How to confront, embrace, and learn from the unavoidable failures of
creative practice; with case studies that range from winemaking to
animation.
Failure is an inevitable part of any creative practice. As game
designers, John Sharp and Colleen Macklin have grappled with crises of
creativity, false starts, and bad outcomes. Their tool for coping with
the many varieties of failure: iteration, the cyclical process of
conceptualizing, prototyping, testing, and evaluating. Sharp and Macklin
have found that failure--often hidden, covered up, a source of
embarrassment--is the secret ingredient of iterative creative process.
In Iterate, they explain how to fail better.
After laying out the four components of creative practice--intention,
outcome, process, and evaluation--Sharp and Macklin describe iterative
methods from a wide variety of fields. They show, for example, how
Radiolab cohosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich experiment with radio
as a storytelling medium; how professional skateboarder Amelia Bródka
develops skateboarding tricks through trial and error; and how artistic
polymath Miranda July explores human frailty through a variety of media
and techniques. Whimsical illustrations tell parallel stories of
iteration, as hard-working cartoon figures bake cupcakes, experiment
with levitating office chairs, and think outside the box in toothbrush
design ("let's add propellers!"). All, in their various ways, use
iteration to transform failure into creative outcomes. With Iterate,
Sharp and Macklin offer useful lessons for anyone interested in the
creative process.
**Case Studies:
**Allison Tauziet, winemaker; Matthew Maloney, animator; Jad Abumrad and
Robert Krulwich, Radiolab cohosts; Wylie Dufresne, chef; Nathalie
Pozzi, architect, and Eric Zimmerman, game designer; Andy Milne, jazz
musician; Amelia Bródka, skateboarder; Baratunde Thurston, comedian; Cas
Holman, toy designer; Miranda July, writer and filmmaker
