Since when does an English art school student get to be knighted for inventing a vacuum cleaner? You do if your name is James Dyson and you invented the worlds' greatest vacuum, the Dyson. It's yellow (but also available in other colors) and is considered an excellent buy because it doesn't use bags, and is designed to last forever. Many may scoff at the idea of being made knight for designing the worlds' greatest vacuum cleaner. But the reality is that James Dyson worked relentlessly to actualize his vision; something that every true artist does almost reflexively.
To quote Mr. Dyson's philosophy, "Each failure, the 5,126 failures taught me so much. Success teaches you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do."
For many art students, one of the greatest frustrations of learning the nuts and bolts of creating art, is that you have to make a lot of bad art before you can make good or transcendent art. Perhaps this is a lesson Dyson learned early on during his time in art school.
As a student at the Royal College of Art in London, England, he studied furniture and interior design. From there he went to an engineering firm but then left to set up his own company after he designed and invented the Ballbarrow, a wheelbarrow that has a ball instead of a front wheel. Simple, but effective.
Now Dyson is starting the Dyson School of Design Innovation in Bath, England, which encourages young people to consider an engineering profession. Studying engineering and art are very similar, after all. The basis of all engineering and art is problem-solving which is at the core of all creativity.
So the next time you are stuck in life, whether personally or professionally, consider if you have weighed all of the options and iterations that are sometimes necessary to create a transcendent, or at least above-average, work of art or life situation. Life is art, art is life, and Dyson's indefatigable methodology of trial and error is an excellent model to follow. Dyson's philosophy doesn't suck, his vacuum does. ;-)
