For those unfamiliar, Virgil Abloh is no ordinary fashion designer. He has a degree in Engineering and a Masters in Architecture, yet holds a career in fashion instead of the crafts he studied. He acted as creative director to Kanye West for several years and has collaborated with huge brands such as Moncler, Levi’s, Ikea and even Nike. His own fashion brand, Off-White, has become a staple in both streetwear and high-end circles.

Throughout his unconventional career, Abloh has certainly picked up his fair share of knowledge. Prestigious institutions such as Columbia University, the Rhode Island School of Design and the Harvard Graduate School of Design have asked him to share this wisdom with their students. Having listened to these talks (and other interviews of his), I thought I’d try to transcribe the bits that I found most insightful, in hopes of helping the unfamiliar to get to know who Virgil is, as well to share some of the advice he has provided for creatives of all types.

“The only failure is not to try…”

Early on during his speech at the Rhode Island School of Design, Abloh offered a piece of advice he wanted to stick with the graduates: that ‘failure’ isn’t the process of trying and not reaching your goals. Instead, failure is never taking that leap of faith in the first place. Failure is choosing not to pursue something you’re interested in simply because of fear. He said:

“Perfectionism doesn’t advance anything, ironically. As a creative and as a designer, there’s no wrong way to go about the future of your career. The only failure is not to try. I think that, we as [artists] have a natural convention to be tormented, or have a little bit of an inner struggle, about if the work is living up to its fullest potential, or if it is as great as the work you idolized. [At] the end of the day, it’s your body of work, and it’s the amount of work, the refinement of that work, that will define who you are as a creative.”

Abloh reiterated this line of thinking during his Columbia talk, saying that getting the ball rolling on producing truly great work requires putting out some bad work as well:

“A thing that I tell aspiring creators is that […] the only way to get to the end means is to start your domino effect. Which is basically: put out bad work. [laughs] I for one am not a perfectionist, and it’s such a gratifying concept.”

“Pick your mentors and understand what makes their work tick.”

One of the things Abloh stressed was that it’s important to know who your influences are and acknowledge that creativity is in large part an incremental process, not one born out of thin air. He explains:

“A premise that largely doesn’t get talked about a lot, in my thought process in design, is that we all have mentors. Like, no one invented anything. I think, that’s where an artist or designer torment can come in if you’re constantly preoccupied with pretending like you’re not influenced. And pretending that you’ve synthesized something that has never existed without any points of reference. […] The power of [students and society] is that we have the luxury to look back, and we can offer a 2.0 to every idea. If we thought of creativity like tech, without the iPod 1, would we get to the iPhone 7? You know, we’re iterating and building upon those things.”

This point was further expounded upon during his Harvard talk:

“You have to have mentors, dead or alive. You can to connect with some body of work, or someone who formulated a thought or aesthetic. And then build yours upon them. What most people won’t tell you is that, the people you look up to didn’t invent it themselves. Everyone has to have this sort of… I call it getting your brain reprogrammed. Once you learn a thought process, you can actually see yourself in that and add to it.”

Creating your own “Personal Design Language”

Slide from Abloh’s Harvard Presentation

“Everyone’s homework is […] to make your own personal design language. Literally, I’m very upset that it took me, and I’m 37, it took me this long.”

During Abloh’s Harvard talk, he went through a slide that contained what he called his “Personal Design Language” or his signature, a set of thought processes or techniques that define his work.

If you want a more thorough explanation of the 7 parts that inform Virgil’s own design language, you can watch it here. But the purpose behind sharing this was to inspire the audience and anyone else watching to think about why they like the designs and aesthetics they do:

“I basically work at a feverish pace, in a self-serving way, just to find my signature. Like, what’s my DNA? Every architect, designer, artist that I look up to, whether they were doing period paintings or buildings in their early career to the end of their career, there’s basically a through-line. So, what I would challenge you to do in your work, no matter what, is go back. Go back to your earliest memories, or the way that you thought to organize, the way you thought to organize your closet, or what colors were your favorite. Back in that early rational, before you sort of learn too much, that’s when your DNA started.”

