Every little job counts. Design counts.

People in the UK will say that the design community in the US is much more coherent than other countries. It has no government support at all, so it's really like a grass roots thing.

The Nike swash that cost $30 and was designed by a Portland State University art student was probably worth that when she first showed it to them. At that point it had no equity at all. None of the guys commissioning it particularly liked it, they all wanted the Adidas three stripes and they thought that was a good logo.

In the US you have New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami and dozens of other cities; a few of them have a really strong visual character. But even with those there is just too much space between them and too many people.

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.

I wanted to be a graphic designer from the time I was 15, without ever having actually met one. I lived in the mid-west, not in a media centre, and I didn't know anyone who did that for a living. It took me a while to find out what that thing I wanted to do was actually called, but once I sorted that out I got really interested in it.

A good cook can make something amazing out of even the blandest ingredients. Still, you don't want to eat the exact same dish every day.