I've just spent over an hour choosing fonts.

Welcome to the world of a deadbeat graphic designer/resident Colosoul creative director. I just updated the look of this blog and literally took over an hour choosing the perfect combination of fonts from a very limited selection, and I'm still not entirely happy.

Sometimes I hate what I'm working on and have no creative motivation whatsoever to continue, often just scrapping the project completely and starting over. Other nights I'm totally in a "zone" and can look at my work thinking "daymm I'm good." But lately I've felt like I'm in a creative rutt, especially with this current issue of the magazine being such a mess, it's been hard to find the motivation to be great again. Then I recently came across this quote from Ira Glass on why creativity and excellence takes time:

CREATIVITY NEEDS TIME: "The first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good - it's not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you in the game, your taste is killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people quit.

And the thing I would just like to say to you is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. We knew that it didn't have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing to do is - everybody goes though that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase or if you're just starting off and you're entering into that phase, you've got to know it's totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work."

I fell in love with this instantly because it nails how I feel so perfectly. It's that feeling of spending hours working on something and still thinking "this looks like shit".

So I wish I could pass this on to everyone that comes through Colosoul. I see a lot of amazing talented designers come and go, because they go through this phase before having breakdowns or quitting and settling into jobs completely out of their field, stable 9 to 5 jobs because it's easier than finding a creative media job. Sure a lot of people who started at Colosoul have gone on to great things, and other times people have just realized that this field isn't for them. But the biggest bummer is meeting people with mad crazy skills and education who have settled into mediocre jobs. This is the beauty of Colosoul, it pushes you to be better, giving you a platform to recognise your potential and to build your portfolio essentially from nothing. What you get from your time here is only going to be as good as the work you put in.

So here's to 2014, to hard work, doing what you love and doing it well.

- x Lil