Every day I receive an email from one of my favorite writ­ers about design and design his­tory, Steven Heller. Steven Heller has been writ­ing for Print Magazine for a long time and even though he had writ­ten that he was not inter­ested in a blog, he’s been blog­ging daily for Print for over two years.

I met Mr. Heller when I was fresh out of school. He was one of my first inter­views and I was very ner­vous to have this pro­lific writer and observer of design review my port­fo­lio. It turned out to be an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. I was pleas­antly shocked that he was spend­ing so much time with me, lis­ten­ing intently as I pre­sented every piece. I had no idea how the inter­view would end up. When I was done, he flipped through the pages one more time, zipped up my port­fo­lio and said some­thing like “Don’t ever use Benguiat again, it’s a silly type­face and you have good port­fo­lio, you’ll soon get a good job.” I was elated and the expe­ri­ence was a huge, huge con­fi­dence builder.

I had sched­uled two inter­views that day. The sec­ond was with Irving Miller, a very accom­plished designer who had worked at CBS with Bill Golden, designer of the CBS Eye logo. After CBS, Irving went on to have a great solo career and I admired his work. One hour after Steven Heller said I would get a good job, I did. Irving hired me on the spot and I was on my way. Thank you Mr. Heller!