The Designers Who Shape How I See

A personal field guide to the people whose work I return to, from type-makers and brand builders to the thinkers behind clean, considered design.

After a string of interviews, I noticed the same question kept surfacing: “Which designers influence you, and why?” It’s a simple question, but my answers weren’t as sharp as I wanted them to be. So I did what designers do when something isn’t clear: I made something to figure it out. This post is my attempt to trace my influences, understand what they say about my own values and style, and give a proper thank-you to the people shaping how I see.

The Type People

Elena Genova builds the alphabet itself. Based in Edinburgh, she is the force behind the MyCreativeLand and Genotype type foundries, and her portfolio reads like a library of moods. There are warm, nostalgic serifs, an ’80s-inspired family, hand-lettered scripts like Brooklyn Heritage Script, and a steady stream of free fonts for the community. Designing a typeface means making hundreds of small decisions so that someone else can make a thousand more. That patience is what I admire most.

John Bresciani, working from Australia’s Northern Rivers, shows what typography does when it’s put to work. His brand projects start with business goals and customer needs, then become practical, beautiful systems. His personal projects, such as A Typographic Odyssey and his poster collections, let the letterforms run wild. He also gave away a Dynamic Layouts Guide that has been viewed tens of thousands of times. He reminds me that strategy and play can live in the same portfolio.

Paula Scher, a partner at Pentagram, is the grand master of type at scale. I first dove into her work in college, and the boldness has never left me. Her letters don’t sit on a surface. They take over the room, turning into maps, murals and architecture. Her identity for The Public Theater is the clearest example: loud, joyful and impossible to ignore. I’m equally drawn to the texture and grit of her album work at CBS Records, including the cover for Boston’s debut, with its guitar-shaped spaceships. Ironically, she isn’t a fan of that cover herself, which I find reassuring: even the work people remember most isn’t always the work its maker loves. Watching her featured in Netflix’s Abstract only deepened my admiration.

The System Thinkers

Some designers work in restraint and research, shaping how things function as much as how they look.

Dieter Rams, the longtime design chief at Braun, gave the field its most enduring philosophy: less, but better. His ten principles of good design read like a checklist for restraint, and they match my own pull toward clean, minimal work. I come back to them whenever a project starts to feel overloaded, because they remind me that stripping something down isn’t about having less. It’s about making every remaining element earn its place.

Calista Moraes is a communication design student in Mumbai, and she’s the least-known name on this list, which is partly why she’s here. What I admire is the variety of her work and the way she approaches it. She moves between UX research, interface design, editorial and branding, and each piece feels considered rather than formulaic. My favorite is The Making of Me, a tactile book she describes as an exploration of growth, design and storytelling. It follows human development from a single cell onward, and she documents the whole process: layout sketches, a mock prototype, a printed prototype and the printing techniques behind it. It bridges art, biology and storytelling so that young readers can marvel at what’s within themselves. Outside design, she illustrates, writes poetry and plays piano, a reminder that curiosity outside the craft feeds the craft. She’s early in her career, and that’s exactly why I’m watching.

The Brand Builders

Jessica Walsh and &Walsh prove that a brand can have a personality. The studio’s portfolio, including Good Culture, Bombas, Coconut Cult, Dify and She Runs the World, is bold, playful and unmistakably authored. It shows how color, type and attitude can make a company feel like a person you’d want to meet.

Ernesta Smilgeviciute is the founder and creative director of EKSDESIGNS, a branding studio built around a simple conviction: brands should be remembered. Her approach is character-led. She pairs identity systems with mascots and illustration, so a brand feels like it has a face and a voice. Her projects show the range. The Woof Gang, a dog-walking service, is warm and playful. Hendrikx, a golf accessories brand, is premium yet approachable. Mr Mochi, a donut brand, is full of joy. I love her illustrative style, the boldness of her work, and how confident her typography and mascots feel together. I also admire how she builds her audience while doing client work, sharing her process on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube and creating digital products for other creatives. She shows that a studio’s public voice and its client work can strengthen each other.

What the Thread Is

None of these designers share a style. What they share is a stance:

They sweat the small decisions, whether it’s a kerning pair, a print technique or a mascot’s expression. They hold a point of view, so their work is recognizable even without a signature. They share generously, through free fonts, open guides and visible process. And they stay curious, making things that no client asked for.

If someone asked me now what these influences say about my own style, I’d say this: I like work that’s bold, that has a clear point of view, and that you could pick out of a lineup. I can go clean or I can go grunge, depending on what a project needs. But I always want it to feel personable, like a person made it and meant it. Rams taught me to strip things back, Scher taught me to take up the whole room, and the others show me what a recognizable voice looks like in practice. Writing this was meant to sharpen my answer for interviews, but it also showed me how consistent my taste is.

Who’s in your invisible gallery? Tell me in the comments.