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Branding, Bravery, and the Responsibility of Leadership
September 30, 2025 AI and Creativity Branding Creative Bravery Design Leadership Leadership Personal Brand
Featuring
Debbie Millman, Host of Design Matters and Founder of SVA Masters in Branding

Debbie Millman is a creative legend and the host of Design Matters, one of the longest-running podcasts on design and culture. She’s the founder of the Master’s in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts and has helped define the visual identities of brands like Burger King, Häagen-Dazs, Gillette, and Star Wars. An Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, Debbie is also a prolific writer, artist, and creative strategist with over 20 years of experience leading creative conversations. Her most recent book, A Love Letter to a Garden, builds on her exploration of creativity, meaning, and connection in everyday life.

Branding, Bravery, and the Responsibility of Leadership

What does creative leadership look like in a time of disruption? For two decades, Debbie Millman has explored that question with the world’s most inspiring creators, and in her newest book, A Love Letter to a Garden, she brings the same spirit of reflection and imagination to the natural world. In this episode, she shares what she’s learned about bravery, identity, and design as a mirror of culture, shaped by her work with brands like Burger King, Häagen-Dazs, Gillette, and Star Wars. From the power of personal brands to the risks brands must take to stay human, this is a conversation that goes far deeper than trends. Tune in for insight from one of the most enduring voices in design.

Takeaways:

  • Why branding is “a profound manifestation of the human spirit”
  • How to foster creative bravery without pushing people off a metaphorical cliff
  • The #1 trait shared by the most creative people Debbie’s interviewed
  • What effective creative leadership looks like in 2025, and why it starts with service, not power
  • How Debbie’s own boldest risk reshaped her legacy
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mentioned in this show:
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Adam Morgan
Creative Leader and RCL Host
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The Stoke Group
Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency
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REAL CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Season: 6

Episode: 3

Episode Title: Branding, Bravery, and the Responsibility of Leadership

Guest Title:
Debbie Millman, Host of Design Matters and Founder of SVA Masters in Branding

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Adam Morgan

Welcome back to Real Creative Leadership, where we explore the ideas, the people, the bold moves, shaping the creative industry and creative leadership. Today we’re diving into a big topic, trends in creativity and design, but this won’t be a surface level scroll through what’s hot on TikTok. Instead, we’re going to go deeper into the shifts in culture and leadership and design thinking that are changing the way we work, what we value and what it means to create with purpose. And to do that, I’m thrilled to welcome someone who’s not just been watching the Evolution of Design, but she’s been leading it. 

Debbie Millman is a force. She’s the host of Design Matters, one of the longest running podcasts on design and culture, and the founder of the SBA Masters in Branding Program. She’s also a prolific writer, artist, and creative strategist who’s helped define the visual identities of brands like Burger King, Haagen-Dazs, Gillette, and Star Wars. Debbie is a maker, a mentor, and a futurist, and she has a very sharp eye on what’s next. So thank you, Debbie. Welcome to the show.

Debbie Millman

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Adam Morgan

So, we are gonna dig into some of these wonderful topics, but first with just a little bit that we’ve read up on you, we wanna just ask some, some interesting questions. For example, you’ve said before that “branding is the profound manifestation of the human spirit.” So what does that mean in a world that’s always changing? Give us some context.

Debbie Millman

Well, actually I was quoting the late Great Wally Olins who said that in an interview that I conducted with him for, I think it was for my book, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits, and he was talking about how brands really on their best day haven’t been created to sell something. It hasn’t been it hasn’t been created to, increase a P&L or fill a shelf, but humans have created brands in an effort to be able to telegraphically express who we are, what we believe in, to discover like-minded people that might feel the same way with the same symbols that they might be wearing or sharing, and that. If we viewed branding as much a form of communication, if not more so than a capitalist tool, then we could potentially use brands as a way to connect our higher selves.

Adam Morgan

Well, for those of us who just got into this as almost like it’s, uh, branding was just another way to make it, a living that’s a lot more philosophical and exciting of how brands.

Debbie Millman

Well, if you think about it, we’ve been using symbols to communicate for the last 50 or so thousand years ago when we first started to make marks on the cave walls of “Let’s Go” where we were essentially recording our reality, our first symbols to organize who we are and what we believe, warrant for soda drinks and salty snacks. It was for religions and to express our relationship to a higher power. And that behavior has continued almost undaunted ever since. And we’ve been using this craft of creating symbols to signify beliefs and behavior for as long as we’ve been modern Homo sapiens.

