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: Do the work now. If the lighting can be right, get it right. If the angle can be right, get it right. If the prop can actually be there, put it there. If the expression matters, wait for it. If something needs to explode — well, sometimes you actually explode it. I once worked on a shoot where we needed a glass to look as though it were exploding. And rather than sitting around a conference table saying, “We’ll just fix that later,” the photographer figured out how to actually do it. That was part of the craft. The photographers I loved working with were constantly inventing things. Building things. Rigging things. Testing things. Moving a light half an inch and looking again. They weren’t resisting technology. They were respecting the image. “We’ll Fix It in Post” Somewhere along the way, “we’ll fix it in post” stopped being a solution and started becoming a production philosophy. The horizon is crooked? Fix it later. The background is terrible? Fix it later. We didn’t get enough room around the subject? Fix it later. The lighting doesn’t match? Fix it later. Someone is standing in exactly the wrong place? We’ll move them. And yes, very often we can. But every problem you knowingly push downstream becomes somebody else’s problem. Usually the retoucher’s. Or the designer’s. Or the art director sitting at a computer at midnight trying to manufacture information that should have existed when the photograph was taken. And anyone who has done enough production knows the strange truth: The shortcut is very often the longest route. You save five minutes on the shoot and spend two hours repairing it later. Sometimes the Shortcut Comes From Pressure And I should admit something. Sometimes I do it too. Because not every shortcut comes from laziness. Sometimes it comes from pressure. A client is waiting. An email comes in marked urgent. Something that was approved yesterday suddenly needs to change today. Another person is asking where the file is. The deadline hasn’t moved, but the work has. And you look at the proper way to rebuild something, then look at the clock, and think: Maybe I can just fix this quickly. Sometimes you can. Sometimes the quick fix is exactly what the situation needs. And sometimes the Band-Aid becomes the problem. That is the part people forget. A proper solution may take another hour or two. Maybe more. But sometimes giving the person doing the work those extra couple of hours would make everybody much happier in the end. Instead, we compress the schedule, create an emergency, take the shortcut and then wonder why the shortcut looks like a shortcut. Experience doesn’t make you immune to that. In fact, experience can sometimes make it more tempting because you know enough tricks to make almost anything work. You know how to patch it. You know how to fake it. You know how to get it out the door. But knowing how to make something work is not always the same as knowing you’ve made it right. And sometimes the most experienced person in the room is the one who has to say: Give me two more hours. Not because they don’t know what they’re doing. Because they do. Now We Have an Even Bigger Magic Wand Today we have AI. And AI is extraordinary. I use it. I experiment with it. I think it opens creative doors we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago. But there is a dangerous little sentence beginning to creep into creative work: “AI can fix that.” Sometimes it can. That doesn’t mean it should have to. AI can extend the background. AI can remove the person. AI can create the missing sleeve. AI can rebuild the wall. AI can manufacture the tree that wasn’t there. AI can turn noon into sunset and summer into winter. Wonderful. But none of that makes a badly conceived photograph a well-conceived photograph. Technology can solve an execution problem. It cannot retroactively create good judgment. And AI has made the pressure problem even stranger. You can be pushed to solve something faster, use a tool that makes the fast solution possible, and then be criticized for having used the tool. Which is why speed cannot be the only measure of whether something worked. Sometimes the fastest way really is the fast way. And sometimes the fastest way is to stop, rebuild the damn thing, and do it right. Schlock Existed Before AI And to be fair, bad shortcuts didn’t begin with artificial intelligence. There has always been schlock. Bad retouching existed. Bad photography existed. Bad typography existed. Clip art existed. Stock photography used badly existed. Photoshop produced plenty of crimes against humanity long before anyone typed a prompt into anything. Every new tool simply gives talented people another way to make something wonderful — and careless people another way to make something faster. The tool isn’t the standard. The eye is the standard. The Best People I Worked With Never Stopped Looking That may be what I miss most about a great shoot. People looked. Really looked. The photographer looked through the camera. The stylist looked at the clothes. The prop person looked at the table. The art director looked at the composition. Someone noticed the reflection in the spoon. Someone noticed the wrinkle. Someone noticed the label had turned three degrees. Someone said, “Wait.” And everyone waited. Because getting it right mattered. Not because we couldn’t fix it later. Because this was our chance to get it right now. That mindset carries far beyond photography. It applies to design. Writing. Presentations. Packaging. Websites. Ideas. And yes, AI. Use every tool available to you. Push them. Experiment with them. Make them do things we never could have done before. But don’t confuse having a safety net with having a reason to jump badly. And don’t assume that asking for another couple of hours means somebody is slow. Sometimes it means they know exactly what happens when you don’t give them those hours. Whenever you can: Get as much as you can in camera. Because “we’ll fix it later” has a funny way of becoming someone’s entire afternoon.

