Embracing Failure

There are only a few worse things (ie: losing your puppy in a busy city, or being one number away from the multimillion dollar wining lottery ticket) I can think of than staying up for forty-eight hours straight working on a project, only to find yourself holding back tears mid critique while your professor asks if you went blind before creating said work.

Don’t panic. It may take a few attempts in nailing your design process down to fully understand what went wrong the first few times, but in order to grow as a designer, step one is to fail.

Failure, seemingly scary, is extremely important in the field of design; In fact, failure, after concepting, is the first step in the design process, whether we want to embrace this or not. It is important to step away from the computer initially and sketch out every idea to see which ideas stick and which ones you can tell are already flops. Usually, when your trashcan is filled up with paper basketball free throws and there is no more room in your newly purchased sketchbook, typically indicates a good time to choose your top ideas and test them out in different ways and styles that will enhance your concept.

With failure comes exploration and exploration brings success. Instead of chaining yourself to the first few ideas that come to mind, the best thing to do is explore various options without limiting yourself and your mind because usually that is where the best solution is found.

Don’t worry, even though your professor still might end up hating some of your new options, the time you spent has never been wasted. Your mom will be more than happy to hang it on her fridge and probably show off your talents on her Facebook page as well.