasks. The latter part of my day was best spent seeking inspiration by reading or listening to music. I saw that most of my days at work were scheduled in exactly the wrong way, spending my vital creative hours fighting fires and ignoring the times when I really needed to sit back.

I spent my remaining time off drawing, writing, and thinking; the same way in which I’d hope to spend a generative sabbatical. I slowed down and realized that what I had been working on, although hard, was exactly the right thing. Once I got away from the grind and back in touch with my own voice, I realized that I still liked myself and my job, and that what I needed was just a small note of self-appreciation.

It’s six months later. I’m not on a sabbatical as I write these lines. But I’ve held on to much of the goodness I found back then, such as trying to incorporate my natural rhythm into my work tasks and keeping the passion for the subject matter at the forefront of whatever I do. Yet I long for another sabbatical, a longer one or more frequent short ones. Part of me wonders whether, if I took an extended generative sabbatical, I would discover some other, deeper, better passion … one that I suspect but can’t confirm while embedded in the place I’ve chosen. For all these reasons, I say the purpose of any sabbatical is to press our boundaries, reconnect our inner narratives, and ask ourselves the dangerous questions—all the while adding quality to our lives… .”

Denise Gershbein, Creative Director at frog design’s San Francisco studio

“While the Internet has largely taken over that cultural delivery vehicle role, I still find the experience of immersion you get from a paper magazine unequaled. It’s free from distractions. It doesn’t ping every time you get a new email or @ message. It won’t parade links across the pages that will whisk you away to a completely unrelated story in a completely different publication. If you can find a title where you trust the editors to bring you the goods month after month, I think that’s still something special. For me diving into a magazine, offline, offers a way to focus my mind and immerse myself in a cohesive experience that I still don’t find elsewhere. I’d like to offer that same immersive experience to others.”

Mat Honan, Co-Founder and Collaborator of “48 Hour” magazine

“The fact that most other places, designers, and design coverage is packed into a ‘Design Week’ special, relegated to a ‘Style’ or ‘Home’ section of a newspaper or magazine, or wrapped into themed, glossy, once-a-year issue is the most concerning issue for the design industry. GOOD has always seemed very far away from succumbing to this, infusing design into every aspect of a general-interest publication without ever having to declare it. It is probably the only publication I know that covers design with any kind of rigor but has never, ever had one of those design slideshows. You know what I’m talking about: Chair Porn. …

Until all design publications agree that we’re going to start devoting the same amount of space to discussing this kind of design as we do for glorifying The Chairs, well, I’m sorry to say I’m not feeling very ‘upbeat’ at all. There are still too many people out there who continue to think that design is something you can sit on.

We can all keep asking skeptical questions about design’s role in solving problems, sure, but I think I’m more interested in working hard to help some of these really great ideas actually get out there and solve them. That’s why I write about design every day, and that’s why I write about design now.”

Alissa Walker, Writer

“Social media works when you give value to others, so:
a. publish good content
b. show appreciation for others
c. point to great stuff on the web
d. interact with your readers
c. care about your readers”

Hugh McGuire, Founder of LibriVox.org

“I live for projects. I tend to become completely enveloped in whatever I’m working on, and focus only on that. Consequently, I am the worst at multitasking. I have always liked to paint at night, pulling all nighters at least once a week in college. These days I try my best to keep a more reasonable/healthy schedule and work mostly during the day. I keep lists of ideas between a couple of sketchbooks as well as one on my computer calendar. When its time to work, I have a ritual of cleaning up my desks, choosing the appropriate playlist, and settling in with a cup of tea. I generally don’t work on artwork and business stuff (shipping, emails, etc.) on the same days... for whatever reason it just doesn’t work out. I’ve mostly painted with acrylics since college, but lately I’m really enjoying pastels and gouache. There is something very pure about the pigment of the pastels, and the gouache flows so smoothly.”

Dana Ray, Artist and Illustrator

“Everybody thinks they’re living on their own without help from others. This is not possible. I really think that others have done something for me, and I have a feeling of gratefulness to other people.”

Endo Mitsunaga, Zen Buddhist Monk

“I enjoy everything about the design process and all the challenges it throws up along the way. I cannot think of many other professions where one finds themselves working with an architectural firm and a tribal fusion belly dancer at the same time!”