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 part psychologist. That doesn’t mean putting the client on a couch and asking about their childhood. It means listening closely enough to understand what they are really trying to say—especially when they don’t have the vocabulary to say it. Clients are not designers. They shouldn’t have to know the difference between a serif and a sans serif, understand visual hierarchy, or explain why a page feels too crowded. They only know that something feels wrong. Our job is to discover why. First, listen silently and completely. This is harder than it sounds. When someone begins explaining what they dislike, it is tempting to interrupt with a solution. You may recognize the problem almost immediately. But if you jump in too quickly, you risk missing the sentence that explains everything. So I let the client talk. They may begin by saying the type is too small, then mention that their audience is older. They may ask for brighter colors, then reveal that the piece is being lost among competitors. They may insist that everything needs to be larger when the real problem is that nothing has been given priority. The first request is frequently just a symptom. You have to keep listening until you find the cause. Then, ask questions. Not dozens of questions designed to make the client feel as though they are completing an intake form. Ask the questions that help expose the actual communication problem. Who needs to respond to this? What should they notice first? Where will they see it? What action do you want them to take? What is the one thing they must remember? And one of the most useful questions of all: What is bothering you about the current version? The answer may not arrive in design language. A client may say something looks “old-fashioned,” “too corporate,” “not exciting,” or “not us.” That is enough. Those words are clues. “Old-fashioned” may mean the typography feels formal. “Too corporate” may mean the piece lacks warmth. “Not exciting” may mean there is no focal point. “Not us” may mean the design is technically attractive but completely wrong for the brand’s personality. A designer has to translate feelings into visual decisions. Only then do you prescribe. A good doctor would not hand you medication before hearing your symptoms. A good designer shouldn’t begin decorating before diagnosing the problem. Design is not simply arranging attractive things on a page. It is deciding what needs to be said, what needs to be seen, and what can be removed so the message has room to work. Sometimes the client’s requested solution is right. Sometimes the logo really does need to be larger. But sometimes “make the logo bigger” actually means the brand is disappearing. The answer may be more white space, a stronger position, better contrast, or removing the five other things competing with it. Sometimes “make it pop” means the headline has no authority. Sometimes “use a friendlier font” means the message itself sounds cold. Sometimes “add more” means the client is afraid something important will be overlooked—when adding more will guarantee that everything is overlooked. If we merely follow instructions, we are operating software. If we understand the reason behind the instructions, we are designing. People do not always say what they mean. This isn’t dishonesty. It is human nature. People react emotionally first and explain intellectually afterward. They know they are uncomfortable with something before they know why. A good designer pays attention to the words, but also to the hesitations, repetitions, contradictions, and tiny remarks that reveal what really matters. That is why the conversation before the design can be as important as the design itself. The client may think they hired you to choose colors, typefaces, and images. What they have actually hired you to do is listen to a complicated collection of goals, fears, preferences, and information—and turn it into one clear message. That requires more than taste. It requires patience, curiosity, empathy, and the confidence to say: “I understand what you’re asking for. But I think the problem may actually be this.” The best designers don’t just make things look better. They help clients understand what they were trying to say in the first place.

