Good things come in threes.

D&AD has shortlisted our work with the good people at Figma, Freeform and the Institute of Design.

Cheers to our teams, cheers to our remarkable clients and thank you, judges.

COLLINS Senior Designer Emily Sneddon possesses a rare mix of even rarer traits.

It’s a dangerously balanced cocktail:

Equal parts sharp, driven, insanely talented, tasteful, caring, committed. With a healthy pour of hustle.

And it’s a knockout.

Creative Bloq sat down with her to talk work, growth and words of wisdom.

You can find the full story, here.

At COLLINS, we may surf Pinterest and Are.na less than you would expect. And for good reason. Brian Collins is on the record saying:

“In the process of designing and creating and writing and coding and building and crafting and launching our work, we use many tools for exploration and inspiration.

We use our library, films, animation, travel, painting, theatre, drawing, hiking, dancing, cooking as well as interviews and conversations with our clients and their customers. There are so many different kinds of references and visual stimuli that it is hard to keep track of them all.

But if there is one thing that we have never used it is this:

Mood boards.”

So, it felt fitting when our friend Eve Peyser at The New York Times reached out to Brian for his thoughts on just that subject.

See the full story here.

Our friends at Design Week asked design leaders where investment in our industry needs to be directed to keep the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals within reach.

Taamrat Amaize, Chief Strategy Officer at COLLINS, was among them. As usual, she landed several key points.

See the her thoughts, here.

Join us as Brian Collins speaks about transforming the future of brand at Columbia Business School’s annual BRITE Conference.

April 10, 2023.

If you haven’t heard, Pepsi has a new look.

If you haven’t seen, everyone has thoughts.

Our friend Tim Nudd at Ad Age did the work to gather opinions from around the industry.

You can see Brian Collins’ take as well those from Pum Lefebure, Hamish Campbell, Andy Cooke, Craig Dobie, Yihuang Zhou, Howard Belk, Maria D’Amato, Meg Jannott, Amin Todai, Adriana Ivory, Stephanie Yung, Nicole Massaro, Greg Auer, Stephen Niedzwiecki, Carlos Ortega, Zack McDonald and Neil Cooper.

It’s all here.

Our friends at PRINT sat down with COLLINS Creative Director Joseph Han to discuss the new “We ❤️ NYC” logo.

“People freaked— and are freaking— out. Everyone has a take, and everyone is more than happy to tell you about it. Maybe all the noise is warranted, but that’s not for me to call.

What is warranted is an examination of the response itself, especially for graphic designers. Look at what a logo just did, what a piece of graphic design just did — an entire city of busy, hustling, no-nonsense New Yorkers just threw a tantrum. Not to mention the rest of the world.

That’s remarkable.

Clearly, Milton Glaser’s iconic original logo is embedded in the nerve bundlings and memory banks of this city and people around the globe.

So, we can debate the execution of this new mark, but for me, it is of far more interest and consequence to talk about the unseen and often unfelt role of graphic design in the places we call home.”

See the rest of his thoughts here.

Design Week interviewed COLLINS Senior Designer Indgila Samad Ali on the city’s new campaign logo.

“While she believes the goal behind the new initiative is well-intentioned, Samad Ali says that ‘absolutely anything meant to stand next to or reference the original Milton Glaser logo is going to pale in comparison’.

‘The original is much more than a brilliant piece of graphic art — it’s now a part of New York itself, if not its very heart. To have done this successfully would have required an impossible amount of good luck.’”

Full story here.

Wow.

We are beyond honored to be recognized by Ad Age as their first Business Transformation Agency of the Year.

Ad Age stated the recognition is intended for companies who, with their clients, are “rethinking product offerings…reconfiguring how clients reach customers…recasting a company’s brand mission, or in general finding new ways for clients to…create new connections to incite loyalty, or increase and build their customer base.”

In short, it is a recognition that values strong outcomes as much as strong output. We like that.

And it is directly in line with the belief COLLINS was founded upon fifteen years ago:

Design is not what we make.

Design is what we make possible.

And speaking of possibility, none of this happens without:

1. Each and every one of our remarkable clients. Thank you for your trust, partnership and industry leadership.

2. Our incredible people. We have an extraordinary team spread across our San Francisco, New York and London offices, as well as around the world–from Australia to London to Los Angeles.

Thank you, Ad Age, and thank you, Adrianne for your thoughtful story.

And bravo to all of the rest of the A-List honorees, here, especially our friends and clients at Mailchimp for their In-House Agency of the Year award.

Onward, all.

The people at Creative Review took the time to cover the new purpose and re-brand we recently launched with our friends and clients at Freeform.

COLLINS “was briefed to bring the platform to ‘a new generation of viewers’, by emphasising Freeform’s commitment to ‘young adult stories that buck tropes, flip scripts, and curb such conventions’.”

Not to get too geeky, but as part of the project, we worked closely with the leadership and creative team at Freeform and with the global typography company Monotype to create a new way to deliver a brand voice. We used the very first cut of Helvetica, Neue Haas Grotesk (designed in 1957-1961 by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman at the Haas Type Foundry), and developed a system which allows letters to evolve, shift and warp to better express different ideas, themes and emotions.

As CR said “It makes for striking branding when used in static imagery, but really comes to life in motion – which feels fitting for Freeform’s new positioning…”

Read on here.