Adam Morgan

No, that’s fair. Yeah. And our job as branders is just to get people to care about those emotional connections, whether they’re religions or whether they are salty, salty snacks. But even just.

Debbie Millman

I dunno if you can get anybody to care about anything, I think that what you wanna do is introduce the ideas to them and give them the space to discover and then potentially care. You know I have, I have real issues with the manipulative side of marketing, which is, I think, you know, something we have to contend with all the time. How do we get someone to think this way about this thing and create more followers and more likes and bigger tribes and, and that has increasingly become a bit more despairing to me than usual.

Adam Morgan

Then what’s the right tactic? Create something and stand for something, and then see who’s attracted to it.

Debbie Millman

I think standing something, standing for something right now is absolutely critical for any brand. I think that if you are creating any type of innovation, of course you wanna share it. You wanna, encourage people to want to participate. I still believe that if you create not a brand that is not just about a different form or a different flavor or a different shape, but if you are able to create a brand that can really make a difference in someone’s life, then you have a fan for life. You can create a way for people to engage with things that enhance how they feel. About their lives, about living, about being one of many on this planet. And you have the potential to use that power for any number of different ways. And I think we’re seeing more and more how brands must now be willing to take risks, to stand for things that are not only important to their audience, but important to them and, and sharing that information, revealing that information about who they are, in my mind, is the most important tactic a brand could undertake in today’s world.

Adam Morgan

And I don’t know. I’d love to hear your take on this too. My experience recently is that there is a much bigger resurgence in brand. You know, we went through this whole kind of performance marketing thing and everything swayed, a decade ago into like metrics, metrics, metrics. What can we measure, what can we do? And now I’m sensing just a lot more of even big brand budgets moving towards just, yeah, that higher level brand awareness, or what we stand for, or what we’re all about versus just the churn of, of content in a, in a pipeline. So anyhow, I don’t know if you’re noticing that as well.

Debbie Millman

I’m sad to say that I’ve been actually noticing a lot of the opposite, where, for example, a brand like Target, that was once so pro-diversity and pro-marginalized communities have backtracked and are seemingly far more tentative than they’ve ever been in their entire history about standing up for those that don’t always have the loudest voices and that’s really, really shocking and incredibly sad for me to see a brand that has been so beloved, so committed to design, you know, a designer’s designer for, for lack of a better way of saying it. They’ve always been, uh, or they had historically been on the forefront of some of the great mainstream design efforts in recent memory. And for them to backtrack in the way that they have over the last two or three years is heartbreaking. It’s really heartbreaking. I mean, there are some brands that have stood by their values and their principles, but not many. I mean, but also walked back on some of what they once touted, they stood for. And when brands do that. I think it’s almost more dangerous when they backtrack than not coming out with a stance at all,

Adam Morgan

At all.

Debbie Millman

Because what it then says is that we are not as strong as culture, that we’re not willing to stand up for our values, that we’re not willing to take a stand. We’re not willing to risk any potential financial downturn for the sake of our beliefs. And I think when you do that, especially with today’s audience, consumer people, et cetera, that that causes more damage to their relationship with the brand than if they hadn’t said anything at all to begin with.

Adam Morgan

Yeah, that’s a fair point. Things are changing. 

Debbie Millman

Tell me who’s doing a good job. Who’s.

Adam Morgan

Well, it’s just more of just like in, in B2B I’m just seeing that it, you know, we were, it’s such a culture of performance marketing of you gotta create a, you know, a, a lead funnel and you gotta follow through with that lead funnel. And it was working for a long, long time, but. It just seems lately like, like a handful of d different brands that I’m working with and watching that they are seeing the value of, even at my current one at Twilio, like seeing the value of kind of brand awareness or just like a highest level of what you, and maybe what not necessarily that you stand for in a, a social or political environment, but more of like what your company is all about, like what you do and putting more effort into that.