DID YOU PROOF YOUR COPY TODAY? Why Are You Still Reading? In the early days of desktop publishing, designers routinely used lorem ipsum as placeholder copy while waiting for the real words to arrive. And clients routinely asked me the same question: “What language is this?” Explaining lorem ipsum over and over became tedious, so I created my own placeholder copy for QuarkXPress. Mine was written in English, intentionally humorous and impossible—or so I believed—to confuse with finished copy. It included phrases such as: THIS IS NOT REAL COPY. And, for anyone who continued beyond that warning: WHY ARE YOU STILL READING? Then it ran in print. Think about how many people must have looked at that page. The designer saw it. The account person saw it. The client saw it. Someone approved the proof. The printer printed it. Everyone looked at the page. Apparently, nobody read it. The placeholder copy did not merely look unfinished. It actually told everyone reviewing the page that it wasn’t real—and still, nobody caught it. That story has stayed with me because it illustrates something people often forget: looking and reading are not the same thing. A designer can become so familiar with a layout that the words begin to look like shapes. A client may concentrate on the photograph, the logo or whether someone’s title is large enough. One person assumes another person checked the copy. By the time a piece reaches the printer, everyone has seen it so many times that they are no longer truly seeing it at all. Our brains recognize the pattern and quietly fill in what they expect to be there. That is why a typo can remain invisible through twelve rounds of revisions and then leap off the page the moment the finished piece arrives from the printer. It is also why I believe in what I call the drawer test. When possible, put the work away. Close the file. Work on something else. Come back later and look at it as though you have never seen it before. Distance restores your eyesight. At St Jude Medical, I didn’t just learn proofreading habits—I created them for my team. They were simple, but they worked: Read the copy out loud, because your ear will catch what your eye skips. Change the format—print it out or view it in a different font—so your brain stops auto-filling familiar shapes. Check every number, name, and unit of measure as if it were the most important element on the page, because in medical communication, it often is. And when possible, read it backwards line by line, so meaning disappears and only the words remain. Designers also need to read the copy they are designing—not merely pour it into a text box and make it attractive. A strange line break can alter the meaning of a sentence. A missing word can make a company sound careless. A phone number can lead somewhere it was never intended to go. A beautifully designed page containing the wrong information is still wrong. And placeholder copy is never harmless simply because everyone knows it is temporary. Temporary has an astonishing habit of becoming permanent. I created my placeholder copy because clients were reading lorem ipsum and asking what language it was. Ironically, once I replaced it with plain English—including the words THIS IS NOT REAL COPY—it proved that people could look directly at words without reading them at all. So, why are you still reading? Because this time, somebody did. So, when was the last time YOU proofread your copy?

A small change in how you frame a thought turns an ordinary concept into a brilliant one. "There is no such thing as a wholly original idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope." — attributed to Mark Twain Whether Mark Twain said those exact words or not, the image has stayed with me. A mental kaleidoscope. As children, we were fascinated by those little cardboard tubes. Inside were only a handful of colored glass fragments. Nothing changed. The pieces remained exactly the same. Yet every slight turn of the tube created a breathtaking pattern that had never existed before. That's creativity. We spend so much time trying to invent something that has never been thought of before that we miss the real miracle. Creativity isn't about manufacturing new pieces of glass. It's about turning the same pieces until the light reveals a pattern no one has seen before. The fragments are everywhere. A conversation. A book. A mistake. A childhood memory. A piece of music. A client comment. A movie. A walk. A failure. A success. They're all just bits of colored glass waiting for the right turn. I've always believed that if I'm trying to solve a creative problem for a client and the janitor walks into the room, casually says something, and suddenly I see the solution... ...then the janitor deserves part of the credit. Not because he designed the ad. Because he turned my kaleidoscope one click. That's why I've never believed creativity belongs to one person. Great ideas are shared experiences. Someone provides the spark. Someone else recognizes it. Another person shapes it. Eventually the audience makes it their own. That's how ideas live. It's also why I don't panic when I lose work. Years ago, losing a hard drive would have devastated me. Today, I still groan, but I've learned something surprising. When I recreate the work, it is never the same. It's better. Not because I remembered it more accurately. Because I'm no longer the same person who created the first version. Since that first design, I've had more conversations. Learned something new. Solved another problem. Read another book. Laughed. Failed. Succeeded. The pieces of glass haven't changed. I have. When I rebuild the work, the kaleidoscope has already turned. That new arrangement becomes something that couldn't have existed the first time. People often tell me they're "not creative." I never believe them. I think back to a classroom. Walk into a first-grade class and ask, "Who here is an artist?" Every hand shoots into the air. Every single one. Now walk into a third-grade classroom and ask the same question. Only a few hands remain raised. What happened? Those children didn't become less imaginative. They didn't become less intelligent. Someone simply convinced them that their art wasn't good enough. No one is born believing they aren't creative. That's something we're taught. And the tragedy isn't that they stopped drawing. The tragedy is that they stopped turning the kaleidoscope. The older I get, the more convinced I am that creativity isn't about protecting ideas. In fact, I think the opposite is true. If you have to hold onto an idea so tightly that you can't give it away, then perhaps it wasn't much of an idea to begin with. Ideas are meant to travel. They move from teacher to student. From writer to reader. From parent to child. From Mark Twain to Helen Keller. From Annie Sullivan to Helen Keller. From one generation to the next. Sometimes they even come disguised as "new" discoveries. Today's "swap" is yesterday's garage sale. Vintage clothing is yesterday's hand-me-down. Meal prep is yesterday's leftovers. The names change. The pieces remain. The kaleidoscope turns. Maybe that's why I love creativity as much today as I did when I first walked into an advertising agency. I'm not looking for something that has never existed. I'm looking for that next turn. That unexpected click. That moment when familiar fragments catch the light in a way no one—including me—has ever seen before. Because creativity isn't about inventing new pieces of glass. It's about having the courage to keep turning the mental kaleidoscope.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with AI isn't that they don't know enough. It's that they think more words equal better results. They write prompts that read like grocery lists: "Make it modern. Make it exciting. Make it bold. Add energy. Make it luxurious. Sophisticated. Cinematic. Award-winning. Viral. Stunning. Emotional. Premium. High-end. Trendy." By the time they're finished, they've described everything. Which usually means they've described nothing. As someone who spent decades in advertising, I learned something long before AI ever existed. The work never started with adjectives. It started with an idea. Who are we talking to? What are we trying to say? Why should anyone care? Where does this message live? Only after those questions were answered did we decide whether it should be elegant, gritty, playful, dramatic, or quiet. The concept came first. Execution came second. AI hasn't changed that. If anything, it has made clear thinking even more valuable. AI is an amplifier. Give it a fuzzy idea wrapped in fifty descriptive words, and it faithfully amplifies the fuzziness. Give it one clear concept, and suddenly the results become focused, surprising, and often better than you imagined. I've discovered something interesting over the past year. The people getting the best results with AI aren't necessarily the people who know the most prompt tricks. They're the people who know how to think. They know how to simplify. They know how to identify the single idea that matters. Ironically, that's the exact opposite of what many tutorials teach. They encourage people to keep adding descriptors as though creativity is built by stacking bricks. But creativity has never worked that way. A great advertisement wasn't created because someone used fifteen adjectives. A great painting wasn't created because someone added twenty artistic styles. A great story wasn't remembered because the author squeezed in every possible detail. The power came from knowing what to leave out. Less isn't about doing less work. It's about removing everything that distracts from the idea. That's true in design. It's true in writing. It's true in branding. And now it's true in AI. The better your thinking becomes, the shorter your prompts often become. Not because you're giving AI less to work with. Because you're giving it something better. The next time you're tempted to add another dozen descriptive words to your prompt, stop for a moment. Ask yourself one question instead: What's the idea? Because AI doesn't replace clear thinking. It rewards it. Sometimes the shortest prompt begins with the longest thought. And that's why less is more. More is almost always less.

For years, marketers have searched for the next shortcut. Keywords. Hashtags. SEO tricks. Algorithms. Now I hear a new question almost every day: "How do I get AI to recommend my company?" My answer usually surprises people. You don't start with AI. You start with your reputation. That may sound old-fashioned, but in reality it's the newest marketing strategy of all. AI is becoming the world's biggest researcher. When someone asks, "Who should I buy from?" or "Can I trust this company?" AI isn't just looking at a flashy website or the latest advertising campaign. It's drawing from a much broader picture—your website, reviews, articles, interviews, customer experiences, and countless other public signals. In other words, AI doesn't just hear what you say about your company. It notices what everyone else is saying. For years I told clients that a brand is built on trust. That lesson hasn't changed. If anything, AI has made it more important. Some companies still believe the answer is to flood social media with hashtags, chase every trend, or hire influencers to talk about their products. Those tactics can certainly attract attention. But attention isn't the same thing as reputation. You can rent attention. You have to earn reputation. An influencer may convince thousands of people to look at your product. But if customers consistently complain about poor shipping, confusing return policies, disappointing customer