Learning to Fail

2011/01 Milton Glaser from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

NY Creative Morning w/ Milton Glaser

What can be said about Milton Glaser? He is one of the most insightful and honest speakers I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. In his most recent talk at the SVA Theater for the NY Creative Mornings he spoke upon the importance of failure and how failure is what feeds or imagination and is the driving force to are furthered development as a designer.

Within the design world there is this notion that we can not fail. To fail is to be unsuccessful and is the proverbial gravestone to our career. But Milton tosses aside this notion, and reminds us of our rejected bodies of work. The collection of proposals that were turned down by clients, that to us illustrate our most imaginative and transgressive work.

Milton reminded us all that in order to better understand what we do, we must fail time and time again as artists. Just as a chef cooks the same dish over and over until it is perfect, we must fail over and over again until we have perfected another aspect of our craft.

We must learn to fail before we can succeed.