Get mad or get better

As designers and creatives, we get attached to our ideas, but sometimes we have to face proof our ideas are bad.

We designers want our creative vision to be infallible, but obviously mistakes happen to everyone — and while you can’t prevent design mistakes from happening, how you handle mistakes when they do happen is important.

This happened to me just this month, as I soft-launched a new brand, Proximity School of Design. As people visited the new site, a common theme emerged: people did NOT like the logo.

Here’s the original logo design on the homepage:

When I designed that logo, I was excited about it. I thought it was really clever! The concept is that the extra space after the first letter illustrates the design principle of proximity, which is the namesake of the brand. I knew it was a risky design, but I believed people would get it and that the risk would pay off.

But, as negative reactions hit my inbox, I started to realize that maybe I’d been a bit too clever for my own good. Not only did people misunderstand the logo, they thought it was downright bad. (A few trolls even came out from beneath their bridges / internet lurking places, and I had to break out the troll repellant.)

Seeing the negative comments, including some from people I dearly trust, I realized I had to redesign the logo. Here’s the new one:

You certainly have your own opinion as to which is better and whether the second logo is even an improvement or not.

But what matters about this story is that, at points in your career, this same kind of thing will happen to you. And you need to realize that every design you make has at least some small amount of guesswork and hopefulness inside it — even if you’re basing your decisions on lots of data and research, you can’t predict everything. (Hopefully you keep the guesswork to a minimum like I try to.)

Sometimes, your tiny guesses and hopes will be correct and the design will be received well, and other times, you’ll have to step back and make changes.

You can take the latter scenario as a disaster. But it’s really not as bad as it seems.

Sometimes, I’m wrong. Every designer is wrong sometimes.

I used to get upset by that. But eventually, I learned that you have a choice: you can get mad, or you can get better. You can let it derail you, or you can learn from it and improve your craft.

I’ve had so many people hate on my designs over the years that I’ve learned it’s really not as big of a deal as it seems.

I choose to look at these times as opportunities to do even better work. With new data, I can make a more creative and successful solution to the problem at hand. When you find an issue in your design, you can fix it, and know that the result is objectively good because you found the issues and removed them.

I’m not telling you to feed the trolls or to submit to the negativity that might invade your inbox when you launch a design. You can’t please everyone, but you can take the feedback in stride and and fix the points that do turn out to be issues with your designs.

You can choose to get better. You can choose to keep going.

Anyway, I hope my story will help you next time you face a situation like this, and that you don’t let little setbacks like these make you question your abilities. Fix your mistakes, and keep going. You’ll only be a better designer because of it. 👊

This article appeared originally on Critique, the design newsletter. Tens of thousands of designers subscribe. You can join here.

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