I think people are saying, oh, when I invest in brand, it lifts everything. You know, it increases all of those sales deals. It increases people caring about you. As you know, AI and search engine and algorithms are changing. It really is gonna be like, you’ve gotta be top of mind in order to make it, you know, in that, in that new environment. Anyhow, onto a new topic. Uh, Design Matters is turning 20. So let’s hear about that. How has the conversation evolved over the years? Where do you see it now versus before? Like just some interesting trends just in your world.

Debbie Millman

Well, the whole world has changed in the last 20 years since I started the show. I started the show in February of 2005, came up with the idea for the show in the fall of 2004. Uh, but it was really as a show that was going to live on a, a live radio show that was gonna live on a then fledgling internet radio network. By the sheer need to let my dad listen to the show whenever he wanted, as opposed to live at 3:00 PM on, on a Friday on a laptop, I started to upload the shows to, what was then iTunes before there was a podcast section, just as if I were an indie musician. And that’s how the podcast was inadvertently born. And a lot has changed in the, in the last 20 years, obviously. In terms of the show, first my sound has gotten a lot better ’cause I have a producer.

Adam Morgan

Hopefully, yeah. 

Debbie Millman

That came after 100 episodes where I’d gotten enough commentary from people like, “Hey, the content’s really good, but what about that audio?” And so I have a studio now as, as you can see from behind me. And, I started out first. First it was just. Friends, friends of mine that were designers, very inside baseball, talking about graphic design and branding. And then I extended to friends of friends and then friends of friends and maybe leaders in, in the design world. And then over the years, it, it extended to anybody that was creative and making something from nothing. And it could be a musician, a writer, a playwright, an artist, anybody that was trying to make something with ideas. And, uh, it’s been over 700 people since then, and I’ve been doing it continuously for 20 years, which is. Really surreal. I can’t even believe how fast 20 years goes. One thing that I think is pretty remarkable is how even the greatest creative minds of our time that I’ve had the opportunity to speak with, or always looking to keep making something new the next day, they’re always looking to better their ideas and break through to something new. And I find that just incredibly inspiring and, and really hopeful for the planet as well.

Adam Morgan

Well, not only that, it’s like, sounds like a, it’s a very. Endless to topic, creativity and human creativity and where people are growing and building and making things. It’s just so fascinating. ‘Cause you’re right. Like that’s the human spirit, right, of human ingenuity of we just keep going and going and going and changing and trying new things. Yeah. We’ve barely hit, we’re like into season six. I can’t imagine season 20 or 20 years. Was it, there’s like some stats on podcasts where it’s like. I dunno, af like 80% of them fail after, whatever, five episodes or something like that, and they.

Debbie Millman 

Oh wow.

Adam Morgan

So the fact that you’ve gone and then there was another one, and then another big chunk drops off after two years. But, yeah, 20 good testament of something that’s everlasting. So well done on that one.

Debbie Millman

Thank you, thank you. Thank you.

Adam Morgan

Well, and, and going in on that line of, you’ve met with. Hundreds of people. you’ve worked with designers and writers and activists, and now you’re working with educators. Tell us about those conversations. Like how has creativity been a part of those conversations and the role that it plays in society?

Debbie Millman

Well, there’s, there’s only a few real common denominators that I can point to in, in my interviews. One I already mentioned that designers and artists and writers and anybody that makes things for a living, I find that they’re always looking forward in terms of what they could make next. Most creative people do not rest on their laurels. They’re not like, oh, I did this yesterday so I’m good tomorrow. It’s always, it seems to be very much a, I made this yesterday, I hope I can do better tomorrow. I hope that my best work isn’t behind me. And that seems to be a fairly pervasive sentiment. And then there’s also the notion that they’re still insecure. There are very, very few people, I could count them on one hand, that I’ve interviewed that just seemed perfectly okay as is. They weren’t worried, they weren’t insecure anymore, they just were really comfortable doing what they do and acknowledging what they’ve made with their lives. And actually, they’re all men, so it’s.

Adam Morgan

Uh oh. So the five that are.

Debbie Millman

Um, all, all, all, all white men that, that I could say that about. Everybody else has, has been, and again, I’d say maybe, maybe four, maybe five people. That’s it. And they were also of a certain age, like probably over 80. And I, I, you know, I can understand that I haven’t interviewed that many people over 80, and I think by the time you’re over 80 you should be like, you know, I don’t have any more Fs to give. I’m good as is. I don’t need, I don’t have to prove anything anymore to anybody. But until that point, I would say that everybody that I’ve spoken to, and, and I would say this with real statistical significance is still hoping to hit it out of the park again, even though they might have already done it.

