A career in design: ten rules Dan Mall plays by
Dan Mall has spent roughly 25 years moving through nearly every corner of the design world—agency work, running his own shop, co-founding startups, teaching, and writing three books. His latest venture, Design System University, focuses on helping enterprise teams master design at scale. Drawing on that跨度 of experience, he offers ten principles he applies when starting, continuing, or ending a project or a career move.
Know what makes a goal worth chasing
Mall's first rule is to identify worthy goals. Every project starts with a goal, and he borrows from Michael Bungay Stanier's book How to Begin, which defines a worthy goal as one that is thrilling, important, and daunting. For Mall, the "thrilling" criterion carries the most weight: if an idea doesn't excite him, he usually doesn't pursue it. Before committing, he asks what end he sees and whether that end leaves him better off than he is now.
Bet on what you already have
Mall frames every decision as a bet, citing Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets: any choice among alternatives puts resources at risk, and not choosing is itself a choice with an opportunity cost. To improve the odds, he recommends betting where you hold an unfair advantage—expertise, network, reputation, resources, or unique insight. He points to the MILES framework from Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba's The Unfair Advantage: Money, Intelligence & Insight, Location & Luck, Education & Expertise, and Status. When he started his agency, he had years of experience and a steady stream of clients. With Design System University, he again held an advantage: a decade of running an agency specialized in designing at scale gave him intimate knowledge of the patterns and problems, plus a reputation as an expert. None of these guarantee success, but they raise the odds.
Work backward from the outcome
Stephen Covey's second habit in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to "begin with the end in mind," which Mall treats as rule three. When he started speaking at conferences, he aimed to eventually present at An Event Apart, a web design conference run by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, whose speakers he had long followed. He blogged, designed websites, and volunteered at the event to work toward that goal. He made it—and was invited back 12 more times before the series closed, with that track record leading to over 100 other speaking invitations.
Decide in advance when you'll stop
Mall distinguishes between three kinds of stopping: finishing, quitting, and giving up. Finishing means reaching the end you had in mind when you started—whether that is a monetary target, a follower count, a time limit like 30 days, or a resource running out. Quitting, he says, is abandoning one thing in favor of something better. Giving up is different: it is, in the words of former Grubhub CEO Mike Evans, "just frustration and apathy."
He advises deciding in advance the conditions under which you will stop. He quotes ultramarathoner Dick Collins: deciding at the moment, based on how you feel, usually leads to the wrong choice. Frustration, Mall notes, is often fleeting, so he tries not to give up while feeling it. The bravest form of perseverance can sometimes be quitting a task for a more worthy one.
Warm up before you create
Just as Mall would not step onto a basketball court without foam-rolling and stretching, he approaches design work with a warm-up phase. Going straight from a meeting into Figma to design a screen, he warns, is a shortcut to injury—creative injury.
He rejects the idea of creative block, citing journalist Sebastian Junger: "It's not that I'm blocked. It's that I don't have enough research to write with power and knowledge about that topic." For Mall, a blank page is a sign of insufficient preparation, not a missing muse. He cites Newton's First Law of Motion: an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Collecting raw materials helps overcome that inertia.
His own warm-up involves gathering references: pasting and organizing screenshots of websites, identities, campaigns, and other visuals that the current work should resemble. Manually assembling long webpage screenshots is a favorite early step. He deliberately uses the same actions as real design work—changing opacities, zooming, assembling elements, copying and pasting—but faster, since he is not creating something new yet. This primes the brain and muscle memory for the harder task of original design.
Sit with the boring parts
The biggest hurdle to working, Mall says, is how boring it is. He points to Seth Godin's concept of "The Dip"—the long slog between starting and mastery, where the initial fun and rapid learning give way to tedious effort. But he sees value in embracing mundane, manual work. It is rote, yet it is about being the solution rather than finding one. Even something as basic as checking the color wheel when choosing a palette ensures consistency and harmony.
This willingness to engage with trivial tasks also serves as an antidote to burnout, addressing emotional exhaustion and feelings of futility. Doing the unglamorous work, he argues, stems from caring about the outcome and the people who will experience it.
Ride Newton's Laws to the finish line
Isaac Newton's First Law applies to more than physics. An object in motion stays in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest — unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Worthy work, as gratifying as it can be, inevitably hits a slog. The "before" phase is full of potential. The "after" brings resolution and closure. Between those two points is the grind: zoomed into a canvas at 3200%, nudging a bezier curve one more time, doing the unglamorous reps that turn a concept into a craft.
What keeps a person moving through that middle stretch? Daniel Pink's Drive points to three motivators:
- Autonomy: the desire to direct our own lives.
- Mastery: the urge to get better at something that matters.
- Purpose: the yearning to serve something larger than ourselves.
Without enough of all three, motivation wanes and quitting looks attractive. The countermeasure is momentum. Start pieces of work early, even if you can't finish them immediately. Share work-in-progress often. Life will constantly throw friction your way — the game is keeping the ball rolling anyway.
Find the why in every task
Feeling gross about a task is a signal worth investigating. Sending a sales email for a new course or book, for instance, can feel slimy — even when you're proud of what you've made. The discomfort isn't a reason to avoid the work; it's a prompt to dig deeper. Whether a project is something you have to do or want to do, identify its purpose. A worthy bet can be found anywhere if you look for it. The approach matters too: doing an uncomfortable task in a way that authentically connects you to the people you can help transforms its worth.
Acknowledge the loss at the end
Endings are rarely clean. After ten years, nine months, and six days of running the agency Superfriendly, Dan Mall shut it down — and felt the loss. Finishing a project, even a successful one, means the daily rituals and routines that defined that chapter disappear. It's important to acknowledge and grieve that end before rushing onward. With the lessons in hand, you can move toward the next endeavor without dragging unprocessed feelings along.
Every end is a possible new chapter
Closure opens the door for what's next. The skills and insights gathered along the way equip you for what follows — whether that's a new agency, a course, or a book. One way to stay open: treat each day as a chapter in a longer story. A bad day doesn't ruin the narrative; it's just a plot twist. You can always add a new chapter tomorrow and change the course of the story. The story never actually ends — it keeps evolving, and there's always another worthy bet to make.
