Most holiday cards are festive celebrations of the season. You know the kind: sparkly, heartwarming, may accompany a fruitcake.Design agency Pentagram took this years card one step further, with a list of items that can double as New Years resolutions.

[Image: courtesy Pentagram]The card is based on celebrated architect Michael Sorkins 250 Things an Architect Should Know from his 2018 book, What Goes Up. Sorkin died earlier this year from COVID-19 complications and was remembered as a fierce champion of architecture and urban design as a medium for social justice. While his list was targeted toward architects, much of the advice functions as a guiding philosophy for just about anyone.

Pentagram partner Michael Bierut and associate partner Britt Cobb designed the card, which features all 250 items. (Card is also a bit of a misnomerits actually a 24-page booklet.) Some of the entries are also paired with red-and-black line illustrations by illustrator Chris DeLorenzo.

Pentagram has been sending out holiday booklets since 1974, just two years after the international design firm was founded. This years version went out to about 3,000 recipients, according to Bierut. The cards, which have a different creative twist each year, are a case study in designing corporate communications that are actually good.(Last years card, designed by partner Yuri Suzuki, had a clever interactive component.)

[Image: courtesy Pentagram]The newest card pays tribute to Sorkin, who advocated a holistic perspective and challenged people to design, create, and live with the world in mind. He was a theorist who was extremely practical, says Bierut, who served with Sorkin on the board of the Architectural League of New York for about 20 years. What always came through was his ability to act in the world not as an architect, nor as a critic, but as a human being.

[Image: courtesy Pentagram]The 250 items on the listeverything Sorkin believed an architect should knowcan be read as individual pieces of advice, but some entries show additional nuance by unfurling into the next, like lines in a stanza. Take one such group Bierut calls out:

39. What the client wants.40. What the client thinks it wants.41. What the client needs.42. What the client can afford.43. What the planet can afford.

Its a a lovely bit of rhetorical sleight of hand in a piece thats full of them, he says.

[Image: courtesy Pentagram]The universality of Sorkins perspective is especially striking. Sure, there are things you need to know as a designer. But most of them are things that would simply make you a better person, Bierut says of the list. It does include straight design tips (38. The color wheel), but it also pushes the reader to think more broadly about human behavior, social policies, and philosophical questions (247. The depths of desire). The list encouragesand inspirespeople to consider the context and implications of their work: Does it make the world more sustainable? More just?

Much like Sorkins outlook, the real lesson for Bierut was broad in scope: that being relentlessly curious and open to new experiences makes you a better designer and a better human being.

See the full list here.

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Pentagram's holiday card has some of the most poignant advice for 2021 - Fast Company