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

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

In a world where design trends are quietly converging — same color palettes, same typography, same illustration styles — how do you make work that actually looks different? Designer and TED Fellow Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz distills his answer into three sharp, counterintuitive ideas, ticking through his studio's own funky creations to show how you can make things that stand out.Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. 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, like, 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. We quickly realized that what was important, it was not the legibility of the individual letters, but rather to convey a sense of awe at the beauty of science. 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. 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, an apartment, 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. And 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 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, like, 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. Idea, number one, is that really, like, truly, truly embrace working with people that have different backgrounds and that live different lifestyles.

These are the three parts 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 immersed 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. 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 ask us to make a poster on the Cas9 Protein Sequence that is used for genetic research, research. When we sat down with them and asked the kind of questions that you could expect from a DJ and a philosopher, we quickly realized that what was important, it was not the legibility of the individual letters, but rather to convey a sense of awe at the beauty of science, 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. Our 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. 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, Austin, where I live, South 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,

is shown in museum, is usually shown, it's usually co-opting the codes of fine art and making it off limits. The 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 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. Thank you so much. That was Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz

at TED Next, 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 back-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonica, Sung Marnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faisi Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balezzo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.