A simple MS Word document, or a Powerpoint presentation, has its limits, particularly the unpredictability in how the page will actually display. With a PDF, you are locking down all those variables.

No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer. And no one is quite as good at simulating it.

If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. If you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients.

Sometimes I will give some very vague directions to the designer that I'm working with on a particular project and they'll come back and surprise me with something that really shows a lot of their own 'hand' in it. Other times I'll have a really clear idea about how I want it done and I'll draw it out pretty precisely and say 'make it look exactly like this' and it will be something where it looks like I can say it was 'fully my design'. The work can also range between the two.

Part of maturing as a designer is discovering what you're good at.

It was stone carvers in ancient Rome, scribes in the Middle Ages, all the way through Gutenberg to the present day. That's a pretty long track record. More likely we may reach a point where each one of us is a typographer with our own custom proprietary typeface.

A lot of times, you design a logo to be timeless, but with something like the Olympics, timelessness is maybe not something you should be going for. Maybe you should be trying to come up with something that will really become associated with a moment in time, a few weeks, that happened, period. Then you look back, think about it and connect it with that time. It may look dated later but it will be still be evocative.