Category: Creative Practice
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Creative Practice #6: Who Are You Making This For?
In my professional life, I am obsessed with audiences. I think about them before a campaign brief is written. I think about what they need, what they believe, what they’re afraid of. I’ve spent eight years at Kaiser Permanente helping translate complex healthcare concepts into messages that actually reach people. Audience awareness isn’t a skill…
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Creative Practice #5: Protecting the Whole
Good ideas can ruin a project. Not because they’re bad, but because they pull in the wrong direction. In advertising, a campaign can have strong individual executions across TV, digital, and social, and still feel like it was made by three different teams. When it works, the campaign just feels intentional. When it doesn’t, something…
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Creative Practice #4: Cutting What You Love
I once wrote what I thought was a brilliant ending to a psychological horror/thriller film I’ve been developing called What Lingers. It tied everything together. It left lingering doubt that the story was over. I could already see the final shot. The feedback I received was simple: “Meh.” No long explanation. No detailed notes. Just…
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Creative Practice #3: Developing Taste
The hardest part of creative work isn’t coming up with ideas. It’s deciding which ones deserve to stay. When we talk about creativity, we often focus on output, making more, shipping faster, generating ideas. But at a certain point, producing isn’t the hardest part. Choosing is. In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick…
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The Discipline of Paying Attention
Creative Practice: Studying Creativity and Leadership · Week 2 Last week, I wrote that I never thought I was creative. That belief began to shift when I redefined what creativity actually is. In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, a book on creativity by prolific music producer Rick Rubin, he suggests that creativity isn’t…
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I Never Thought I Was Creative – Until I Learned What Creativity Really Is
I grew up around creativity. I performed, I rehearsed, I showed up. From the outside, it probably looked like creativity was already part of my life. Despite all that, I never felt like I could call myself creative. Creativity seemed almost magical. It was something other people with very different lives than mine experienced –…