Design Thought Leader

I’ve always lived within my means. I’ve never been in debt in my life. I refuse to because I know the minute I’m in debt, I’m then at somebody else’s behest, and it’s the way Hollywood works. Hollywood is very good about getting everybody out there to live richly. So they’re all in debt. They’ve got mortgages, and they have to keep churning out whatever Hollywood wants them to make. And I can’t do that.

Terry Gilliam
Film Director

I actually hate the word ‘feature.’ I’m always trying to develop benefits for people, not features. …

I believe people are willing to pay for value and I’ve seen that time and time again. It takes conviction. You better be sure you are offering something of value and sometimes it takes time and testing to understand where the value is in what you offer.

And you know it’s our responsibility to prove our value to our customer base, through service, through developing the product, through a whole bunch of different things—and every month we’re on the hook for that. But, as you know, as long as we deliver against that—and we have a long track record of doing that right now—people are willing to pay for the value.

Mike McDerment
Co-Founder and CEO of FreshBooks

Creative people have to believe in the value of their work. If you don’t have any belief then you can’t give anything—designing is an act of giving, and a belief in the value of the work fuels the desire to express something. It’s important to know what your values are and to take care of them.

Peter Saville
Designer