A long time ago, a design teacher told my class that you have to put your bad ideas out there and try them out in order for your brain to be able to move on to better ideas. That has been true for me for sure. Sometimes I know something is not going to work, but until I try it, I can’t get past it. Sometimes when I’m designing, I have a phase at the beginning that I call my “crappy designer” phase, where it seems like all my ideas and solutions are terrible. I have learned to be patient with myself and humor my internal crappy designer for a while. Eventually, I have a eureka moment and everything suddenly clicks. From there, whatever I’m working on becomes the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
I just wanted you to know that if you have trouble starting projects because you feel like all your ideas are terrible, you’re normal. Go ahead and try out those awful designs so you can clear your head and make room for all the great ideas you have.
Sometimes, your good ideas turn out to be bad ideas and that’s ok too.
For the past few days I’ve been working on updating an infographic I developed last year. I had what I thought were some great ideas actually for how to do this, but when I tried them out, they were awful. Looking at what I had created was painful. It was like I had never designed an infographic before. What had I been thinking? I took a break. I sketched out some solutions to my mess. But again, when I tried to execute them, it didn’t work as well as I’d thought it would.
I was frustrated with myself but I pushed forward. I realized I was making my design too complicated by trying to get cute with too many icons. Finally my moment of clarity hit and I was able to see where I was going wrong and fix it. From there, it was like running down a hill at full speed. Each decision I made led to another great idea. I ended up with a design I’m extremely happy with.
