A few years back a friend approached me about doing an exhibition of my rejected work. We appropriately gave the exhibition the title of “Reject” and I was off to find enough crap to fill some wall space.

Finding rejected work wasn’t a problem at all. I have a folder on my computer titled “Design Orphanage”, which is where I send all my babies that are without a proper home. Like a true orphanage, some of these children of mine find homes later on (it’s not uncommon to unearth an old idea and renew it for some other client), but the great majority of them are there to stay. Sifting through these homeless treasures is often painful for me in two ways. One, after having had ample time away from some concepts, a pop visit with them will often show my fresh eyes just how horrendous the ideas really were. Why they seemed good at the time can be attributed to a number of reasons, one of them being desperation. Like desperate lovers, ideas that try a little too hard get canned all the time. Well, not all the time. Some actually manage to score, and revisiting those ideas is even more painful since you know that other eyes have seen them too.

But the real pain of digging in that Orphanage folder is that you really do find some good stuff, and suddenly all the memories of why they were rejected begin to resurface. The “reasons”for rejection are as disingenous as some of the doozies I heard in high school.
But as bad as rejection is, it pales in comparison of conformist approval. These are the people who “like” something, only after everyone else does. More than once I’ve seen clients switch their esteem about something I designed for them after it received an award or some other form of group approval. It’s not just clients, either. Friends, that first had a vapid response to my work, have magically located their enthusiasm after the same work in question garnered outside approval.

My late mentor, Tony, would always tell me, in his own way, to learn how to accept rejection graciously. Even when it’s bullshit. It’s an excellent PR strategy, since people love to know when they’ve successfully gotten under your skin. So I suppose the same is true of applause and approval. For the phony smile, smile back. Awards, too, carry the subtle smell of bullshit. Take the award and ignore the smell. As Tony would say, soon enough they will move on to the next poor bastard and will have forgotten all about you.