Mil­ton Glaser, the designer best known for cre­at­ing the ‘I ♥ NY’ logo, offers ten pieces of advice from a life in design:

  • You can only work for peo­ple that you like: “all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client”.
  • If you have a choice, never have a job: “if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age”.
  • Some peo­ple are toxic; avoid them.
  • Pro­fes­sion­al­ism is not enough, or: the good is the enemy of great: “Pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not allow for [con­tin­u­ous trans­gres­sion] because trans­gres­sion has to encom­pass the pos­si­bil­ity of fail­ure and if you are pro­fes­sional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success”.
  • Less is not nec­es­sar­ily more: “Just enough is more”.
  • Style is not to be trusted: “any­body who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist”.
  • How you live changes your brain: “The brain is actu­ally more like an over­grown gar­den that is con­stantly grow­ing and throw­ing off seeds, regen­er­at­ing and so on, [than a computer]”.
  • Doubt is bet­ter than cer­tainty: “Deeply held beliefs of any kind pre­vent you from being open to experience”.
  • On aging: noth­ing matters.
  • Tell the truth.

via Green Oasis