When working through a creative exercise, you have to be willing to fall flat on your face. Taking risks and making mistakes can leave us in a vulnerable place, but it also releases us to be creative. It is a part of making something new and different. If we need to create work that captures minds and does not let go, then we need to be creating work that is memorable, using new ideas that break out of the norm–going beyond safe solutions and creating fearless creative.

Paula Scher, a principal at the Pentagram New York office, creates fearless work that has infiltrated American society. Her work comes out of a courageous mindset. She completely trusts herself and relies purely on her instincts. In an interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, Scher described how she approaches her projects. “I operate very strongly with my instincts … It is a very intuitive kind of process for me. I have never been a refiner. My best work has been big bold strokes that came very quickly.”

Working on an instinctual level can bring immediate results. Scher also states in her interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, “How can it be done in a second, but it is done in second? It is done in a second and forty-three years. It is done in a second and every experience, every move and every thing of my life that is in my head.” Scher trusts her creative instincts and the reservoir within her mind to create fearless, fresh, engaging work.

But creating fearless, fresh and engaging work takes guts. Stefan Sagmeister, founder of Sagmeister Inc., creates work that is gutsy and far from being just another safe solution. His work has a transparent quality that leaves every beautiful flaw visible. In a recent interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, Sagmeister talked about how he writes in his dairy as a way to reflect and improve. “I find the time when I write, I really am forced to look back and evaluate what went well and what did not go so well.”

Sagmeister takes every opportunity to learn from his successes as well as his failures. Engaging work comes when you push the boundaries, and I want to find myself in that place, creating something captivating and risky and avoiding what is truly detrimental–setting boundaries and creating limitations to try to prevent failure. Because mistakes are often a turning point. When a creative direction proves to be a failure, you are free to move on to a new idea and create something fearless and captivating.