Design is hope made visible.

You can live your life as the result of history and what came before, or you can live your life as the cause of what’s to come. You choose.

When talent doesn’t hustle, hustle beats talent. But when talent hustles, watch out.

When you work only for money, without any love for what you do in and of itself, your work will lack energy. People will feel that. So give every project everything you’ve got, at every moment, every time.

A good philosopher will say: “Know thyself.” A good shopkeeper will say: “Know thy customer.” A good designer will say: “Know both.”

Listen for when someone is dismissing your ambitions. Only the petty do that. Avoid them. Instead, seek out those much better than you; they’ll make you feel that you can achieve your dreams, as theirs are probably even larger. They’ll wave you on to the finish line.

A brand is always answering two questions. The first one internally facing: What do we believe? The second, externally: How do we behave? You must remain authentic to yourself, your core values, and what you stand for. If you’re not, people will sniff you out. But your brand must maintain cultural congruence — remaining relevant to the times, always evolving to inspire people at large. The answers to these two curiosities must always be aligned.

Find a way to connect every project to something much bigger: a higher order value, a truth, a courageous goal, or a larger question. Then, if your efforts start to lag or feel mundane, return to that larger ideal that inspired you in the first place. It works.

Put this over your desk: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller knew stuff.

A good designer will help a company get to where they want to go. A great designer will push a company to where they should go.

Are you going to tell a story? Then tell a big story. An enormous story. An epic story. Or tell no story at all.

The role of creative leadership is to create more leaders — not more followers. This view is more uncommon than I’d like.

I’ve learned that there are only two kinds of people:

1.) People who do exactly what they say they’ll do.

2.) People who are full of shit.

Form follows fantasy. Every good idea comes from a spark of imagination, not pragmatism. Facts are important. But possibility creates futures.

Never take an unpaid internship. Ever. It is unethical to be offered one, and in many places, it is illegal. But more importantly, what kind of people would refuse to pay you? Oh yeah, really shitty people.

If you lose the desire to be silly, the power to laugh, and the ability to poke fun at yourself, you will lose the power to think. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy for one reason: It kills off his imagination.

Stuck on a problem you can’t solve? Go bigger. Expand it. Make it giant. Do not try to contain it, or simplify it, or reduce it. Make it so large that you can begin to see a new pattern. Solve the larger problem and the smaller one will get solved along the way.

Always begin in mythology. It’s good fuel. Fables and fantasy don’t age or grow stale for one reason: They are a step into a dimension beyond the reach of time itself. Build with them.

When I turned 35, I shifted my desire to be happy to a desire to be useful. It made all the difference.

There are only two kinds of leaders:

1.) Those in the engine room helping the crew shovel the coal.

2.) Those who sit on top of the train and wave at the crowds as they pass by.

Learn from ad agencies. They say yes to everything, even when they can’t do it. But they try. Designers say no all too often: “Oh, no. We don’t do that!” That’s shortsighted. Instead, say yes to everything. But always add “yes…if.” Then define your terms.

I was on a board with the esteemed educator Sir Ken Robinson. At one meeting where a pompous guest was droning on, he turned to me and whispered, “What we do for ourselves dies with us when we leave this planet. What we do for other people can live on forever.”

The opposite of courage is not cowardice. The opposite of courage is conformity.

Ubiquity = Invisibility. What we’re overly familiar with, what becomes common, we stop seeing. One function of design is to restore our perception, renew our understanding, and invite us to be more alert.

Seek simplicity only on the far side of complexity. Do the work, the research, the understanding, and discover the unseen, surprising, unanticipated insight before you start crafting your solution.

A celebrated designer I admire once said “Style = Fart.” I disagree. I believe “Style = Accuracy.” It gives focus and timely relevance to ideas.

If you want to make people like things, work in advertising. If you want to make things people like, work in design. Both are valid ways to build a brand, but the second way pays off better in the long run.

You can always pull a good story out of a successful product or service. You can’t always pull a good product out of a story.

Hire gifted people your clients would never let in their front door. Give them influence. Clear the runway. Provide sandwiches. And stand back.

When designers get overwhelmed we can retreat into passivity. We pull back. This gives us an illusion of control. The less we try, the less our chances to fail. We make it look like we’re not responsible for what happens to us. But never give up. Move in closer, instead. Try. Make a mistake. Apologize quickly. And keep trying.

Never be boring. Be ridiculous. Absurd. But never be boring. (Yes, this rule will get you in trouble.)

Push.

Push harder.

The goal is to make the complicated simple — not the other way around. The best ideas are often expressed as simple ideas. They’ll have power because they’ll feel inevitable.

Looking backward from the end of a project, it will have the appearance of inevitability. But when you began, you had no idea you’d end up there. What dullards suggest at this point is dangerous: “This creative process is too messy and too complicated. It needs efficiency since this solution was so logical. We should apply more logic throughout the process!” That’s the beginning of the end of creativity. Resist this urge. It destroys spontaneity, originality, serendipity, and unintentionality, which is where the biggest ideas are waiting for you.

Do you find yourself surrounded by people who whine that “clients don’t understand what we do”? Those people will never have good clients.

A designer’s first job is to articulate the tangible value we bring to every situation. It’s not the clients’ job to try to guess it.

Average designers hit the brakes when they feel fear. But when the talented get frightened, they hit the pedal, accelerate, and drive headlong into the unknown.

I’ve taught students for 20 years. In that time I’ve seen self-confidence, persistence, and desire play a much larger role in growth and achievement than talent. Passive? Whining? Waiting for orders? You won’t get off the ground. Energized? Enthused? Curious? The sky’s your limit.

If you want to teach design, first read “Teaching to Transgress” by bell hooks. Your whole mindset will change. If it doesn’t, please do not teach.

Seeking mastery in design means being comfortable with making your own path. Forge the new road. Others will question it and doubt it. But that path will eventually come to fit your soul. It will not only lead you into deeper parts of your craft, but to hidden parts of yourself.

There may come a time when someone publicly attacks you or your work. If that happens, remember this: Those who attack are the ones who fear you the most. They’ll suspect that your talents might be greater than theirs. They, in fact, become your most sincere belie

Brian Collins • 101 Design Rules