HERB VINCENT PETERSON | CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND EDUCATOR

THE RULES

The following list of rules comes from my almost 17 years of professional practice and teaching experience. First vocalized within the fury of an incredible teaching or designing moment, students and clients have recited these various isms and rules back to me as learned truths throughout the many years, often remembering the number and order far better than I.

MOST IMPORTANT

Rule No. 4
Aways act like you know what you are doing.

Rule No. 34
Put people first; over money, over profit, over ego.

Rule No. 16
Presence is everything, it changes reality and perception; the more present you are, the more of a gift it becomes to everyone.

Rule No. 1
Replace equipment where it belongs.

Rule No. 29
Kill your ego, daily.

Rule No. 17
Clean out the pencil sharpener, often.

Rule No. 14
Never design for free, always value your work, even if it’s for a good cause.

Rule No. 42
Always give your work away, especially if it’s for a good cause.

Rule No. 48
No matter the context, always use a contract.

Rule No. 91
Keep four books on the front seat of your car; read them when your meetings are running late.

Rule No. 13
Never back down to individuals who flex power and control.

Rule No. 19
Thinking is Dead.

Rule No. 3
Leave the place as clean as you found it.

Rule No. 31
Always use your privilege to empower others and to push inappropriate power out of the way.

Rule No. 27
Carry one book in your hand always, especially when you walk across an academic campus.

Rule No. 40
Ties are optional, but look great when least expected; don’t just follow the expectation.

Rule No. 78
Use pencils whenever possible.

Rule No. 28
Get away from the computer, it kills creativity and is the furthest thing from an effective maker of solutions for design.

Rule No. 84
Always offer a drink to your clients in a client meeting, even if it’s on their home turf.

Rule No. 97
Send hand-written thank you notes whenever possible.

Rule No. 77
Install pencil sharpeners in your work space (the old kind).

Rule No. 92
Turn off the overhead lights when finished.

Rule No. 6
Call the printer first to get a good cost idea, take donuts when preforming a press check.

Rule No. 30
Design to kill white supremacy in everything you make.

Rule No. 64
Include type licenses in your overall consumable costs for the client.

Rule No. 79
Design backwards thinking of the end first. This may help our landfills.

Rule No. 18
Blow shit up especially when evil prevails.

Rule No. 2
Push in your chairs before you vacate the studio.

Rule No. 41
Only use sharp “brand-new” exact-o blades on fresh cuts.

Rule No. 63
Do not create design that causes harm or makes you feel bad, it’s not worth it.

Rule No. 36
Competitions kill the soul, do at least one so you know what it feels like.

Rule No. 88
Design like you care, like it matters, like the world is in your hands.

Rule No. 59
When it gets tough remind yourself you are in the right place.

Rule No. 67
Design in such a way you learn your clients’ client’s first names.

Rule No. 54
Learn real design histories that have so easily been misplaced; we need to know the narrative of indigenous and other marginalized communities.

Rule No. 65
Stop reading from only white men who talk about other white men.

Rule No. 46
Make the influence of your human-centered relationships drive your ideas; then you won’t have the issue of your ideas feeling like wind.

Rule No. 7
Never design alone.

Rule No. 66
Listen more, talk less.

Rule No. 58
Give people the benefit of the doubt, even when it makes no sense at all. It will help your projects.

Rule No. 33
Do not steal typefaces. Hell, do not steal.

Rule No. 87
Always spell check, once in-a-while.

Rule No. 56
Don’t compare yourself to others, even though you will, it’s a bullshit and unrealistic way to measure poor success. If you need a measurement, make a yelp page.

Rule No. 62
Your job does not make/define/control who you are.

Rule No. 61
You can design in any situation.

Rule No. 49
Don’t wear all black and try to look like a designer, it’s too obvious.

Rule No. 86
Remember as a grade schooler that fire you had in your belly; the one who would always die on the hill for justice? Make friends with them again and get them back here.

Rule No. 99
Decolonizing design means we have to do the right kind of work. Humble yourself, we never had it right in the first place.

Rule No. 45
Stop designing for your needs and wants only, amazon is too big for all of us.

Rule No. 57
Do not use tokenized imagery.

Rule No. 94
Do not let your clients use tokenized imagery.

Rule No. 23
Do not say, “we need black representation,” when you are a white person with zero black relationships.

Rule No. 55
Do not use BIPOC in your writing if you don’t understand what BIPOC means.

Rule No. 89
It’s ok to discuss ethics in the interview; watch what happens. Make educated choices afterwards.

Rule No. 70
Place brand-new pencils in the table jars prior to all client meetings, sharpen beforehand.

Rule No. 75
Always cary a stapler and a small box of staples.

Rule No. 98
Share your design library; access over ownership is the right way to go.

Rule No. 32
Empower your clients to become agents of change and impact.

