Let’s kill the myth: a better tool can’t make you a better designer. Tools are just vehicles for our ideas and if our ideas are lousy, no app in the world can save us. Although being a jack-of-all-tools feels deceptively productive, preparing to work is not the same thing as actually working. Chantal Jandard.

My definition of success is doing what you love. Tony Hawk.

If I wanted to become a manager, I would have gone to business school, which would have been much easier than getting into art school in Austria. Stefan Sagmeister.

So how does typography communicate without people noticing typography? It’s like watching a film: The average movie–goer knows little or nothing about camera movement and film editing, and rarely consciously notices these things, yet directors can still affect viewers by using these techniques. Similarly, people can be affected by good typography without being actively aware of it. Thomas Phinney.

Typography is like fashion, or furniture. With rare functional exceptions, the world doesn't «need» new clothing or furniture designs, but people want to look different or evoke a particular feeling or fit with a particular «look,» and there are trends and styles. While true innovation is rare, people consistently come up with variations on existing themes, or combine existing elements in new ways, whether in type design, clothing or furniture. Thomas Phinney.

You should never consider your portfolio finished, and you should always be dissatisfied with it. The day you sit back and say, «My portfolio is great,» is the day you are dead in the water. Your portfolio requires endless work, and few things are more important than it. This never changes no matter how successful you have become. That’s really the only thing I’ve learned about portfolios. Adrian Shaughnessy.

Your client hired you because you are the expert at what you do. They are the expert at the thing they do. And you have been brought in to add your expertise to the client’s expertise to help them accomplish their goal.

What they didn’t hire you to do is make them happy, or be their friend. Your decisions should revolve around achieving that goal, not pleasing the client. And while you should do everything in a professional and pleasing manner, never conflate helping the client achieve their goal with making them happy.

Mike Monteiro.

The job of a designer is to provide clarity around an idea. People can talk all they want about ideas, but the designer can take all that stuff that’s up in the air and turn it into something real. Dustin Mierau.

Simplicity and saying no to things and focus is hard. So is choosing to do these three things and nothing else and ensuring that we’re focusing on the right things at the right time. I look at my role as editorial. I consider Steve Jobs the greatest editor of all time and that the best entrepreneurs are great editors.

We have had thousands of ideas, and we’ve probably already thought of most of the ideas that we’ll ever do. So the question is which one should we do now? It can be incredibly scary because deciding what we’re working on means you’re betting that six–month period on doing just that one thing.

Dave Morin.

It may sound like I’m down on Designers who don’t code. Not at all. You are the engine that’s driving many of our brightest innovations forward. No one disputes that. I’m just saying that you need to pay more attention to what’s happening around you while you’re heads down in Photoshop and making wireframes.

The game has changed. Adapt and evolve by learning to code, or face becoming extinct.

Mike Pell.