Getting over rejection: Creatives, and a therapist, share their stories and methods

We spoke to creatives with successful careers who have experienced rejection at different times in their journey, to prove just how common it really is. Though, importantly, our conversations also demonstrate just how varied the experience, response and lesson can be.

Trying to scramble your way into a career in the creative industry can be pretty disheartening, a fact the illustrator Aysha Tengiz knows all too well. At university, Aysha’s illustration course was what she describes as “experimental”, encouraging a more fine art approach to the medium. While Aysha loved the course, she left university without a portfolio that translated to commercial creative work. “I had been floating about in the lovely bubble of education and once graduating it finally popped and I was vulnerable to the elements of real life,” she says.

In desperate need of a job, Aysha applied to every creative position she encountered – only to be rejected by every single one. Aysha had no experience, but if no one wanted to hire her, how exactly would she gain any? “You’re stuck in this dead-end situation and it can feel really hopeless. There’s so much anxiety and stress after having the luxury of loans and grants, to then having to learn how to be self-sufficient.” When Aysha instead ended up getting a job in retail, she recalls feeling like a “failure” – but this career progression proved anything but. Through working in various shops, she learnt things like formulating emails, building customer relationships, and understanding how to manage stock, essential skills for any independent maker, and ones that are often missed out of an arts education.

As Aysha wasn’t using her creative brain during working hours, she felt able to dedicate days off and evenings to expanding her portfolio and developing a personal illustration style. These two factors became essential in helping Aysha finally make the (still very scary) leap of becoming a freelance illustrator – and it paid off. She’s now been commissioned by the likes of Google, The New York Times and Stella McCartney and recently illustrated her first widely-published children’s book. “I have no idea how my career would have developed if I had actually got any of the jobs I applied to,” she says, “but working in a non-creative job was exactly the right thing for me.”

Over her career Aysha has learnt that there’s also something to be said for trusting your gut and not letting instances of rejection dictate your whole outlook. A few years ago she wrote and illustrated a small but riotously colourful independent book, A Spot of Loneliness, in the hopes of breaking into the publishing industry. Every single publisher she sent it to rejected it, with one bookshop even saying to her face that it “wasn’t good enough”. Knocked down by such feedback, Aysha nearly didn’t enter it into the 2020 AOI illustration awards. But, low and behold, A Spot of Loneliness went on to win the award for alternative publishing professional, an accolade which has now opened numerous doors for the illustrator. “If I had believed in the opinions of a handful of people, it could have broken my dreams of being an artist completely,” she ends.

The experience affected Janvier personally, but it also spoke to broader industry issues that had come to his attention. When he attended film festivals and screenings they were undiverse both in age and ethnicity – predominated by middle aged white folk. “It felt like such a massive exclusive club,” Janvier recalls. Not only were the events homogeneous, but the films being platformed too. “All the films I was seeing had the same message and the same look.”

In response, Janvier decided to tackle the issue head on, personally creating a short film platform that was truly diverse and – unlike the elitist film industry – accessible. Janvier wanted to build something that anyone and everyone could use: those who loved short films, and those who may never have watched one. He looked to apps such as Spotify for their breadth and ease of usability. “What Spotify did really well was it made music accessible to everyone. Like my mum uses Spotify, my Gran uses Spotify,” he says. Now, Minute Shorts is a carefully streamlined framework which allows you to filter content you watch by the minutes you have to spare, as well as a film randomiser and curated playlists. Alongside this, it also holds events and collaborates with organisations like The British Independent Film Awards and Girls in Film, providing a space for filmmakers who may once have found themselves in Janvier’s position.

Janvier now believes that rejection is something creatives have to get “comfortable” with. Even now with the success of Minute Shorts, rejection is a part of the everyday – clients and projects don’t make it through the pitching stage, or fall through at the last minute. Though Janvier believes there are ways we can prevent it being such a difficult topic, with things like greater transparency online (its safe to say he’s not a fan of LinkedIn bravado); always asking for feedback and using it as an opportunity to grow; and, perhaps the most simple yet important – working out how you deal best with rejection. Personally, Janvier copes by popping his headphones on and going for a long walk around London. “When you receive rejection, it can be so overwhelming,” he says. “It’s about trying to find something that will completely snap you out of it.”

What happens when rejection comes from those who arguably matter most (your audience) in a space known for its sticky relationship with nuance (social media)? Known for his organic style and penchant for blending digital and analogue techniques, the illustrator and designer Bráulio Amado is a leading figure in the creative industry. He’s set styles and become a highly sought-after collaborator: but in the online world even Bráulio isn’t invincible to rejection.

Earlier this year Bráulio was approached by the singer songwriter Ben Howard to create the cover art for his upcoming album Is It?. Ben and Bráulio collaborated closely, going through many ideas, sketches and versions together, before unanimously agreeing on a final design: a pink face with hazy green eyes and thin smiling lips eyes atop a bright blue backdrop, lines connecting the eyes and lips spelling out the album’s title. An explosion of block colour and characterful charm, the cover is fun, but it’s utterly bizarre too – and that’s what Bráulio loves about it. “I often try to push my work to the weird side. I feel so stuck on my own habits and tricks of drawing and designing, that I try to trick my brain to go somewhere else I normally wouldn’t,” he says. “I like when my work feels like it was done by someone else.” He’s not sure why this is the case – perhaps it’s because he’s his own “worst critic”, or a learned process after so many years of practice. But he felt the Is It? cover was a perfect example of this approach – it felt fresh and it felt new.

When eventually posting about the album on his own Instagram account, Bráulio outlined the negativity he had received and the impact it had. He got a text from Ben telling him he still loved the cover and some fans even got in touch to tell him how much they had liked the work. Though something didn’t feel quite right and he deleted the post – he realised that he had given in to the very thing that had caused him such anguish in the first place. “Internet and social media is a fucking black hole and I made the mistake of falling into it,” he says.

The only thing that gave Bráulio respite was receiving the physical copies and spending a moment properly appreciating his work. “I looked at it, took a big breath and told myself I should be proud of how weird that cover looks and that I was able to capture what the person who wrote the album envisioned,” he says. Sometimes, your work won’t be to everybody’s taste – ‘you can’t please everyone’ – as the old saying goes. But if you’ve managed to inspire yourself and those you’re collaborating with, that’s often more than enough – and something worth holding onto.

Studio Ping Pong is a small yet “mighty” design studio based in Calcutta which has devised a playful way of nursing the experience of rejection; a website in which they lay all of their unsuccessful ideas and pitches “to rest”.

When the studio was first finding its feet back in 2021, its founder Kritika Trehan tells us that rejection was very hard to swallow. But now, the studio has been on a journey to “accept rejection”, searching for a common ground between its work and the clients’ perspective. “Over time this has taught us how to do better, look at things in a new light or understand why a certain idea worked better than the other.” Through this process the studio also came to an important conclusion: though a project might have been rejected, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth celebrating. So, in time for its two-year anniversary, the studio wanted to create something to commemorate the projects that didn’t make it. “While social media and our portfolio presents a very glossy picture, we wanted to publish the real (dark) side of the design process with a touch of humour,” Kritika says. “Reject Pile is a way of celebrating iterations, emotions and the chaos of the design process itself.”