… That’s a function of a small studio. Roughly, we can do a dozen jobs a year. Roughly. We are now at job number 140, and we have been in business for 12 or 13 years. Of course, the nice thing about this is we can pick the ones that seem the best.

Not accepting the Zadie Smith On Beauty cover design when it later turned out to be my favorite novel of that year.

Stefan Sagmeister.

There are several processes, to be combined differently for every project. They include list-making; switching from one project to another; going alone into a café with nothing to read and nobody to meet, thus winding up like a lonely fool and being shamed into working (stole this technique from director Steven Soderbergh); and starting a project where the seed of the idea has absolutely nothing to do with the project, like designing a campaign to promote literacy using the word «air-conditioner»—a technique developed by Edward de Bono. Stefan Sagmeister.

I think exploring new ways of making things and using new technologies to do that is exciting, but my concern and practice is to make work that combines my particular combination of idea and craft. How and why other people make work doesn’t interest me, just what it looks like. If new technologies make better, newer, more relevant work – great.

To make with a quill or automated technology—for the end-user—so what? What is the end result like?

Gareth Hague.

If I looked over the work we completed last year, I would say I am really happy with about three projects. And we worked on at least 15 projects. So that means I let something go 12 times. But I don’t separate the good things from the bad, and I know that many studios do. One company I know says, «This one’s for the meal, this one’s for the reel.» Because I keep my studio so small, there’s not very much we have to do for the meal.

Now, to be clear, those 12 projects that I’m referring to, I’m not embarrassed by them. Most of them have good content, and I would say that all of them were done for clients who have a product that is worthwhile, and they all had a right to be interesting. But for one reason or another, they are not quite where the other three are.

Stefan Sagmeister.

Graphic design is the work that is made by a graphic designer.

Or..

The combination of visual and written expression of an idea, process, and system for the betterment of client interests, human locomotion, not excluding the recent trend of a lower x-height among Dutch typographers.

Stefan Sagmeister.

Stefan Sagmeister and I nearly got arrested together. While working on a conceptual design project utilizing my office in the Empire State Building, Stefan dangled out of my 17th-floor window with a sign that simply read, «OVER.» It never occurred to me that the crowd below would think that the sign read, «IT’S OVER» and was the parting message of a jumper. When hordes of police and press showed up, accompanied by every fire truck and ambulance in the vicinity, it dawned on me that the whole of Manhattan was watching the flawless execution of a true master at work. Debbie Millman.

I find that you have to continually renew, that growth is what matters. You can’t do the same thing for five years. You have to get rid of it. It doesn’t matter anymore. Just let it go, even if it’s your signature. Even if everybody expects you to do it. Try to find another way to walk. It’s easy to say in theory, but harder to do in practice. Paula Scher.

Very often, I do a lot of work for nonprofit organizations. I literally donate the work—so that I can make a breakthrough. If I’m doing a job for free, they’re not challenging me, they’re accepting what I create. If they pay me, they have a right to participate. Paula Scher.

I think I’m successful in certain ways. I think that I’m lucky in that I like what I do, and I get to do it. That is a factor in how I see myself as successful. I consider the fact that I have been able to continue to grow a very important part of how I perceive success. To me, success is not about money, it’s about what I design. If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me. Paula Scher.

People develop communities that define themselves and isolate them from others. This leads to a kind of estrange- ment from everyone else. And before you know it, there’s a class or status war, or some other sense that we’re more important because of our desires, or a sense of betterment because we have good taste, or because we earn more money. That collective identification quickly turns into a way of excluding others from humanity. We have to be so cautious of this. It is an endless cycle of human history. A collective consciousness develops within a tribe, and everyone outside becomes worthless—it’s a prevailing pattern in humanity. Milton Glaser.