A short first-person design talk (YouTube) by Dan Mall recounting his experience as a junior designer and mentorship from creative director Jason Santa Maria. The speaker contrasts slow, perfection-seeking creation with Jason’s rapid multi-version process and gives the core takeaway: "it's always easier to revise than create," advising fast initial creation followed by focused iteration.
When I was a design intern and a junior designer, one of the things that would frustrate me most was trying to make something that looked really good and I just couldn't do it. There's this great Ira Glass quote about things that people don't tell beginners. And he says, like, you know, when people who do creative work, they get into creative work because their taste is really high, but when they're beginners, their ability to execute against that doesn't match their taste. And that's the thing that helps them grow, is that you notice this discrepancy between your taste and your skill level. And, and you want to increase that skill level until it catches up with your taste. Right. So I certainly experienced that when I was a junior designer, just not being able to execute against my taste. And one of the things that really helped me was, came from a creative director that I worked with when I was in my first jobs. I was lucky to work with Jason Santa Maria, who's an excellent designer and a creative director. And I learned so much from him. And this one lesson in particular sticks with me to this day. Every day I think about this thing that I learned maybe 20 years ago now from watching Jason work. So one of the things that I used to do was if I was working on a design concept, I would come in in the morning at, you know, whatever, 9 o' clock or 10 o' clock, and I would start on my work and I would work on it and work on it, work on and iter, and tweak this thing and move this thing and move this over here. And then at the end of the day, you know, 5 o' clock or whatever, when I clock out, I would go, okay, I'm done. And I'd look at it and it'd be like, eh, it's not that great. And the thing with Jason that I always noticed was that Jason would always be done. He would come in at the same time as I did, but he'd always be done his work at like noon or 1pm And I'm like, you know, maybe it's just that he's faster than me. And so I would watch him work and he actually wasn't that much faster than me. So I'm like, what is it that makes his work better? It can't just be. Is it just experience? He's just more experienced than me. Well, there's a thing about his process that I really picked up on it and I take to heart and even to this day is that Jason would get done his work really fast, and he would get to a point where he was done with his work as fast as possible. And I think he would do it without worrying about whether it was good. And I think that's the thing that I didn't have at the time was I would always try to make something good, and if it wasn't good, I would keep working on it. Keep working on it. Whereas Jason, what he would do is he would come in at whatever, 9 o' clock or 10 o', clock, and he'd work on version one and he'd be done in an hour. And whatever he had done in an hour wasn't that great. I mean, by my standards, sure, it was better than what I could have done, but for his standards, it wasn't that great. I remember him showing me a design once that when he was done at the end of that first hour, I was like, is this a website or what? What is this? It's. Cause I didn't really understand what it was going to be. And actually, side note, it ended up being the amazing design for a list apart. That kind of broke a lot of boundaries at that time. Anyway, Jason would work on this thing for the first hour and then he call it done. And then he would work on it again for the next hour and then he'd be done version two, and then the next version three, version four, version five. In five hours, he would be done five different versions. And the thing about iteration that probably, you know and I know, but maybe beginners don't know, is that when you iterate on something, you can make it better. If you try to work on the same thing, though, on the same iteration over and over like this, the same iteration, just all the way through, and not calling it done, just continually moving stuff around, it's not gonna be good because you're still on version one. And the thing I learned from Jason that I put into play and put into practice this day to this day, is that you just work on something, finish it, then iterate quickly finish it, finish it, like, and you finish it multiple times. And then you really get to something that's a great result after five hours and five iterations, because you're going through that. And the lesson that he taught me, and this is kind of sums it up, is he said he would say to me, dan, it's always easier to revise than it is to create. And I was always stuck trying to create something. Like, I'd put something on screen. Oh, no, no, it wasn't good. I'd move it. I'm still in the act of creation. Whereas what Jason would do is he would just create something that he knew wasn't good, so that he can very quickly get to the revision stage. And then in revising, that's where the work gets really good. So that lesson has stuck with me to this day. It's easier to revise than create. So anytime I'm designing something, I'll try to design it really quickly and not care about whether it's good. So that can skip the creation stage or get through that as fast as I can and then move along to revising. It's always easier to revise than create. Hopefully that helps you in your work. Good luck.
