100-Day project

What is a 100-Day project?

It is a challenge to complete a short project every day for 100 consecutive days and has become a worldwide phenomenon with people from around the world challenging themselves and others to create – something – every day.

History of the idea

The original idea is credited to Micheal Bieruit who taught a workshop for the graduate graphic design students at the Yale School of Art.  For five years, he gave his students an assignment to encourage regular creative practice. The basic instructions were to do a design operation could be repeated every day for 100 days. On the last day of the project each student was given 15 minutes to present the one-hundred part project to the class in any way that they chose.

Read more about the processes and some of the projects in the The Design Observer article Five Years of 100 Days.

Since 2015, The 100 Day Project has offered a 100 day every April. It launched its 7th annual challenge on April 7, 2020 and had 1000s of people from around the world join to challenge their own creativity. In recent years, many smaller organizers have offered challenges on specific skills or have issued a general invitation to create.

Start your own 100 days

You can join a challenge any time – or start your own on any day you choose. Which brings me to what prompted me to write this post today. Today is Day 266 of 2020. That means that there are 100 days left in the year. Start today with a 100-day creative challenge and celebrate the 100th instalment on the last day of the year. End this year of change and difficulty with 100 days of creative inspiration. Learn new techniques. Advance your skills.

Tips For Success

• It doesn’t matter what or how you choose to express yourself – write, dance, paint, photograph, quilt, stitch, carve, podcast, sketch, sing, design, explore, discover….. Just make it something that you want to do daily for 100 days. You can make small projects each day or multiple phases of a bigger piece
• Make it something that you can do in 5-10 minutes. If you have more time or feel inspired, you can always keep going but your task should only require a short time commitment so you can find time every day
• Be sure that you have the tools that you need or they are available and accessible for to use them when you need them. It might be helpful that they are portable
• It might be helpful to do something that will not require you to come up with entirely new idea every day. Build on previous iterations or have a stepping stone from work already done or look for existing prompt series to give you inspiration
• If you want accountability, think of how you will share and do it consistently. You can post using #100dayproject and also add your own custom hashtag like #susansdailystitches
• HAVE FUN