Design Feast Series: Quotes

“I actually hate the word ‘feature.’ I’m always trying to develop benefits for people, not features. …

I believe people are willing to pay for value and I’ve seen that time and time again. It takes conviction. You better be sure you are offering something of value and sometimes it takes time and testing to understand where the value is in what you offer.

And you know it’s our responsibility to prove our value to our customer base, through service, through developing the product, through a whole bunch of different things—and every month we’re on the hook for that. But, as you know, as long as we deliver against that—and we have a long track record of doing that right now—people are willing to pay for the value.”

Mike McDerment, Co-Founder and CEO of FreshBooks

“All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism—it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

Conan O’Brien, Television Host and Comedian

“We’re not having anyone sponsor us—because we’re foolish. We don’t have a PR person. I think there’s something a bit more humble about it. We do everything. We do the sales and stuff. I like that in the beginning, to meet and greet people; really tell people the way I see it. …

I really don’t go too deep into a concept because I think that can feel a bit contrived. But I take inspiration from photos, although it’s not really a specific era or moment. I like the idea of ‘I use this fabric because I love it: what can it fall into, how can I use it?’

Color, and then fabric, is first for me. Then I was looking at a number of old French photos. There’s a photograph of a boy, taken from behind, facing a mirror. I don’t think it’s attributed to a single photographer, but I’ve been thinking about it. He just wears woven shorts rolled up, and stripes.”

Tim Hamilton, Fashion Designer

“I recently did this thing. I co-founded and am now chairing a graduate program. And I did it by taking a considerable leap from a career as a designer that I’d been growing for more than a decade. Sure, my first job out of college was an educator, and I’ve been an educator on the side ever since. But suddenly I’d made it the focus of my everyday.

I’d stepped away from something familiar into territory with new colleagues, new landscape, new tempo. Because I believed, with everything, in founding a new program.

What’s astonishing to me is that people continue to ask me the same questions: Aren’t you afraid to be so young and be chair of a program? Aren’t you afraid of the responsibility? Aren’t you afraid to be shifting careers? Aren’t you afraid?

And the answer is yes: yes, I’m afraid. I’m afraid every day just like I’m afraid that the products I design with clients are not going to succeed, or that I’ll get run over on the streets of Manhattan. Even when you choose the thing that inspires you, the thing you believe in, work with colleagues you learn from, do good work, there’s going to be a level of fear involved. People will have opinions and negative reactions. But that fear means it’s worth it. …

People, both women and men, should be so fiercely passionate about good ideas that self-promotion is a natural extension. Otherwise, why is it worth doing in the first place? It’s when confidence and self-promotion are obfuscated from passion that the claims become flimsy and empty. Confidence can bridge the gap between desire and outcome as long as the integrity for what we believe and the authenticity of what we create remain in place. We have the ability to both do good work and to recognize it—the choice is ours to make. Confidence is good’s natural extension.”

Liz Danzico, Designer and Educator

“…all of us who do creative work like, you know, we get into it and we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean?

Like you want to make TV because you love TV. You know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just like love, OK? So you’ve got really good taste and you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap. That for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.

And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.

But we knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing what to do is… Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s going to be. You create the deadline. …

I guess I’m saying it takes a while. It’s going to take you a while. It’s normal to take a while and you just have to fight your way through that, OK? You will be fierce.”

Ira Glass, Host and Producer of the public radio and television show “This American Life”

“Whenever someone tells me that the Bauhaus is out of date, I always know that I am dealing with an individual who never understood the Bauhaus. To understand the Bauhaus you must be able to separate philosophy from product.”

Rob Roy Kelly, Graphic Design Educator, Historian, Collector

“Whether it’s called design thinking, lateral thinking, right-brain thinking, systems thinking, integrative thinking, futures thinking, or my own term of ‘metathinking,’ from my perspective, the concept itself is rooted in a capacity to understand the world and our relationship to it, and within it, in a different way.

Design thinking is a ‘human-centered approach,’ and for me that means truly getting down to the core of what we think it means to be human, of what it ‘should’ look like, and how we want to experience life. When we see the word ‘design,’ we may immediately think of just products made by a snooty designer; items we see displayed at a museum that bear no resemblance to something we’d find in our home, artwork that makes us somehow feel stupid because we don’t understand why it’s so special, or architecture that is said to make “a statement” but feels completely alien in the way it impacts us. That is not the same design that is being proposed by design thinking. …

So whether you hope to employ design thinking to restructure the culture of an organization or to innovate a new product or service, it’s important to remember that it’s more than a set of simple tactics that can be implemented overnight. It’s more like a new ecology of mind, that takes time to grow, adapt, and evolve. It still requires an adherence to sound business decision-making, but also a commitment to challenge one’s own beliefs about ‘the way things work,’ and to keep coming back to a human-centered approach by focusing on addressing people’s unspoken and unmet needs.”

