Rockin' Around

I've been slow to catch the Christmas spirit this year (too warm), but crafting this Christmas concert highlights reel has me ready to decorate the Christmas tree (finally).

T(W)hat's Creative?

Published as an article on my LinkedIn profile.

The image above is a photograph by Felice Frankel, one of the most creative people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. This is a photograph of peppers cooking in a pan with the cover on. Felice is known for envisioning science—showing us the beauty of fractals, microstructures, and our own human cells. In her bio she states her goal is to "encourage researchers to develop creative ways to visually communicate their work and to teach the next generation of scientists and engineers about the power of visual communication –– both to colleagues and to those outside the research community. I want the world to love science as I do."

Do I think Felice is creative because I would have never thought to take this photograph? Yes, I think that's what sparks us to say something is creative—we didn't think of it first.

So, how do we get beyond our own initial thoughts so that we can dip into our own creativity?

Rod Ebright once gave me 50 (or so) exercises to unlock creativity. Matt "PASH" Pashkow's book, Inspirability, ventures into the creative worlds of 40 top designers to ask them how they manage to be creative. Rod gave me some specific tools I have used reliably for over a decade (thanks!). PASH's interviews proved to me that talent doesn't always equal creativity and (for sure) it's not easy for anyone. But, I'll come back to Felice. I believe she really has the answer: creativity comes from intentionality and love.

I've art directed thousands of illustrations. When I didn't make a good match of artist to assignment, the work was usually late and mediocre. When an assignment synched with their style and medium, the work was joyful, quick, and with little editorial correction. Their creativity came from a love of the assignment. It was exhilarating to witness an illustrator hit their stride, act with freedom to create, see the challenges as fun, and intentionally invest themselves in a rewarding result. To do my job well as an art director, I have to figure out this love-match for every assignment or else figure out how to make the most of my misguided judgement.

Despite intention and love, we can also get stuck via a crisis of conviction or confidence. This is when we think we are not creative, when we've lost our mojo. I've talked enough illustrators (and myself) off the ledge over the years to have compiled eight suggestions from Rod and PASH and Felice that seem to help:

1. Turn it upside down, on it's ear, look at it in the mirror, read it backwards.
2. Look behind you—the sunset may not be as interesting as the sunset reflected in the windows of a beautiful barn.
3. Inspire yourself by going to a museum or a library or just go shopping and open your eyes.
4. Take a bath. A long hot bath or shower works wonders for me. When something is especially challenging, I rate it not in stars but in showers—"That was a two shower solution." This also means I've likely slept on it. Fresh eyes can be very powerful, either your own or through a colleague's review. (I always have a colleague review my work.)
5. Take a bath. This kind of bath is a long walk in nature, literally called Forest Bathing. It's the best kind of meditation/mindfulness for me and it's amazing how the exercise coupled with nature activates the little grey cells.
6. Don't ever cop out by saying, "there's no need to reinvent the wheel." In this age of sharing, give others their due, build yourself through known expertise, and form alliances that make you both stronger. You cannot literally copy someone's work and successfully apply it to your circumstances anyway . . . you'll have to put your own air in the tire at the very least.
7. You don't know what you don't know. Do your research; it's often inspiring.
8. Develop a reputation for creating concepts that work, not for doing what you want. Keep your opinions to yourself so that you are known for your expertise. If you can approach a problem objectively, your mind is open to solutions beyond yourself.

And, there's one more point to make. That colleague who always plays the devil's advocate is doing you a favor. Listen to them. Take a few showers, if need be, and use their perspective to make sure you've kept #8 in mind. Or, maybe, that devil will help you practice #1.

Smoke and mirrors

I revel when someone says at a photo shoot that "Cindy can fix it in photoshop." The most challenging work I've done recently was a composite of the boy's national basketball team. I was taking the photos that day because the photographer I had scheduled was sick. I struggled to get these active teens to focus for one good shot. The first image is the base photograph and the second is the composite I created from multiple images in order to capture everyone at their best. The poster was created by Derick Harris.

