It’s the kind of failure that matters

In graphic design education, we talk a lot about process, critique, and iteration but not always about failure. That’s a mistake.

Fear of failure can paralyze students, especially in their first few semesters. But failure is essential to learning creative skills. What matters is not whether students fail, but how they fail. A recent newsletter from Dan Mall pointed me to a fantastic framework for naming and sorting different types of failure.

It’s changed how I talk with students about risk and revision and if you are in one of my classes, get ready to discuss.

Failure spectrum from *Strategies for Learning from Failure* — Some failures are blameworthy, others are praiseworthy. What matters is the intent and the learning opportunity.

In my classes, I now introduce this spectrum early on and explain it like this:

Blameworthy failures are things like ignoring directions, forgetting to back up work, or rushing through critique.
Neutral failures might come from trying to follow a flawed process or taking on something unusually complex.
Praiseworthy failures are the best kind: testing an idea, pushing your work into the unknown, asking “what if?”

This gives us a shared language for talking about mistakes. It allows me to separate careless errors from courageous ones. And it helps students take risks with purpose, knowing that the goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress.

Thanks to Dan Mall for surfacing this in his newsletter and to Amy C. Edmondson for the original research, which you can read here:
Strategies for Learning from Failure — Harvard Business Review