Venessa Miemis, Blogger of Emergent by Design

“The other day someone sent me an IM and thanked me for my open source contributions. They then said something about wishing they had my gem/code creation talents. I didn’t miss a beat and informed them that I have no talent.

It is true. I have no talent. What I do have is a lot of practice. And I am not talking about occasionally dabbling in Ruby on the weekends. I am talking about the kind of practice where I beat code that isn’t working into submission (though often times the code wins).

The kind of practice where all of a sudden I realize that it is 2am and I’m exhausted physically so I should go to bed, but mentally I feel on fire so I let the code have me for another hour or two (I imagine this state to be like a marathon runner or iron man near the end of their race). …

I am sick of hearing people say, ‘Oh, I love your code, I wish I could do that.’ You can. The only reason you can’t is because you don’t practice enough. I used to think that I wasn’t smart enough. I was jealous of those that did crazy code stuff that I couldn’t even comprehend. Then, one day, I ran into something I did not understand and instead of giving up, I pushed through. I sat there in front of my computer for hours and wrestled with class and class instance variables.

That day was a turning point for me. It was the last time I thought that whether or not I was successful depended on my talent or intelligence. It really comes down to hard work people. Ever since then, I have attacked each thing that I do not understand until I understand it.

I will close with this. I still suck. There are still so many people out there who are far better than I am, but that does not stop me anymore. I do not measure myself against the programming greats, but against those projects on my Github profile from years ago.””

John Nunemaker, Web Developer and Programmer

“To me it’s the most important thing when working at home to have an inspiring workroom. I spend a lot of time in the room so I have tried to make it as inspiring  and comfortable as possible. As you can see I love mid-century design and I feel its one of my main influences. Being able to live with and work with good design makes everything more efficient and it’s just great stuff.”

Matte Stephens, Artist

“How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you’d be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time. …

A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It’s not something you have to seek out, but something you can’t turn off. …

Does anyone who wants to do great work have to live in a great city? No; all great cities inspire some sort of ambition, but they aren’t the only places that do. For some kinds of work, all you need is a handful of talented colleagues.

What cities provide is an audience, and a funnel for peers. These aren’t so critical in something like math or physics, where no audience matters except your peers, and judging ability is sufficiently straightforward that hiring and admissions committees can do it reliably. In a field like math or physics all you need is a department with the right colleagues in it. It could be anywhere—in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for example.

It’s in fields like the arts or writing or technology that the larger environment matters. In these the best practitioners aren’t conveniently collected in a few top university departments and research labs—partly because talent is harder to judge, and partly because people pay for these things, so one doesn’t need to rely on teaching or research funding to support oneself. It’s in these more chaotic fields that it helps most to be in a great city: you need the encouragement of feeling that people around you care about the kind of work you do, and since you have to find peers for yourself, you need the much larger intake mechanism of a great city.”

Paul Graham, Essayist, Programmer, Programming Language Designer

“We think this kind of online peer-to-peer criticism is counterproductive on a very practical level as well. In our view, what this whole subculture of small, independent studios really needs is a sense of solidarity. It could do with less bickering, less backstabbing.

We think this whole international scene of small studios is really special, and we should try to protect it as much as possible. The independent studio is pretty much a threatened species. The catastrophic influence from branding-, marketing- and PR-people becomes more and more visible every day. Large advertising conglomerates are taking over the kind of territory that was usually covered by smaller, more cultural studios. The world has gone mad, and even the smallest client suddenly wants to work with pitches and competitions, because they believe this is the way it should be. We really think that, in the middle of all madness, we should stick together. We should use our combined energy to defend this whole subculture of small studios. We shouldn’t be putting energy in complaining about each others work. ‘I would have kerned this logo in a completely different way’ … well, of course you would have kerned it in a completely different way. But what’s the point moaning about that in public? We all have different graphic languages; that’s the beauty of it. Why spend so much energy on what are basically small stylistic differences? …

You know how people sometimes say that ‘the work should speak for itself’? We never really bought that phrase. The point is, we are quite traditional, old-school graphic designers. We design objects to function within very specific contexts. So the moment you present those objects within a totally different context, as flat digital images on a website, it’s only logical that you need some words to at least sketch the original context.

