On Saturday, May 11, 2013, at the AIGA National Design Center Gallery, Laurie Rosenwald led the AIGA/NY Workshop: How to Make Mistakes on Purpose.

Typically, Rosenwald leads this workshop only a few times a year and swears all participants to omertà, a code of silence, about what happened. The omertà ensures the element of surprise for future participants.

The premise of the workshop is to re-create the kind of insight that comes from random acts or interacting with your environment. Rosenwald introduced the workshop with Georges de Mestral’s invention of Velcro, as an example. De Mestral went for a walk in the woods and when examining the burrs that had stuck to his pants, he afterwards thought, “What could this be?” Rosenwald pointed out that he didn’t invent Velcro by sitting behind a desk and trying to create a different way of sticking things together, rather, the invention of Velcro was a happy accident.

“Trying to be creative is like the kiss of death,” Rosenwald said. She discouraged participants from sitting behind a desk all day and trying to be creative, something many designers do on a daily basis, “I don’t want to be alone with me and my limitations, i want surprise.” she remarked. The workshop gave participants a different mindset to start their work and a jumping off point for when they get stuck.

With the words “Ok, I’m going to play loud music and shout things,” Rosenwald conducted the group through a series of top secret activities during the first part of the day.  These exercises attracted an audience of onlookers from the  street.

Toward the end of the day, Rosenwald gave a presentation on how she applies the idea of ‘making mistakes on purpose’ in her work as an illustrator and designer. “Computers don’t make mistakes. I think that’s bad,” she stated. “Computer programs want you to do a certain thing and when you use them they do exactly what you tell them to,” she explained. For example, computers can easily do things that are hard for people, like drawing a perfect circle. When designers rely only on programs or Google images for work and inspiration, she explained, they create a lot of work that looks the same because everyone else is doing it too. Rosenwald likes to experiment between the organic—the blagh! as she calls it—and the crispness of digital forms.

“If things are too perfect, I think they’re boring and if things are too blagh! I think they’re crazy. What you want is perfect but not perfect,” she said.

She offered advice to work backwards. For example, she suggested the process of making things first and then asking, like de Mestral, “What could this be?” If you’re trying too hard to be good, it makes it difficult and takes away the fun of creating. By letting these serendipitous projects unfold, there’s no time to worry about being “good.”

Additional Information:
Rosenworld, Laurie Rosenwald’s website

Event Details:
AIGA/NY Workshop: How to Make Mistakes on Purpose

Event Photos:
Click here to view all photos from AIGA/NY Workshop: How to Make Mistakes on Purpose. To view additional photos, or to contribute your photos, visit our AIGA New York Flickr group.

Special thanks to guest contributing writer Jacklynn Pham for the AIGA/NY Workshop: How to Make Mistakes on Purpose event recap and photos. Jacklynn can be found at jacklynn.com.