Call It Good

When I was a Senior Designer 14 years ago, I wanted nothing more than to become an Art Director. So, I tried to soak up everything I could from every Art Director I worked with. I picked up a tip from one Art Director that I still use to this day.

I was watching him present a design concept to a client. He said, “And over here is an area that summarizes what a user will find on this page…”

There was nothing out of the ordinary about that statement. He was doing what we all do: scrolling through the web page, talking about what there.

But then he added this tidbit:

“…which is looking really good.”

I perked up and my eyes darted across the room to him and then to the client and then to everyone else. Did he just… compliment his own work? Surely, this arrogance is something the client would pounce on. What if they didn’t think it looked really good? Was there going to be a conflict?

To my surprise, they nodded, almost in realization. Like he was giving them permission to think it was good. Like he was teaching them that it was good.

He did this several times throughout the conversation, stopping to point out what things were working well. Each time, the client seemed more awakened at how fitting this design was to their needs… largely because he said so.

I learned a valuable lesson that day:

We often fail to call our own work good.

If we don’t, how can we expect others to do so?

As uncomfortable as it was to start, I began to call my own work good more often. In presentations, yes, but also just to myself sometimes in the process of doing the work. This wasn’t some brainwashing technique that allowed me to convince myself that bad work was actually good. It was a forcing function: if I wasn’t comfortable honestly calling a piece of design good in front a client, it was a signal to me that it wasn’t ready yet.

This past year has been a different kind of year for me professionally. It’s the first full year that I wasn’t an employee of a company—someone else’s or my own—since 2006. I’ve done a mix of contract work, consulting, coaching, creating courses and content, and a considerable cacophony of other campaign. Still though, within the variance, there’s a lot that I can call good.

The first chapter of the Bible’s book of Genesis tells the story of how God created the world. There’s an interesting rhythm to the chapter: God makes a thing—light, sky, land, animals, etc—and then He “saw that it was good.” After He makes everything, he “saw that it was very good!”

Whether you believe the universe was created by some old dude in the sky or think it’s a book of fairy tales and mythology, I still think there's a lot to learn from this story. Over this past year, I can look back at some things I’ve made and call it good. As I look back on the entire year, despite some trials and hardships, I can see that it was very good. I hope you can do the same for your year too.

So what’s next? Well, according to the story, God created some things that were good, saw that the aggregate was very good, and then He rested.

I think that’s a pretty good model to follow.

I hope you had things this year that were good, and very good. I hope, as the year winds down, that you get some rest.

This will be my last newsletter for the year, as I get some rest too.

Thanks for reading, and see you in 2024.