The bright side of failure.
“ Have no fear of perfection-you’ll never reach it”- Salvador Dali
Once you realize you have the knack and your success rate for creating arresting ideas is high, you are on the other side of failure. There is a fear for everyone that their ideas could be failures, but unless you push through and present your ideas in spite of it, you’ll never get the confidence that you need to be good. And what is being good? You’ll be good at seeing the obvious. You’ll understand how to redefine clichés. You won’t take very long to resolve ideas. Your methodology is simple, and you’ll know how to press on when a project has great potential. Confidence will make your brain move faster and bring you more ideas than you know what to do with.
I often look back at the CBS eye as one of the all time great trademarks that was born out of a cliché. The trademark was designed by William Golden in 1951. He was the art director for the Columbia Broadcasting System. I don’t think I ever start a trademark assignment without referencing this mark as a benchmark for success. I think this is about as close to perfection as anyone can get. I admired this trademark so much that when I graduated from the Art Center College of Design and went to New York to find my fortune, one of the first interviews I had was with Lou Dorfsman, who had been William Golden’s advertising assistant. He eventually became vice president and creative director for CBS. For me, he was also one of the great graphic design thinkers of all time. I am sure he thought of failure as simply another cup of coffee.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”- Thomas A. Edison
The kind of fear I am talking about isn’t when you present an idea and everyone’s face in the room says “that’s dumb”. It when you see an idea developing and you know it’s not right. Or, you go through a number of them, all of which don’t work. I consider it a day of achieving nothing or failure. I always tell myself – “I ‘m sure glad you got those ideas out of your system”. I consider those bad ideas as a sign of not being focused enough. The answer is right there in front of you and you refuse to see it. During these moments, I sometimes recall the work of others that are similar assignments to one I am working on that I would consider a failure. That usually gets me back to work looking for that great solution.
“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door” – Coco Chanel
At this point in my career, failure only changes my direction. It’s like falling over your own two feet. If anything, it makes me more focused and emotionally intense to find what I am looking for. Don’t look at failure as a level of accomplishment or lack of, rather use it for inspiration. The fear of failure will certainly hold you back from real creative success. There has been moment when I just laughed at failure, especially when it was obviously clear that I had not used my head while working on a project. I also found failure after the fact. You create something that you think is the right answer and put it out there only to find out that it doesn’t work in real life- a real learning experience for me. There were obviously factors that I didn’t consider during the process. Let’s face it, you can’t go through life without failure, so deal with it! Own it. “Fail better”, someone once said.
“ Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor”- Truman Capote
I remember hearing the story about how Apple got its name. Steve Jobs had just started his company and was looking for a name and trademark. He had given the assignment out and after the deadlines had passed, no one was able to satisfy him. Being frustrated, Steve said that if no one is able to come up with an answer, he would name the company after his favorite fruit. I would call this a bright side of failure.
Just do it!
