Comment

I have a philosophy about what it means to be a good designer. For me, the perfect designer is 25% visual, 25% experience, 25% strategy, and 25% visualization. Ian Burns .

Comment

There are so many young and talented type designers today. I think we are in a kind of type design renaissance. There’s a ton of crap, but there’s also more good stuff than ever before being released. When I got interested in type design back in the 1970s, there were maybe a dozen or two new releases each year that I was aware of, and only a handful of major ones. Seems like we get that every month now. And the quality is often higher. Mark Simonson .

Comment

The biggest challenge designers face is the problem of finding good clients who actually value good design for itself—clients who don't perceive design as just another expense, but a worthwhile investment. Michael C. Place.

Comment

… a great deal of useful and insightful feedback happens when the design process is transparent. not all feedback is useful so it is important to know the difference. Lance Wyman .

Comment

… how every one of my typography prints have evolved. I select a subject, super excited to start, then I find myself wondering why I agreed to work on something that would consume 50 to 300 hours of my time, and then I couldn’t be more pleased with the result when it’s all done. And I don’t know how many times I’ve told myself, «I’ll never do that again.» Cameron Moll .

Comment

Don’t overlook the obvious. designers too often neglect exploring ideas because they seem to obvious, trite, corny, etc. when the obvious is transformed into a new image it can be powerful and easily understood. Lance Wyman .

Comment

Do we want our future to be dictated by big companies, with independent input coming only from those young or privileged enough to be able to work some of the time without payment? Do we want our brightest minds to become burned out, leaving the industry or heading into jobs where the best scenario is contribution under their terms of employment? Do we want to see more fundraisers for living or medical expenses from people who have spent their lives making it possible for us to do the work that we do? I don’t believe these are things that anyone wants. When we gripe about paying for something or put pressure on a sole project maintainer to quickly fix an issue, we’re thinking only about our own need to get things done. But in doing so we are devaluing the work of all of us, of our industry as a whole. We risk turning one of the greatest assets of our community into the reason we lose the very people who have given the most. Rachel Andrew .

Comment

The ability to give time, energy and professional skills free of charge is a privilege. It is a privilege that not everyone has to begin with, but that we can also lose as our responsibilities increase or as we start to lose the youthful ability to pull all-nighters. Perhaps we begin to realize how much that free work is taking us away from our families, friends, and hobbies; away from work that might improve our situation and enable us to save for the future. Rachel Andrew .

Comment

I tend to travel quite a lot because of my work, and luckily I've always really enjoyed train rides. I find that they often provide a good opportunity to relax, read or simply watch the landscape passing by, but I can also get quite a lot of work done during a train ride. There are not many distractions so I can focus. Alice Savoie .

Comment

You watch for patterns. You see what people love, and you see what they are trying to do. Then, you and your team use your product expertise to implement features that help people accomplish these things. It’s important to note that the way you design it may not be exactly what people expect.

It’s okay if you don’t give people precisely what they ask. Trust that you know how to design features that will enable what folks are trying to do and make your product stronger for the people who haven’t yet tried it but will. You still have to keep things simple, and like I said, that’s complicated.

Biz Stone .