Added to that, we really enjoy ‘background information’. We love reading about artists and their methods, watching documentaries about the making of movies, listening to writers being interviewed on the radio. We like the idea that behind every artifact, behind every designed object or piece of art, there is a complete universe of ideas, references, stories. So we like to add to this ‘background genre’ by creating, on the internet, a small hidden gateway to our own micro-universe. We are not saying that everybody should read it, or like it; on the contrary, we really created our archive for the small group of people really interested in it.”

Marieke Stolk, Danny van den Dungen and Erwin Brinkers, Founders and Designers of Experimental Jetset

“Fannie Hurst epitomizes persistence: ‘In 1909, following graduation, Hurst secured a job in a shoe factory. Once in New York City, she worked as a restaurant server, salesperson, and actor. In her spare time, she combed the city and Ellis Island picking up local color. Hurst, this prolific and determined writer, received thirty-four letters of rejection from the Saturday Evening Post before publishing ‘Power and Horse Power’ in 1912. After breaking that barrier, success came swiftly, and Hurst never again knew a dry spell.’

I’m definitely a fan of working hard and working smart. But when I define working hard as a business owner, it’s about persistence and determination. It’s not about sacrificing health and family that so many find so easy to do.””

Nate Kontny, Co-Founder and CTO of Inkling Markets

“The simple fact is this: You, and only you, can determine what works best for you. Regardless of how biased or objectively the advice is phrased, you would be unwise to not consider alternate methods and ideas throughout your entire career. You would be even more unwise to be swayed by every new compelling or forceful argument that comes along merely because it was spoken by someone notable. …

Rest assured a ‘better’ tool, a ‘better’ process, a ‘better’ way will always come along. However, what will remain unchanged is the need for you to know what works best for your personal, project, and client needs—and to adapt when it really is a better way.”

Cameron Moll, Founder of Authentic Jobs

“We thrive with the challenges that limitations bring. Clients with limitations know what’s important. Wealthy clients don’t know what’s important because for them, everything is equal. If they want eight fireplaces, they can have them.”

Einar Jarmund, Architect and Co-Founder of Jarmund/Vigsnaes Architects

“I think that we’re going to start to see more designers who aren’t waiting to be asked to solve a problem or for an invitation to act; when they recognize a need, they will craft a built response to it. But you can’t get it right unless the client and community are involved. Each of us has an asset we bring to a project, and when you put those assets together to resolve an issue, that’s incredibly powerful. We’re not just looking for a practical solution; we’re looking for poetry.”

Bryan Bell, Founder of Design Corps

“Let this be the last New Year that you make a ‘new start.’ Think about it. Every January the world makes new resolutions and every February those newly purchased exercise machines become overpriced clothes hangers. Rather than look to the calendar to set an ill-fated point of new beginnings, let every day become its own accomplishment. Start each day with an idea of what you are setting out to achieve, incorporating the resolutions listed above into bite-size, attainable daily goals.

How can you be more productive ‘today?’ How can you expand awareness of your brand ‘today?’ Who can you connect with ‘today’ amongst your peers? What new skill can you learn or improve upon ‘today?’ How will you better communicate with your clients ‘today?’

We cannot do it all at once. Nor is it realistic to expect ourselves to reach the end of the year and look back at the goals we set—without ever checking in along the way—to reveal a perfect success rate.

Live your life as a freelancer in the moment. Set out to do the best you possibly can for today and discover the joy of a job well done on a ‘daily’ basis, rather than a yearly disappointment. The pride you take in your completed work, the sense of accomplishment at the end of a productive day, and the constant growth as a person as well as a freelancer in your field will improve your quality of living in ways you can only imagine.

Resolve to let these resolutions be the last one’s you make on an annual basis. Resolve to embrace each day with expectation and a full view of its unlimited potential. Resolve to live and work and play within each moment to the fullest of your abilities and enjoy a new life from this point forward, rather than a New Year every January.

You won’t be sorry.”

Brian K. McDaniel, Freelance Web and Graphic Designer

“We all have a certain passion in life some of us pursue it full time other pursue it when time allows. The only failure is not taking the time to pursue it at all.

I was having a peaceful moment earlier this afternoon, watching a deer graze in the field and I started thinking about the decisions I have made in the past ten years and how I got where I am.

It was interesting to me to remember how many of those decisions have been rather split second. I more or less had a vision of what I wanted to be doing, believed I could do it and went for it. Sure I put thought into what making those decisions would mean and how they would effect my life, but in doing so I realized that we tend to over analyze. We start out having faith in our ability to accomplish something and then go about breaking it down until we talk ourselves out of it and instead pursue the safer, less passionate route.