Loz Ives, Founder, Designer, Art Director of Because Studio

“I love to eat. That’s why I like doing restaurants. But I also appreciate the fact that restaurants are not pressured environments. Unlike stores or showrooms, where the idea is to display merchandise and encourage people to poke around, restaurants are first and foremost poetic places. As a designer, once you’ve dealt with the logistics of food service, your main concern is to allow customers to enjoy themselves.”

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, Interior and Product Designer

“People respond to software ‘that doesn’t feel like software’. The more analogue your software feels—the more depth and character, the more buttons ‘feel’ like buttons and the click of a mouse gives a near-tactile response—the more immersive the experience. Let users forget that they’re dealing with code based on servers spread across continents and think only of the tool, the media, at hand. Build human software.”

Luke Groesbeck, Co-Founder of JobAlchemist

“What kind of content you create is important but the focus of your content says a lot about what’s important to you.

As companies start to launch Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, it’s important to remember the value of content and the effort you put into it. Your content shows how much effort you put into it. Not effort as in cost or even quality  but effort as in how much you personalized it for your audience.

The effort you put into the content shows how well you understand and appreciate your audience.

Your content shows whats important to you. What are you talking about? Yourself or your customer?

Are you producing the content you want or the content your customers want?”

Tac Anderson, Director of Digital Strategies at Waggener Edstrom

“We improvise daily. Every time we come across a baffling product or service, we start the process. Without understanding intended use, we cope our way through it (often with pride), not cracking open the user manual the technical writer crafted so carefully, choosing instead to invent our way through the experience. These improvisations, at times, lead to the accidental new uses of products, just as improvisation on the creation side leads to the intentional development of products.

Improvisation has interesting implications for us going forward when we look at ourselves not as creators, but as consumers. While a tweet, a status update, or a flickr upload may not be a design contribution as we define it, a Blurb book or a fully funded Kickstarter project might be. At a time when we’re beginning to become comfortable with co-creating content, we need to become comfortable with improvising. Not for a societal construct, but in the interest of creating meaningful and engaging experiences alongside of everyone who wishes to engage in creating them. The challenge will be to sustain the quality in real time.

We’ve always been part audience, part creator. The world around us shapes our experiences. The more we can be active participants in observing our experiences, being critical observers in our surroundings, the better creators we will be. We’re just becoming comfortable that the role we have is part consumer, part creator, and full-time improviser.”

Liz Danzico, Co-Founder and Chairperson of the MFA Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts

“I just try to make it for myself, try to give it some kind of unity throughout. That often involves tiny details. I’m never sure what’s going to be obvious or what nobody will ever notice. I put stuff in my comics that I thought was blatantly obvious, and nobody noticed. And things that I think are buried in the background, everybody gets it. So I try to be consistently aware of every part of the frame.”

Daniel Clowes on the details in his comics, Cartoonist and Screenwriter

“If you want to be artistic, if you want to be creative, if you want to express yourself, you can’t let things get in your way, and drugs are included in that.”

Wes Bentley, Actor

“So here’s an idea. Design could start to value the idea of the happy, balanced designer. I know. It sounds so wrong. The entire structure of design is against happiness and balance in its practitioners. What would we talk about if we didn’t talk about how tired we were, how overworked, how busy, how stressed? Imagine knowing a designer that wasn’t hurting himself in some way. Such a designer would turn the whole mythology of design on its head. Which needs to happen. Because, let’s face it, if a designer does not understand what it takes to sustain Self and spirit, do you really want his taking on designing sustainable things? For sustainable things, at this point, are really the only interesting design things.

And so I press you to take heed of the Committee for Happy American Designers at www.happydesigners.tumblr.com. They’ve had enough of the old Art Ball paradigm. They’re swimming upstream, relearning how to eat, sleep, design, play and connect with other people—not just machine—all in the same 24-hour period. Shocking, I know. Radical. And it’s an uphill fight, what with most of the art directors in the world having been schooled in the old ‘hurt yourself’ mythology. It could be crushed or it could be the beginning of something better than what we’ve got now. Sustainable design must start with teaching designers to sustain their own lives, their heart. I’m with them: It’s time we say goodbye to the Art Ball.”

Natalia Ilyin, Design Critic, Educator, Communications Consultant for Social Change

“First you start with a blank page, stare and think really hard, drink lots of coffee, take lots of breaks, fix the copier jam, update your Facebook page, get over the fears that this project is the one that will finally expose you as the hack that you are, and then just trust to do what you feel is right from what you’ve read, present your ideas to find out how they live outside of your head, listen to feedback, try to leave work at a decent hour, have a life, floss, get enough sleep, have a good breakfast and come back the next day to redo it all over again. It’s that simple and fun. And if it isn’t, then get another blank page and start all over again.”

