Brian Collins (designer)


Brian Collins is an American designer, creative director, and educator. He is the Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS:, an independent strategy and brand experience design company with offices in New York City and San Francisco.
Prior to founding COLLINS:, he served as Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of the brand and innovation division of Ogilvy & Mather for ten years. He has been a professor in the Graduate Program of the School of Visual Arts since 2001, and is an officer on the Board of Directors for The One Club, a non-profit organization recognizing creative excellence in design and advertising.
Collins was named a “Design Master” by Graphis Inc. and named one of five American “Masters of Design” by Fast Company. He was also named one of 50 Most Influential Graphic Designers Working Today by Graphic Design USA. He was the first graphic designer invited to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, becoming a charter member of the Forum's Global Agenda Council on Design

Early Life and education

Growing up, Collins’ parents fostered his interest in literature and art by taking him to museums, theatres and operas, and he worked at the local library in his hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts.
Collins graduated with a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1982, later receiving the college's Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2004. He also studied at Parsons School of Design in New York City, where he met artists such as Larry Rivers and Antonio Lopez.

Career

After graduating college, Collins started his own studio in his parents’ garage in Lexington, MA, working with clients including the Digital Equipment Corporation, John Hancock Financial, and Perkins School for the Blind. The company grew to a team of 20 and relocated to Concord, Massachusetts.
Collins' interest in working on global brands led him to sell the business, and he spent a summer in London before being hired by The Duffy Design Group in Minneapolis, whose clients included Giorgio Armani, Jim Beam Brands, and Porsche.
In 1995, Collins moved to FCB in San Francisco to work on Levi Strauss & Co., Amazon, MTV, and The Walt Disney Company.
In 1988, he became Senior Partner and Chief Creative Officer for the new design and brand identity division at Ogilvy & Mather in New York. At Ogilvy, he worked for clients including Jaguar Cars, The Hershey Company, Kodak, IBM, The Coca-Cola Company, BP, Motorola, Mattel, Vera Wang, American Express, Kraft Foods, Unilever, and New York City's bid for the Olympic Games, NYC2012.
When Hershey's hired Collins and his team, they initially requested a billboard design in Times Square, but Collins expanded the project into a retail store in New York City's Times Square that has remained open for over 15 years.
After the September 11 attacks, Collins and his team published the book Brotherhood, which became the basis of an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. It was a tribute to New York City's firefighters that reached The New York Times Best Seller list.
In 2004, Unilever hired BIG to transition the Dove brand from the soap category into beauty. Collins’ team launched the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty in North America, a traveling international photo exhibition that explored what “beauty” meant to 60 female photographers including Mary Ellen Mark and Annie Leibovitz. The campaign won the Media Image Award from the National Organization for Women.
His team's design of BP's Helios House with Office dA in Los Angeles became the first gas station using environmentally sustainable principles and is included in Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The project also won the I.D Magazine Annual Design Review Award for Environments, Design Distinction; AIA Los Angeles Design Award; and the 2009 Grand Clio Award for Design.
Collins also produced The Ecology of Design, a handbook on environmental design thinking, published in 1996 by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Additionally he initiated the annual forum “Designism: Design for Social Change” with designer Milton Glaser and sponsored by the Art Directors Club of New York. The Designism Award is now given annually by the Art Directors Club, which recognizes work that drives positive social and political change.

Collins

In 2008, Collins founded COLLINS:, a strategy and brand experience design company. The company's first job was working with The Martin Agency to design an ad campaign on global warming for the Alliance for Climate Protection, which appeared in the Sunday Review column in The New York Times.
COLLINS: designed The CNN Grill, located in Denver, Colorado and St. Paul, Minnesota. The combination restaurant/broadcast studios opened during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions as an expression of the network's “CNN=POLITICS” slogan.
COLLINS: led the brand and design development for the new Microsoft stores in partnership with The Martin Agency and Gensler.
In July 2013, Collins was appointed to the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Creative Council, the council that oversees the agency's work globally.
COLLINS:’ 2015 global redesign and identity system for Spotify was cited as one of the year’s most notable designs by Fast Company, Wired, and Design Week.
In January 2017, COLLINS: was named by Forbes as one of the companies transforming the future of brand building. Working Not Working ranked COLLINS among the “Top Companies WNW Creatives Would Kill to Work for” in 2018 and among “The Top 50 Companies Working Not Working Creatives Want to Work Next” in 2019. Additionally, COLLINS:’ work has been featured in Fortune, NBC News, ABC News, and Fast Company.
Since founding the company, Collins and his team have worked to create environments that appeal to and foster young creatives in the industry. The company participates in the World’s Greatest Internship program where “2 lucky interns will be selected to participate in a 6-month internship, in 6 different cities around the world.”

Honors and Awards

Collins is regularly invited to speak internationally on design, innovation, and technology and their abilities to shape future-facing products, services, and brands. His speaking events include:

Notable Works

Selected works