155 - Self-indulgence

Self-indulgence is vital as a designer.   Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED   Music and links from this episode Outro by Komiku The Life and Death of a Certain K. Zabriskie, Patriarch by Chris Zabriskie The Simulation Hypothesis by Revolution Void Line-by-line notes It’s easy as a designer To get bogged down in the day to day humdrum Of things like client amends Projects not going your way Or you just not being able to produce your best work That’s why it’s OK sometimes To give into self-indulgence And indulge yourself in some side projects This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess Peaks and troughs are natural in anything you do Something can’t be amazing without there being something bad to compare it against after all And even today, I go through times where the work I produce isn’t my best Or I don’t feel its my best Even today, I still doubt my abilities And question whether I’m a good designer or not And wonder endlessly whether I’m good at my job It’s natural It’s self doubt It’s what we all do. I don’t seek to remove self doubt in my life though Because I see self doubt as a positive thing When I’m doubting myself, I know it’s usually for two reasons I’m doing something new or challenging And I care about doing a good job And neither of those things are things to avoid Obviously I know I care about doing a good job But even when my subconscious is doubting I know even in my subconscious I care about doing a good job That was a weird meta-tangent Anyway The reason I say this is to make a point that everything we do won’t be great Every design you knock out isn’t going to be your best work But there is a place where you can always do your best work And if it doesn’t turn out to be your best work, you can just scrap it and try again In side projects, you can always try and do your best work There’s no restrictions on time, effort, feedback You just do the work you want to do, when you want to do it That’s self-indulgence And whilst the word indulgence is often seen as a perjorative I don’t see it like that at all To get better as a designer you need to be indulgent If you stick to the sometimes tight confines of a client brief You’ll never push past and do your best work Often...