In doing this we end up hurting ourselves in the long run. We hinder our ability to grow and ultimately end up becoming more fulfilled in our lives, careers, hobbies, whatever the case may be. …

Sometimes it is extremely hard to talk yourself up instead of down and away. Coming up with the idea is only half the battle, convincing yourself to take action is when it counts. Don’t be afraid to take the leap and pursue your passion, even if it means hardship you will come out ahead in the long run if only you learn from the experience.”

Jeremy Jaymes, Designer, Developer, Owner of Papertree Design

“Ultimately, it is the process. What the printer loves is the doing of it. … The nicest thing that anyone has ever said about my work is that ‘It’s always so suitable to the purpose.’ Yes, make it attractive, but make it be what the text needs it to be. …

The old guys got it remarkably right. There was an intuitive understanding of what constituted readable text. And so you can be at home with letterpress. It will die, eventually, because people will no longer remember how to do it. It’s OK. I’m only responsible for my watch. I’m thankful everyday that I get to do this.”

John Kristensen, Proprietor of Firefly Press

“Some people will tell you creativity is part of your make-up. That you can’t learn it. I disagree. I believe that there are different levels, and natural talent for sure, but I strongly believe that creativity can be learned, or at least manifest itself in people who are exposed to passionate, inspiring people, or exposed to environments and opportunities that can help bring it out.

Passion takes a person to greater heights. In design, the most passionate never stop thinking or solving problems. They work on a project after the budget has all but gone, with an aim to get it perfect. They do personal projects; they talk with a fire in their eyes about a piece that inspires them. They see opportunities where others see restrictions or walls. I nearly always take on designers who show a passion for their own work.

You can’t fake passion, I will say that. Although passion in design isn’t always an easy thing to maintain. Most of the designers I know have lost theirs at one time or another. I’ve always felt that to get the most out of being a designer, you have to have an interest in something else as well, away from the world of design. It can provide an outlet for frustrations, or act as a reality check, when work can become all-consuming.”

Jason Little, Creative Director of Corporate Brands at the Sydney office of Landor Associates

“I’ve always been fascinated by the different ways people interact with objects and space and how their behaviour may reveal underlying habits. This is probably because I’m a little nosey! In most cases my ideas come through observing and questioning this interaction. …

Often people say they don’t have any particular habits or rituals; this may be because they’re embarrassed to admit it or they’re so engrained in their daily life they do them subconsciously. …

In most cases design strives to simplify things and present them in a considered and logical way however people still instinctively find their own way of use that satisfies their own criteria. It’s this act of manipulation that I find really interesting as it reveals underlying needs that the object alone does not fulfill.”

Nadia Pedreschi, Designer

“This thing that is happening on the web right now with Social Media has everybody talking because there is a lot to talk about. All of the connections and conversations and industries and ideas are exciting to watch and to learn from and to participate in. You can start by listening in on your industry or those conversations that touch on topics around which you feel passionately and find room for your own voice. I try to encourage clients to participate in the dialogue because, quite simply—that is content. Respond to conversations that are already happening. Bring them back to your blog and take a position. Whatever it is—whether you agree or disagree—your contribution adds richness to the discussion. I think people often believe they need to comment on a blog post or article and that must be the end of their interaction with the material. Really, there's nothing wrong with taking it home and expanding on your comment, your opinion, your reaction to the piece and encouraging others to do the same. … At the end of the day, if you love what you do and you are willing to talk about it and share your passion and just plain participate—you've got yourself some content.”

Nancy Lyons, President and CEO of Clockwork Active Media Systems

“Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive, economic way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is not a matter of facade, of mere external appearance; rather it is the essence of products and institutions, penetrating and comprehensive. Designing is a complex and intricate task. It is integration of technological, social and economic requirements, biological necessities, and the psychophysical effects of materials, shape, color, volume, and space: thinking in relationships. The designer must see the periphery as well as the core, the immediate and the ultimate, at least in the biological sense…The designer must be trained not only in the use of materials and various skills, but also in appreciation of organic functions and planning…that design is indivisible, that the internal and external characteristics of a dish, a chair, a table, a machine, painting, sculpture are not to be separated. The idea of design and the profession of the designer has to be transformed from the notion of a specialist function into a generally valid attitude of resourcefulness and inventiveness which allows projects to be seen not in isolation but in relationship with the need of the individual and the community. One cannot simply lift out any subject matter from the complexity of life and try to handle it as an independent unit…

There is design in organization of emotional experiences, in family life, in labor relations, in city planning, in working together as civilized human beings. Ultimately all problems of design merge into one great problem: ‘design for life.’ In a healthy society this design for life will encourage every profession and vocation to play its part since the degree of relatedness in all their work gives to any civilization its quality. This implies that it is desirable that everyone should solve his special task with the wide scope of a true ‘designer’ with the new urge to integrated relationships. It further implies that there is no hierarchy of the arts, painting photography, music, poetry, sculpture, architecture, nor of any other fields such as industrial design. They are equally valid departures toward the fusion of function and content in design.”

