Please be a shittier graphic designer

A few weeks ago someone in my course asked me whether it was going to be a hindrance to their experience design journey if they were a shitty graphic designer.

To which my resounding answer was: absolutely not.

If this is you—also a shitty graphic designer, you face a fork in the road.

You can probably make whatever you need with AI. And it will probably be fine. Probably very nice looking in fact!

The case for the first tine of said fork feels obvious, so I will not extrapolate.

Today, instead, I want to make the case for the second.

Look — right now, in this moment in which AI can make most everything, and people are using AI to make more content than we would ever want to actually ingest (but don’t worry, my robot can read your robot stuff, if you want), I think there is something wildly important about still designing moments that feel human.

I think we all have better tuned intuition than other people give us credit for (and we give them credit for). I know your AI wrote that post. Even if you scrubbed out the “It’s not this, it’s that” and the “Here’s what no one else will tell you.”

And sometimes that is A-okay! Thanks for writing me a clearly organized email and not unedited word vomit! Good job and nice for us all!

But also, as we are building experiences for one another, very often it’s the effort that matters just as much as (if not more than) the quality.

When we’re designing experiences, we must always be designing for the experience, and also for the memory of the experience. And feeling cared for? It’s one of the stickiest, most memorable feelings you can create.

So your AI poster might be beautiful, but your butt ugly handmade poster makes my heart tender.

And yes — it’s of value to you. And so yes, sure, don’t waste it on crunching a thousand numbers while being desperately unhappy because you hate doing that and your robot could do it for you while you make a sandwich.

But because it’s of value, gifting it to others in the form of effort is wildly precious.

So don’t give all the effort away. And don’t be afraid of making things that aren’t perfect.

A month ago we saw Sara Bareilles live at The Gorge. And the moment where she said “Whelp, my left hand really shit the bed on that one.” made her 80,000 immediate life-long groupies. Because it’s the humanity of honesty. Of mistakes. Of reality.

And we are all desperate for things that feel real.

Lisa Kudrow was asked if she wanted to take guitar lessons for her role as Phoebe Buffay. She declined because she thought that if she actually was good at guitar, her playing badly would feel fake and would not be funny. And all of us would have been deprived the unparalleled comedy of her delivery of lines such as “Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?” or “Life is like a pigeon, shitting on your head.”

Lastly, my final point on said second fork tine:

But you know what is funny? The absurdly bad and the chaotically dumb. Good news is that humor still lives in the land of the humans.

So maybe, friends, just maybe, take this as your sign to lean in to the things you aren’t a savant at, and gift the humans in your life a heaping load of care.

I, meanwhile, will be over here doing my best to unleash the unhinged inner chaos writing monster onto the page. To prove to you that no robot would or could ever write these words, so it must be me, your friend, Olivia. RUTABAGA. NARWHAL. DINGBAT.

(Now I sound like I am giving you my secure passwords. Well maybe I am! Try them and find out!)

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What are you shitty at? Drawing? Harmonica? Decorating cakes?

Is there a way — rather than offloading that skill, or deciding never to use it because someone with actual skills could do it — that you might instead lean in? Make it a schtick?

Use it to prove, to everyone, that it is you, a human. Trying over here. And not a robot.

It may very well win you some groupies for life.

Yours at poorly wrapping presents, Olivia

This month, in honor of summer weather, summer feet, and summer popsicles, we’re diving into what it could mean to design backyards and front porches for our experiences.

Spaces of chaotic free play and public thresholds that invite others in.

Because whether you’re designing a gathering, a program, a process, or a product, the edges of your experience are critical.

So come make them the highest impact element of whatever you’re building.

Join The Good Chaos Club (just $47/month) for access to the live session, the downloadable tools, and the recording.

Plus, when you join you get access to all the other goodies in the Club — all the past recordings, monthly inspo drops, discounted coaching, and early access and member pricing for upcoming studio offers.

🎟️ join the club to snag an invite 🎟️