Adam Morgan

That’s wild. I mean, it’s certain like, yes, we know that the creative act is a very vulnerable thing where you’re putting something new together and you have no idea how the world will, will react to it. I know for me, starting out in the nineties as a creative and ad agency world, it was like you had to put your babies in front of people and they were your ideas were killed right and left. You know, you had to get really thick skin about it. But yeah, that imposter syndrome is real. Like, I don’t know anyone who, you’re right. That has really made it, had great careers and even all those I’ve interviewed that still like “I hope they don’t fire me. I hope they don’t figure me out. You know, I’m still gonna give it a go and keep trying,’” even though you have amassed a whole bunch of experience.

Debbie Millman

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam Morgan

All right. How about, uh, what’s an example of the, creative work that’s made the biggest impact over the last couple decades? If we’re looking at trends, what types of things are making an a difference?

Debbie Millman

I think people are making a difference, and I think that that’s probably why the resurgence of person as personal brand has become a big, big industry. Again, because you know, it’s, it’s cyclical and, and it’s its resurgence in a big way now. I think that the whole notion of platforms, the whole notion of being able to share your own point of view, your own information, control your own income potentially. All of these things are really appealing to people that are creative. And so I think that the biggest, one of the biggest trends is the solo, practitioner, consultant, influencer, if you choose that word, where you are no longer looking to connect with a sort of faceless group of people, but with, with heft, but with a very personalized experience, with a lot of influence. 

And I think it’s an interesting model we saw some of that really early on in the beginning of the 2000s with the launch of the blogosphere, where suddenly people had a platform to write and communicate and share and influence. And then that moved into social media and we’ve cycled through all sorts of trendy moments in time, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, X, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, now TikTok. It’s always interesting to look at the trajectory and see how the platforms begin to ever so slightly pivot in what people are interested in continuing to see or not see anymore.

Adam Morgan

Well, that actually all lines up with, I just read a, an article that had a, there was a study where, trust from people in institutions and big companies is continuing to decline, and especially in today’s news environment, like people aren’t trusting, who the government or the, the big companies, whatever it is, but trust in individuals is increasing rapidly. And so when we talk about, yeah.

Debbie Millman

Influence. Yeah.

Adam Morgan

Yeah, individual brands and individual peoples, it’s like, we’ll trust someone in their opinion ’cause it’s very human. Even if we know that they may not be getting it right. Even if we know that they don’t have all the data and all the information. We still are attracted.

Debbie Millman

I also think it’s a matter of, of that person being upfront with not necessarily knowing. If somebody says that they do know and then it’s revealed that they don’t, then that erodes trust. But I do think it is easier to trust a person than a corporation or a widely known brand, mostly because people don’t trust what they can’t see or understand. And if we don’t understand how or why something was made, or who it’s been made by or how it’s distributed, then of course we become mistrustful because humans aren’t willing to accept that everything is going to be okay unless they know it’s okay. So, so if we don’t know something, we don’t assume it’s okay. If we don’t know something, we assume it’s not okay. and I think that’s a real good survival tactic that we all hopefully have. But I also have a real issue with the notion of people wanting to position themselves as brands as these non-human entities. 

Because while a person can own a brand, and run a brand, and manage a brand, and even have their own brand, if you begin to see yourself as a brand and not as a person, you become more manufactured in the eyes of your audience and less human, and I don’t know any human that would wanna seem less human in an effort to sell more products.

Adam Morgan

Yeah, that’s. Totally fair. Although the interesting, another trend that, I’m hearing, I was at a leadership conference and they’re saying, with where things are going with AI, it could be that in the next who knows how long, we’re gonna see the first billion dollar company that’s a solopreneur, that’s a one person. And so that starts to get interesting as people and brands are one thing, and companies are one thing, and it’s only one person. It’s not this big conglomerate of faceless branding. So that’ll be fascinating as we see where things go with all of that.

Debbie Millman

So when you say a single person. I mean I would look at any of the Jenners with their billion dollar businesses. Is that what you mean?