By doing this, you can create your own broad “Personal Design Language” which you can refer back to, add to, and use for inspiration in whatever project you begin moving forward.

Abloh’s work process and Off-White’s vision

Telling Stories. Many looks from Off-White’s recent Woman’s Collection were inspired by the late Princess Diana. (virgilabloh “ one woman, 40 @off____white looks in the works come september “)

Abloh also shortly talked about why he likes to work on so many projects at once, from Nike to Ikea to everything else:

“One bullet point of the process of how I work and the reason why it’s little bit all over the place. I always thought that when you worked linearly, then you have no room. You know, do opposites. It just feels better. But then that space in between, gives you sort of a new experience that you can apply and problem solve. That’s why I think I work on so many things at one time. I couldn’t just do one project, like day in, day out. I think it’s actually not healthy.”

In addition, he talked about his origins and what he ultimately wants for his brand:

“I have this brand Off-White, only to tell stories. I don’t have it to do traditional fashion, because I don’t know that. I started from that Pyrex, like a hoodie with a Caravaggio image. But I would think, and promote, that I was never going to be limited by hoodies and t-shirts. No matter how much it made sense. You can imagine how much advice that I’ve got, and it’s like, “Hey, just do that.” And, it’s like, no, I want to draw a line between that and the opposite, and that’s where the zig-zag [is]. And now, I’m free to articulate stories.”

On his collaboration with Nike

Abloh’s recent Nike collab has been one of the most documented in a year full of surprising fashion brand partnerships. During his Harvard talk, as well as in an interview hosted by Nike, Abloh explained some of the processes behind the redesigns:

“For me, this resurgence of the ’85 Vintage is where [the collaboration] started from. And of course, being entrusted by Nike to re-approach 10 different icons. I took that as another major design project, not like a “Let’s just color them up and put them back out into the market”. Let’s almost think about it as a student would, like how I would make a model of it. […] I thought Nike products… the only thing I could add to the situation is that I felt that their products came out of a microwave. Cause they were so good. It’s sort of naïve, but they’re so perfectly put together.” “A lot of the whole process was using my toolkit, whether it be a zip-tie, or my version of the Nike swoosh which has an orange tab on it or whether it’s using text as an illustrative tool to guide people, like an infographic. I was able to sort of self-reference and that’s the whole ethos of Off-White. […] This whole project is us teaching and giving a window inside of what goes on at Nike.”

What’s up with the quotes? If you are at all familiar with Abloh’s recent work, you will notice that quotes are used frequently in the design. Quotes put around the name of the sneaker, the brand, the location it was made, everything. Abloh explains the reasoning behind the design by saying:

“It’s basically humor. A couple of people laughed [when I brought up quotes] and that’s literally the point of that tool. To insert humanity through conversation… you open up when you laugh. And obviously, in our era where vintage is cooler than a popular trend item, it’s just us being ironic. Normcore, that whole rational, it’s real. […] So, my way of doing that and trying to be like, the most Doushant version of ironic, is speaking in quotes because it allows me to say two things at the same time. Or be figurative, and sort of precise. And I can basically design with a keyboard, I don’t need Photoshop or anything else.”

“This is the best time to be a creative…”

In his Rhode Island School of Design talk, Abloh went on to say that he feels the modern day is the best time ever to be a creator. This due to the fact that everyone has an ability to create art and transmit it out for the world to see immediately. He said:

“I believe that [this] is the best time for design, art and culture because it’s the most democratic it has ever been. We all have iPhones, which are an iconic design and thought process. We have a larger understanding of what fashion and art means to popular culture, to high society and to even Zara/H&M. Us as designers, it’s now the time for us to input the most pure forms of our ideas into this ecosystem of culture, to see new things come about.”

Abloh covered this point again at the end of his talk at Harvard, saying that people shouldn’t think of today’s world as some sort of dead end: