About a week ago I had finished a design for a postcard invitation that I was hurriedly trying to get to print. I printed it off, handed it to the marketing manager, and waited three days for a reply. When it came, I wasn’t surprised; if you don’t hear from them in three days they’re trying to find a way to say something nice about it.

“I just absolutely, positively LUUUUUV the background of the piece,” the marketing manager gushed. I winced. “It’s SOOOOO in keeping with the THEEEEEME of the EVENT!”

From this fortuitous beginning I was positively sure this wasn’t going to go well at all. And it didn’t. The next sentence started with “Couple of small THINGS…”

In short, “we,” which presumably meant “me,” had to scrap every design element on the invitation and start over. I trudged back to the desk, envisioning a world full of pointy things that might land on this woman. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean…POIIIIIIINTY THINNNNNGS.

So I sat at my desk with a fax featuring all her ‘edits’ and stared at my design. And then, like a bolt of oobleck, it hit me: My original design was complete and utter crap.

I had designed this thing with one hand on the phone, one hand on a bagel, and not particularly interested in doing anything other than making a “sandwich design.” You know the sandwich design… slap a logo on two sides of paper and drizzle some type across it, then serve?

So I went back and I created a really nice postcard. It didn’t actually take me any more time than the original sandwich design, and when I presented it, there were oohs and aaahs…and not just about the background this time.

Criticism, of any kind, reboots creativity. It forces you to rethink, to reinvent and make something pleasing, memorable and palatable where you might have made a sandwich instead. I complain about a lot of things: uninformed consumers and supervisors, deadlines, doing the impossible the day before yesterday, but not real true criticism.

We live in an age of instant feedback, instant critique and the chance to get ripped apart regularly by poetasters of the design world. It’s hard to define true criticism, to separate the critics (of which there are many) and the critiquing that actually benefits. But it’s important. Weed out the snipes and the “make the logo bigger” statements and look for the ones where people say “well, we like MOST of it,” or “I don’t get it…what is this part?” These are the critics who want you to succeed with your work. These are the gems you use to advance your own skill.

So, next time you get handed a fax with a million changes, ask yourself, “have I made a sandwich here?” If you can say yes, it’s probably time to see how a return to the drawing board isn’t a hindrance but a gift.

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits