Just in time for Halloween, something frightening is happening to creativity. And the monster isn’t who you think it is. I’ve been noticing something peculiar about advertising lately. Everything is starting to look alike. The same dramatic lighting. The same impossibly perfect people. The same elaborate backgrounds. The same polished, saturated, overproduced compositions. Every square inch is screaming for attention. And somehow, nothing is getting mine. It’s as though an en

Life, energy, and finding your next galaxy. Years ago, my mentor Stanley Becker told me something I’ve never forgotten. During your career, you’re going to get fired at least three times for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with you, your talent, or your creativity. At the time, I thought that was an interesting observation. Years later, I started thinking about marbles. Yes, marbles. Those little glass balls we played with as kids. The ones you carefully arranged i

There is a difference between designing a page and decorating a page. A designer can choose a beautiful typeface, create a lovely color palette, establish a grid, and make everything line up perfectly. But if they haven't read the copy, what exactly are they designing? A very attractive collection of words? I've seen designers treat copy like it's something to be poured into a container. A headline goes here. A paragraph goes there. Maybe a few bullet points, a photograph, an

This is an interesting time for creatives. We have a new tool that can be very useful and very easily misused. Pay attention to AI rewrites and redesigns. Make sure your voice is not lost in the homogenization of correct punctuation and smoothed-out logic. The trouble starts when “cleaner” becomes the same thing as “better.” A sentence can be awkward on purpose. A pause can carry a thought. A strange turn of phrase can be the part people remember. AI can preserve the gist whi

Sometimes a client asks me to tell their company’s full story on one page. Can I do that? Sure. I can make the type smaller. I can make it really smaller. I could probably fit the whole company history in there if we include a magnifying glass as a free incentive. But who wants to read mice type? When a client wants the kitchen sink on one page, you start getting a lot of dirty dishes, too. Too many thoughts plated together turn to mush—and before long, the whole thing may be

Small Budget. BIG Impression. Dress your event for the success you want. I’ve always told my clients: You don’t have to have a huge budget to look like a million bucks. Think of it as dressing for success. You may not have a closet full of expensive clothes, but you can still walk into the room looking polished, confident and put together. Your business, organization or nonprofit should do the same thing. People can’t see your bank account. They can see your brand. And if you

The smartest AI strategy may be knowing when not to leave it alone. There is a strange thing happening in business right now. Companies have been handed one of the most remarkable new employees they have ever had. It can research. It can organize. It can analyze. It can brainstorm. It can write. It can help solve problems at astonishing speed. And some companies seem determined to put it behind the complaint desk. Alone. That last word matters. Because AI absolutely can work

AI customer service: “I hear you.” Then it hands your complaint back in a mirror and gives itself five stars for empathy. Customer service should sound human—and back its words with action. I recently received a reply from Custom Ink after explaining that the experience had cost them my confidence, my future business, and my recommendations to clients. The response told me the impact went beyond a single order. It repeated that losing my confidence as a creative professional

The tools got smaller. The job got bigger. And somehow, everybody ended up sitting in the designer’s chair. When I started as an art director, design was a team sport. There were art directors and designers. Typesetters. Retouchers. Production artists. Photographers. Illustrators. Writers. Prepress people. Each person had a specialty, and you relied on all of them to get the finished piece out the door. Then computers arrived. And slowly, all those people started sitting in m

The best ideas don't just land. They keep flying. Or, in This Case, Wings Some ideas solve the assignment. The better ones keep going. Years ago, I was sitting in a meeting about a marketing piece for an aviation event. Everyone was talking about how to make the piece stand out. Maybe it needed an unusual fold. Maybe it needed an interesting shape. Maybe there was something clever we could do with the printing. And, as usually happens when you start talking about unusual fold

AI "Ingredients" are Almost Right. Apparently, somewhere along the way, the logo stopped being a piece of finished artwork and became more of a suggestion. A jumping-off point. A general direction. Something kind of like this, only make it sparkle. Welcome to branding in the age of AI. And before anyone gets nervous, I use AI. I like AI. AI is enormously useful. But AI has also introduced us to a fascinating new category of artwork: The logo that looks exactly like your logo

Pay no attention to the production problems behind the curtain! Every few years, a new piece of software arrives that is going to make designers obsolete. I know this because I have apparently been becoming obsolete for decades. First, everyone got Microsoft Word. Suddenly, people discovered fonts. ALL the fonts. Why use one when six are sitting right there? Then came PageMaker. Then Publisher. Then PowerPoint started moonlighting as a design program. And now we have Canva. A

the problem line up There is a very specific moment in almost every project when someone realizes there is a problem. And there is an equally specific moment when they decide not to tell the designer. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps they think the problem will become embarrassed and leave on its own. It will not. Problems are remarkably self-assured. They sit quietly in the corner, grow several heads, invite friends, order cocktails, and wait until the deadline is six hours away

The drawer test: because everything looks brilliant at 2 am. There’s a very simple test for whether an idea is actually good. Put it in a drawer. Not literally, although in the days before everything lived on a hard drive, I suppose that was exactly what we did. You work on something. You love it. You’ve stared at it for hours. You’ve moved the headline three pixels to the left, changed it back, changed it again, convinced yourself the first version was better, and eventually

Payment Obstacle Course Freelancing comes with a lot of jobs nobody tells you about. You are the designer. You are the account person. You are the scheduler. You are the bookkeeper. You are tech support. You are collections. And apparently, sometimes, you are also expected to finance the privilege of receiving your own money. That last one is where I draw the line. I Already Gave You a Deal Freelancers do this all the time. We shave a little off the estimate. We throw in one

Everything starts somewhere. Even original ideas. A few days ago I saw a post about an AI-generated song that had made its way onto the charts. The reaction was furious. The machine had stolen every riff. Every lick. Every vocal inflection. Every musical thought from the human artists who came before it. And I found myself thinking about Mark Twain. Which is probably not where most people go when discussing artificial intelligence. In 1903, Twain wrote to Helen Keller after s

Artificial Intelligence. Occasionally HEAVY on the Artificial. I use AI all the time. I use it to brainstorm, organize information, proofread, summarize, research, and help me work through ideas faster. Sometimes it saves me an enormous amount of time. Sometimes it helps me get past a sticking point in seconds. Sometimes it takes a task I really do not want to do and gets me halfway there before I’ve had my second cup of coffee. And sometimes it confidently tries to move Oreg

My Voodoo Doll is a Colorful Dude There are moments in every creative career when professionalism requires… accessories. Not the glamorous kind. Not a new laptop. Not a Pantone book. Not another beautifully organized set of markers you will absolutely swear you needed. I’m talking about a voodoo doll. Now, before anyone gets nervous, this is a metaphorical voodoo doll. Mostly. Because if you have worked with clients for any length of time, you know there are moments when some

Get it in Camera!!!! Or spend hours trying to just fix it!!!!! There was a phrase I used to say on almost every photo shoot: Get as much as you can in camera. It didn’t mean we couldn’t retouch. Of course we could retouch. It didn’t mean we couldn’t manipulate an image, composite something, enhance it, clean it up or do any of the hundred other things that happen between the moment the shutter clicks and the moment an ad appears in the world. It meant something much simpler:

Part Designer Part Client Psychologist Clients rarely begin by telling you what the actual problem is. They tell you what they think the solution should be. “Make the logo bigger.” “Use a friendlier font.” “Put more information on the front.” “Can we make it pop?” A designer’s first instinct may be to open the file and start moving things around. But if you immediately do exactly what the client requests, you may solve the wrong problem beautifully. The best designers are par