We Are COLLINS: A Conversation with Design Leadership at the Celebrated Strategy & Brand Experience Company
Interview by Michael O’Donnell / Editor of the WNW Magazine
In talking to several higher-ups at COLLINS this fall, I was quickly reminded of founder Brian Collins’ nearly mythic stature in the world of design and advertising. Over the past decade, Creative Directors and Design Directors at COLLINS' offices in New York and San Francisco have universally chosen to work there not only because of the company’s creative reputation—but also because of what its namesake set out to establish with his colleagues from the very beginning.
Brian once framed it like this: “It’s about all of us, here. It’s diverse talent, curiosity, and passion of our people that I hope always pushes us—and our work—forward. Here’s a key: We never hire for that grim HR idea ‘cultural fit.’ Ever. ‘Do you fit?’ What an awful question. We hire, instead, for cultural contribution. What is most different about you? Most...weird? Uniformity butchers creativity. We want to build a place where people will always bring—and always be—something new.”
The particular combination of senior creatives Nick Ace, Megan Bowker, Ben Crick, and Louis Mikolay proves Brian’s point. It’s the quickly exceeded expectations and open invitation for individuality and ambition that has kept them fulfilled. “I’ve been at COLLINS eight years now. It was a different company back then,” San Francisco-based Partner and Creative Director Ben Crick recalls. “But even then, COLLINS was not about one person's vision. Each designer’s different perspective was celebrated and elevated.”
I caught up with these four members of design leadership, split between COLLINS’ two offices, to shine a light on the industry perspective of the strategy and brand experience company, how that insider reputation was met and swiftly surpassed, and which projects have only further solidified their team appreciation for incredible craft at incredible scale.
Editor’s Note: In a companion piece to this feature, we’ll discuss with COLLINS the challenges of functioning as a company mid-pandemic, and how they’ve managed to continue producing great work in the face of less-than-ideal conditions.
Tales of Joining COLLINS: New Design Thinking & “Incredible Craft at Incredible Scale”
Ben Crick (Partner & Creative Director, SF): I was fascinated with how Brian Collins thought about design. He lived outside the echo chamber—and often in direct rebellion of the status quo. He taught me to always see design from two perspectives: the professional and the casual observer. To most, an unseen force shaping the world around them. One with still hidden reserves of untapped potential to make things better. Through him I began to see the potential for graphic design at scale in a way that I had previously been somewhat disdainful of. So I asked for a job.
Nick Ace (Partner & Creative Director, NY): I wound up at COLLINS in December 2013, approximately 5 years after I took Brian’s class at SVA’s MFA Design department. I admired the company’s ability to achieve incredible craft at incredible scale. And I admired Brian’s less precious attitude to those of his contemporaries.
Megan Bowker (Design Director, NY): I first heard about COLLINS in my junior year of school at SVA. I was looking for an internship, trying to map out which firms were doing interesting work. At the time, I believe COLLINS had just launched their new website and the Spotify work really put them on the map for me. I was really excited after graduation to hear from them as they were looking to fill a new design position. At the time, my main perception of COLLINS was that they fit what I considered a niche of “great craft at scale.” In other words, bringing a small, inventive studio approach to large-scale clients and audiences, which is something I didn’t see a lot of other studios doing at the time.
Louis Mikolay (Creative Director, SF): In 2018 I had been planning to start my own studio with a colleague, but Brian Collins and Ben Crick inspired/persuaded me to make a gigantic leap of faith across the pond (and across The States) to help lead the COLLINS office here in San Francisco. I was super familiar with COLLINS work—they were one of the only studios out there applying the kind of creativity and craft that I care about, especially for complex, strategic brand projects for big organizations. I also knew COLLINS had a reputation for helping some of the most interesting and innovative tech companies re-think and leverage the power of brand. They saw design as a strategic and growth function more than a simply expressive one—which was something I was very interested in.
“COLLINS had a reputation for helping some of the most interesting and innovative tech companies re-think and leverage the power of brand. They saw design as a strategic and growth function more than a simply expressive one.”
Expectations? Exceeded.
Ben Crick: Brian was interested in quality, not any house style or even a particular creative ideology. We would talk about the architectural design of Disneyland as much as we spoke about typography. Success was always about more than aesthetics here. It was about belief, impact, meaning, and behavior.
