In graduate school, Randy Hunt spent weeks on a poster for Milton Glaser’s class. He built an image entirely from hand lettering, so it read as a picture from across the room and as words up close. Glaser pointed at it and said, “Well, that’s not very good,” and moved on to the next student.
Ouch! Randy tells the story fondly. He went on to apprentice in Glaser’s studio, then led design at Etsy, Grab, and Notion, and he chairs the MFA Design program at the School of Visual Arts. Glaser played a huge role in shaping Randy’s sensibility as a designer, and his standards for quality.
Eli and I talked with Randy about what that standard looks like inside a software company. His answers apply whether you lead a team or want to join a better one.
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Set a high bar and good people get better
Quality standards are often framed as a bar to aspire to, but Milton Glaser had a quality floor, a baseline of excellent he expected from his studio and from his students. Randy compares it to teaching to the top of the class.
Randy brings the same approach to his own teams. Put five or six excellent designers together, especially ones who keep their egos in check, and each of them improves faster than they would alone. Everyone’s work raises what the others expect of themselves.
“Keep the floor really high so that the ceiling can get higher.”
—Randy Hunt
Dan Harden described the same kind of mentor when he told us about working for George Nelson. Nelson, he said, “was always striving for the apotheosis, the very best you can do,” and he refused to compromise on the design while others argued about cost. Both Dan and Randy describe a mentor whose standard became their own.
“The objective should be to keep improving one’s basic product.”
—George Nelson
Glaser was generous as well as demanding. Randy calls him a “communication philosopher” who cared about how people feel about things. He remembers the bowl of fresh fruit Glaser kept in the studio, gesture of hospitality to all who visited the studio.
