Kill Your Darlings — It Makes You Better.

I remember being in my second year of college. I can’t remember the assignment I was working on, but my professor was coming around to look at our work, and I was explaining I was working on a concept that I really, really liked, but it didn’t quite meet the expectations of the assignment and she said to me…

“Well, sometimes you have to kill your darlings.”

This advice has stuck with me for years, and still does to this day. In the design world, it’s a term for a concept or design that just doesn’t quite fulfill the goal of the project, but we just really came to love.

I think all designers can pinpoint a project where we’re doing some research and find a really badass idea that we want to execute, we start working and after some time, it’s starting to grow some legs and we’re liking it. And then presenting the idea to our Creative Director / Art Director / Account Manager / Client etc. and suddenly, you’re get the silent stare. Pistons aren’t firing, it’s not hitting a cord with them like you had hoped. At this point, most designers are thinking “How can I fix this to be in a place where it’s still the concept I’m liking, but it’s going to get approved?”

In these cases, we have to admit the concept isn’t working in this particular context and it’s time to move on to something that will. That is our job as designers, whether we work for an agency, in-house or freelance. Killing those ideas means we get to start from scratch again and allows us to see beyond our scope to create.

Killing our darlings isn’t a bad thing, and once we get a little experience under our belt, we can understand quicker when it’s time to abandon that concept and move on to something new. Maybe it’s a logo option that didn’t make it to the final presentation, maybe it’s a print ad layout that just got cut from the 1st round after client review, maybe it’s the website design that we just loved – and was a little edgy, but it just wasn’t the right feel.

Killing those ideas, does not mean burying those ideas.

Those are the ideas I love to build out and include in my portfolio. Those are the ideas we can go back to for inspiration and re-work when it feels right for a different client. Maybe that idea is resting in peace for the time being – but we can bring it back to life when it’s the right time.