Adam Morgan

No, but they have a whole company of people, like we’re talking like one human being using AI to extend themselves and.

Debbie Millman

Oh, using AI.

Adam Morgan

Something huge. Like that’s, that’s a, that’s a different phenomenon. So no, not just like someone who is a famous person and is a brand. Of course there’s many of those billion dollar folks out there right now. But just like. Someone who’s come from nothing and creates a company and it’s just them and they’re automating everything. That’ll be interesting to see if that happens.

Debbie Millman

How, what are you feeling about AI these days?

Adam Morgan

Oh, we just, I was just at a leadership conference for the last week on where we’re trying to guess where things are going in the next couple years and the whole organization of marketing departments and how, you know, a lot of things are gonna be changing from just. wasting so much time of interpersonal checking and connecting in big organizations, but two, some people being in charge of all the inputs, like what the brand is, what the elements are, what the art is, and others who are outputs, who are more generalists, who are just gonna assemble a lot of things and, and create campaigns and events and all sorts of things fairly quickly.

So it’s an exciting, exciting time. I mean, it was funny, like they went around to all these leaders of what they were feeling, and it was a mix of. Of fear and uncertainty along with excitement, of where things are going. But there’s still so much unknown. But I can see some, like in that group where they’re looking towards where we think things are gonna be going, in the next little while, even though it’s not there right now. But how do we start taking steps to get there? But I, I think there’s a lot of denial that I’ve seen, AI denial where people are like, oh, it won’t change what I do. I’m. creativity is immune and I just actually just got an article in Adweek this week, on why AI won’t kill creativity, and I certainly believe it, but it won’t, it’ll still change.

Like it’s gonna change of how we run big marketing departments and brands and teams and stuff, and we’ll just have to be able to be ready to zag with it. All right, let’s go into a new section now. We’ve talked a little about, philosophical of where things go with brands and people and ideas, but since this is a show called Real Creative Leadership and it’s all about leadership, I’d love to have a few questions on that. Because you’ve led teams, you’ve built institutions, coached creatives.

Talk to me about what effective creative leadership looks like for you in 2025.

Debbie Millman

Well, effective creative leadership, I think, has a number of different criteria and responsibilities. First, you need to be very clear on why you want to be leading and it, it can’t be for power. It has to be, because you have ideas that you can hold yourself accountable to manifesting. You also have a responsibility to the people that you are leading in, that you are both training them to also be good leaders while they’re doing the work that they’re doing, but also you are able to get the best possible work out of them with them.

The very best leaders really have to care about who they’re leading and their success should be as important, if not more important than your own personal success. And in many ways, I think the more inclusive, the more transparent and the more candid you are with people about why you are leading, how you’re leading. And who else you are leading will help you become the best possible leader. Leader, being a leader is about servicing. It’s about servicing the people that you are leading and also servicing the people that are bearing the fruits of those that you’re managing and providing for. So leadership is messy. Leadership is really hard. It’s probably the hardest job to have in an organization because so much rides on the success of, of how you lead. It’s a great, great responsibility and it has a lot of, accountabilities and a lot of, um. It challenges you to be the best you could be, even when you don’t know what your best is.

Adam Morgan

I really like this idea of, it starts with an idea that you believe in. If I think about when I started a career in the mid-nineties as a creative, it was really about it’s ’cause I fell in love with big ideas, and I love this framework that you have of, it’s not about power. It’s not about, I just, I’m doing it because I wanna make more money. I want to, move up in society. It’s really about, as a leader to have a vision and an idea that you think is so powerful that you want everyone else to, to feel that idea. I love that. That’s a, that’s a good framework.

Debbie Millman

You, you have to be able to get people to do things that they might not otherwise have been able to do on their own, not because they’re not capable, but because they didn’t think it was possible. And so when you are leading someone, you are actually going higher. You’re, you’re going above and beyond and you wanna take those people with you to allow them to understand their own power. So when you are in power, you have to empower and that empowerment allows everyone to rise higher.

Adam Morgan

So if we’re leading people to do things that they never would’ve on their own, how do we foster creativity?

Debbie Millman

Not that they never would’ve been on their own, it just would’ve been a lot harder for them to do on their own.

Adam Morgan

That’s fair.

