The American flag is a potent piece of national iconography, but its design shifted frequently until the early 1900s. What if it were redesigned today? The New York Times invited us to do just that.

COLLINS welcomes Nicole Cousins, our former high school intern, now RISD graduate, to the company as Associate Designer.

George Lavender, design director here at COLLINS, speaks with Transform Magazine about how powerful storytelling can help brands stand out, build new futures and gain the relevance they seek.

As we approached evolving the Clubhouse brand, we didn’t want to just design another big ‘C’, we wanted to expand on what they’ve been great at since the beginning: Designing experiences with the belief that people are at the center of every moment.

Stay tuned for a full case study showcasing all of the work we did in partnership with our friends from Clubhouse.

Photographer: John Canon

We celebrate #pride all through the summer. Well, frankly, all year round.

And with music from 1975 to last week. We hope you will, too.

Well, this was a nice surprise. Our good crew did well at the TDC Design Awards with our good clients, including Crane/Mohawk, Medium, Primary and San Francisco Symphony. Bravo to our friends at Pentagram, The NY Times and all of this year’s winners.

We are all book-crazy here at COLLINS. Our Design Director, Megan Bowker, shares five books that shaped her career and impacted her life with our friends at Creative Boom.

Megan has a dazzling body of work. Originally from Wasilla, Alaska, she now lives in Manhattan. And she works across a spectrum of emerging to established organizations. Her work always sits (energetically) between strategy and insanely complex brand and design systems.

Read on.

Sanuk Kim, Senior Designer, and Alex Wallace, Business Leader, discuss the work they led with the rest of our team and our clients on the re-imagination of the extraordinary, delicious and way-better-for-you-than-old-school-fast-food, sweetgreen.

We’re honored to work with sweetgreen’s leaders on a better future - along with our colleague, friend, and COLLINS alumnus (and now sweetgreen creative leader) the awesome Mr. Thomas Wilder.

She moves from China. Graduates with honors from Washington University.
Interns at Apple. Wins grants to launch her senior thesis project on climate change. Launches her senior thesis project on climate change into the real world. It becomes a smash. Works with the great people at Square. Launches the new Nikolas Type site.

And then she joins us. Yes!

Welcome, Jingqi Fan.

We’re honored.

Ad Age named us Design Agency of the (Craziest) Year (We’ve Ever Had).
And, incredibly, for the third straight year.

We’re grateful to each one of our clients. And so happy for all
of our colleagues and partners.

Congratulations to all of the 2021 awardees.

And thank you, Ad Age.

For over 40 years now, the One Show Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry.

The One Club, importantly, is also a not-for-profit organization. It celebrates and serves the global advertising and design communities with uncommon care and commitment.

So it is an honor to learn that our work with Robinhood, Crane Paper/Mohawk, The M.AD School of Ideas (Miami Ad School), and The San Francisco Symphony have been included by the judges to be in the 2021 show.

Thank you to the judges this year. But once again, thank you to our intrepid crew at COLLINS in San Francisco and New York City, as well as to each one of our amazing clients who are as creatively daring as they are encouraging.

May our design work endure for them as long as it has for this awesome client twenty years ago.

Two Gold Cubes from the ADC for our work launching the M. AD School of Ideas - formerly the Miami Ad School — and the SF Symphony.

To win one cube from the ADC in any year is a career-making milestone. In 2021, after the insane, tough one everyone in our industry has gone through, this is a gift.

Congratulations to our friends at M. AD, including the unstoppable Hank Richardson and the kickass Pippa Seichrist. Bravo to the SF Symphony and our friends at Dinamo.

Taamy’s approach to brand building shatters conventional standards. She is already challenging our clients to consider broader and more diverse perspectives in their trajectories.

She believes that brand is a key driver to scale a business. She also believes brands must do more to be both responsive to and responsible for the communities they serve.

“People now demand the brands they support to contribute and regenerate value rather than extract and exploit it,” she said. “They want brands to take a real and clear position, make it part of their business and be consistent. That’s what I’m intent on doing more of at COLLINS — strengthening, growing and scaling our clients’ businesses in a way that can make a real, un-ignorable impact.”

