Crossing the Chasm: When Your Graphic Design and Illustration Work Isn’t As Good As You wish It Was: You’re On The Right Track.
Vol. 048
Crossing the Chasm: When Your Graphic Design and Illustration Work Isn’t As Good As You wish It Was: You’re On The Right Track.
High aspirations, process-driven work, and setting deadlines: the 3-step formula to success.
A quick bite:
One of Ira Glass’ most recognized quotes hit me hard when I read it a few years back. He notes that we as creatives are often frustrated with our own creative output because the stuff we make is not as good as our taste. Our work doesn’t align with our vision for what our work wants to be. What it should be... Sound familiar?
Continue reading below…
The beginning of my graphic design career was quite lackluster. Everything I created was a C- at best, and I was only moderately satisfied sometimes with what I would design.
Around this time in my graphic design career, I came across a quote from Ira Glass, the host of NPR’s famous podcast, This American Life. Glass noted: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
His words stopped me in my tracks...I spent years absorbing beautiful creative work on websites, blogs, and portfolio sites, and my taste for graphic design and creative work was top notch; however, my ability to execute or replicate this top notch work was severely lacking. Glass could not have captured my feelings more succinctly.
After reading this quote, it made my “hopeless” attempt to create work I was proud of feel, well, less hopeless.
Breaking it down a little further, there were 3 crucial takeaways for me:
Bad work good taste: Acknowledge that your dissatisfaction with your own work is a good thing. This means that you have the ability to distinguish good from bad, and you aspire to be in the upper echelon of creative work. If you’re a freelance graphic designer and you’re comparing your logo design to someone like Saul Bass or Allan Peters, you’re probably gonna hate everything you do...learn to love this feeling.
Prolific output: “...the most important thing you can do is a lot of work.” Being resilient and focusing on prolific output is imperative. You need to learn and develop your own process, allow your creative style to find you, and get in the habit of regularly producing creative work. Consider the 3 year rule.
Timelines: “Put yourself on a deadline every week...” Stop fuckin’ around and trying to make “that one thing” perfect! Set a goal, do a project, get shit done and move on. You’re only wasting your own potential with obsessive behavior. Sprint-based timelines can help you with this.
The beginnings of developing a style, body of work and graphic design or artist career takes a lot of being immersed in the creative work you intend to be creating. Graphic designers may spend time perusing Pinterest looking at logos and packaging design, painters surf museums to find inspiration in the work of the greats, and photographers can endless scroll through instagram to be immersed in inspiring work.
In order to "get better" in our own creative work we must first understand what’s already out there and what the possibilities truly are. This can only happen through immersive yourself in the industry and continuing to experiment with your own work.
Our eyes are first larger than our stomachs: our taste for talent is far greater than our own ability to execute.This is a good thing! This drives us to create, to get better and prevents us from becoming complacent with our work too early on.
Think of it like this: we’re all gonna be working until we’re 65+. Why the hell would we think we’d be “awesome” at age 35? We still have SOOO MUCH TIME in our careers to learn, develop, and grow. Enjoy the journey.
