Failed It! How to Turn Mistakes into Ideas and Other Advice for Successfully Screwing Up

Erik Kessels's Failed It! is a pocket-sized argument for error as a working method in art and design.

Kessels contends that people have become afraid of failure and that the digital undo command lets work stay too perfect to turn into anything else. The book answers with more than 150 visual examples drawn from art, design, photography, architecture and product design, set beside short pieces of advice, quotations and anecdotes. It is part photobook and part guide, published by Phaidon as a 168-page paperback.

Kessels is the co-founder and creative director of the Amsterdam communications agency KesselsKramer. As an artist and collector he has published several books of found photographs and started the magazine Useful Photography. He received the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts in 2010.