My Social Media Wedding (Strategy)

I have two big buckets of skills. One bucket is Design and the other bucket is Writing. Who knew that they would meet and fall in love? Admittedly, my writing has always been a bit of a stalker of my design work. Most editors have been grateful that I cared about the words, too. For event planning, I'm a one-stop shop. My publishing experience taught me to copy fit for space (yeah, like Twitter on steroids). I learned to be a skilled copyeditor and then to write captions and headlines, then reporting and articles. It's a beautiful union to write a story, take the photos, and then design the presentation, either in print or online. Social media gives me this opportunity and challenge multiple times a day.

Social Media is a powerful communications tool. However, it requires engagement. Success is often measured by likes and shares but even more powerful is mentions. A healthy social media program engages and builds relationships with followers. In effect, followers lead you to—and help you build— meaningful content.

Want to build relationships?

• Be authentic. 
• Celebrate, be grateful, and always be positive.
• Reciprocate to followers when they comment.
• Be immediately responsive to questions and direct messages with answers. 
• It takes 24/7 monitoring to make your social media a safe place for comments. 
• Become a trusted resource for clear, accurate information. Consider yourself a reporter and abide by reporting ethics, ie. don't report anything unless it can be confirmed, be nice, and don't take sides.
• Make every post specific to your audience, ie. your Veterans Day message should highlight veterans from your organization, not just be a generic Veterans Day post.
• Brand flyers with your logo so followers can print and share.
• Resist using social media as just a bulletin board. 
• Use video, photographs, gifs.
• Create some infrastructure to support you—key individuals you can rely on to answer texts promptly so that you can reply to a worried parent and a rich pocket of contacts who will keep you in the loop about information your audience needs.
• Shout out and mention organizations and people who support you and especially those you want to support you in the future.

Use technology to your advantage—

1. Set Google alerts for relevant topics.
2. Program your phone to alert you for activity on posts.
3. Use Hootsuite (or similar) to manage multiple platform posts.
4. Use Asana (or similar) to manage your strategy and delegate tasks, if needed. Yes, there's a strategy to it so use that strategy for it's best purpose—Twitter and Facebook posts are not the same. Your audience peaks at 4 pm...post at 3:55 pm. You have the most engagement with photos of adorable children. Your following businesses actually follow you...mention them, thank them, comment on their posts.
5. Review analytics to make sure you are posting content your audience cares about.

Social media takes much more time to do well than we are usually willing to admit. There's still a stigma that equates social media to pics of cute puppies. Get over it. Unlike other communication tools such as direct mail and telephone marketing, social media gives us an opportunity to truly build communities with people and businesses. That means you have to care and be able to put yourself in your audience's shoes... and then dance around in them. The effort increases the results exponentially, as only social media can—greater audience, more event participation, and larger fundraising dollars.

See a screen shot below of my recent Asana social media calendar tasks.

Quickie Videos

I am skilled just enough to put together small, quick videos for social media with iMovie and a personal video camera. 😊  Bonus: Most organizations don't have the personnel to do this so if you create a movie and tag a partner organization, you've given them a wonderful gift that they can use on their social media, which grows your social media reach. 

Legacy Early College Design Portfolio

Legacy's annual golf tournament and gala

Double truck ad in the Greenville News for Legacy's first graduating class and Parker's 90th reunion.

Middle School postcard, graphics created in Photoshop.

24-page comprehensive development booklet—concept, photography, writing and design

Small development brochure, the concept, all photography, writing, and design created by me. On an added note, I created this in two days over the weekend.

Postcard for Legacy's annual basketball tournament. You can also see in this photo the banner design I created for the tournament.

Our Top Stories flyer was a popular flyer for recruiting events.
We also used this content for a donor e-blast and a parent e-blast.

Photography, writing, design, and management of translation

Save the date postcard

Legacy's CrossFit facility business cards and t-shirt design.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I'm a skilled ghostwriter, with appearances in the Greenville News, Greenville Journal, and guest blogs. Here's a recent OpEd I wrote for Legacy leadership.

Recommendations

I recently reached out to some connections to ask for their recommendation on LinkedIn. I am honored by the responses.

It's a Revival!

Someone just asked me if I blogged. I haven't contributed to this public blog in years—I even had trouble remembering my password. This was a fun and useful project when I was relocating. Now that I'm settled in "sunny Carolina," I'll get us caught up on my accomplishments and challenges and begin posting regularly again. Welcome back!