Room For Improvement

Let me tell you a quick story.

I was recently working on a fictional newsletter to help me learn InDesign. I had an instructor looking over my shoulder every now and then to comment on my work. I designed the newsletter for the shareholders of a fictional railway company. Naturally, my newsletter had the company’s name as the header. It was a simple black text on a light blue background (colors of the company).

To make the distinction that the newsletter was for shareholders, I put exactly that – “shareholders” – in black type, half over the light blue background box and half on the white background (the paper).

Some would see it as I saw it: beautiful balance between who is most important (the company and the shareholders), slightly abstract, and it was the first thing to catch someone’s eye – rightfully so. The instructor saw it differently.

She saw it as unorganized (even though I had every bit of the text perfectly aligned with the rest of the page). She saw it as distracting (forgetting it’s the part of text everyone should see first).  Essentially, she thought it was wrong.

“Wrong?” Sure, I’ll give it to her. It could have been improved.

But, “not right?”

I like to remember the Law of the Many, which has two focal points worth briefly mentioning. First, the theory of it implies that there will always be at least one person in the world that thinks what you did was right. And it’s often more than one person.

Second, the Law of the Many gives you the right to reject rejection, to deny someone’s disapproval of what you did. If I had 20 instructors tell me it was wrong, I might think differently about it. But one, just one person telling me it’s wrong?

Failure is a hard thing to sell. If you’re wise, you won’t buy it.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Ever Forget That There’s Always Room For Improvement

Garth E. Beyer

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