Rule No. 37
Teach design to the world. Make it free. Give it away.

Rule No. 50
Support good work.

Rule No. 22
Use a baseline grid for your resume.

Rule No. 44
No-one knows the truth of what they are doing; don’t let confidence confuse you. You most likely know more than the other person, they just wear it better than you.

Rule No. 25
To experience freedom means to design in a way that tears down systems of oppression, flips, and dismantles exploited power. Yeah, do that.

Rule No. 24
Smile.

Rule No. 68
Always have a play mix for the studio; play music you don’t know and understand. Get recommendations from others outside your normal culture.

Rule No. 73
At every meeting ask, “who isn’t here, who should be here, why am I here, why are you here,” and if needed, go get the appropriate people to join right away. Don’t wait, it causes more harm.

Rule No. 76
Take the right time to learn your positionallity, your narrative dictates how you see the world and thus how you will design for it.

Rule No. 51
Quit believing that there are right and wrong ways to design.

Rule No. 90
For every good one, there is one more better out there.

Rule No. 38
When you critique, ask what the person needs, then over deliver.

Rule No. 35
Promise more and deliver the extraordinary, your clients won’t know what to do.

Rule No. 12
Question Everything.

Rule No. 93
Walk away from fads. How boring.

Rule No. 96
Kill your social media; you don’t want to hear this, it’s rotting your brain, but you already know this, don’t you?

Rule No. 21
Travel, experience, and feel the world. Do not stay in one place. Your designs will thank you.

Rule No. 39
It’s ok to love the Bauhaus, I do, but it’s ok to let it go also.

Rule No. 74
Design conferences are meat markets for ego, if you go, take a friend and go for the free drinks then get out of there.

Rule No. 72
Your experiences are going to change you and your work. The only constant we have is the desire to do something. So, always do something.

Rule No. 82
Find real mentorship.

Rule No. 69
When you think you’ve realized how it all works and you have the answer, QUIT, hang it up and go open an icecream stand. You’ll thank yourself for it.

Rule No. 9
You are meant to live multiple lives far reaching and beyond the robotics of the grind.

Rule No. 53
Advertising just sucks. Seriously, stay the hell away; unless you are cool for pain, some people like pain and that’s ok.

Rule No. 60
Use lo-fi tools, post-its, dry erase, scribbles on paper, pins, etc; better yet make your own (like Mau).

Rule No. 47
Be careful who you idolize.

Rule No. 71
Read everything.

Rule No. 85
Never design without reading all of the content, even the small print; thats where they get you every time.

Rule No. 20
Do not design for credit card campaigns.

Rule No. 15
Share your failures frequently, let others laugh with you. Feel that pain, battle scars baby.

Rule No. 95
Spelling errors are like the moment you crap yourself in public as an adult; you can’t believe it happened but there’s not much you can do about it either. Clean yourself up, and get on down the road. We’ve all done it.

Rule No. 81
Work with and hire people who are better than you. Hire people who are diverse in thinking, culture, background, and makeup. Hire people who push you and force you to be a better human.

Rule No. 5
They said everything is an experiment, it’s quite true, especially if you can blow it all up for good.

Rule No. 10
Good does not mean best or number one; it means ethically right, morally just, and pure for the soul. It does not harm and it does not take away. Understand this language so you can tell others.

Rule No. 26
Do not follow the path of the man who says they know it all. Follow the path that has always resided inside you even if it scares the hell out of you.

Rule No. 11
What to do with extra paper? Place your very expensive diploma in a big fancy frame and then go bury it in a place you can come back to when its time to mourn life’s realities.

Rule No. 52
Awards feel good for the moment and then the high drops like any good drug; stay away from them and you won’t have this issue.

Rule No. 80
Don’t use spray-fix, that stuff is terrible for the environment.

Rule No. 83
If you don’t know, go figure it out; always be figuring it out. Remember rule no 4, “to act like you know what you are doing,” actually means that you have to figure it out. Now you get it.

Rule No. 43
Don’t be afraid of what’s ahead of you; remember, many of us once knew a thing called Flash. Nothing is permanent, everything is fleeting, design is more inside you than out.

Rule No. 8
Think, make, do.

Rule No. 100
Design for peace. Design for love. Design for inclusion. Design for equity. Design for justice. Design for righteousness. Design for grace. Design for mercy. Design for all things, good.

GET THE BOOK

Need more? Miss those wild moments? Need someone telling you what you already know? Purchase a printed version or Download for free The Professor Is In: Design rules not to live by Vol. 1. By Herb Vincent Peterson and uncover a world of thinking about design and good. Rules come equipped with post-rules and antidotes that are guaranteed to maximize your design abilities (for an hour or so).

Book coming soon and available where people purchase books, just not Amazon.
Purchase Here & Download Here