Quantity leads to quality

Showing up consistently without worrying about the results leads to better results. Here’s a parable from David Bayles and Ted Orland’s book, ’Art & Fear’ to illustrate this:

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A," forty pounds a "B," and so on. Those being graded on "quality," however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an "A."

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

Give good critiques

Learning to give good critiques will make you a better designer, and having a process for reviewing design work will help you navigate the emotional ups and downs of the critique. Here’s 5 steps for confidently critiquing your own work or someone else’s.

In each step, describe:

1. What you see
2. The things that you like
3. The things that feel off to you
4. What elements you think don’t work, and why
5. What you think might work instead