Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for Print and New Media Designers

6. How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Edit

YOU CAN’T GET WHAT YOU WANT

TILL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT

—SONGWRITER JOE JACKSON

In the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, elegant con man Lawrence Jamieson (played by Michael Caine) describes how he got into the business of swindling rich, corruptible women out of their money: “As a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn’t very good.... I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style but not talent.... Fortunately I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired.” Mr. Jamieson might also have made a successful interior designer or, dare I say it, a fine art director.

I’m not saying that graphic ...