Steve Jobs had invited Brian Collins to his home for dinner. That night, he told Brian that Apple existed for just one reason:

“The world needs Apple. We need to make things that are insanely great.”

Over the last 12 years, however, groupthink in Silicon Valley and beyond has replaced big, outsized ambitions with three words:

Minimum Viable Product.

Not insanely great. Not even great. Just enough to make it through.

Now, we understand the need for fast prototyping and testing. Got that.

But how do we regain the energy embodied by “insanely great”?

How do we fuel that aim everyday?

At COLLINS, we work to make room for embracing the unexpected, mistakes and the absolutely unintentional.

And we never leave serendipity to chance.

See the full clip of Brian’s talk at D&AD in London here.

Join us as COLLINS Creative Director Joseph Han and Design Director Sanuk Kim speak at the Carnegie Mellon School of Design.

March 20, 2023.

More details here.

Our friends at Square Roots, the technology leader in indoor farming, just announced plans for a new facility in Kentucky. It marks a tripling of their growing capacity this year.

The new location features the latest in Square Roots’ growing platform, promising yield increases of 30% using a range of automation technologies from seeding to harvesting and sanitization.

It’s another encouraging milestone in their journey towards making locally grown, fresh produce available to everyone, all year round.

Read more here.

We have all spent time working as a part of a team. So we all have experience with projects grinding to a halt or workstreams hitting a wall.

It’s draining, frustrating and often confusing as to what, exactly, went wrong. We blame ourselves. And sometimes (if we haven’t had our coffee), we start pointing fingers.

But more often than not, the people are not the problem. The problem is how those people are working together.

That’s where Mural comes in. They know that good work only happens when you work well together. It’s why they designed a new platform and tools to make seamless, thoughtful collaboration easy for any team.

We’re grateful to have worked with the great people at Mural to craft a new strategy, tone of voice and design system. To support their transformation from a collaboration tool to a community primed to close the gap between ideas and impacts for teams everywhere.

Case study coming soon.

Wow.

We’re thrilled seven of our projects have been selected as winners at the first AIGA Design annual design competition in more than a decade.

Bravo to all of our incredible clients and, of course, to our team.

And thank you, judges. What a way to head into the holiday season.

You can see all the honorees here.

We are always delighted to see when It’s Nice That covers our work—which they just did with (almost) everything we launched with our friends at the Institute of Design (ID) in Chicago.

It was the perfect way to end the week.

See their full story here.

Coming to you from KALW 91.7 FM in sunny San Francisco:

A very special Friday edition of COLLINS Sounds.

A Side -
100+ hand picked tracks from the KALW DJ’s.

B Side -
A discussion of KALW’s award-winning redesign between COLLINS designer Barney Stepney and Managing Editor David Boyer.

Turn your digital dials to our Spotify to see what’s playing in the Bay and hear our friend Barney’s made-for-radio pipes.

Mix

Interview

When the San Francisco Symphony invited us to work with them, they were already celebrated as a pioneering, global orchestra.

Their ambition was to expand that reputation, retain the devoted audiences who had come to love the Symphony and begin recruiting new audiences for the future.

Quickly, we realized the power of cultural institutions like SF Symphony lies just as much in their ability to pull stories, ideas and questions from the future into contemporary art forms as it does in their capacity to preserve the masterworks of the past.

To put it plainly: timeless art forms help us metabolize, understand and embrace the new.

So, together, we built a brand expression that offered up tradition as a fertile ground for innovation. And we anchored it with the Symphony’s dynamic typography–the idea of musicality visualized.

Creative Review checked in with the remarkable crew at NB Studio as well as with COLLINS about what might be next for the world’s performing arts institutions.

Read on.

Several years ago we were introduced to the dazzling creative work of Astrid Stavro, a designer, leader and formidable partner at Pentagram in London. Since that day we have tracked project after project she has produced with deep admiration.

On her way to Pentagram, Astrid built a reputation working with the likes of Phaidon, McKinsey & Company, ELEPHANT and AB InBev. She co-founded the acclaimed brand and design consultancy Atlas with Pablo Martín. She is a Visiting Lecturer at both Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and The Royal College of Art in London. Her work has received over 150 international awards.

So, she’s been…busy. But today we are insanely fortunate to announce something new that might make her even busier.

Astrid has joined us at COLLINS.

As Vice President & Creative Director, Stavro will play a key part in driving our ambition to deliver the level of craft, intelligence and adaptability of small, highly focused creative and technology studios—but against the world’s most complex problems and opportunities.

Welcome, Astrid Stavro.

We couldn’t be happier.

Sometimes legacy is best used as fuel for the future.

It was in the case of our work with the wonderful team at the Girl Scouts of the USA, which recently won recognition from the Art Director’s Club and Design Week in London.

See the full story on Creative Review.

Ask the next question.

