Stefano Carta, Vice Academic Director of IED, reflects on the importance of failure as an essential element of creative development and the need to address the complexity of the contemporary world through design
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Failure as part of the creative process. Open's interview with the Academic Deputy Director
Date
16 December 2024
In an interview with Open, Stefano Carta, the Vice Director of IED, explains how to help students overcome the fear of making mistakes and face an increasingly overstimulated world.
"Failure is never final; it’s always part of a process." This is the mantra that Stefano Carta shares with his students. An educational context that embraces uncertainty and error as integral parts of the creative process not obstacles to avoid but tools necessary for progress. "Our task is to create a safe environment where students can make mistakes without fear. Only then can they truly learn to design," Carta explains to Open, emphasizing a concept that seems simple but makes a significant difference in academia often rigid and competitive. Especially when considering that the fear of not meeting personal and social expectations weighs heavily on many students.
Error and the fear of failure among students
The professor’s personal experience reinforces this vision. Carta began his career in the field of economics before transitioning to design two seemingly distant disciplines united by the complexity of their processes. Today, he teaches and serves as Vice Academic Director at IED, coordinating with Academic Director Riccardo Balbo to oversee contemporary topics and teaching methodologies, ensuring an updated and high-quality educational offering. As Danilo Venturi, Director of IED Milan, has pointed out, "The university must not only teach but also learn," and for Carta, teachers must also convey the ability to embrace and value the educational process of failure. "If mistakes are seen as an essential step in any creative process, the fear of failure that often paralyzes many young people transforms into a crucial opportunity," he says. "The more you fail, the more you learn. And that’s how, in the end, you improve your project."
The complexity of today’s world and how to navigate it through design
"Designing means learning to live with complexity," Carta states. It’s a challenge that defines the contemporary world, increasingly intricate due to unprecedented access to an immense amount of information. It’s no coincidence that the Oxford Dictionary chose the term "Brain rot" as its word of the year, describing a state of mental exhaustion caused by content overload: hours spent on social media, watching videos, playing video games, or drowning in notifications and stimuli that overwhelm the mind. "It’s not that the world today is more complex; it’s that we have access to much more information," notes Stefano Carta. A study by the Rapporto Giovani from the National Youth Agency highlights that young people spend an average of seven hours a day immersed in constant flows of digital data and stimuli. "This amplifies the perception of complexity and poses a huge challenge, especially for educators."
Global trends, new sensibilities, and the role of design
In such a context, according to Carta, design becomes a crucial tool for tackling informational chaos. "It’s a fundamental transformative platform. It enables students and citizens to create tools to navigate this complexity independently," he explains. Design can no longer be merely an aesthetic act but must also address ecological, social, and political issues, becoming a nutrient for complexity rather than a pollutant. "The trend cannot be to escape complexity, but to embrace it by integrating it into a value system that includes equity, inclusivity, and responsibility. The challenge," Carta concludes, "is teaching students to design with a social and cultural sensitivity capable of responding to the challenges of our time."
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