Henry Sene Yee on designing a book cover, Creative Director of Picador

“As a content creator, albeit a small-time one, I feel constantly on the hook for finding interesting things to share with all of you. I scour the internet daily, looking for tidbits and ideas that are worth of your time and attention. It shapes what I read and, maybe more importantly, how I read it, as I am constantly reading with a critical eye towards insights.

I guess the point is that too little attention is paid to the effects of so many of us being content creators, since the consumption part is the topic-du-jour. Just think about how it changes the way you look at everything, even if you’re only a creator amongst a tiny group of friends or family. Look at how differently you judge photos that are going to the web or how you’ve learned to describe experiences on Twitter.

Pretty soon we’ll have a world with a billion-plus publisher/editor/creators and only focusing on the ‘mass’ of content they create is probably missing the larger cultural impact of them all being this other thing that puts content out into the world.”

Noah Brier, Head of Planning and Strategy at The Barbarian Group

“When asked about the role of a columnist who writes a few times a week when there are bloggers who put up something new every hour:

‘Well, my role always has been to write an interesting column. There are a lot of people who are more knowledgeable than I on a given subject. You know, certainly if you want some breaking information on a constitutional issue, you might go to a lawyer blog and get some good meaty information. But that’s not at all the way I see myself.

First of all, I come out of the newsroom. I’m an old fashioned columnist. That means that is in part personality-driven. But mainly for me it’s an essay and I try to make as pleasant to read as I possibly I can. I really struggle with the writing part of it. And I’m, of course, making an argument that ultimately for me it’s a little gem—and not all of them are, obviously, but that’s what I am really aiming for.’”

Kathleen Parker, Columnist

“The underlying problem is that design is a holistic discipline while data-analysis, applied dogmatically, is a reductive discipline. When the two coincide, serious friction can ensue. But far from vowing to never interact, these two disciplines need each other tremendously. The designer brings perspective that helps to organize experiential systems at all scales, while quantitative metrics are key for validating decisions. The problems arise when analysis is treated as the primary driver for invention—that’s like setting a measuring tape on a drafting table and expecting it to design spectacular architecture—rest assured, the genius is not in the tape. …

The interplay of all disciplines (engineering, design, research, marketing, sales, QA, product, legal, customer care, etc.) is where the magic happens. Metrics are an absolutely critical interface between disciplines, but when wielded and controlled by only one discipline they can greatly limit the potential of the others.”

Tom Chi, Co-Writer and Co-Illustrator at OK/Cancel

“Competition on the web is fierce and it seems that to differentiate themselves from the crowd many companies simply add feature X without any regards to their brand. When making any changes/additions to your site, products or services you should always end up asking how will this hurt or help your brand. If it doesn’t help it in anyway why should you proceed with it? It’s very difficult to add a new feature today that your competition can’t add tomorrow. Features aren’t what will separate your company from the crowd, your brand is what will do it.

To end I would like to provide you with a definition of brand from my friend Mark.

‘Boiled down to its ultimate simplicity, a brand is really nothing more than a promise.

Fulfill that promise consistently, the brand remains strong and gets stronger. Break it, or have one that’s too vague in meaning and you’re either heading for trouble or going to have a real hard time of getting started.’

That isn’t a logo, that is everything you or your company represent.”

Paul Scrivens, Web Designer at Emersian

“Personally, I agree with Thoreau’s definition: ‘A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.’

If you’re spending most of your time working on things you care about and you’re having the experiences you want to be having, that’s success.

Thinking of success more as a ‘state of being’ and less as an accomplishment is a very useful mindshift. Instead of focusing on how to make enormous sums of money or become famous, figure out how you could live your life without worrying about money or without caring whether or not people notice you. The end result is often the same, but it’s a completely different way to experience life.”

Josh Kaufman, Independent Business Educator and Author of “The Personal MBA”

“Everything that happens to me is usable. Everything feeds into creativity, but you need to be prepare, to see it, to retain it and to use it. You need to get ready to create.

