I am sure you’ve seen all the great tutorial websites out there, full of really helpful tutorials. Nowadays we have the chance to read tutorials directly from the industry leading bloggers, designers and entrepreneurs.

Even I have checked out my luck and sent a tutorial to one of the major websites (hope you’ll have the chance to check it out soon). And this is exactly the reason that made me think a little bit more on our perception of the tutorials we read every day.

Recently I’ve gone through some great tutorials on how to create awesome cute little animal in illustrator! Definitely interesting read, but the question I asked myself was:

So what ?

Can I really create it on my own now? Even if I can, what’s the point of doing that? Isn’t it already created? Ok, I’ve really learned this specific technique of creating it, but I’ve learned something more important – that we should never stop experimenting. We should at least try to use the great art of learning by trial and error in order to achieve something worthy, to earn something by reading this tutorial.

Here are the advantages I see in experimenting:

You have nothing to lose!

While experimenting, with the newly learned technique of creating sweet little puppy in illustrator, you cannot lose what you’ve already learned. But you can find completely new way of doing that. No matter what is the subject – there is always space for improvement.

Use it! Use what you’ve just learned to upgrade your skills.

You learn more!

Forget about the theory you know for a while, try a different approach:

• you will be never able to stand out if you stick strictly to the rules

• you will definitely learn a lot more, and you will find that some of those “mistakes” are actually pretty good looking ones.

Here, comes a very handy quote by Claude Bernard:

“The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in experiment, but also what he did not seek!”

You learn better!

The best way to learn to design better is simply by trying again and again until you find the right combination. Of course there are principles which you really cannot evade, but in the end it’s all about trial and error.

As Nick Campbell – the creator of GRAYSCALE GORILLA says:

“Moving stuff around until it doesn’t look like shit”

Learning how to design involves a lot of mistake. Being creative and make mistakes actually can find the right way of your future.

Satisfaction!

You won’t regret, it’s much better to learn that something is not working for you than just sit and ask yourself “what if ?”.