Carefully choose the projects you take on. Choose to leave the world better than you found it. Improve things for people. This doesn’t mean just working on non-profit or purely mission-driven projects. A lot of commercial products and services improve life for people in large and small ways. Just make sure there is some meaning to what you are doing besides exploiting a niche. Be the advocate for the person who will ultimately buy, use, or experience what you are designing.

We have limited resources, whether natural, financial, or cognitive. Don’t contribute to people wasting them on crap.

You have more power than you think. And you are part of a long lineage of designers who fought to be listened to and respected. Designers like Victor Papanek, Tibor Kalman, Ray and Charles Eames, William Caslon, Paula Scher, Zuzana Licko, and our own Jeffrey Zeldman. Not only can a designer change the world, a designer should. This is the best job in the world! Let’s do it right.

Mike Monteiro.