László Moholy-Nagy, Professor at the Bauhaus

“If you want to have your own firm, you have to come to terms with the fact that it means that more than 50% of the time will be running the business, not designing. At a certain point you have to embrace it, or you will end up resenting it and it will sour the freedom you have. In all honesty, probably 80% of my time is the logistics of running everything these days, and then I come home and do the design work at night. Someone has to run the ship, and the someone ends up being you or you capsize. No where else can you have this freedom, so the fact that 80% of my day is spent on paperwork is fine because I get to design and make whatever I want, whenever I want. I will take that option every time. No one else is going to hand you your dreams, you have to go out there and build them. There is no golden opportunity, no free ride, no client that will give you carte blanche. There is just you. You have to build your own future.”

Brian Flynn and Dora Drimalas, Owners of Hybrid Design

“I believe that good design is good communication, finding the best way to communicate an idea or a concept. This allows designers to take a huge part in making change happen in the world. That’s some of the appeal that data visualization has for me—being able to show something, to tell a story that is hidden in raw data. …one must be as concerned about the data being shown as with the intention of telling its story. Sometimes, it takes a certain degree of aesthetics in order to draw the audience into your story. Other times, you need to keep away from aesthetic approaches for the best result.”

Pedro Monteiro, Art Editor

“Good design must become an essential value. Good design permeates society spontaneously, often anonymously and without paraphernalia. It becomes vital, essential for the society that uses it, whether in the form of a typeface or a chair.

When we refer to design as an added value, we are focussing solely on the aspect of profitability, ignoring its social value.

It is clear to see that we designers, and the institutions that represent us, have fallen into the trap of an unconscious use of the term ‘added value.’

What happens with design, with good design, is that it becomes what in medicine is the ‘autonomic nervous system’: in a nutshell, it operates without having any apparent consciousness, automatically, like the heart or the kidneys. And we only become aware of its existence when it suddenly goes missing. In the same way as we only realise how vital a kidney is when it fails, we only appreciate the importance of design when it doesn’t work, when, for instance, an airport has no direction signs, a chair is impossible to sit on or a book is illegible. If we take it for granted that a signposting system has to be infallible, a chair comfortable or a publication intelligible, then we cannot talk about design as an added value: we have to talk about it as a value in itself.

It may now be time for all of us to search for other ways of asserting our presence in a society that is already complex enough without having to assimilate still more ‘added values.’ Design will be essential, or it will not be.”

Pere Alvaro, Co-Founder of Bis

“Firstly, ‘Don’t mistake legibility for communication’. Type design shouldn’t be about striving for legibility; it’s about communicating a message, or an idea, or a feeling. I think I first came across this maxim on a piece of typography by Phil Baines in the late 1980s. It was true then and it’s still true now. It also goes hand in hand with, ‘We read best what we read most’. However, a great source of amazing advice can also be found in one little book by Brian Eno called A Year with Swollen Appendices. Apart from his ideas on Axis Thinking, which suddenly opens up any field of endeavour into an almost limitless expanse of possibilities, I really love the story he tells about encouraging his kids to draw (at least, I think it’s in this book). Well, my version of his story is that he opens up a huge tin of felt-tip pens that are in a rainbow of colours, offers them to his kids and says, ‘choose three’. I love this. In a world with so many choices and options presented to us, sometimes the best thing to do is to self-impose limitations.”

Jon Forss, Designer of Non-Format

“As a director, you make a thousand decisions a day. Mostly binary decisions, yes or no, this one or that one, the red one or the blue one, faster or slower. It’s the culmination of those decisions that define the tone of the film, and whether or not it moves people. The only way you become a better director is by watching the result of those decisions, and understanding how they worked—and if they didn’t work, how to make them better. And over the course of the past six years, as I’ve directed more features and commercials, I’ve become better at articulating exactly how I want the audience to feel.”

Jason Reitman, Filmmaker

“I design to a client and their audience. We design for them. I’m—and perhaps, unfortunately so—not one who has a particularly strong design aesthetic that I lean on. I’m not known for a ‘look’ and there’s nothing wrong with either side of the coin. I try to push each project in the direction it naturally should fall into—this isn’t always easy, this isn’t always profitable. I’ve done an identity, an initial web design direction and gone through with a small beta site before getting the nagging feeling that it just wasn’t right for the client and therefore communicated with the client about it, who was too polite to tell me that they too, while content with what they were seeing, just didn’t feel all there. So, we re-started. Not entirely from scratch but in a new direction from what we originally had. At no extra cost because it wasn’t right. And sometimes, doing the right thing is much, much more rewarding and satisfying than worrying about the bottom line (i.e. profit margins, and terms like that which make me squirm a bit). This isn’t the rule nor is it the exception, it was something that made sense and was appropriate. There was room in that project to do work that we were both happy with. Not all projects can end this way but sometimes, honesty and communication can go a long way. … Listen, communicate, design well.”