service, or unhappy employees, those experiences become part of your company's public story. AI is increasingly able to recognize patterns across many sources. The louder your advertising becomes, the more important it is that your actions match your promises. Walking the Walk Matters More Than Talking the Talk Imagine two companies. One has beautiful advertising, celebrity endorsements, and a massive marketing budget. The other quietly delivers great products, treats employees with respect, honors its guarantees, and earns loyal customers who gladly recommend it. Which company do you think will build the stronger long-term reputation? The answer hasn't changed in fifty years. The difference is that today, those positive and negative experiences are far more visible. Customers share them. Employees share them. Journalists report them. Review sites collect them. Industry experts discuss them. When people ask AI whether a company is trustworthy, that larger reputation matters. The lesson is simple. Don't just tell people you're a great company. Become one. A New Executive Role Is Coming I believe we're going to see a new position appear inside companies. Not another social media manager. Not another SEO specialist. A Reputation Manager. Not someone hired to hide bad reviews. Someone responsible for making sure the company's reputation deserves to be good. Because every department now contributes to the story the world sees. Marketing. Customer Service. Shipping. Sales. Human Resources. Product Development. Returns. Every interaction either strengthens or weakens your reputation. The Reputation Manager's job won't be polishing an image. It will be making sure the image reflects reality. AI Isn't Looking for the Loudest Company One of the most interesting changes I've noticed is how often people now ask AI the questions they used to ask search engines. "Is this company legitimate?" "Is this product really worth buying?" "Are these reviews real?" "What's the catch?" I do it myself. When something sounds too good to be true, I don't immediately believe the advertising. I ask AI. That should tell every business something important. The conversation has changed. People aren't just searching anymore. They're asking for guidance. The Best AI Strategy Has Nothing to Do with AI Companies often ask me how they can get AI to notice them. Ironically, the answer has very little to do with AI. • Build products people genuinely love. • Treat your employees well. • Deliver what you promise. Fix problems instead of hiding them. • Make returns fair. • Answer customers honestly. • Create helpful content instead of empty marketing slogans. • Be consistent. • Be authentic. • Be trustworthy. Those aren't AI strategies. They're good business strategies. The companies that will thrive in the AI era won't necessarily be the ones with the biggest advertising budgets. They'll be the ones with the strongest reputations. Because in the end, AI isn't creating a new rule. It's reminding us of one we've known all along. You can spend millions convincing people you're great. Or you can become so trustworthy that customers —and eventually AI —say it for you. Let's recap: For years, companies focused on SEO, hashtags, influencers, and algorithms. Those things can get attention. But attention isn't the same as reputation. As more people ask AI which companies they should trust, buy from, or work with, I believe the rules are changing. AI doesn't just see your advertising. It sees your reviews.It sees your customer service.It sees your return policy.It sees what employees say.It sees whether your company consistently delivers on its promises. You can rent attention. You have to earn reputation. I think we'll soon see a new executive role emerge inside organizations: The Reputation Manager. Not someone who manages spin. Someone who makes sure the company deserves to be recommended. What do you think? Is reputation becoming the most valuable marketing asset in the AI era? #AI #Marketing #BrandStrategy #Reputation #Leadership #CustomerExperience

For most of my career, brand mapping meant understanding how people saw a company. Was it trusted? Innovative? Affordable? Luxury? Friendly? As an art director and creative director, we spent countless hours shaping that perception through advertising, design, photography, and storytelling. Today, there's a new audience we have to think about. Artificial Intelligence. Not because AI buys products. Because people are increasingly asking AI what to buy, who to hire, where to eat, and which companies they should trust. That changes everything. Years ago we asked: "Where do we rank on Google?" Today we're asking: "When someone asks AI about our industry... are we even part of the answer?" I recently came across software designed to measure exactly that. It doesn't just track search rankings. It maps how AI systems talk about your brand. Think about that for a moment. Which questions mention your company? Which competitors appear instead? What websites are influencing AI's recommendations? What topics does AI associate with your business? Where are the gaps? As someone who spent decades helping companies build brands, I find this fascinating. Brand strategy hasn't disappeared . It's gained another layer. We're no longer communicating with just customers. We're communicating with the systems that help customers make decisions. The companies that understand this early won't just have better websites. They'll have clearer stories, better content, stronger expertise, and more consistent messaging wherever AI goes looking for answers. I don't think this replaces creativity. In fact, I think it rewards it. AI doesn't invent your reputation. It reflects what the world already knows about you. The question is... If AI were describing your brand today, would you like what it says?

