3 ways to create a truly original design | Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz

0:03Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. You know that feeling where every design you see online starts to look the same? The same color palettes, the same 70s revival typography, and the same illustration styles everywhere. That's designer and TED Fellow Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz. In today's talk, he dives into why this happens and how we can break out of that loop, sharing three ideas to help us find inspiration in unexpected places and make bold, creative choices. He's not just talking about this in theory. He shares real projects at the intersection of science and design.

0:44We quickly realized that what was important was not the legibility of the individual letters, but rather to convey a sense of awe at the beauty of science.

0:54Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: Lope offers us a thoughtful look at creativity, collaboration, and how originality can still thrive in a world that seems to rely more and more on hyper-connected, globalized trends. This talk is made in partnership with Unibrands Corporation, coming up right after a short break.

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1:48Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: That trust is built on scale. Bill has securely processed over a trillion dollars in real transactions, supporting teams and handling payables, receivables, and expenses. When financial tasks are organized and visible, it can free up time and energy to focus on what matters most, whether that's your team, your mission, or your community. Visit bill.com slash proven and get a$250 gift card as a thank you after speaking with a bill expert. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. This episode is brought to you by Duck.ai. AI can be incredibly useful, but sometimes it gives me pause to think that my chats might be saved somewhere forever.

2:30Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: Between work stuff and embarrassing personal questions, a lot of us share more with AI chatbots than we realize, and information shouldn't come at the cost of your privacy. That's why Duck.Go built Duck.ai so you can chat privately with the same AIs you might already be using, like ChatGPT or Claude, and protect your data from hackers, scammers, and data-hungry companies. There's no account required. It's completely free. Plus, it's from DuckDuckGo, known for protecting your data, not collecting it. So you can chat freely without worrying about your AI conversations getting stored or exploited.

3:02Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: If you want to use AI without giving up your privacy, visit duck.ai slash talk today. That's duck.ai slash talk, a private way to chat with AI from DuckDuckGo, where AI is always optional and private. This episode is brought to you by Bombas. Lately, I've been thinking about the small things that make a big difference in my day. You know, those upgrades you don't realize you needed until you try them. That's exactly what happened with Bombas. I picked up their women's Pima cotton V-neck tee, which is what I own, and now I reach for it constantly. Whether I'm recording or just doing school pickup, it works.

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4:29Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: And now our TED Talk of the day. So we're all living in a connected world, of course. We're constantly sharing images, video content, no matter where we are, roughly using the same platforms, right? And in turn, this is creating a world and design trends that are starting to look a little bit alike, right? Which can be problematic if you work in the creative field like I do. I'm a designer and a partner at a studio that is based in Austin and in Barcelona. We're also a typeface foundry. We make experimental display variable typography that pushes the boundaries of what you can do with technology.

5:05And through the history of the studio, we have always had this goal of making work that challenges the familiar. Work that you might say looks different. And as the world becomes more homogenized and design trends have started to look more and more the same, this went from being a nice-to-have to becoming a necessity. And by the way, if you work in graphic design, you know what I mean when I say that things are starting to look the same, the same color palettes, the same 70s revival typography, and the same illustration styles everywhere. So we distilled three ideas that we think might be helpful for anybody who's interested in creating unique work despite living in a world with globalized trends.

5:47Idea number one is that, like, really, like, truly, truly embrace working with people that have different backgrounds and that live different lifestyles. These are the three partners of our studio. We could not be more different. We could not have more different backgrounds. We are a journalist, philosopher, DJ. Our passions are completely different. Along with this, we are committed to having our staff immerse in different visual cultures, being part of different subcultures, and live whatever the hell they want. Whether it's a beach in the Caribbean or Tokyo or a remote town in Croatia, we do not care, because when we get together to work on a project, we're not only bringing different visual preferences, but also different lessons from being part of subcultures and different approaches to problem solving.

6:32You know, we not only think different, but we have different approaches to research. And since we're talking about research, idea number two, get used to looking for solutions or doing research not in the areas that you feel comfortable or where the problem is directly sitting on, but rather in the areas that are adjacent, that sit very close to the problem that you're trying to solve. An example is that we see every data visualization project as an animation project. We see every editorial or publishing project as an opportunity to explore branding. And a good example of all of this is a project that we did for MIT, where they asked us to make a poster on the Cas9 protein sequence that is used for genetic research.

7:15When we sat down with them and asked them the kind of questions that you could expect from a DJ and a philosopher, we quickly realized that what was important was not the legibility of the individual letters, but rather to convey a sense of awe at the beauty of science, at what we can do with science. So we took our experience in a field that is adjacent to poster design, which is typography or typesetting, and we made a font that included additional information about this protein sequence, and then we just typeset the sequence. It's a stunning way of approaching data visualization and a very different way of looking at typesetting.

7:57Our third idea that we'd like to share is be additive. Always think about your future self. So we're human. We always want to do extraordinary work. But the reality is that extraordinary efforts require extraordinary amounts of energy. So rather than believe that you can do remarkable things in one big push, what you should do is build a life that allows you to do bold choices and build on top of them. Bold choices, unique choices on top of each other. An example of this is that we recently took a leap and did the biggest independent project we have done at the studio. It's called 100 Points. It's an exhibition on graphic design from four cities.

8:37Austin, where I live, Sao Paulo, Cairo, and Helsinki. The exhibition is gigantic. It's massive. 4 ,000 square feet, 50 projects. But most importantly, we did it and we took decisions that were in opposition to the way that we see graphic design shown in museums. All of the projects are three-dimensional because graphic design is usually shown printed or very flat. Video is interactive because the experience of video in a museum is usually very passive or removed from the viewer. And we invited visitors to the exhibition to touch the projects, because when graphic design is shown in a museum, it's usually co-opting the codes of fine art and making it off-limits.

9:21The result was an exhibition that, in its opening night, broke all records of attendance, and our events have been very well attended, the reviews have been great, but most importantly, it proved to us that, yes, we can do things that are different, but the reality is that if you allow yourself to live a life where you can take these bold, unique choices and build on top of them, you can move away from doing things that are different into doing things that are wonderful. So despite living in a globalized world with these design trends, I truly believe that we can all make unique work. All we got to do is update our understanding on how to build teams, where to look for solutions, and more importantly, how to spend our time and energy.

10:08Thank you so much.

10:16Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: That was Lope Gutierrez Ruiz at TED Next 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

11:20Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz: of actually deciding what to eat. And for the desk workers among us, over half rarely take a break at all, eating right over our keyboards. We want healthy options and high protein with zero prep, but finding that intersection can feel like its own full-time job. That's where Bondwell Bistro Bowls come in. They are these chef-crafted, plant-rich salad bowls designed to be a desk-friendly lunch that actually tastes like a real break. They're packed with fresh ingredients, craveable dressings, and crucially for those of us on the go, they're ready to eat with a fork included. It's a flexible, delicious way to fuel your momentum, no matter what the day's big idea happens to be.

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