Leading Designers Share Their New Year’s Resolutions for 2015

The holidays offer us the chance to relax and rethink what we wish for ourselves for the next year. But starting with a blank page is hard, so we thought you might want to hear what other designers wish for themselves.

We asked a number of our favourite super-talented, uber-awesome designers “What is your new year’s resolution?” Their answers were inspiring, thoughtful and hilarious at times. Here goes:

Brad Frost “Make shit happen. Make shit happen. Make shit happen. Make shit happen. Make shit happen.” TwitterWebsite

Mitch Goldstein (Design Crit) ״My New Year’s Resolution is to not wait until an arbitrary date on the calendar to change something about myself — I have learned that’s the best way to guarantee it will fail. You need to be paying attention all the time, not just on a holiday.״ TwitterWebsite

Chris Coyier (CSS-Tricks) “The only way to get better at design is to do it a lot, and that’s been my resolution for a bunch of years in a row. One of these years!” TwitterWebsite

Daniela Meyer (Gutensite) 'I've been wanting to create really good but simple animations—loaders and maybe even a short for my own amusement. In a good 2015 I'd come out of a dark room at the end of several animating binges, wrinkled, with pita chip crumbs in my hair, a caffeine hangover and a really damn creative frame by frame to post.' TwitterWebsite

Kerem Suer “In 2015, I want to travel more, spend more time with my people (wife, son and labrador) and design things that will make people’s lives better and healthier.” TwitterWebsite

Brian Hoff “My 2015 New Year’s resolution is definitely to find more time to write again. With the new blog, I should have no excuse! Plan on me covering topics of design, business, process, and other thought-provoking rambles.” TwitterWebsite

Shauna Haider (We Are Branch) “My resolution is to carve out time for personal projects. The really great discoveries don’t necessarily come from paid client work — they come from giving yourself permission and room to explore. The best design happens when you take away the barriers and create just because you can.” TwitterWebsite

Mushon Zer-Aviv (Shual) 'No, I don't want this future, I want that one. Yes.' TwitterWebsite

Chuck Anderson (NoPattern Studio) “My resolution for 2015 is to continue getting more involved in the creative community here in Chicago and helping the young people in this city feel enabled and inspired.” TwitterWebsite

Jacob Cass (JUST™ Creative) “Last year my new year’s resolution was to get to travel more and get to the gym at least 3 times a week to fix my back problems which I successfully did. This year, I want to make more time for my newly married wife… and travel more of the world. “ TwitterWebsite

Cat Noone 'In 2015, I want to work toward improving as a person, designer and founder. I’m also making it a point to work on side projects I’ve been wanting to push out for a while now.' TwitterWebsite

Mike Rohde “My resolution or goal for 2015 is “focus” in the sense of focusing more on what I love and pays well, instead of spreading myself across many activities. For me that means focus on running my Sketchnote Workshops in the US, building up my Sketchnote Army site (sketchnotearmy.com), sketchnoting experimentation and book illustration work. A very narrow focus on sketchnotes and illustration only. Everything else: logos, icons, other work that doesn’t fit here are not on that list and instead I’ll recommend colleagues for that work – so I can focus.” TwitterWebsite

Jessica Walsh (Sagmeister & Walsh) “My new years resolution is to do more personal work!” TwitterWebsite

Mirko Humbert “My new year resolution as a designer for 2015 is to create more real products and experiment with new technologies while doing it. I’d like to play around with 3D printing, letterpress and easy electronics. The main idea is to get away from the computer while still designing and do cool stuff.” TwitterWebsite

Andy Sowards 'I don't really do new years resolutions, If I get inspired to do something I try to jump right into it, not wait for the right time (spoiler alert, that time never comes). In 2015 i'd like to continue doing what I was doing in 2014 - it was a great year and there are always things you'd like to focus on and continue growing. I will continue taking care of my health and trying to fit in as much personal work and writing as I can swing while following those rabbit holes of interests to find that next great direction to focus on and keep reworking the routine. Focusing on the few things in life that really matters, like family, and sanity.' TwitterWebsite

Eric Hoffman (JellyJar) “Last year all my Strava mountain bike rides were named after Mexican food. This year will be Italian.” TwitterWebsite