Naz Hamid, Co-Founder and Designer of Weightshift

“Freelancers know how to hustle. As a freelancer, you can’t afford to become irrelevant, because that could mean that the next gig will never come. Freelancers are constantly networking, marketing, and staying on top of the latest and greatest tools and news in their field to make themselves the go-to person for a certain kind of service or expertise. Good freelancers live on their toes. They’re adaptable to changing opportunities, and can quickly shift gears, evaluate different jobs, refer potential clients to their freelancer friends, and chat at the virtual watercooler about who needs what. Freelancers know when it’s time to pull an all-nighter and when they can take an afternoon off to catch a matinee. Freelancers don’t put their careers on cruise control for long periods of time because they’re setting the course—not their boss or company.”

Gina Trapani, Founding Editor of Lifehacker.com

“This is so cool: because we only look at things we want to look at, only talk about things worth talking about, the amount of fabulous in the world continues to rise exponentially. … Not only do I notice more fabulous, but it sure seems as though the creators of it are more engaged, dedicated and yes, joyful, than I can remember. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can’t say, ‘but I need to make a fortune instead,’ because that's not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, ‘I love doing this.’”

Seth Godin, Author

“Like I said before, make sure that you are communicating in a constructive way, and understand that collaborating consists of a lot of give and take. While your final idea may not be exactly how you initially conceived of it, most of the time your ideas will come out better because of the back and forth. Two heads are definitely better than one!”

Anna Corpron, Co-Founder of Sub-Studio

“Do good work. For us the quality of the work coming out of our studio is THE most important thing, above all else. You are only as good as your last job. Sometimes its easy to get sidetracked by commercial requirements, but for us the number one principle is absolute commitment to work of the highest quality. We try not to stray from that.”

Tim Beard, Jonathon Jeffrey, Mason Wells, Directors of Bibliothèque

“I think it’s absolutely critical to have a strong culture in a studio. A design studio is a living, breathing thing and people generally work extremely hard, so its important the environment and culture supports that. They’re creatively investing themselves in their outcomes so there’s a bit of your blood in everything you deliver. I think that brings a bit more emotion and passion to the process and more emotion and passion means more potential conflict or just more intensity.

It’s very important that people feel valued, that they’re part of the team and that they’re supported. We’ve developed out Quality Assurance system for delivering projects, so that people feel they could go out on a limb and make mistakes, stuff up and not ruin a project. Because part of design is that element of chance and surprise, if you manage that out of your creative process you miss out on a whole world of interesting outcomes. You’ve got to allow people to make mistakes and you’ve got to allow people to grow in a business.”

Soren Luckins, Founder and Director at Büro North

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the time that I am bored or understand—I use those words interchangeably—another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

“I encountered everyday objects that would make their way into the story. At other times, the story would demand an object to keep it moving, so I would bring one in. When I am stuck, I cast about looking for ideas from objects around me. My perceptions, or you can say my tentacles, are wide open to everything in shop windows, in friends’ homes, in flea markets and antique shops and so on.”

Orhan Pamuk, Author

“The design process is much like the progression of a story in how it begins with the materials and a few undeveloped ideas. As the materials are crafted to fit the ideas everything is more defined and the design becomes stronger. Narrowing down and combining ideas help to create a bigger picture and a more developed design.

When coming up with a design or a piece of writing one must take into consideration the many different views that the observers and readers will have. To help with the design and writing processes there are guidelines that can be followed to clean up the clutter of the initial group of ideas to better refine and polish the work.

As many designers learn, ‘commodity, firmness, and delight’ are key terms that aid in the formation of a design and can also be accommodated for the writing process. Commodity is the utility of the design or writing. This is a design’s use as a bus shelter or the moral of a children’s story. Firmness is the structure which represents how well a design holds though the elements and how a story flows from scene to scene. And delight is how pleasing the works are to the audience through the eyes and through the mind.”

Hailey Allen, Writer at Associated Content

“If the data allows it, we like to break down information into a graphical hierarchy similar to poster designs: a larger motive or trend is visible at first glance, and more detailed information becomes clear on closer inspection. Furthermore, the design should reflect some of its content. The data does not always allow for this: many times a simple bar graph is best. That said, a design cannot exceed its content: bad data sets lead to bad graphics, however simple or conventional the design is.”

