An Interview with D&AD

I am beyond honored that good people at D&AD invited me to chair the 2024 Brand Design jury.

Soon after, they asked to interview me on a number of things. My career, aggressively punctuated with bouts of astonishingly dubious judgment and a still surprisingly underdeveloped instinct for self-awareness, has somehow continued in spite of myself.

So I said yes.

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D&AD: What does creative excellence look like to you in Branding?

I have no, no, no good idea how to answer that question. Creative excellence is ineffable. When you see something that resonates, you’ll know–it has some mysterious power over you that is irrational.?And that's as close to a definition as I can get -?it’s something that moves me.

It can come from anywhere; a fresh combination of words, a stupid joke, the way wood typography leaves a streak on a page, a bouncing, animated ball on an elegant interface. Often without warning, and usually without any consistent, telltale signs. You just suddenly sniff it.

You can see: Look there it is.

James Joyce struggled trying to define it, too. So he quoted Shelly.

“This supreme quality is felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his imagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony in the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a spiritual state…”

Then my hero Joseph Campbell tried to explain Joyce in this, less fancy way:

“Joyce’s formula for the aesthetic experience is that it does not move you to want to possess the object…The aesthetic experience is a simple beholding of the object. Joyce says that you put a frame around it and see it first as one thing, and that, in seeing it as one thing, you become aware of the relationship of part to part, each part to the whole, the whole to each of its part. This the essential aesthetic factor – rhythm, the harmonious rhythm of relationships. And when a fortunate rhythm has been struck by the artist, you experience a radiance. “

I love that. But then he goes on to say this, which I love the most:

“You are held in aesthetic arrest. This is the epiphany.”

My last definition, then, is when you experience excellence, whatever form it takes, you feel more alive.

D&AD: What’s your philosophy at COLLINS?

We have many. But one idea we try to embrace is to thoroughly absorb the puzzle our clients are trying to sort out. We make their problem, our problem.

What that does?not?mean is cozying up or pandering to current aesthetic sensibilities.

Our imagination, our talents, are what we bring to the equation–it’s what we’re trusted for. We bring our unique points of view, backgrounds and experiences to bear on whatever it is we’ve been asked to transform.?Always, the more the team brings of our own varied history, interests, quirks and personal curiosities into the work, the better it will be.

I mean, who knew a few years ago that when we did (the Yellow Pencil-winning brand with) Robinhood that we'd be inspired by late 1940s French, science fiction comic books?

Most importantly, form does not follow function here. That’s an arthritic 19th century cliché. The architect Louis Sullivan, in fact.

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

The designer on the Robinhood project is a comic book fan?

Ben Crick? Yes. But Ben is more a science fiction fan, as were the members of my team in San Francisco on this work. As were our clients. As am I.

In dull conference calls, Ben and I would send each other obscure Star Trek references. Well, Star Trek: The Next Generation references.

When we wanted to visualize the inviting future Robinhood was building for their customers, we looked to speculative fiction and mid-century French comic books as potent references. Then, with story building workshops with our friends at Pixar, we fully imagined and built out the year 2087. If Ben and other members of our team and the Robinhood crew hadn’t brought their quirky interests and influences, that project never would have happened in the unique way it did.

Keep in mind, though, that the creative leaders at Robinhood have uncommon imagination and taste. And they are driven to support their customers. Having clients like that makes all the difference.

Happily, we didn’t have to work with Senior Vice Presidents of Fear, Doubt & Worry.

Where do you find creative inspiration?

Two places.

The first is right here. In front of me. In this office. When we began, my co-founder Leland Maschmeyer and I were hellbent on hiring the kind of talented misfits that clients would never let in their front door. So my inspiration are the people here at COLLINS. All of them.

Second? The brain itself. Specifically, my early visual cortex and the frontal cortex. Like many creative people, it seems that I have a larger surface area in my frontal cortex. That, coupled with stronger connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and visual cortex results in something called Hyperphantasia.

The brain uses multiple regions to form mental images.? But the way my brain uses them, like many designers, it is constantly generating hyper-vivid images on its own. It can imagine things, fictions, objects, ranges of imaginary scenes, like experiencing and seeing them first-hand. As if they are in front of me. So, quite literally, is inspiration always, everywhere.

I wanted to be a designer since I when I first heard the word at 10. I’ve been carrying around this collection of images in my head like an enormous card catalogue ever since. Today, I can never remember where I put my glasses, but I can recall anything visual – the light stippling on a poster by Ludwig Hohlwein, blue moonlight on a spire in London in 1988, or what a store of the future might look like from six different angles.

Many, many designers are like this, though. And there’s a price you pay for not learning how to turn that off. I was not very good at big dinner parties when I was younger, for example. When they got boring (and they always got boring) I would just check out and visit places my brain made up until dinner was all over. Hyper daydreaming.

I eventually learned to lower the volume.

What is a challenge the creative industry currently faces?

Designers underestimate how powerful we are. We are a combination of engineer, artist, business leader, counselor, steward and strategist in helping our clients transform themselves for a better future they desire.

We are wizards. We can transform something from what is into what should be. We can imagine, plan and then build new futures.

That said, as a profession, we chronically undervalue that ability and the value we can bring to our clients and their businesses. Unfortunately, we continue to behave in ways that perpetuate that condition.

Branding is not about what something looks like. Branding is about how a company helps people understand what it does, how it works and how it helps them make better sense of the world around them. And, at its best, it can help point to a better future.

Sadly, much of the profession still views design and, in fact, branding overall, as a process for communicating value that sits at the periphery of a business.

At COLLINS, we see design and brand as a way of creating value that sits at the very center of a business.

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.

We've been insanely lucky to work with good clients who are out to change the future. When creative people can engage as real partners like this, we can all better understand the value of what we’re capable of unlocking by working together.

Why the hell we continue to refer to agencies, creative companies and design firms as "shops" is truly beyond me. The last time I checked, I don't sell begonias and bon-bons in Covent Garden.

Do you have any advice for creatives?

Two years ago, I wrote down 101 pieces of advice that have served us well over the last 15 years. Of anything I have written, this list has been the most popular thing on COLLINS Ideas.

You can find them here: https://www.wearecollins.com/ideas/101-design-rules/

These are the first five:

1. 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. Choose.
2. A good philosopher will say: “Know thyself.” A good shopkeeper will say: “Know thy customer.” A good designer will say: “Know both.”
3. 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
4. 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.
5. 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

In the end, there are two places that you can find motivation. The first is from within our profession, which includes knowing the history of design, product design, architecture, motion design and so on. The second is outside of design. Poetry, geology, marine biology, baking sugar cookies or anything else in the world. At our offices, we maintain large libraries to go digging in all sorts of odd places before you jump into Google.

At COLLINS we make a practice of tapping into both.

It is important for us to build a historically-informed design practice. But it’s even more important, it is imperative to look far beyond the profession. It’s the only way to break out.

When designers stare at each other's best work for a little too long, a little too often, with a little envy, everything can start looking a little too much alike. So when we begin a new project at COLLINS, we try to do something we’ve never done before. We have no interest in any house style whatsoever. It's self-plagiarism. I have a few visual prejudices, but we don't belong to any specific aesthetic school. Some members of my creative team do, and that's cool. I really don't.?All I want to do is tell our client’s story and build the world in which it will all live.

Our work with the good people at Robinhood and The Institute of Design in Chicago could not be more different from each other. That’s how we like it.

In short, we look to the past and the future for inspiration. Otherwise, we’re just peeking over everybody’s shoulder. And when you do that too often, you and your work become invisible.

And isn’t that the the opposite of why we enter this profession in the first place?

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