Marc Edwards (Bjango) 'To get out of my comfort zone, continue to learn, and continue to help others learn. As well as being a nice thing to do, teaching others means you’re likely to understand the material better yourself.' TwitterWebsite

Reagan Ray “My new years resolution is to design more in the browser.” TwitterWebsite

Maayan Pearl “In 2015 I would like to explore the world and find inspiration in unexpected places, returning to my roots and remembering what truly inspires me to make things every day.” TwitterWebsite

Jacob Gube (Six Revisions, Design Instruct) “My 2015 New Years’ resolution is to increase my contributions to the design community through open source design assets. My goal is to work on projects that are useful in solving today’s web design challenges.” TwitterWebsite

Jeff Archibald (Paper Leaf) “In 2015, I want to re-evaluate our design workflow and improve it from an efficiency standpoint. This might just be improving the way we use our existing toolset, or it may be a wholesale change in how we go from wireframing & prototyping through design & development. Right now, there is too much rework involved. So, my goal is to evaluate our workflow and tools and increase our shop-wide efficiency so we can ship faster and iterate more.” TwitterWebsite

Bastian Allgeier (GetKirby) “My new years’s resolution is to focus more on the accessibility of my projects — no matter if it’s the visual part or the code.” TwitterWebsite

Stéphanie Walter ״As a designer, in 2015 I’ll try to learn to say “NO” in order to spend less time in front of my computer and take care of my health. The end of the year was pretty tough for me: I work in an agency, as a freelance during the evening, teach at the university, give some conferences and write lots of articles. This has led to some terrible pain in the back. We are passionate people and tend to like to work a lot without even seeing the hours pass. So for 2015 I am really trying to learn to say “NO”, do less projects but more interesting ones in other to be able to rest a little bit, do more sport and avoid a burn out.” TwitterWebsite

Dan Matutina “My New Year’s resolution is to work on personal projects. I’ve been busy with work (which I’m very thankful for) this year so I wasn’t able to spend time on my book project. Hopefully, I’ll get to finalize the story and finish it in the coming year.” TwitterWebsite

Lee Munroe “Focus. Focus on just a few things I'm good at and enjoy instead of trying to spin too many plates.“ TwitterWebsite

Jarad Johnson (Mostly Serious) “Our entire company has a goal this year to better assist and educate our clients earlier in the design and development process. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing that a solid process will automatically cover all the questions a client may have. What we do can be confusing at times and clients may need extra assistance in understand what we do and why we do it. We’ll be spending extra time on upfront planning, both internally and in collaboration with our clients, in hopes of getting projects off to an even better start.” TwitterWebsite

Kristina Halvorson (Brain Traffic) “In 2015, I will celebrate the good more often than I criticize the bad.” TwitterWebsite

Ian Paget (Logo Geek) “I'm planning to start writing a book about logo design. I want it to be a practical, hands-on guide full of tutorials, example projects and case studies so people can follow along. I'll build a community around this too and involve other designers where I can, as everyone has their own unique way of doing things.” TwitterWebsite

Jan Jursa (UX Storytellers) “In 2015 I want to continue my deep dive into understanding leadership. It’s a challenging environment influenced by values, processes, responsibilities, inovation and people. And we all know how complex things tend to get when humans are involved.” TwitterWebsite

Mike Smith (Guerrilla) 'I vow to turn 2015 into the year that I make the switch from full time freelance work to passive income streams that give me full time earnings, allowing me to be my own boss, 100%' TwitterWebsite

Thord D. Hedengren (Odd Alice) 'I'm not big on resolutions, but I do intend to focus more on concepts for the larger projects in 2015, and less on fretting the details. Obviously I'm restless so I intend to schedule small tight designs in-between, with short turnarounds.' TwitterWebsite

Andrew Wilkinson (Plastic Hallway) 'Focus more on subtle animations that encourage interactions and less on large animated features that reduce conversions.' TwitterWebsite

Dave Mottram 'My new years resolution is to get my personal work out there in a book.' TwitterWebsite

Happy nuYear!

* This post was inspired by something we’ve seen on Creative Bloq last year. We believe that credit must be given even if just for ideas.

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