Early in my career, I worked for one of the best creative directors I've ever known: Stanley Becker. One afternoon, he walked into the creative department and simply said, "Come on." We all looked at each other. "Where are we going?" "The movies." It was the middle of the workday. After the movie, he took us to Katz's Delicatessen in New York. I remember sitting there thinking, This is work? Finally, I asked him why he had taken us away from our desks. He smiled and said something I've never forgotten: "Creative people need to get out. If you ever get stuck, go out." At the time, I thought he was just being generous. Years later, I realized he was teaching one of the most important leadership lessons I'd ever learn. A few years later, I joined a small company between larger creative director positions. There were only two of us. The owner handled the clients, and I handled the creative. As time went on, I wasn't just designing. I was art directing. Writing. Editing copy. Preparing files for print. Solving production problems. Developing concepts. Helping win new clients. Finding solutions before anyone even asked the question. The company grew rapidly. The work became stronger. New clients kept coming through the door. The strange thing was... most of that work was invisible. People only saw the finished ad. They didn't see the hundreds of tiny creative decisions that made it successful. Then one day, I got sick. I had a 102-degree fever and asked to take one day off. The answer was no. That moment taught me something I'll never forget. It wasn't about the sick day. It was about respect. When someone quietly carries a tremendous amount of responsibility, it's easy to forget how much they're actually doing because everything appears to be running smoothly. After I left, I later learned from our printer that it took four people to replace the work I had been doing. Not because I was extraordinary. Because no one had realized how many different hats one creative person had been wearing. The most valuable work in a company is often invisible... ...until it's gone. Today, we have another temptation. We measure creativity by screen time. Hours at the computer. The green dot that says someone is "online." The number of files produced. But creativity doesn't work that way. The computer screen is where we make the idea visible. It is not always where the idea begins. Ideas begin while watching a great movie. Walking through a museum. Listening to conversations. Traveling. Reading. People watching. Laughing over lunch. Experiencing life. That's where the raw material comes from. The computer simply gives those experiences a place to live. So, if you're fortunate enough to lead a team of creative people, remember Stanley Becker's lesson. Don't chain them to a computer screen. Don't mistake constant production for creativity. Give them permission to step away. Encourage curiosity. Let them explore. A walk around the block. A museum. A coffee shop. A movie in the middle of the day. They're not avoiding the work. They're gathering the ideas that will make the work worth doing. Because the best creative people don't simply make things. They notice things. They connect things. They experience the world... ...and then they return to their desks and create something no computer could have imagined on its own. Sometimes the most productive thing a creative person can do... ...is get up from the computer. Because you can't chain creativity to a computer screen. ❤️

AI had great ideas. I just had to teach it how to count to 20. Recently, a client asked me to design a commemorative jewelry pin featuring ivy, diamonds, gold strands, and exactly 20 pearls. That last requirement mattered. Not approximately twenty. Not “about twenty.” Exactly twenty. Like many designers today, I turned to AI to help explore the concept. Within minutes, it produced elegant gold vines, luminous pearls, sparkling diamonds, and intricate ivy leaves. It generated idea after idea, each one visually beautiful. There was just one problem. It couldn’t count to 20. Every version came back with a different number of pearls. Twenty-three. Eighteen. Twenty-two. Sometimes pearls merged together. Sometimes they disappeared behind leaves. The more I asked for exactly twenty, the more I realized something fascinating. AI wasn’t really following the production specification. It was trying to make the design look aesthetically pleasing. It was creating what seemed visually balanced, even when that balance contradicted the client’s instructions. AI was designing what looked right. I needed to design what was right. Then something happened that confirmed what I was seeing. The client took the concept to a jeweler. The jeweler was also using AI. And the client came back to me with the exact same request: “Can you create this design with only 20 pearls?” That was my “aha” moment. I stopped asking AI to create the finished pin. Instead, I asked it to make the individual ingredients: One pearl. Three different sizes of pearls. Gold ivy leaves. Diamonds. Curved gold strands. Then I opened Photoshop. I counted every pearl. I resized them. I moved every leaf. I connected every strand. I art directed the composition until it matched the brief. Together, we got there. AI supplied the raw materials. I supplied the judgment, precision, and production thinking. And that is when I realized this wasn’t really a story about AI failing. It was a story about learning how to use a new tool. Learning a New Language Using AI often feels like learning a new language. At first, you think you are being perfectly clear. Then the tool responds with something completely different from what you intended. So you change the wording. You add context. You simplify the request. You divide one complicated task into several smaller ones. Eventually, you stop trying to force the tool to think exactly as you do. You begin learning how it works. That process reminds me of when I first learned to use a Macintosh. The mouse felt completely unnatural. My eyes, brain, and hand had to learn to work together in an entirely new way. When the mouse was positioned upside down, I had to retrain myself so that up was down, down was up, left was right, and right was left. It felt like a puzzle. But that was also what made it exciting. Eventually, I stopped consciously thinking about the mouse. The movement became instinctive. The tool disappeared, and I could concentrate on what I was creating. The same thing happened with Photoshop. Layers. Masks. The Pen tool. Bezier curves. At first, every new function required thought. Then, over time, they became part of my creative vocabulary. AI feels much the same. At first, you translate every idea into instructions. Then you begin to understand how the tool interprets those instructions. Eventually, you stop asking: “How do I make AI do this?” And begin asking: “What is the best way to solve this