We are proud to have Taamrat Amaize join us to do just that.

Welcome, Taamy.

Few brands have as rich and lengthy a history as Crane. The first American dollars were printed on Crane paper, and the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton began as a note written on Crane stationery.

To say it is a privilege to have worked with our clients at Crane on the revitalization of their storied brand is an understatement.

It’s Nice That, the celebrated British design publication, reviewed our work with Crane and was generous in its praise. We are grateful for the acclaim. It is a testament to a client and company with a strong history and an equally ambitious future.

Read the review.

Young Guns recognizes the vanguard of creative professionals 30 years of age and under.

Founded in 1996 by the ADC, the portfolio-based competition has grown to become one of the most coveted awards for emerging creative leaders around the globe. For many designers, art directors, illustrators, copywriters, photographers, filmmakers, animators and other creative people, being named a Young Guns winner is a sign of a remarkable career trajectory.

Zuzanna Rogatty joins honorees including Benjamin Crick, Christian Widlic and Leo Porto from our team who have also been honored by this recognition.

Go, Zuzanna, go.

Congratulations to all of the 2020 finalists.

For over two years, we’ve had a remarkable relationship with the great people at Twitch.

What started as a strong strategic and creative partnership ended up with a wonderful, engaging result for the people and communities Twitch serves around the world.

Adobe invited us to talk about our work together and how we do what we do.

Kari Norder from Adobe interviews Byron Phillipson, global executive creative director from Twitch, and Brian, about our teams’ work together.

Read on.

The world is fundamentally different from when this endeavor began. A labor of love that started a year ago. The purpose, though, remains the same.

To tell the untold stories within design. These days it seems like we spend so much time assessing the visual output, but so little time understanding the input. The thinking, process, and partnership behind the pictures.

We want to open that black box and share some ideas to help creative people learn how we use creativity and design to build new futures with our clients.

For the full experience, check out the desktop version.

The COLLINS High School and College Design Internship Program is entering its fifth year, led by Yocasta Lachapelle.

From hands-on client experience, learning the tools of the trade, and help with financial aid, we’re honored to be able to invest in, and nurture, the next generation of designers and creative leaders.

Last year, Safiya Jones and Cesar Rodriguez were among the students who joined us. Safiya is currently a student at the High School of Art & Design in Manhattan. Cesar was accepted to Cooper Union and is currently pursing his undergraduate degree in fine arts.

We’re excited to see who will join us this year as we expand our program in new ways to address the COVID-19 crisis. We start in July.

If you are - or if you know of - a high school or college student of color seeking a career in design in San Francisco, New York City or elsewhere, please let us know at apply_ny@wearecollins.com.

Before the world confused fame for mastery.

Before young designers were lost in the black hole of on-line portfolios and a million design posts a day.

Before the number of clicks and followers determined your worth, we used to learn about masters of design through their work on the street, in stores or through a small number of carefully curated design magazines and annuals.

Today, almost all of those magazines and annuals are gone.

But those masters were — and continue to be — the ones we look to for inspiration. Not only because of their remarkable work or enormous talents, but because of their tenacity — and an endless desire to reinvent themselves and the world around them for the better. The word “retire” never even crossed their mind.

This short film on the remarkable designer Deborah Sussman represents the first of a series of conversations with such masters. It was the last interview she filmed.

Masters never run dry on ideas or patience. Despite insanely busy schedules, not one of them turned us down, the inheritors of their craft. And we continue to be inspired by them every day. Today, our own hope is to expand upon the vision they established.

We thank the ADC Hall of Fame laureate Deborah Sussman for allowing us to create this brief portrait.

She never put fame before mastery.

And in this film, it shows.

For a second time in a row. We’re floored. And honored.

As we said last year: Design is not what we make. Design is what we make possible for others.

That’s been our mission from the start. It continues.

Thank you to our great teams in San Francisco and New York for pushing us further into the future.

And most of all, thank you again to our remarkable clients, partners and friends who give us opportunities to do meaningful work — and who make us all better, every day.