As I mentioned in my last post I will talk about perfectionism. I recently created a book about perfectionism for art school. The purpose of the book was to help myself not to be too perfect in my work. I can take hours on a stripe or a color which totally makes no sense.

While I was making the book, I learned some great lessons on this subject. The most important lesson for me is that as a designer you can't be perfect at all. When the process is accompanied by fear of whether it is good enough, or that you are procrastinating to start, then you know it will bring your project down. It will keep us from taking risks, making it impossible to generate new ideas.

What makes designers great is the same thing that makes them a difficult designer to work with: PERFECTIONISM. It's part of what drives us to design in the first place. We're not happy with what's on the market right now, so we decide to make it ourselves.

PERFECTIONIST DESIGNERS ARE SAD DESIGNERS

REPEAT AFTER ME: I DO NOT NEED TO FINISH A PROJECT BEFORE STARTING THE NEXT PROJECT.

Instead of taking a linear approach to your projects, jump between your projects. If you're in the middle of a project and another idea stands out, jump to that project. You can come back to the first one later. Work on several things at once and you will find that you are in a beautiful flow of productivity and you create your own inspiration.

Image by Marijn Poelmans

As a perfectionist I like to be in control of my designs. For this book I challenged myself to have all the images made by other designers. I found this very exciting because of course I didn't know what I would receive. I only indicated that the subject is perfectionism and that it will be printed in black and white. The image above is one of the results I received. I was very impressed with the work I received from everyone and this has certainly given me confidence to outsource work and that it doesn't always have to be the way I want it.

I am very happy with the personal developments I have made while making this book. At the moment I am still in the process of compiling that book and publishing it as a physical book.

Let us know in the comments if you are interested in a physical version and maybe you can receive it on your doormat for a small price.