problem?” Sometimes the answer is AI. Sometimes it is Photoshop. Sometimes it is Illustrator. Sometimes it is a pencil. And sometimes it is all of them working together. The Kitchen-Sink Stage This also reminds me of the early days of website design. Suddenly, people could use fifteen fonts, blinking text, spinning logos, animated GIFs, visitor counters, scrolling messages, and music that began playing the moment a page opened. Because the technology made all of those things possible, people assumed they should use all of them. The entire kitchen sink went onto the website. Eventually, we learned that good design is not about using everything a tool can do. It is about restraint. Purpose. Hierarchy. Knowing what to leave out. AI is going through a similar stage now. I t can generate endless possibilities, and the temptation is to accept the most elaborate or visually impressive result simply because the tool produced it. But possibility is not the same as intention. Beautiful is not always the same as correct. And “close enough” is not the same as exactly 20 pearls. Don’t Fight the Tool. Learn the Tool. A master carpenter does not blame a hammer because it will not turn a screw. They choose the right tool. The same principle applies here. I could have continued asking AI to regenerate the entire pin, hoping that eventually it would count correctly. Instead, I changed my workflow. I learned what the tool did brilliantly. I learned what it struggled with. Then I bent the process to get the outcome I needed. That is what creatives have always done. We solve problems. The tools change—from markers and X-Acto knives to Macintosh computers, Photoshop, Illustrator, digital photography, and now AI. But the creative thinking remains. And perhaps that is why I find AI so fascinating. It does not necessarily make me think less. It makes me think differently. It gives me a new puzzle. The people who get the most from AI will not be the ones who expect it to do all the work. They will be the ones curious enough to keep asking: “What happens if I try this?” Then: “What if I phrase it differently?” And finally: “What if I completely change the workflow?” That is not simply automation. That is creativity. AI imagined the pin. I made it accurate. AI generated the possibilities. I directed the final solution. The finished design was not created by AI alone. It was not created without AI, either. It was created through collaboration — by understanding what the tool could do, recognizing what it could not do, and finding another route to the answer. Creative people have never been defined by their tools. They have always been defined by how they learn to use them. And the future does not belong to the people with the newest tools. It belongs to the people who learn how to use them.

teaching AI to whisper and shout I believe the next person who figures out how to bring beautiful typography and true editorial pacing to online storytelling will win the prize. Not by recreating paper magazines on a screen. By bringing back the thinking behind them. Imagine a web page that doesn’t simply scroll. Imagine a story that unfolds. Typography whispers when the moment is intimate. It shouts with excitement when the story calls for it. White space creates anticipation. Images and words move together with rhythm. The experience feels less like consuming content and more like turning the pages of a beautifully art-directed magazine. The technology already exists to make this possible. But it still needs to be human driven. Typography Gives a Story Its Voice Typography is not decoration. It is the voice you hear before you have read a single word. It can create tension. It can slow you down. It can make you lean closer. It can celebrate. It can disappear quietly and allow an image to speak. Great typography is not simply choosing a beautiful font. It is directing emotion. That is what the strongest art directors have always understood. They knew when to break the grid, when to leave a page almost empty, when to make a headline enormous and when to let it whisper. AI Needs Better Teachers AI can generate almost anything now. But left on its own, it often moves toward the average. The acceptable. The polished. The familiar. That may be efficient, but memorable work rarely begins with the statistically safest solution. AI does not need another font library. It needs creative direction. Teach AI when the story should whisper. Teach it when it should shout with excitement. Teach it when to pause. Teach it when silence on the page is more powerful than another paragraph. Teach it that white space is not empty. It is breathing room. AI may eventually learn to break out of visual sameness, but someone has to teach it why the rules should be broken in the first place. For now, that still requires human judgment. We Didn’t Just Lose Magazines. We Lost a Classroom. There was a time when a new issue arrived every month. And if you were serious about design, you did not just read it. You studied it. Why did this headline feel so powerful? Why was that photograph cropped that way? Why was there so much white space? Why did turning the page feel like entering a new chapter? Without realizing it, we were apprenticing under some of the best art directors in the world. Those magazines were not simply publications. They were classrooms. Each issue taught hierarchy, contrast, pacing, composition, restraint and surprise. You learned how one page related to the next. You learned rhythm. Then Everything Went Digital The web gave us speed. Publishing became easier. Information became immediate. Those were enormous gains. But many digital stories also began to look and behave alike. Hero image. Headline. Paragraph. Card. Button. Scroll. We optimized for consistency and efficiency. In doing so, we often flattened the emotional experience. The problem is not digital technology. The problem is allowing the technology to determine the story. Technology should not decide how we communicate. The story should decide how the technology is used. Bring Back the Thinking I do not want magazines back simply because they were printed on paper. I want the thinking back. The craftsmanship. The respect for typography. The understanding that layout can control pace, build anticipation and create emotion. The belief that a page—printed or digital—can make someone stop, breathe and look twice. The future is not about reproducing the past. It is about taking what the best magazines taught us and using new technology to push it further. One Final Thought We spend so much time teaching AI what words mean. Maybe it is time we teach it what words feel like. Teach it when to whisper. Teach it when to shout. Teach it when to pause. Teach it when to leave enough silence on the page that the reader can hear their own thoughts. Until AI understands that, it may know language. But it will not yet know communication.

