Cameron Moll is a very accomplished designer, speaker, and writer. I was watching a recent presentation he gave for LessConf3010 where he highlighted several of his views and theories when it comes to great, as opposed to merely good, design.
The entire presentation is wonderful to watch, not least of which is for the slideshow itself, which is a truly great slideshow (just take note of how many bullets you see in the whole thing: none), but one thing captured my attention that is the main point of this post.
A while back Cameron decided to challenge himself to create a poster of the Colosseum in Rome using glyphs. He brought this up as an example of his drive to do hard things, and that, in setting out to do something you think you can't do, you thereby learn how to do it and expand your capabilities and gain practice with stretching yourself.
Cameron's self-made video on the process can be found at ColosseoType.com. It's an incredible inspiration to me, and a reminder that the fear of messing up or doing well is never a good reason for not trying. Fear breeds complacency, and complacency kills creativity.
I hope this inspires you to go out and accomplish something you think you can't do.
