Top designers get animated about creative discomforts

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Your comfort zone might be lovely and comfortable, but it's not the place to do your best design work – the world's best logos and packaging design were certainly not created by playing it safe. if you want to take things to the next level, you're going to have to shake things up a bit.

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The team at Taxi Studio have their own mantra – Fearless Creativity – that they've used this as the basis for an educational short film, produced with D&AD New Blood, in which leading creatives give their take on how they've been fearlessly creative in their careers.

"Fearless Creativity is a our mantra but moreover it's our mindset, a commitment to kick mediocrity to the kerb and produce stunning communications that break the mould." says Taxi co-founder Spencer Buck, who also co-directed the short. "Sadly roughly 90 per cent of all creative work produced is shit. Students need to get themselves into the 10 per cent if they want to have a truly fulfilling and distinguished creative career."

Jack Renwick appears as a candy-striped asterisk

So following on from a series of lunchtime talks at Taxi Studio, where top industry names would come to share their wisdom and supply their thoughts on the idea of fearless creativity, the team had the idea of turning it into an animated film.

Pentgram's Marina Miller becomes a fig leaf as she explains how she overcame fears of being exposed

Two years later the result is Creative Discomforts, in which a collection of design legends including Laura Jordan-Bambach, Jim Sutherland and Jack Renwick, are recreated as adorable animated characters to illustrate their own tales of fearless creativity.

The whole five-minute film is available now; Taxi will also be producing a series of bite-sized clips to distribute in September, just in time for when the latest crop of design students are arriving at university. Buck hopes that students gets something out of the film and that it'll help instil a bit of creative courage in the next generation of designers; but what's been his big moment of fearless creativity?

Poor old Jim Sutherland

"Well, it takes some balls to invite legends of our industry to take part in an educational film – and then treat them so badly," he says. "But I'm not ashamed to say that we took great delight in breaking James Hilton's bones; stripping Marina Willer bare and chopping Jim Sutherland's leg off."

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• 8 up-and-coming designers to watch from D&AD New Blood
• Why designers should face a fear every day

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