Legendary music producer Rick Rubin was trending on Twitter this week (in design circles, but also more generally) after this clip from a 60 minutes interview with Anderson Cooper was posted:

Rubin is the co-founder of Def Jam Records, and has produced some incredible records for artists across a huge variety of genres, including Kanye West, Adele, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, Metallica, Slayer, System of a Down, and Slipknot. He’s worth around 250 million dollars.

People less familiar with him were obviously surprised when he said the following:

Cooper: Do you play instruments?

Rubin: Barely.

Cooper: Do you know how to work a soundboard?

Rubin: No. I’ve no technical ability, and I know nothing about music.

Managers and execs with zero (or atrophied) technical design skills rejoiced. I know what I like too! I have great taste!

He continues…

Cooper: *laughs* You must know something?

Rubin: Well I know what I like and what I don’t like, and I’m decisive about what I like and what I don’t like.

Cooper: So, what are you being paid for?

Rubin: The confidence that I have in my taste, and my ability to express what I feel, has proven helpful for artists.

Honestly, these are clear, thoughtful answers to questions Rubin’s got many times over in his career, and he’s been very consistent with those answers over time. His career is based on his taste in art, and that’s why people hire him.

Design is not art

If you’re in the design field, I’m here to gently remind you that your career is likely not about creating or facilitating the creation of great art. Good design is “useful and understandable, is innovative, aesthetic, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and involves as little design as possible.” — Dieter Rams principles of good design.

Many of these principles are based on how people (customers, users) actually experience your products, and part of your role is to improve that experience based on testing with real people. Aesthetic and innovative are arguably more subjective of course, but designers have a tendency to over-index on these aspects already.

Rubin is also hired per-job, and often by the people who are actually making the thing. If you’re a contractor or consultant, you have a much higher overlap with this advice as your next job is based a lot more on the results and sentiment of your previous customers. If you’re a manager or leader in a company, you are less likely to have a direct correlation from decisions of taste, to directly measurable success. Decisions based on your taste will affect your reporting line the most, and your reports didn’t hire you in the way artists hire Rick Rubin.

So what can be taken and applied from Rubin’s approach to his work to your work as a designer or manager?

Clear communication is essential.

Reading any interview with Rubin (such as these pieces from The Ringer, or UCR) you get the sense that he’s a great communicator. He appears to be overwhelmingly calm, and he makes concrete suggestions rather than dictating direction.

“I’m thinkin’ maybe we start a cappella” — Rick Rubin to Jay-Z, on 99 Problems

This is framed as a suggestion rather than a directive, but it’s also specific enough to convey a concrete thing to try. It’s not “I don’t really like that part” or “it doesn’t pop”.

“Well, let’s just sit down and play me songs you love, and we’ll figure out what to do.” — Rick Rubin to Johnny Cash, starting the process for the album that would revive his career.

In the UCR piece, he talks about how he convinced Johnny Cash to cover Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, which released to huge critical success, often being cited as the greatest cover song of all time. He did this by creating a rough example and playing it for a reluctant Cash to show him what the song could be as an acoustic ballad, rather than what the original version was, which was loud, heavy and industrial.

Use examples, make specific suggestions, offer to collaborate, remain calm.

He focusses on proven success.

You probably think you have good taste, and that your taste is a core part of the value you bring as a designer, or leader within your organization. Great, can you prove it? Can you tie it to business metrics? You aren’t the Rick Rubin of design, but you should be able to communicate your success in a compelling way if you want to be hired like he is hired. Testimonials & success stories from your customers are incredibly helpful in painting this picture, as is word of mouth. Approach problems with the lens of having a success metric at the end, and you’ll be more likely to have more of these stories over time.

His quote, “The confidence that I have in my taste, and my ability to express what I feel” can apply to almost any of us, but “has proven helpful”, a lot less so.

The audience doesn’t know what they want.

In the same interview (but a different clip) he professes that “the audience comes last” because they don’t know what they want, and only know what came before.

In a design context this is half right and half deeply wrong. Your users likely don’t know what they want. But they should come first. It is your job to give them something that solves their problems, possibly in a way they didn’t expect (but more often in ways they do expect). You do this effectively by putting them first, observing how they use your products or perform tasks, and listening to them talk about problems, rather than solutions.

His job is to get the best out of people.

If you’re in a leadership position, great news, that’s your job too! But you need to know the difference between artistic output and design work, and know that getting the best out of those groups can require very different things. To get success out of designers might be about cutting out external noise and pressures, it might be about helping them get more direct access to customers, or ensuring you’re amplifying their ideas throughout a wider company. Talk to your reports and understand what motivates them, and what they need.

He forged his own path.

Lastly, it’s good to remember that Rick Rubin didn’t become Rick Rubin by trying to emulate the success of someone else. He likely got there through a mixture of confidence in himself, good decisions, making and taking opportunities at the right times, and of course a huge amount of luck and circumstance.

There are a huge number of successful music producers, and there’s only one Rick Rubin. This is obvious, but I say it not to highlight Rubin, but to remind you that you can be hugely successful without being iconic.

Learn useful lessons from him, but don’t try and emulate him, or put him on a pedestal as some kind of golden god.

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