This week in class, Hal McGonigle from Signifyd delivered a guest lecture entitled. ‘Designing Your Narrative to Unleash Creative Confidence for Success”. This title was derived from ‘Creative ‘Confidence’ by Tom Kelley and David Kelley.
This book is about harnessing everyone's creative potential. It emphasises the importance of a growth mindset, overcoming the fear of failure, and promotes action over endless planning. It also highlights the role of prototyping and iteration in the creative process.
While this isn’t directly related to the module, Hal offered great insights into industry, his own journey to where he is today and lots of advice to develop our own design practice and confidence within our craft.
<aside> ⭐ REFLECTION ON LECTURE
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Hal posed many questions to the floor towards the beginning of the presentation, such as “do you think you are creative?” or “what do you think limits you as a designer?”. These questions sparked some internal dialogue during the presentation, as I reflected on my own relationship with creativity throughout my life, thinking of the various outputs of creativity I have been privileged enough to experience. From fine art to being a professional harpist, I paused to reflect on all of these experiences and how they have led me to this creative pathway and moreover how they inform my design practice. I feel that my path to this course was equally as roundabout as Hal’s, but in a way that traversed a more artistic and humanities education experience.
Hal posed that each of these unique experiences is what makes the design sphere so diverse and rich. Each person’s unique experience is what contributes to a holistic design team and as a result more holistic and diverse designs. There is an element of ‘school of life’ involved in being a designer, particularly in more human-centred disciples such as UX design or service design. This means that having a highly diverse group of designers with differing backgrounds and experiences can only be a positive thing.
Hal argued that the fear of failure is the single biggest obstacle people face to creative success. Removing this fear would already position a designer on a path of creative confidence. In the workplace, this demands employers to allow the space for failure and experimentation. Spreading creative confidence throughout an organisation is a vital step involves encouraging others to embrace their own creativity and fostering a culture in which creativity is valued and nurtured.
Ultimately, design, innovation, and creativity should be daily habits and lifelong missions. They should be seen as integral parts of our lives, influencing the way we approach problems and conceive of solutions. This is encapsulated in the idea that there is no word in the Tibetan language for "creativity" or "being creative", with the closest translation being "natural". This underscores the idea that creativity is a natural and inherent part of human life.
Believing in the potential for growth and innovation is vital. This involves adopting a growth mindset, which is the belief that your true potential is unknown and not limited to what you have been able to do before. Creativity is closely linked with innovation and the ability to see beyond current circumstances to envision what could be possible.
I particularly resonated with a point Hal made about adopting a mindset surrounding the positive impact you can have on a company. A design that you create has the potential to make a company a lot of money. Using that as your motivator to experiment and find alternative solutions to problems, it allows true creative confidence to flourish.
I really enjoyed this lecture as it was very inspiring and the motivator I definitely needed at this point in the semester. It is easy to get bogged down in projects and forget the bigger picture as to why I am here. Particularly as I am starting placement with Rapid 7 in under two months, it felt like a pep talk preceding my first ever industry job. I am beyond excited for this role and in my time there, I want to display this creative confidence as much as I can as it will truly set me apart as a designer.