Debbie Millman

Or they might not even know they could do on their own. A real leader makes you feel really good about working with them. They want to work for you. They want to do well. They want to do things that are going to make the, the whole culture or the company, or the department better. Real leadership instills tremendous loyalty and if it’s done right, where you’re all working together for the same things to do bigger and better things than you might’ve been able to do on your own.

Adam Morgan

So how do we not just foster creativity, but also creative bravery? How do we get people to feel so inspired that they, like you said, do things that they didn’t know they could?

Debbie Millman

I think it’s with small steps. You can ask somebody, I mean, you could ask somebody to jump out of an airplane with zero training, but chances are they’re not going to feel very brave doing it. They’re gonna feel like terrified. I think that what you need to be able to do is establish small wins where you get people to step out of their comfort zone before you ask them to step out of an airplane and in that experience, that success, that the successful repetition of that endeavor, even if it’s becomes more and more challenging, that repetition breeds confidence and that confidence breeds more success. So it starts very small, from very small steps, but then can move into things that are much grander. I think that people are often waiting for confidence to happen, or thinking that they can go to a supermarket and pull confidence off a shelf.

Confidence doesn’t work that way. What we need first before confidence is actually that courage to step into the unknown, not knowing what the result will be. We’ll never as a species feel good about doing that. Humans, just by the sheer genome that we inhabit, are are very tentative about uncertainty, the unknown, the future where it can’t be predicted. And so there’s always a trepidation when facing something that you don’t know. In order to do something courageous, you have to step into that unknown. There’s no avoiding it. You can’t go around it, you can’t go underneath it. You can only go through it. 

Adam Morgan

Well, as you were going through all that, it made me think of, oh, is there anything courageous I’ve done? Maybe, maybe not. I think of my career and, you know, I, I started in the nineties in ad agency life, for 20 years, and then I made the jump to try and just go over to the brand side, and I remember all of the words echoing in my ears that it’s oh, “going in-house is like creative suicide” and “you’re just gonna be stuck in a back room and it’s the worst ever.” And you’re not, your creativity’s gonna be stifled and boring. But I’ll tell you what, like that was a crazy move. But I feel like, at least for me, internally, working as like a brand expert in a company has been phenomenal, like life changing. Now it’s like I can drive the stories, I can decide what, where we’re going and what the brand stands for and all those kinds of things. It’s really liberating and fun. So, and I’ve seen a trend of that, like with my, all the people I knew, in the nineties and early two thousands of like, “Oh, don’t ever go in-house.” So many of ’em moving over and, and really having great experiences. So, I dunno, that’s something that changed, with my creative career.

Debbie Millman

Oh yeah.

 

Adam Morgan

What about you? Any big risk taking that shaped your career that was.

Debbie Millman

Oh my God, I’ve, I mean, turning down the CEO position at Sterling Brands was a huge risk for me. I didn’t, I in, I had been at Sterling for 20 years at that point. I was plotting my exit strategy and just when I thought that I was gonna make the jump, I was offered the CEO position I had been president for, at that point, about 18 or 19 years. And, really had to struggle through that decision. You know, did I want to leave before having that role? Did I want to take one for the team and that there weren’t that many CEO women within Omnicom, which is the network that Sterling was a part of. Um, what did it mean for my, my legacy or my family or any of, any number of things. But ultimately I had decided that I was committed to doing all of the other things that I always said I was going to do and had to take that leap.

That was probably one of the biggest risks of my life. But I’m glad I did it. Starting, starting the podcast was not a risk really, because there weren’t people doing podcasts at the time for, for the most part, nobody even knew what I was doing. And the fact that anybody listened at all was just a, a, a win. And so it really wasn’t much of a risk. It was probably more risky to just keep going over the years and continue to do it. Luckily, I, I haven’t lost any audience, so that’s good.

Adam Morgan

Oh, that’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that. That’s good to hear just like the personal experiences. Well, in this last little bit, let’s just talk about some other bigger trends. What’s a trend that you think has staying power, something you’ve seen over the past decade or so that it’s not gonna change back?

Debbie Millman

I think our search for information is not going to change. One thing about being the age that I am now, which is, I think, quite a bit older than you are, is that I went through the whole debate in the eighties of what the computer was predicted to do to the design business.

Adam Morgan

Nice.

