Design Details – March 2008

March 28th, 2008

Volume 02 // Number 03

March 2008

In this issue

• Spring Has Sprung
• Fail Your Way To Success
• Find of the Month

Hi,

This email newsletter comes to you in HamiltonBerchman’s never-ending pursuit of helping our clients and friends succeed.

Spring Has Sprung

At least here in Southern California spring has arrived. The smell of the orange blossoms fills the air in the Ojai Valley and to me that is the arrival of spring. The office is busy, as we get ready to release our new web site next month. Our web site will have archives of DesignDetails, our blog, portfolio, ways for you to interact with us, and more (details to follow). This month’s topic is a bit more philosophical than some of our more ‘nuts-and-bolts’ topics so we will get right to it.

One last thing, if you like this e-newsletter consider forwarding this to a friend. We always like referral subscribers. Thanks for spreading the word.

Fail Your Way To Success

A blog post I read recently used the phrase you just read, “Fail Your Way To Success.” I had to read that post just based on the title alone. I thought, “How can you fail to succeed?” And I have been ruminating on it ever since.

We are all creatures of habit. We do certain things a certain way. We all like some degree of predictability in our lives and cherish the security in knowing that some things will always be. However, when it comes to our professional lives, our ‘career’ lives, predictability can sometimes be not so predictable. Economies change, businesses change, people change and we can influence these things but really we do not have complete control over them. We are seeing some of this play out on the U.S. national scene now in the financial markets with regard to the economy as a whole. No one person has complete control. But people can influence what is going on.

In my business, a service business, things are constantly in flux. Clients come, clients go, people’s needs change, projects change, but there are some constants. I perform my processes and tasks for projects in a consistent manner. I control how they are carried out and can create some sense of predictability with how things will go. These are things that I know are a part of what I do and what I create. However, what about the unknown things? What about new challenges and the risks and rewards associated with them?

This is where failing comes into play. We like our comfort zones, so taking risks and stepping outside those zones creates the possibility of failure, or success! I’ll admit I have a deep seeded fear of failure. For me to declare I was starting my own business was risky and took an enormous leap of faith. I’ll admit I was scared as hell at failing. But here I am, still at it. Although now the challenges that I face are different than they were when I started out in this business. I am feeling a sense of failure in a few areas of business because things are not going how I envisioned them. From this I know that what I am presently doing is not working. The great thing is I have opportunities and options—as we all do—to make a change towards something else.

If I fail at something in business I see it as an opportunity to learn and make a more informed decision going forward. So, in a sense even though there is a part of me that has a fear of failure, there is a part of me that knows without failure there will be no success. Get up and get moving! Make a change, try something different, fail your way to success!

I wonder, do you have a fear of failure? Do you have any stories of where failure led to success? I would love to hear them, let me know.

Finally, Find of the Month

In every issue I share an Internet destination I have come across that has some application to doing business, getting things done, or just plain cool. This month it’s a website called The Story of Stuff, http://www.storyofstuff.com. From their web site, “The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.”

I took time to watch the video and was fascinated at what I saw. If it helps create a little awareness in you, you might want to pass it along.

Wrap up.

That’s it for this month of DesignDetails. Let me know if you have any questions about any of this content.

I am always on the lookout for article ideas. If you have a challenge or question you are facing relating to the Internet or design and would be willing to share, let me know. I can answer your issues here and share with everyone—with anonymity of course.

I’ll talk to you again in April 2008.

Bert Mahoney AIGA
Publisher, DesignDetails

Principal and Creative Director,
HamiltonBerchman Design Group, Inc.
details@hamiltonberchman.com

Director of Internet Strategy and Services
AIGA Santa Barbara

AIGA | the professional association for design