Iterative Design: Boost Creativity & Mastery

Explore how iterative design fuels creative evolution. Uncover design secrets from Sony PlayStation's iconic logo journey and spark your creative process.

An analog collage made of last week’s headers

Hey Friends! I’m closing in on 6 months of writing each week here on Substack. I’m nearly half way towards my goal of writing one article a week for a year. Thanks for riding along with me!

Iterative Design

In the post below, from

ObsoleteSony

, they share a collection of designs that Manabu Sakamoto explored while coming up with the now iconic Sony Playstation logo.

While it’s fun to envision a world in which your favorite brands look completely different, this piece also serves as a case study in the iterative nature of good design. Aesthetically, each logo is different than the next, but there exists a through line in color and form and the interplay between the letters “P” and “S.”

It’s clear from the picture that Sakamoto started with a clear concept, but only realized its full potential after nourishing it by exploring its potential. This Reddit post shares the same image with a 5th column of iterations. I can only imagine the number of versions that remained in sketch form and never made it to the graphics software stage.

In my experience, working iteratively in this way, doesn’t come naturally to most. When I teach logo design to my 100 level graphic design students, most will work on one single version of a logo. When I instruct them to make a minimum of 10 different versions of that first one, they look at me like I’m crazy, but the best work emerges only after you’ve explored every angle of what a project could be.

Sakamoto’s Play Station concepts illustrate this perfectly.

Takeaway: An important aspect of creativity is experimentation and play. It’s only once you’ve tended to the seed of an idea, and given it time to germinate, that it can fully blossom.

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The Creative Process

Francis Chouquet

recently shared a funny meme he found on Instagram. It reads:

The Creative Process

1. This is awesome

2. This is tricky

3. This sucks

4. I suck

5. This might be ok

6. This is awesome

For one, I think the meme, as an art form, doesn’t get the respect it deserves. For many, it has slid under the radar as an art form unto itself. To be able to make someone laugh, and say so much with so little, is chef’s-kiss-perfection. Let’s hear it for the meme.

Also, this particular meme perfectly represents the familiar emotional journey of participating in creative endeavors: the elation of a creative spark, followed by the frustration of realizing your talents fall short of your creative vision, followed by depths of despair as your efforts continue to fail you and you question life’s meaning, followed by a glimmer of hope as a last ditch effort to save your creative work hints at a path forward, followed by pure elation as your creative vision is in fact realized.

I can imagine Manabu Sakamoto feeling something similar as he worked through his iterative design process with the Sony Playstation logo project. The middle collection of logos are clearly the most experimental, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was less than thrilled with them, but there in lies the lesson: Creativity is exploration.

Sakamoto would have never found his way to the end had he not gone through that messy middle.

Takeaway: When your efforts aren’t clicking, and you feel like giving up, that’s exactly when you need to keep going. Embrace the suck. It’s part of the creative process.

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Compare Yourself To Who You Were

In the post below from

Adam Ming

, he shares a pencil sketch he drew and writes:

When I was starting out as an illustrator, the biggest mistake I made was comparing my 5 week year old work with people who have been doing it for over 10,000 hours. Recognizing the need for patience gave me peace of mind to just keep going daily!

This is a great reminder to anyone in the early stages of learning a new creative pursuit. It’s easy, and generally tempting, to compare yourself to the creatives you admire most, but the effortlessness with which they execute their craft hides the endless hours of practice and countless failed attempts that paved their way.

Still, it’s difficult to find the patience Ming refers to, so here’s a suggestion for you: don’t compare yourself to the masters, compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

I recently took up collage as a new creative hobby. I’m trying my best not compare myself to

Duane Toops

, and others who’ve logged WAY more hours than me in this field. Instead, I’m keeping a visual log of each project I make along the way.

You can view it here if you l’d like.

I’m still early in my journey, but I can already see improvements in my compositions and technique as I explore materials, tools, and switching between digital and analog mediums.

Takeaway: If you improved your ability just 1% each day for a year, compounded, that would make you 37.78 times better than you are today. Focus on you and keep going.

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Greatness

If you were to ask me, in an interview, “What’s your greatest weakness?" I might respond, “Sometimes I take on too much responsibility.” If you were to ask me that same question at a pub, I’d probably say, “I love hustle culture content.” To be clear, I’m saying I love the content about hustle culture, not hustle culture itself. I’m all about work/life balance.

But hustle culture content? It’s so good.

Give me a 45 minute Gary Vee podcast, a Tony Robbins seminar, or a Grant Cardone video, and I’m in my happy place. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I genuinely like these guys, or if I’m hate watching them because they’re ridiculous—bordering on performance art. All I know, is I can’t stop watching them.

Fortunately, in moderation and with appropriate mental filters in place, these hustle bros occasionally spout some truth worth repeating. In this tweet from Alex Hormozi, He states:

Greatness rejects all first time applicants.

Oh man! Feed that directly into my veins. It’s so good!

In all seriousness, there is a profundity to these words. Greatness doesn’t come easy, nor does it come fast. My aunt, a retired elementary school art teacher, recently shared a story she’d heard about Pablo Picasso. She said:

After Picasso died they found hundreds (thousands?) of his paintings in a store room. People asked what they were doing there. It was said those paintings were the ones he made and learned from. The only way to get better is to keep doing more art. Even Picasso practiced and experimented with ideas, and not all were ready for prime time.

Even history’s greatest artists took time to develop. Nearly everyone who reaches the pinnacle in their field shares a commonality: an enduring commitment to their craft and persistence in the face of rejection.

Takeaway: Behind any great body of works lies a lifetime of trials and tribulations, and a graveyard of experimentation.

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It’s Inevitable

In a recent episode of My First Million, host Shaan Puri shared a thought-provoking idea about the future (at 42:47). He stated:

If something is not impossible, it’s inevitable.

As AI continues its march forward, Puri’s quote seems more prescient each day. Just look at the leaps made in generative video over the course of one year in the video below.

In 2023, Will Smith Eating Spaghetti looked like someone’s terrifying fever dream. In 2024, you’d be forgiven for thinking the footage was real. While there is much hand-wringing over the use of generative AI in many parts of the creative web, it seems pretty clear that fully generative cinematic feature films are on the horizon.

As AI unlocks new capabilities, the inevitability of everything seems to be accelerating—for better or worse.

As a creative, I remain optimistic that the future will usher in a golden era of creativity. Sure the quantity of AI slop will greatly outnumber that which is worthy of attention, but the cream always rises to the top. As the metaphorical container for all this dairy expands, the highest-quality work will rise even higher.

Takeaway: When everything becomes increasingly plausible, what you choose to do, not how you do it, will matter most.

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One More Thing

Good things are better when shared. If you liked this, it would mean the world to me if you sent it to someone who might like it too.

I’ll see you in your inbox again next week.

Until then,

-Mike