Dig Deeper. Tell the Unexpected. One of the biggest mistakes I see creatives make isn't bad typography, poor color choices, or weak layouts. It's telling the obvious story. If the assignment is to promote a medical device, they show the medical device. If it's a toy, they show kids playing with it. If it's a building, they show the building. But the obvious story is usually the one everyone else is already telling. The real opportunity is to dig deeper. Years ago, while working in healthcare, I wanted to create a video featuring a patient. It wasn't a popular idea. The focus had always been on the technology, the physicians, and the product. I kept asking one question: Who is this really for? The answer wasn't the pacemaker. It wasn't the engineering. It wasn't even the hospital. It was the patient. So I searched until I found a little boy whose personality lit up every room. With almost no production budget, I wrote the interview, brought the family in, filmed it, and even taught myself Premiere Pro so I could edit the piece. The technology wasn't the story. The little boy was. On another project, I pushed to recognize the engineering team who designed the pacemaker. Some people questioned why. My answer was simple. Medical innovation doesn't happen because of one brilliant inventor. It happens because hundreds of people dedicate years of their lives to solving a problem. I wanted the audience to see the faces behind the breakthrough. Again... The product wasn't the story. The people were. This lesson has followed me through every stage of my career—from television commercials to healthcare communications and now AI-assisted creative work. Whenever I start a project, I ask myself: "What's the story everyone expects?" Then I ask the more important question: "What's the story nobody is telling?" That's usually where the best ideas are hiding. The obvious story informs. The unexpected story connects. And people rarely remember information. They remember how you made them feel. Creative Takeaway The next time you're given a project, resist the temptation to tell the first story you think of. Ask yourself: "Am I telling the obvious story... or have I dug deep enough to find the one no one else sees?" Because that's often where the best creative work begins.

Toss the manuals, solve the creative problem first. People often ask me how I learned Photoshop. The answer usually surprises them. I didn’t. At least not the way most people do. I never sat down with the manual. I didn’t work through tutorials from beginning to end. I opened the program and started creating. If I wanted something to happen, I kept pushing buttons until I figured it out. To me, software has always been a puzzle, not a class. One day, while experimenting, I accidentally created an effect I couldn’t reproduce. So I called Adobe technical support. “I’ve got a strange question,” I said. “Can you tell me how I made this?” There was a pause. Then the support technician laughed. “Actually… can you tell me how you did that?” That was one of my favorite moments. It reminded me that creativity doesn’t come from knowing every feature in a program. It comes from having an idea and refusing to let the limits of the software stop you from finding a way to create it. That is exactly how I approach AI today. I didn’t begin by studying everything AI could do. I dove in. I brought it real problems, real ideas, and real work. Then I learned how to communicate with it by experimenting, adjusting, and trying again. Sometimes I give it the wrong direction. Sometimes it misunderstands me completely. Sometimes the result makes me laugh. But every attempt teaches me something. Working with AI feels less like operating a machine and more like learning a new creative language. You have to figure out how to describe what you see in your head clearly enough for the tool to help you build it. But the idea still has to begin with you. I don’t ask AI to decide what I should create. I start with the problem. What am I trying to communicate? What emotion am I trying to create? What business problem am I trying to solve? Then I use AI to help me explore, refine, visualize, and sometimes push the idea further than I could have taken it alone. That is the same way I have approached every creative tool throughout my career. I don’t learn software for the sake of learning software. I learn whatever I need to solve the problem in front of me. That distinction matters, especially now. If you begin by asking a tool what it can do, you may end up creating only what the tool already knows how to show you. But if you begin with imagination, curiosity, and a problem worth solving, the tool becomes something much more powerful. It becomes a creative partner. The best creative people I’ve known never waited until they understood every tool. They had an idea first. Then they made the tools catch up.