No one starts a creative project without a certain amount of fear. Write your fears down and be as specific as possible about them. Finally, stare them down, look at them in the eye and shake them down. Create a ritual; buy a new notebook, clean the apartment, buy a bottle of wine... A habit becomes a rituals, and rituals have this spiritual component, where the faith invested in them converts them into an act that provides comfort and strength.

Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. You’re never lonely when your mind is engage in playing with ideas, push them around, make them your companion.

Immerse your self in the details of your work, and at the same time step back to scan the work, don’t get so involve that you lose what you’re trying to say.

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we’re experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It’s how we interpret what we remember. Metaphor transforms the strange into the familiar.

Write down the goal for every creative project. That way you can always go back that anchor, to remind you of what you were thinking at the beginning if and when you lose your way.

Every point in the creative process is a good time to start something, to take it from there into anywhere it goes. Every step is a potential new beginning.

The first steps of the creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful. These moments are not pretty, but there is a way to get to something of value: Scratching. The way you scratch a lottery ticket, you dig through everything to find something. Ideas come upon you mysteriously, unbidden. Scratching is where creativity begins. it is the moment where your ideas first take flight and begin to defy gravity.”

Twyla Tharp, Dancer and Choreographer

“You always need to think about how a building will look beside its neighbors. Of course, that doesn't mean you should merely imitate them. Neither does it mean you should make the other buildings look bad. The ideal is to create something that, through its presence, makes the overall environment look better, and at the same time makes your own building look good by virtue of its relationship with the surrounding buildings.”

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Architects at SANAA

“I’m really multicultural. My mom is from Haiti. My dad’s from Puerto Rico. I was born in Brooklyn. I read Proust. Your heritage is your heritage, but your soul is truly who you are.”

Maxwell, Singer and Musician

“Oh, I’m much more relaxed about the whole process than I used to be. Basically, all that matters is what appears on the page, I don’t worry so much anymore about publishing schedules. I’m primarily interested in the trial and error of forging the patterns of my imagination’s fingerprint; the grimy marks it may leave on the world comes later.”

Philip Graham, Author

“Applying constraints can help your company and your customers in unexpected ways. The default thing we do is ask how we can add something to make it better. Instead we should say, What can we take away to create something new?”

Evan Williams, Founder of Twitter

“…a democracy of images is important for me. I don’t see anyone’s work as being older just because it was posted earlier. And I also don’t view the work of somebody who has never shown in a gallery as less (or more) important than the work of someone who sells her or his photos for a million bucks.”

Jörg M. Colberg, Founder and Editor of photography site Conscientious

“What if, instead of thinking about sourcing from the crowd, we reverse engineer that thought. In other words, why not send the company out into the crowd?

As [Cory] Doctorow’s character Kettlewell (more force of nature than human being) puts it: ‘Our business plan is simple: we will hire the smartest people we can find and put them in small teams. They will go into the field … capitalized to find a place to live and work, and a job to do. A business to start. Our business to start. Our company isn’t a project that pull together on, it’s a network of like-minded, cooperating autonomous teams, all of which are empowered to do whatever they want, provided that it returns something to our coffers. We will explore and exhaust the realm of commercial opportunities, and seek constantly to refine our tactics to mine those opportunities, and the krill will strain through our mighty maw and fill our hungry belly. This company isn’t a company any more: this company is a network, an approach, a sensibility.’

In our world, we regularly talk about the agency of the future being a ‘networked’ agency, if it isn’t already. It’s not who you employ on the payroll, it’s who those people are connected to on the outside. Only Superman can ‘do it all’ at warp speed, the rest of us need strong, mutual partnerships and a bucket of caffeine. Well-managed crowdsourcing takes that a step further, enabling a kind of controlled serendipity: potentially speeding the process to commercial & creative gain. Co-creation is a strand of crowdsourcing that can lead to physical production in many cases—think Nike ID and the rest. At the root of both is a flattening or democratizing of media and, to some degree, production.”

Mel Exon, Managing Partner at BBH Labs

“Never once in my life did my parents say, ‘What you’re doing is a waste of time.’ ...I know there are kids out there that don’t have that support system so if you're out there and you’re listening, listen to me: You want to be creative? Get out there and do it, it’s not a waste of time.”

Michael Giacchino, Composer and Academy Award Recipient of Best Original Score for Pixar film “Up”

“What I’m seeing is not the failure of our economy but a reality check.

