Milton Glaser; Ten Things I Have Learned

I came across this list from a random tweet I followed and felt I had to repost it. This is from a talk Glaser had at the AIGA London in 2001, it is still very relevant today, that is the beauty of Glaser. His work thought his career is as relevant and fresh today as it was then.

See the full essay here, I shortened it for brevity!

Milton Glaser; Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client.

2
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.
I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age.

3
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.
You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

4
PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.
I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks.

5
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6
STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty.

7
HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
I am a great advocate of drawing, not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.

8
DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation.

9
ON AGING.
Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter that what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life.

10
TELL THE TRUTH.
We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher?