DAY 019 – DESIGNING DANGEROUSLY

Effective vs. Ineffective

How do we inch the needle more closely toward effective storytelling? It’s definitely not sexy, but one of the answers is repetition. Your 100th design process ought to be more effective than your first. All things being equal, which we know they aren’t, experience can make you a more adept storyteller. There becomes a shorthand we have with ourselves, a close, quiet conversation like the languages developed between twins. 

The danger of repetition is calcifying, of playing to our strengths too often, of never exercising the weak leg. What a strange paradox that partnering with our strengths can eventually become a weakness. There’s a temptation to continue hitting the same note, the one we know we can play, the one we have been praised for. But that is not how creation happens. 

Rather we lay down well-worn pathways and then hopefully branch out in search of routes that are either more direct, more unique, more nuanced, etc. To co-opt a bumper sticker phrase, we wander, but we are not lost. Something beautiful may grow when we are rooted in our strengths but graft in our weakness.