“Every advance this species has ever made is the result of someone, somewhere, looking at his world, his neighborhood, his neighbor, his cave, or himself, and asking the NEXT question. Every deadly error this species has committed, every sin against itself and its high destiny, is the result of NOT asking the next question, or of not listening to those who ask it.”

—Theodore Sturgeon

Problem-seekers revel in the unknown.

We are at ease with ambiguity and have a heightened sense of peripheral vision.

We are looking for what isn’t yet obvious, a quest that begins with asking a question.

That leads to the next question, which leads to the next, and on and on.

The more meanders, the better. That means we’re getting close.

It’s almost in focus.

Almost there.

Join us as we ask the next questions.

Let’s assemble in Seattle in October at the AIGA Conference.

Brian Collins, co-founder of COLLINS, is hosting the event with fellow questioners and designers Rick Griffith, Lee-Sean Huang and Debbie Millman.

And there are still tickets left.

From the very start, COLLINS has sought to nurture and advance our people and their careers.

In looking to our next chapter, we have been seeking a true talent leader to help accelerate that ambition.

Lauren Ranke - the legendary Director of Talent at Wieden + Kennedy - has been our benchmark for quite some time. Over the span of 14 years, Lauren has played an integral role in building and developing one of the world’s most celebrated creative cultures.

Hoping to model who our VP of People should emulate, Co-Founder Brian Collins pointed to Lauren as just the kind of leader we wanted to find.

Co-Founder Leland Maschmeyer just pointed to Lauren.

So we called Lauren.

And we could not have been more honored when she said “yes.”

We are beyond thrilled to have Lauren join COLLINS to help us all build what’s next for each other, for our company, for our clients and for the future of design.

Welcome, Lauren.

The way we see it, we’re just getting started.

COLLINS Associate Designer Jaeyou Chung counts among our newest colleagues. For that, we count ourselves beyond lucky.

In this interview with the editorial staff at It’s Nice That, Jaeyou walks through his inventive approach to the X Museum—a project that was one of the reasons we were hoping to have him join us.

He also just won top honors for the Young Ones portfolio review and two Type Directors Club awards for typographic excellence. Auspicious beginnings, indeed.

So, welcome Jaeyou.

And go, Jaeyou.

See the full story here.

And his honors here.

We’re quite fond of the good people at Creative Boom.

They had a few questions about the work we got to make with our remarkable partners at CNET. COLLINS Design Director Jump Jirakaweekul and Creative Director Tom Elia had a few answers.

Happily, it was all written down.

Here.

We’re all made up of many things, but it’s hard to find one place on the internet that allows us to easily showcase all of them. It’s as if we toss our digital selves into a jumbled storage closet, where huge chunks of who we are—and what we do—get lost. Enter: Linktree. A tool that lets anyone untangle their web and become the personal tour guide of their digital universe.

We’re thrilled to have worked closely with our friends at Linktree to help craft their new brand strategy, tone of voice and design system–supporting their transformation from their “link-in-bio” beginnings to a revitalized, vibrant platform that champions self-expression and drives the discovery of all the extraordinary things happening just beyond the feed.

A full case study of our work together—and the many things that make up Linktree—is coming soon.

Creativepool has made a habit of interviewing some of our industry’s brightest newcomers.

It was only a matter of time before they grabbed COLLINS Motion Designer Darius Wang for a few questions. Together, they talk hard-won lessons, current sources of inspiration and tips for creative professionals new to the scene.

We just wish they’d asked more.

Well, one month certainly isn’t long enough to celebrate the contributions Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have made across every facet of our culture and society.

There’s a lot of ground to cover.

As it comes to a close, we’re taking one more moment to salute all of the incredible gifts they’ve given our nation, our history and, of course, our industry.

We’re so grateful to count them as neighbors, leaders, clients and friends—as well as our remarkable colleagues.

The Manship Medallion was created by and named after Paul Manship–the artist who created Prometheus, Atlas and all of the iconic art deco sculptures at Rockefeller Center. It’s an incredible, rarely-given recognition awarded by the Art Directors Club to leaders in the creative community.
 
In celebration of ADC’s first century, a small group of industry voices who have played significant roles in the club’s history and evolution were honored with the Manship Medallion at this year’s awards ceremony. 
 
We’re honored that Brian Collins was among them.
 
It’s a seriously wonderful acknowledgement of the leader we’re (uh…usually) thrilled to work with every day.
 
Congratulations, Brian. And congratulations to all of the other honorees.

The sun’s out and so are we.

From the COLLINS Run Club - sounds to move with this spring 💐

Listen here.

When it comes to inviting people into our team, we look for cultural contribution over cultural fit. In her short time with us, COLLINS Associate Designer Nicole Cousins has already been contributing plenty.

With our friends at It’s Nice That, Nicole speaks to the curiosity that anchors her process and the wide-ranging sources of inspiration that shape her perspective–one we’ve been so grateful to have on board.

See the full story here.