It’s okay to be cautious, to live within your means, to not get further into debt. The questions that people are asking themselves are perhaps the right questions—do I really need to buy a second car or even a car period? Do I need to buy this piece of clothing that I’ll never wear again in six months, if not sooner? What items do I really need?

For an economy and people who are used to splurging on material goods, this sort of introspection influenced by a shrinking economy may not be a bad thing. At all. Do we turn local and look at what is worth actually paying for?

I’ve long subscribed to the lifestyle that is paying well for something that is made well. That it is possibly bespoke, artisanal and made smartly. Or that it’s of a high quality—quality over quantity. A few excellent and good pieces that you cherish over many pieces that are mediocre and that you could care less about. For me, this comes in many forms—a few of mine are bicycles, baggage, clothes and even food. Things I need to be functional, well-made and that will stand the test of time, possibly outlasting me before they give in or give me a longer, more pleasurable experience. Something to savour, to marvel and appreciate.

At the moment, I don’t mind this at all. A wake-up call for a new time in the world.”

Jen Schuetz, Minder of Ps & Qs at Weightshift

“Irrespective of the lack of experience, knowledge & the massive budget most people think is needed to create a new business, we’ve created something against most odds; the only barrier to entry would’ve thus been the limitations that we set ourselves in our minds.

Don’t be afraid to evolve your ideas and build from an imperfect foundation. There are always ways to rectify those imperfections in the future, and being conscious of those imperfections shouldn’t deter you from gunning for your vision & ambition with utter passion & motivation.”

Adii, Co-Founder of WooThemes

“…I think how we pay attention to the world matters and if you can spend time inside an imaginative world then there’s a calmness and an ability to think.”

Adam Haslett, Author

“The specialist vs. generalist debate has raged on, throughout many fields, for ages. I think it’s clear that there isn’t any answer to this debate, and that’s just fine, the debate has been and probably will continue to be an interesting one that doesn’t need, or have, an absolute answer. Having said that, I think what truly matters is a genuine interest and passion for what you’re doing, not so much the depth and breath of your skill set.

I know many successful generalists and more than a few successful specialists. But does it really matter one way or the other? Is it better to be specialized? Do you have to be specialized in order to advance your skills? Do generalists have more fun? I don’t think so. If there is an answer to these questions it’s likely the ever cliched ‘it depends.’

Depends on the person, the position, the organization, budgets, work load, team make up, et cetera.

The specialist vs. generalist argument really boils down to this: What really matters is your passion for your work, the rest is just a heaping pile of ‘it depends.’ …

Skills can be learned. Programming, design, writing, project management; all of these things can be practiced and developed. A true desire to succeed, passion for your work, a solid work ethic; these are harder to come by.

Bottom-line: if you’re willing to work hard, practice, learn and bring passion to the table every day you should do well, either as a specialist or as a generalist.”

D. Keith Robinson, Designer

“At its core, innovation is applied creativity. And, it is my belief since I have seen it for years is that most employees can be encouraged to be creative, if you want them to be.

How can you encourage small innovations?

Think small. The beauty of small innovations is that they focus on immediate concerns, not on finding game-changing products. Encourage your people to find a solution to a problem, or a better way of doing things.

Try posing questions: How can accounting streamline billing? How can customer service resolve issues on the phone without supervisor intervention? How can product engineers find more time to spend with customers? Using such questions will get people generating ideas. Not every idea will be brilliant, but that's the point. You want to collect ideas, refine them, and select the best for implementation.

Implement locally. Since most small innovations are limited to a department or a function, put them into action as soon as possible. If the idea does not work as expected, don't abandon it immediately—see if you can tweak it. Implementation itself can be creative and sometimes it takes several tries to make innovative ideas work as expected, or beyond expectations.

Promote widely. You need to recognize those who think of and support the innovations. Many organizations provide incentives for such efforts, from gift coupons all the way up to substantive bonuses for innovations that positively affect the entire company. The important thing is to recognize the right people, and to do it in a timely fashion.

Encouraging small innovations is only part of the management equation. Execution of the innovations is critical. No amount of applied creativity can make up for slipped deadlines, blown budgets, dissatisfied customers, or unbalanced profit and loss statements. You need to focus on the details to get things done.”

