I'm currently at D&AD Festival in London, which is full of inspirational speakers talking about their work. There's a tendency at these things to come out thinking that everything in the creative world is smooth and that the creative process is just one seamless flow from brief to solution.
Except it's not. Even the best rebrands and best adverts ever made were not made without error. "Behind these brilliant shiny products are messy stories," says Matt Baxter of Baxter & Bailey in a talk called The Design Laundry, where together with his co-founder Dom Bailey, they lift the lid on the mistakes behind the briefs (pun intended).
Why are they doing this? "We live in a world where everything we see is pristine," says Matt. "For young designers, it's quite reassuring to know that even the most experienced designers make mistakes," adds Dom.
What kind of mistakes are we talking about? Dom and Matt start by sharing their own misdemeanours. There was the time when Dom was so shocked by his Russian travelmate's pants on a train in Russia that he left his entire portfolio in the carriage.
Then there was the time when Matt was halfway through a brief when the client stood up, put his thumb down and made what was essentially a booing noise.
Matt and Dom were wondering if it was just them who had made such mistakes so they decided to ask a friend, Rian Hughes, if he had experienced anything similar.
The result was an absolute corker and involved a wet day, a long journey, a client meeting, a portfolio and some dog poo.
They realised they were onto something.
So they opened it up to the creative community as a whole and launched The Design Laundry, asking people to submit their worse mistakes into the fold. And what started as a trickle of anecdotes turned into hundreds of emails from hundreds of creatives sharing their dirty laundry.
Matt and Dom shared four stories from the creative community and they were all varying degrees of cringe.
There was Daljit Singh of Exactly AI who thought he was going to meet Gene Simmons of Kiss fame, got on a flight to meet him and then convinced himself it was his friend Simon playing a prank on him.
When he knocked on the hotel door room to meet Gene, who was staying under a pseudonym, Simon, he said: "Simon, come out you massive tosser!"
""You English guys have got such strange senses of humour," said Gene. Needless to say he didn't get the job.
There were tales of embracing mistakes and being yourself – of course, every story comes with a learning – but my absolute favourite came from Frances Jackson of OPX.
She was designing a book for the King's Trust, which was called 'Art in the Public Realm'. The books were lovingly created and thousands of them were printed and then presented to HRH himself, King Charles.
The King handed the book right back.
Why? The title said 'Art in the Pubic Realm'.
And that's the kind of story that makes the Design Laundry so fun. If you've got a story you can submit it to the Design Laundry. And if you get the chance to see Matt and Dom talk through these stories then I highly recommend the experience.
Stay tuned for more highlights from D&AD Festival.