Joris Maltha and Daniel Gross, Designers and Founders of Catalogtree

“Design can simplify the mission of an organization or the purpose of a product. As a result, design helps us engage.

I had this in mind a few weeks ago during a meeting with the leaders of a new nonprofit organization. They were asking me for feedback on their mission statement and the way their website was organized. While their purpose was noble, I was struggling to really understand what they did. To put it bluntly, their design was horrid.

It saddened me to hear that they “didn’t have time to focus on design” because they were a nonprofit. Since when was design just a luxury? Some new nonprofit organizations have proven that design can be THE core strategy for success. The best example that comes to mind is Charity Water. As one of the only nonprofits I know that employs a full-time designer as a senior leader of the organization, Charity Water has raised a tremendous amount of money and attention for a very worthy cause: clean water where it is needed most. I encourage you to take a few minutes to review Charity Water’s website, and you will see what I mean. While there are many nonprofit organizations with a similar cause, Charity Water has a competitive advantage: design. …

Whether you admit it or not, your product or service will only succeed if people are engaged by it. Design is a means to that engagement. Reconsider your emphasis and investment in great design as a core part of your business.”

Scott Belsky, Founder of Behance

“Design is a pendulum that swings from then to now as designers look for inspiration in old forms and new ideas, alternately embracing and rejecting the past.”

William Bostwick, Writer of Art, Design, Architecture

“As Creative Directors our philosophy is to [give] designers as much freedom as possible, and only intervening when they go off track. Yet it is only possible to adopt a hands-off approach when you work with good people. If you employ second-rate designers then you have to intervene all the time.

It’s the same with the authors or the external designers we decide to work with on books. Editing is like being a Creative Director, it only works if your intervention is wanted and respected, so we’d only want to work with people who felt that our editorial or design interventions were welcome. If we were consonantly at war with an author or a designer then it probably wouldn’t be the sort of book we’d want to publish—although a bit of creative friction can often help reach a deeper and richer outcome.”

Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook, Founders of Unit Editions

“1) People don’t accurately self-report what they do. This is useful when studying customers during research, and managing clients during the whole darn life of a project.

2) Design isn’t an analytical process. Creativity requires taking leaps and risks, success requires managing those risks perfectly.

3) Have a mantra. Have a few words you can say to yourself over and over that captures what you want to accomplish in a design. Then make it a point to stop every few days and ask yourself, ‘does the design live up to the mantra?’

4) Always look at least one layer out from the design problem. When you’re drawing your designs, always put them in context. What room is the person in? What else is there? It might just force you to be a better sketcher, but it will often give you insight into issues and opportunities you’d otherwise miss.

5) Fidelity matters: Don’t try to be too polished or too rough, be where you are in the process. If you don’t have a good sense of what’s right, find a mentor who can review your work from that perspective. Otherwise, no matter how great your idea is, it’ll get lost in the silly stuff.”

Gretchen Anderson, Director of User Interface Design at LUNAR

“People tend to think of creativity as a mysterious solo act, and they typically reduce products to a single idea: This is a movie about toys, or dinosaurs, or love, they’ll say. However, in filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems. The initial idea for the movie—what people in the movie business call ‘the high concept’—is merely one step in a long, arduous process that takes four to five years.

A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing. The director and the other creative leaders of a production do not come up with all the ideas on their own; rather, every single member of the 200- to 250-person production group makes suggestions. Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization. The leaders sort through a mass of ideas to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole—that support the story—which is a very difficult task. It’s like an archaeological dig where you don’t know what you’re looking for or whether you will even find anything. The process is downright scary.

Then again, if we aren’t always at least a little scared, we’re not doing our job.”

Edwin Catmull, President of Pixar Animation Studios

“Glassblowing is an ancient craft developed by the Romans 2,000 years ago. Traditionally, it has always been done in teams of three to six people. Most of the glass I make is created similarly to how it was done then, except that my teams are sometimes as large as twelve to fourteen people, simply because the scale is larger and the pieces are more complex.

People ask, ‘How does the team work?’ and ‘How are you able to direct the team?’ It’s not easy to explain. I sometimes make the analogy of myself as a filmmaker. First of all, I come up with a concept, which might be like a script. I don’t work on the team itself but make drawings while the team is working. The whole process is a very exciting and inspiring one, and it is the time when I do all my drawings.