I was struck with a great sense of ambition. From the company. From the individuals within the company. And for design itself as a more influential, expansive discipline.
Nick Ace: After 7 years with the company, everything I had envisioned for myself and for COLLINS has happened—our craft and scale has developed tenfold, also largely thanks to our Director of Talent, Yocasta LaChapelle.
I knew I would be able to collaborate with intelligent, diverse minds and ambitious clients, but would never have imagined how many minds, how many clients, and how many places I would travel to work with them. I knew I could take on a lot and thought I knew what I was capable of in 2013, but didn’t realize the threshold of my resilience in often impossible situations.
“My expectations have been both met and surpassed. The caliber of projects and of clients has consistently grown over the course of my time here. To this day I’m constantly surprised and energized by the projects and clients coming in.”
Megan Bowker: My expectations have been both met and surpassed. The caliber of projects and of clients has consistently grown over the course of my time here. To this day I'm constantly surprised and energized by the projects and clients coming in.
Louis Mikolay: It’s exactly how it feels. I really got to understand that the work is so strong because of our teams—a wild mix of characters that ultimately balance laser-focused strategic thinking, potent storytelling, and an unrelenting passion for the craft of design on every project we touch.
Being in San Francisco, we work with a lot of medium to large tech companies. That’s exactly what I expected, but I was excited to find out that we also get to work with a whole bunch of other interesting clients like Cora—the premium feminine care brand whose mission is to revolutionize the female experience, as well as iconic cultural institutions like the San Francisco Symphony.
“Each designer’s different perspective was celebrated and elevated. Brian was interested in quality, not any house style or even a particular creative ideology...Success was always about more than aesthetics here. It was about belief, impact, meaning, and behavior.”
Making Great Work, From the Ground Up: A Conversation Around Favorite COLLINS Projects
Ben Crick: How dare you. I love all my children, equally.
But it’s hard to argue with Spotify—a project of great personal and professional growth for me, and a turning point in my career. It has been incredible to see the seeds we planted still bearing fruit for their teams six years later. It also showed me the power of design at scale. I believe it was the kernel of COLLINS mantra: Design is not what we do, Design is what we make possible for others. When the Spotify team won In-House Agency of the year in 2018, I could not have been prouder for them. Since then, I’ve had the chance to work with Spotify on numerous other projects, from reactive event spaces, to brand architecture, artist sub branding, and even playlist cover art. I also worked with them on their IPO event.
Nick Ace: HBO, Warner Music, Crane, Azealia Banks x Google Cloud, Chubb, Swarm, Naturalizer, and Happy Valley. I am proud of those projects because of the collective ambition and imagination demonstrated by us in partnership with our clients. In addition, I pride myself most on originality, and none of those projects looked or felt like anything else that was out at the time.
“I knew I would be able to collaborate with intelligent, diverse minds and ambitious clients, but would never have imagined how many minds, how many clients, and how many places I would travel to work with them.”
Megan Bowker: The project I’m most proud of is one that hasn’t launched yet—but it's a brand for girls whose mission is to champion female ambition. Fittingly, it was one of the first rebrands that I led creatively, along with a comprehensive team of all women—strategy, account, design, and copy. It has been such a rich and rewarding experience to work on something I love, with a team I love, for a client whose mission I absolutely believe in. Visuals to come.
Louis Mikolay: I’m super proud of everything we put out, but our work with the San Francisco Symphony is a real highlight for me—partnering so closely with a world-class orchestra at a critical moment and welcoming an unbelievably talented new Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, was as inspiring as projects get. I’m also incredibly happy with the creative solution—a simple idea which was touched by almost everyone in the studio (and got stronger each time) that I think finally starts to push and test the possibilities of variable typography.
Ben Crick: From a broader perspective, it’s been a wild ride as COLLINS has grown and expanded—both extraordinarily tough and extraordinarily rewarding. When I started out the team was just 10 people. I feel fortunate to have been trusted to experiment with all kinds of solutions for design at scale. Having also worked plenty on smaller, more contained projects, I feel qualified to say that the problem of maintaining craft at scale is an exponentially complex and challenging one. How do you resist entropy with so many vying perspectives, organizational layers, and goals? Seeking new ways to answer that question keeps all of us on our toes here.
In many respects, COLLINS has been an ongoing experiment in figuring out these puzzles, and I feel privileged to have contributed to that journey for so long now.