Mini Series: Practice to Professional (3 of 7): Never Stop Experimenting.
Vol. 059
Never stop experimenting.
The power of routinely experimenting, trying something new.
Mini-Series Schedule:
A 7-week series dissecting the 6 main points of my keynote speech: Practice to professional: manifesting your ideal creative career. This mini series culminates with a live webinar and Q&A where I talk through actual examples of how I applied these 6 main points to grow a 6-figure + creative business. You can rewatch the webinar through the link in week 7 below.
Week 1: You are your brand
Week 2: Free and underpaid work can be okay*
Week 3: Never Stop Experimenting
Week 4: Lie More
Week 5: Your Network is your net-worth
Week 6: Chasing the fog
Week 7: Watch the Webinar and Q&A!
Continue reading below…
It is only through perpetual experimentation in my personal work that I have amassed a wide array of experimental, type-based graphic design client work.
Often referred to as personal projects or passion projects, this type of work is what enables you to get paid to do the work you love.
I didn’t even know what hand lettering was when I was in college, and they only way I learned about it was through experimentation: I saw something that I was interested in, and I then made the time to try, learn and practice the art of hand lettering. Experimentation in my graphic design practice allowed me to freely play with hand lettering without any pressure, and I ultimately realized I loved this artform. However, experiment I’d art was only through creating and posting hand lettering that I was ever hired to create lettering for brands, campaigns, packaging or murals.
Experimentation in my personal work (and my career) is what led me to teaching, speaking, modeling, acting, stop motion video, photography, painting murals and even starting my own business.
Experimentation — and a propensity for posting and talking about those experiments — is how I know that I want to be focused lettering (for now, at least), and it’s how I know that I don’t want to be focused on other things. It is only through doing that you should be eschewing.
But, what is the actual, true reason that experimentation important? Experimentation allows you to voluntarily try something new — something that you want to try. Because this experimentation is your choice, it’s generally something that you’re passionate about. Something you’ll be talking about with others, and online.
When you are creating passionately, you are more likely to be proud of your work, you will more than likely talk about that work with conviction and with confidence. To others, this conviction and confidence will be convincing and compelling, and ultimately functions as “selling” your ideas through. This process not only helps you learn how to passionately speak about the value of your own creative work, but it can turn an experimental passion project into a paid client project.
Additionally, experimenting allows you to continue to try something new: something that you’re interested in. Experimentation will keep you engaged, excited and happy about producing creative work, and prevents you from feeling bored or look like a one trick pony to the public. If you’re continually experimenting, you’re continually adding to and evolving your skillset as well as growing with the industry as a whole.
Maybe most importantly, experimentation keeps you engaged in your work and life.
To quote Thomas Gillovich, a psychology professor at Cornell, “The enemy of happiness is adaptation”.
Simply: When we get used to something—it becomes routine. Routines begin to feel monotonous, and monotony ultimately begins to feel mundane. Gilovich’s quote suggests that if you’re doing the same type of work over and over, you will become bored and unenthusiastic in your work. You will become stagnant. To be stagnant in the creative industry can be detrimental to your growth and success, and experimentation can help you avoid that.
Arguably more important than finding what you love, experimentation helps you find what you don’t love! Feeling confident in your business’ direction is just as much about knowing what you enjoy doing as what you don’t enjoy doing, and this can be explored through trying new things. Over the years, I’ve tried everything under the sun, and this has enabled me to feel confident that leaning into branding, packaging and murals with a focus on typography and illustration is exactly where I want my career to be going.
If you take one thing away from this article this week, take away this: experimentation allows you to continue to grow and evolve as a creative individual and business. Do you think that you have it all figured out right now as you’re currently working? If your answer is “nope!”, then your solution is to continue to experiment throughout your career to continue growing with this industry.
Tune in next week for part 4 of this 7 part series!:
Week 1: You are your brand
Week 2: Free and underpaid work can be okay*
Week 3: Never Stop Experimenting
(Next week!) Week 4: Lie More
Week 5: Your Network is your net-worth
Week 6: Chasing the fog
Week 7: Live Webinar, Q&A (secure your spot now)