Debbie Millman

And so I was there in the audience listening to Milton or Massimo, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli talk about how, the computer was going to take all the soul out of our business, that it was going to destroy our business, take all our jobs, and we would, lose all of our creative agency. And is that familiar? Does that sound familiar?

Adam Morgan

Oh, so familiar right now with AI. See you later, suckers. You’re not gonna have jobs in the future. Yeah.

Debbie Millman

And, and it’s so interesting because again, this is what I was talking about before, and when we think about the future and we don’t know what’s coming, it’s very hard for us to be really optimistic about uncertainty. We always think about what we’re gonna lose as opposed to what we might gain because we don’t know we what we might gain if it hasn’t been invented yet. I’m not saying that there’s no reason to worry at all. I’m saying that there’s always reason to worry when people are involved. However, a lot of the exact same arguments are being stated with the exact same amount of terror. And yes, there were some jobs that were lost.

Adam Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Debbie Millman

Type setting, bit of pre-press, pre-production work, but there were, you know, I was just at Apple Park a couple of days ago. I don’t know that any of those jobs would’ve been jobs 45 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of people. And not just people that worked at Apple. I was there for WWDC, and so there were all the developers there. And so all of those jobs were jobs that were created through the technology, with the technology. So I hope, you know, going back to branding as a profound manifestation of the human spirit, or could be, we could as a species commit to, to using our technology for good. I doubt we’d get consensus on what that good would be.

Adam Morgan

Hmm. Hmm.

Debbie Millman

But I do think a trend we will constantly be facing is the fear of the future and what anything that we make or mark might do to our security or our safety and any, I mean, we can’t even design a logo with people not going crazy about whether it’s good or bad.

Adam Morgan

We’ll always have opinions. Yeah, that’s fair.

Debbie Millman

So, so I think the same will be, can be said for any technology.

Adam Morgan

Hmm.

Debbie Millman

I do hope that rather than spend the energy on fearing and fighting what this might bring, that we learn and educate ourselves and be able to leverage that learning and education into guiding where it goes instead of fighting where it goes.

Adam Morgan

I agree. For me, with this latest big round of AI and all the hyper on that I like better, the idea of leading with hope and vision of where you can go, rather than fear and uncertainty of “it’s coming for you, so you better do something.” I think humans, especially creatives, we’re such emotional animals that having, a vision of where to go feels a lot, a lot better than scared.

Debbie Millman

Yeah, and I, I think that we’ll only be as good as we wanna be, and if people want to use any technology for bad, that will happen. But any technology that we’ve made over our histories as humans has been feared. When, the railroad could go over 40 miles per hour, people were afraid to get on the railroad ’cause they thought that speed would make our skin fall off. Fly off, not joking. Look it up.

Adam Morgan

Well, glad that didn’t turn out.

Debbie Millman

Yeah. So we, we tend to approach anything that we are not either in control of, aware of, or privy to with skepticism and fear. If we take that into account with everything that we encounter, then it might make our lives ever so slightly less stressful.

Adam Morgan

Yeah. There we go. All right, well thank you Debbie. Before we wrap, I just wanna summarize a few of the things we’ve talked about, just ’cause there’s some really good takeaways that have kind of stood out. Number one, we talked about design is a mirror of culture. There really is a lot with how humans interact and how we, since religion and times of the past that you talked about all the way to today, like how we reflect our values and what we stand for. So as you’re creating brands, look for brands that stand for something and, and mean something to others. We talked about creative leadership and that it leadership is really all about setting an example and, and guiding people and giving them inspiration and looking where you can go and, and making sure they have the vision so that they also can, can make things that they didn’t know they could. We also talked about bravery, that leadership is about going out there and stepping out into the void first, and then living through that discomfort so that others can see that it’s okay and that they can follow you and cr and create amazing things with you. And then finally, design really does matter.

It’s not just about branding and visuals, but it’s how we build meaning, connection, and impact in the world. So thank you so much, Debbie, for joining us. And for sharing, not just about what’s trending, but your personal journey and what’s timeless and all the great experiences that you’ve learned over the past 20 years.

Debbie Millman

Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure, real honor to join you today. Thank you. 

Adam Morgan

And if you enjoyed these, this conversation, don’t forget to subscribe. Leave a review, share this episode with someone else, another creative leader, hopefully. And as always, thanks for listening.