Unpublished and never-used work celebrated on Recently Rejected blog

There was an interesting discussion on our podcast recently about why anyone would really want to watch the creative process taking place. Off the back of our visit to see what was essentially P J Harvey in a box, we’ve spent a lot of time chatting about how the creative process is slow and messy and frustrating, littered with wrong turns and dead-ends.

And so as if by magic along came Recently Rejected, a new project from Mario Hugo that’s billed as “a curated graveyard of both good and bad ideas…unfinished and unpolished, (otherwise) unused, and (previously) unseen.”

Mario’s tapped up a raft of art and design talent – including friends and colleagues at his Hugo & Marie agency – and published their “unfinished concepts, process sketches…terminated artwork and rarely seen personal projects.” Contributors include Craig & Karl, Hvass & Hannibal and a load of creatives without ampersands such as Santtu Mustonen, MVM, Emily Forgot, Lotta Nieminen, Micah Lidberg, Leslie David and Merijn Hos.

It’s fascinating to look through the work and try and work out what combination of personal pride and client rejection means they’ve never previously seen the light of day, although the quality of those featured means there’s no absolute stinkers. It is, as Mario eloquently puts it, “a project about old, artful skeletons and peculiar closets."