Fellow passionate designers all over the world, You have a gift. Use it! You are a special bread of people because you never go with the flow. With every design you create, you are making your own mark and showing the world your individuality and uniqueness as a designer.
Now let me ask you a thought-provoking question: Do you think that renowned designers made it this far over night? I doubt it! We only see their great work but in order to reach greatness, they probably invested so many hours in order to “perfectionize” their craft. Similar to you, me, and all designers, these famous ones probably have some hidden work that they wouldn’t dare to share with anyone. You know why? Because it sucks!
Judging creative work is always controversial and very subjective as different people tend have radically different tastes. So, expecting that everyone will love your work is the most self-defeating lie of all!
“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” Sven Goran Eriksson
The ones who actually made it big time in the fiercely competitive design world were the ones who had unshakeable belief that they will. It always starts with believing in yourself so if you show some of your work to some idiot and he made a mockery out of you, your self-confidence will be your savior and who knows, you might be today’s mockery and tomorrow’s legend!
But in order to make it his far, you must fail a lot in order to succeed. Here are 5 reasons why failure is very healthy for creative designers in particular.
( Image Credit: shutterstock )
Reason 1: Enjoy Creative Exploration
If you want to become a sought after designer someday, you must be authentic and your work must reflect who you are. In other words, you can’t get their by mimicking someone else blindly. Your work must your personal brand. In order to figure out who you are design wise, you will need to experiment for a while. Don’t rush your natural evolvement process. Screw up, make mistakes, learn, explore, enjoy!
Reason 2: Remember that Route to the Hall of Fame Starts From the Hall of Shame!
What if you came 10th place in a design competition of 10 contestants?! Does that mean you have failed? Hell no! You have won because you took the risk. You have won because you saw what the top winners did right to learn from them. You won because your aesthetically suicidal design is your ticket to amazing designs to come.
Reason 3: Listen to Your Inner Voice
Receiving criticism from others can be very tricky sometimes. Some people take whatever others throw at them for granted. They never question it! Their self-confidence is at the mercy of what others say or do! On the other end of the spectrum you will find the over-confident folks who believe that every crappy design they did is a masterpiece and would readily kill anyone who begs to differ!
Smart people, on the other hand, let their intuition guide them when they listen to other people’s criticism. If what they said resonates with you, then you probably received constructive criticism. The biggest sign of constructive criticism is that your critic offers you exact advises on how to work on your deficiencies but if s/he just pointed out your flaws in a demeaning way, then probably s/ he is not worth listening to. It would be a great loss to overlook a sincere advice and also much greater loss to buy into some crap of some criticism freaks. How could you tell who is who? Just follow your heart.
Reason 4: Ready, Set, Grow!
Are your ready to leave the audience seat and get in the game? Are you going to roll up your sleeves and start filling huge stockpiles of files with drawings, sketches, designs that you wouldn’t dare to show to anyone? Are you willing to embrace what you see as pure ugly work that feels like a mismatch made in hell and love it only because it is yours? And here comes the most important question of all: do you realize that with every crappy design is your milestone to a great design? If you get that, you will make it big time.
Reason 5: Break the Rules and enjoy it!
The word “create” means making up something from scratch or bringing an idea or a product that never existed before into existence. I for instance, launched a marketplace where marketeers can buy unique content. When few centuries someone came and said we can fly, he was a laughing stock because he broke the rules. Break the rules and enjoy doing it since that’s the only way you can embrace the creativity within.
“No Pain no gain” and when you fail miserably before you succeed, you will experience the real taste of success. There is no sense of accomplishment when things come to you handy without any effort on your behalf. Now I will leave with the most important lessons you can take away from this article:
- Without believing in yourself and your unique talents and gifts, success will be impossible
- Creativity is controversial. Do NOT expect the whole world to give you a standing ovation
- Be authentic and true to who you are
What else would you add to this list? I can’t wait to find out. Thanks in advance for you contribution. 
