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I had a job once or twice. Ok maybe a hand­ful. They taught me things. The last one taught me that I never wanted to have a job. That was just the story that some­one else had writ­ten for me — it was the given sign of success.

I had dreamed of work­ing in a large stu­dio with many oth­ers who wanted to solve prob­lems and who worked to cre­ate smart, mean­ing­ful solu­tions. Then I tried it. I didn’t like it. It was like some­one had placed a pil­low over my face and was press­ing the air out of me.

I decided I was done with jobs.

I cre­ated my own thing.

And every­day I wake up and think. I’m really, really, lucky. I get to work with these inter­est­ing peo­ple, learn new things, view from a new per­spec­tive, and share what I’ve learned. That’s not a job.

2
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.
One night I was sit­ting in my car out­side Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity where my wife Shirley was study­ing Anthro­pol­ogy. While I was wait­ing I was lis­ten­ing to the radio and heard an inter­viewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audi­ence about how to pre­pare for your old age?’ An irri­tated voice said ‘Why is every­one ask­ing me about old age these days?’ I recog­nised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the com­poser and philoso­pher who influ­enced peo­ple like Jasper Johns and Merce Cun­ning­ham as well as the music world in gen­eral. I knew him slightly and admired his con­tri­bu­tion to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to pre­pare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morn­ing and I try to fig­ure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, 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’ he said.

In those times when answers don’t come to the design prob­lems we are work­ing on I often drift into read­ing. I’m expe­ri­enced enough now to know you don’t just push through to an answer. I decided to look at some man­i­festos and key beliefs of those whose work and process I admire.

One of those fine visual com­mu­ni­ca­tors is Mil­ton Glaser. He is a cur­mud­geon at times — I relate with that. He believes in the human­ity of the design process and that our work at its best adds some­thing to our col­lec­tive cul­ture. Here is num­ber one of the ten things he has learned. As usual, he’s right.

1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
This is a curi­ous rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the begin­ning of my prac­tice I felt the oppo­site. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism required that you didn’t par­tic­u­larly like the peo­ple that you worked for or at least main­tained an arms length rela­tion­ship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the oppo­site was true. I dis­cov­ered that all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client. And I am not talk­ing about pro­fes­sion­al­ism; I am talk­ing about affec­tion. I am talk­ing about a client and you shar­ing some com­mon ground. That in fact your view of life is some­way con­gru­ent with the client, oth­er­wise it is a bit­ter and hope­less struggle.