People ask me if I get too removed from the process, because of its complexity and the numbers of people involved. But when the numbers involved in making film increase, it doesn’t necessarily put the director further away from the concept of the film. Having the support and skills of a large team can be tremendously gratifying. I feel very fortunate to be able to have such talent at my disposal, especially now that I am getting more involved with large architectural projects and installations. I suppose it would be possible to do these things on one’s own, but the whole process would just be too slow for me. Glassblowing is a very spontaneous, fast medium, and you have to respond very quickly. I like working fast, and the team allows me to do that.”

Dale Chihuly, Glass Sculptor

“The first stage of every new cover is nerves and self-doubt: can I do something interesting, visually smart and get across the fundamental nature of the book and help it sell? Nightmare. So I get reading and then try to throw away all my concerns and fears and start getting stuff down on the page, sketching on paper and working things out on the computer. Usually that means trying out a lot of rubbish and having to trust that eventually something will emerge from the process that works. When that happens I can breathe a short sigh of relief and then get on with developing and refining until the cover is finished.”

Coralie Bickford-Smith, Book Designer of Penguin Press

“What we’re expounding is very simple: To be in a space where people can feel the breeze, the sunlight, the changing of the seasons, where they can forge and nourish relationships with one another. That shouldn’t be so complicated, should it?”

Takaharu and Yui Tezuka, Founders of Tezuka Architects

“Never underestimate the resourcefulness of your users.

If users see something lacking in a design, they’ll find ways to make it work for them. Which is great! The work is done for you. No need to design anymore! Right? Unless, of course, you care about your users’ happiness. And you should.

Users don’t like to work. They like to use. They want whatever it is that they’re attempting to do to just happen. It’s your job to make it happen, and they’re going to let you know if it doesn’t. Which, let’s admit it, is a time-consuming pain for you, and also a sign of two things:

Your users care enough about your product or service to whine when it isn’t working and innovate around it. But also…

You’re not doing it right.

You’re just plain not doing your job if your users aren’t happy.”

Heather Rasley, The Deputy of Automattic, Makers of WordPress

“The challenge of communicating the significance of numbers—and acting on them—is to find ways to bring them closer to people's day-to-day experience.

Building intuition about numbers is different from shocking people with numbers.

A good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion. For a stat to do either of those, it must be dragged within the everyday. That's your job—to do the dragging. In our world of billions and trillions, that can be a lot of manual labor. But it's worth it: A number people can grasp is a number that can make a difference.”

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

“I don’t know what’s next! It’s kind of a joke, but we’re proudly ‘without business plan’ in our 13th year. We’ve had a lot of things not work, and that’s OK too. If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, ‘What is your greatest failure?’ I always have the same answer—We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome! …

You need to have the stomach for risk and you need to have good ideas. Let’s just assume that those are the givens, that without either one of those nothing else makes a difference.

I know a lot of people who are in our position, who used to work for The Man or whatever, and now are making records or making films or designing clothes or creating products or screening posters or any of a million other things. And all of them, without exception, all say exactly the same thing and they say it in exactly the same words: ‘I should have done it sooner.’

When you think to yourself, ‘In 18 months I’m going to start my crocheted beer coaster company,’ the problem with that sentence is the 18 months. What you’re really saying is, ‘I’m afraid.’ Do it now. If you bankrupt a company before you’re 25, that’s like a badge of honor! Get out there.”

Jim Coudal, Founder of Coudal Partners

“…creativity isn’t a specific activity; it’s a quality of things we do. You can be creative in anything—in math, science, engineering, philosophy—as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance. And you can certainly be involved in the arts in ways that are especially creative. And so it’s important to emphasize that it’s not about creating some small space in schools where people can be creative, and particularly not if that means just tacking on some art programs on a Friday afternoon. It’s about the way we do things. … We live in worlds that we have forged and composed. It’s much more true than any of the species that you see. I mean, it seems to me that one of the most distinctive features of human intelligence is the capacity to imagine, to project out of our own immediate circumstances and to bring to mind things that aren’t present here and now. You know, to conceive of the past, to anticipate the future, and not just a future but multiple possible futures and many different sorts of pasts.

So this capacity for imagination, to me, is absolutely at the heart of this whole argument. Creativity to me is a step on. Creativity is putting your imagination to work and it’s produced the most extraordinary results in human culture. I mean, it is really the foundation of human culture, I believe. And it’s generated multiple ways of looking at the world, multiple ways of seeing it, multiple ways of thinking about it.”

Sir Ken Robinson, Author

“We don’t see urban and nature as opposites. We feel that they need each other and coexist. Even in a big city, all you need to do is to take a few minutes to look at your surroundings with a new eye, and you will find nature is right there.”

Chao-Hsien Kuo and Eero Hintsanen, Founders of Chao&Eero Jewel