July 17, 2011
“It’s true that various media require differing degrees of commitment—releasing files to a printer is a nail-biter of a moment for many of us; the same with anything relatively permanent such as signage. There’s a retail store on Broadway that makes me cringe every time I walk by: ‘Damn, I should’ve made that logo a little smaller; definitely should have tightened up the letterspacing between that I and A.’ And perhaps it’s because most of my projects of late have been web-based products that I find myself missing the idea of designing in a way that involves some degree of finality—of synthesizing all inputs to arrive not at a solution, but ‘the’ solution—one that inspires conviction. And holding myself accountable when I ultimately fail, but learning in a way that affects me at my core.
It used to be that designers shared the company of photographers and filmmakers, hired for a particular expertise or point of view and responsible for a discrete product that, once unleashed in the world, could never be changed. Increasingly though, especially among practitioners who work in more fluid media such as web or mobile, a designer’s perspective is overshadowed by a prevailing ethos of an iterative approach: ‘If it doesn’t work, we can always change it.’ Many designers embrace this; who hasn’t wished for a Command + Z to apply to real life? We could save ourselves the occasional professional misstep, a lot of heartache, and healthy amounts of humiliation. But when the stakes are high, being confronted with evidence of your mistakes makes it that much easier to learn from them.
In the start-up world, there’s a widely held belief that if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve waited too long to release it. Similarly, I’ve heard colleagues remind me time and time again that Perfect is the Enemy of Good. But to aspire to anything less won’t do us any favors either.
Keep a drawer of your mistakes. But design like there’s no tomorrow.”
Mimi O Chun, Design Director of General Assembly
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