Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned

by Steven Heller

The thrill of victory…the agony of defeat.  We're not talking about just any failure. Design failure. So public. So humiliating. How do designers who are really, really good (we swear!) turn a disaster into a triumph? Read this book and find out, as dozens of top names reveal the heartbreaking—and sometimes hilarious—mistakes they have made and talk about how they were able to grow from the experiences. Self-delusion, overcommitment, procrastination…they’re all here. Poor communication, missed deadlines, enraged clients…yes, they’re here too. Read Design Disasters and weep? No! Read Design Disasters and be inspired to find the silver lining in even the cloudiest situation.

Featuring essays by: Henry Petroski • Alissa Walker • David Barringer • Allan Chocinov • Peter Blegvad • Ross MacDonald • Robert Grossman • Ina Saltz • Warren Lehrer • Rob Trostle • Ralph Caplan • Richard Saul Wurman • Marian Bantjes • Rick Meyerowitz • Amanda Bowers • David Jury • Veronique Vienne • Francis Levy • Colin Berry • Nick Curry • Debbie Millman, and more!

Genres: Design, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Steven Heller writes a monthly column on graphic design books for The New York Times Book Review and is co-chair of MFA Design at the School of Visual Arts. He has written more than 100 books on graphic design, illustration and political art, including Paul Rand, Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design Second Edition, Handwritten: Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age, Graphic Design History, Citizen Designer, Seymour Chwast: The Left Handed Designer, The Push Pin Graphic: Twenty Five Years of Design and Illustration, Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits, The Anatomy of Design: Uncovering the Influences and Inspirations in Modern Graphic Design. He edits VOICE: The AIGA Online Journal of Graphic Design, and writes for Baseline, Design Observer, Eye, Grafik, I.D., Metropolis, Print, and Step. Steven is the recipient of the Art Directors Club Special Educators Award, the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and the School of Visual Arts' Masters Series Award.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an anthology of short essays by contemporary designers and observers of design. The editor, Steven Heller, is certainly one of the most articulate designers who writes about the craft.

The theme is entertaining: everyone has failures, and designers should learn to incorporate design failures into their problem solving process. The essays are of uneven quality; and even those which are well written have a hard time going beyond entertainment. If there were a formula for good design, everyone would use it. There are endless theories, innumerable methods, and even designers with talent and experience regularly have blind alleys, duds, and stinkers. You may have suspected it before, now you know, even some relatively big names admit it.

None of the essayists represented suggest how they get their clients to pay for and embrace the wasted efforts that lead to the eventual success. Oddly, Mr. Heller, a veteran as both author and designer of many books and publications, has provided an odd page design, including an enormous head margin, as though we were going to need lots of room for notes. The idea of making the headlines and chapter titles run off the page, well, it was funny on the cover, but IMHO detracts from its essentially serious topic.

A harder hitting and more incisive work–funnier too– "Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn't Worked" appeared in the 1970's, and benefited from more context than Heller's collection.

Essays by Ralph Caplan and Richard Saul Wurman are well written and worth the price of admission.

So, I propose a solid 3 stars; maybe could have been 4 with tighter editing and some case studies.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

If it were not for the title I would have given the book four stars. Yes, the stories were well written and amusing. I enjoyed the book as an interesting collection of antidotes for certain. But, the stories in the book read more like cathartic exercises than insightful accounts of "Design Disasters."

About the title ...
Design Disasters is a bit dramatic since many were hiccups and typical problems that designers face every day. Great designers? — some were actually writers and poets perhaps with some design and/or illustration backgrounds. Fabulous Failures? — now the author is trying to get into a rhythm here. Lessons Learned? There were not many lessons from what I read but there were some colorfully written stories.


Again, as a collection of short stories as told through the pen of creative types, yes, I will recommend this book. I will not recommend it as a book from which one can glean some insight from the failure of a designer.

[Elaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

So far it's not what I expected. It's more personal reflection about failure and how it feels to fail. I was expecting more concrete examples with analyses about what went wrong.

[Joe Stephens · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book is misleading — I went into it hoping it would be a wonderful collection of established design professionals sharing the stories of small & large failures they've made and what was benefited from the experience. Only a handful of the entries in this book are anything like that. Instead, most are deep philosophical musings on failure, its definition, etc. felt more like people attempting to be profound in their own minds than offering real applicable insight based on their professional experience.

[Aggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me feel okay about trying new things and having them not work.