#FAILURE!

DesignMakeDo was back in London in April with another instalment of design inspiration goodness. As usual, we brought together four creatives from different backgrounds to talk about FAILURE! and the role it plays in producing original, innovative work.

Jen Sturrock

Textile designer and founder of blancc_space

Failure and the fray

Jen’s talk explored the art of weaving disruption in the creative process. Jen started off as a knitwear designer and the ‘weaving’ pun was totally intended. She used the art of weaving as a metaphor for the creative process, using concepts like ‘fraying’ and ‘tangling’ to describe types of creative ‘failure’ and how they can be used to change direction and create something better than planned.

Read Jen’s article, Flow and the Fray and, of course, follow Jennifer Sturrock on Medium

Graeme Balfour

Product/UX Designer & Researcher, Yoga Teacher

Rubbish at failing?

What can yoga philosophy teach us about failure? A lot, it seems. Graeme spoke about how yoga feeds into his professional life as a designer and researcher. He taught us that the physical practice we commonly think of as yoga is actually just a minor tool and a by-product towards the goal of being more aware of how our mind works and how we can gradually take more control of it. Reflecting on this he showed that many commonly perceived ‘yoga fails’ are perhaps fails for the wrong reason and this is because we set the wrong goals in the first place. He then reflected on how we often set the wrong goals for other aspects of our work and personal lives too and that we might feel failure less if we establish better goals in the first place.

Check out Graeme’s website attento.com or check him out on LinkedIn

Chris Myhill

UX Designer — Just UX Design

Why I’m obsessed with failure

Chris really was obsessed with failure and had us all laughing at some great examples of products or ideas that just didn’t fly. Judging by the room, the favourite had to be Colgate’s ill-fated foray into ready-meals with Colgate Beef Lasagna. Who’d have thought? But seriously, the point is that ideas like this can go to market with huge investment of time and money without being tested and allowed to fail.

Ross Connell

Singer-songwriter

Cynicism vs confidence

As a musician, Ross had a very personal take on failure and how to approach it in your life and work. He spoke about early failures in the music industry and how his own attitude, at the time, prevented him from really understanding them and using that to up his game.

Follow Ross on Instagram @rossjohnconnell or check out his music on rossconnell.bandcamp.com