Regular readers will remember Chris Doyle’s Personal Identity Guidelines project from last year. His new work has a pop at a host of designer clichés

This Year I Will Try Not To is a collaboration with fellow designer Elliott Scott and was, the pair say, “born out of frustration, complacency and laziness. Most designers are seduced by design trends. They’re easy to appropriate, and even easier to imitate. The challenge is to innovate. To be new. We decided the best (and most enjoyable) approach was to identify and document the most common trends we felt we had to avoid. Before long we found ourselves with a checklist of DON’Ts and a new aim: to try to be new. We may fail, but we will try.”

In a series of set-ups, Doyle promises to avoid various clichés of designer life. The format itself conforms to current trends – it’s a loose-bound newsprint booklet with tastefully muted pallette and centred upper case type.

And, as a sly dig at himself, Doyle even promises that he will not “produce self-focused, inward looking, promotional work, for the sole purpose of industry recognition”.

And it has the obligatory Vimeo ‘making-of’ film

This Year I Will Try Not To is available here. Check out Michael Johnson’s feature for CR on why designers feel the need to put themselves at the centre of their work

Thanks to copywriter Mike Reed for Tweeting us about the project.