From staff jr. designer to senior agency roles to freelancer to agency founder. You get this far into doing something, and realize that a lot of the things you ‘just know’ took years to take shape, and people in year 1, 5, 10 might enjoy a list like this to compare to their own blossoming perspectives on this line of work.

Along with the years of experience come the entrenched beliefs and biases — which are neither right nor wrong, but feel pretty universal to me based on the roads I’ve travelled. These concepts focus around the work, the relationships, and the reality of the business at hand.

This list likely leans more towards my current role as an agency founder serving mostly B2B tech, nearly 10 years into that chapter of my career. Agree, disagree, roll your eyes, open your eyes, learn something, reject something else. All good. Enjoy!

In no particular order, because it’d take too long to reorganize with intentionality:

01
85% of the time, clients really just need high quality design execution, done well and pretty quickly. Not brilliant new creative.

02
Brand refreshes should roll out in chapters, every 6–9 months, with intention. Leave the core identity alone, and look for ways to deliver measured brand design evolution when things start to feel stale. Refresh, evolve, enhance. Show the market that this is a brand in motion.

03
Companies can’t compete without a dedicated design team. In house, agency, freelancer. Everyone needs at least one, often more. A brand without someone responsible for design is destined to fall flat.

04
Your day to day social creative execution has an outsized impact on your brand. Lousy design on organic social really hurts perception. Strong design really boosts it. Your audience notices, whether they realize it or not.

05
Brand design is about bold differentiation first, and then rigorous consistency in absolutely everything that goes out.

06
Don’t overlook the simplest and most mundane use cases for brand design. These are usually the most common and wide-reaching touch points. Everything should be designed, especially the boring stuff.

07
A new brand and a new website can’t fix an underlying business model or strategic problem. Sometimes they draw more attention to it.

08
When we do our best work, we’re designing a brand that takes off, gets acquired, and the company moves on to bigger agencies. We work ourselves out of a retainer, and couldn’t be happier. The value of being able to tell that story will lead to many new clients.

09
Great work springs from great relationships. Those 1:1 connections persevere across companies, ownership, boards, acquisitions, industries, continents, and decades.

10
Typography is everything in design. This was the first lesson I learned in design school (thanks Jeff Bleitz!) and it’s held up for 25 years.

11
AI is here to stay, but we still need to do the thinking, or we risk a race to the lazy bottom — ChatGPT copywriting will make everyone sound the same. Image generation will make everyone look the same. Humans must bring the nuance and the differentiation.

12
Differentiation requires research. Creative intuition is made more powerful with data behind it.

13
Sweat the details, but don’t hold up the train. It’s never been easier to spread your messages to your customers. Take advantage of this tech-driven landscape and move quickly. Your competitors are not going to slow down. Just ship it.

14
Design is a tool in service of business. It should be simple, clear, and disciplined. It’s not art, it’s not precious, and the designer’s ego has no place in the equation.

15
Dollar amount is secondary to value.

16
Functional design assets should always be accessible and editable by the non-designers on the marketing/communications team. Google, Microsoft, Canva are all valid for day to day executions. Set up a good process with checks in place, and you can unlock your design system.

17
Clients within clients — no two teams are alike, even within the same overarching company and corporate brand system. Understand the way your client’s company is organized, and how design resourcing decisions are made.

18
All creative efforts have to start with smart questions, and honest answers, from both the client and agency sides. Check your assumptions, confirm the change you’re seeking. How can design help to get us there? Is it even the right tool to employ?

19
New technology will always keep rolling in. Recognize what’s fleeting, be confident in what stays the same (and why) — learn about everything new before your clients do. Savvy clients will ask you about the shiny new things.

20
Be proactive about your clients’ business and brand/digital needs (whatever services you’re providing). You’re more valuable, and harder to replace, if you are a steady source of fresh ideas.

21
Oftentimes, the tactic you’re asked to execute by your client is not the right/best tactic to solve the problem they’re facing. Find out what best serves their needs, even if that means passing work off to another team or agency.

22
Maintain connections and good relationships with professional practitioners in every tangential field. Your ability to build a team of experts is highly valuable to your clients.

23
Talk about the problems you solve. Not the tools in your toolbox.

24
Speak in the language of your client. Memorize their acronyms. Learn their unique interpretations of words that you previously understood differently. Speak about project/business success in their language, not yours. Be multilingual.

25
Be intentional about your career. It’s easy to put your head down, dive into the work and the crazy pace of client service-based business, and realize you haven’t been driving your own bus for…maybe years. Observe the people above you and craft a vision for how you’d like your creative journey to unfold. If you don’t visualize it or define it clearly for yourself, you’ll have no idea what you’re working towards.

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Thanks for the read — have a great rest of your day, and come find me if you’d like to chat more about the things we think we know.