John Baldoni, Author and Leadership Consultant

“Getting projects built requires strong alliances between the client, engineers, and architect, as well as good collaboration with the city government. Architecture is not a solitary pursuit. I don’t think we’re especially fast or successful at getting things built, at least not by European standards. But we do manage to find clients who share our view of architecture. We have a longing to experiment with space, bring out the site’s potential, and speculate on possibilities for rethinking conventions. It seems risky at first; however, all our projects so far have proved very economically successful.

One strategy we discuss during the design process is the ambiguity of meaning. A project has more presence and impact if there’s some doubt about it, something quite bold yet difficult to describe and hard to grasp. We like to offer more than one potential reading per project, to allow for individual appropriation, but the relationship between nature and technology is always an underlying topic.”

Jürgen Mayer H., Founder of J. Mayer H. Architects

“As a designer, one of the things that fascinates me about photography is camera language. In design, we talk a lot about creating visual grammar through choices of color, line, form and typography. These are the building blocks we use to create a grammatical system with which to construct visual communication.

In photography, the same concept is referred to as camera language (although in practice, the term is more frequently used when discussing cinematography and filmmaking). As in design, color, line and form are important elements that help define a visual grammar. But technical and mechanical forces are also at work: lighting and lens choices, film speed, paper choice, aperture settings, shutter speed and camera angles are all mechanical controls you can use to define a signature camera language. …

Through manipulation of equipment, color, lighting and composition, it’s amazing how a photographer can establish a distinct visual language and then, using different mechanicals, add what can best be described as visual linguistic dialects.”

Callie Neylan, Assistant Design Professor at the University of Maryland and National Public Radio Alum

“Design to me is the embodiment of elegance, it’s trying to use just enough to do/communicate the most. …

It's not less is more. It’s not simple as possible. It's just what’s needed, no more, no less.”

Noah Brier, Head of Strategic Planning at The Barbarian Group

“Let it be local: Design is informed by what is intrinsically bound to a culture. We respond to that, respect it, and draw upon it.

Let it be sustainable: We design for the health of humanity. Sustainability is about creating a balance between what we build and what is naturally meant to be and ensuring a project’s longevity and financial integrity.

Let it be appropriate: The components of a design are made compelling by their ability to respond to a community’s needs both technically and emotionally.

Let it be collaborative: Successful projects come from the informational input from all parties involved through the dedication of passionate people.”

Minnesota Chapter, Architecture for Humanity

“I usually view the world as a big laboratory. I try to identify with this. I try to move around the world as a voyager, as a sort of a sensor, a sensor device, that can understand where things are really changing. Some people think of art as an aesthetical issue. I always think about art and about my work as a political issue. Whatever happens in my work is that at the very beginning, there is a political question. I think we’re always moved by something that happened in our childhood, and then we just find a way of translating, of re-displaying this concept into modern answers. Usually in my work, I have two phases. In the first stage, I only care about myself which means the content—What am I talking about? What am I trying to say? But then I have a very important turning point when I only care about the perception of others, the spectators. Suddenly, I assume the point of view of the people who are going to meet my project. When I have to choose a medium in my work, the medium is never pre-decided. It depends on whom I am trying to reach and in what kind of language those people are going to share and going to understand. I’m not really interested in the media itself which is like an empty shell to me. I’m more interested in the ghost in the shell which is how do people feel about media. … Keep an eye on where the transformations are happening. … I would behave like a mover, bringing back stories, unknown stories. It doesn’t matter if they are far. They must be unknown. In terms of shaping, I would push myself more and more, mixing up art, documentary, storytelling and fiction.”

Francesco Jodice, Filmmaker, Artist and Photographer

“There’s two components to the interaction between my blogging and my work as a design strategist.

Firstly, to be able to blog, as you well know, one needs to be well-informed, particularly when I’m talking about developing trends and how they might apply to the car industry, so I end up doing enormous amounts of reading across many different topics and media types. In that lies the very essence of how blogging informs my design strategy work: to help clients make strategic decisions about future products, I must be able to inform them of emerging social and technological trends and how they’re going to impact their customers and, by consequence, their product development cycle. Reading-to-blog helps me achieve the depth of knowledge I need to be able to assist them.

Secondly, blogging is a fantastic way to reach an audience of people who, although not necessarily working in the same industry as me, are interested in the same things I’m talking about. Because of this I can connect with these people either through comments on my posts, email or—if I’m really lucky—in person. When that happens, it’s incredibly powerful because I can very quickly test my ideas out, refine them or blend them together with the ideas of others.”

Drew Smith, Design Strategist