Design, writing, and ideas from a creative mind
Somewhere between a cramped line of body copy and a client's fourth 'quick revision,' I realized design principles aren't just for layouts—they're for life. Here's how white space, hierarchy, and ruthless editing became my boundary-setting playbook.
I logged out of LinkedIn for a full quarter and replaced the scroll with handwritten notes, coffee chats, and a personal site that actually sounds like me. The results surprised even my skeptical self — and taught me that being findable in one place beats being forgettable in five.
When a dream offer from a big-name agency landed in my inbox, I did what any self-respecting spreadsheet nerd would do: I built a decision model with columns for money, mornings, and creative control. The numbers told a story my gut had been muttering for weeks.
A big-tech offer with a salary I couldn't ignore landed in my inbox last spring, and I spent two weeks pretending to weigh options I'd already made. Here's the framework I used to figure out what 'making it' actually costs—and what it actually pays.
A household-name brand wanted to hire me, and my first instinct was to scream into a pillow with joy. This is the story of why I said no anyway — and how one awkward phone call reshaped everything I thought I knew about building a career.
For one year, I sent a cold email every week to creatives I admired—designers, writers, an art director in Portland who I'm still convinced is a figment of the internet's imagination. Here's the honest tally: the silence, the weird replies, and the three people who changed my career.
Saying no to a nationally recognized brand felt like setting my own portfolio on fire. Six months later, I'm convinced it was the single best career decision I've made.
Forget the $2,000 retreat and the 30-day challenge. My entire creative maintenance system fits in a quarter of an hour, once a week, with stuff I already own.
Every freelancer has a story about the client they should have walked away from in week one. I've collected mine, anonymized the guilty, and turned them into a field guide of red flags to stop rationalizing — plus the green signals I now treat like gold.
I spent three years hiding behind the vaguest job title on the internet and wondering why the wrong clients kept finding me. Here's what happened when I traded the buzzwords for a plain-English description of my actual work — and why the rewrite exercise in this piece might save you a year of misfit inquiries.
I pitched the identical design package to four prospects at wildly different price points, each framed around a different story—speed, prestige, partnership, legacy. The results upended everything I assumed about what clients are actually buying.
Every project I touched started looking suspiciously like the last one, and I couldn't figure out why—until I realized my entire visual diet came from the same three websites. Here's what happened when I traded algorithmic inspiration for a notebook full of diner signs and subway tiles.
My most valuable project last year isn't on my portfolio, wasn't for a client, and exactly three people have ever seen it. I think we should all be making more work like that.
After eleven hours on one layout, I couldn't tell if it was brilliant or garbage—and neither could my eyes. Here's the slightly ridiculous routine I use to trick my brain into seeing my work like a stranger would.
Writers and designers are solving the same problem — holding attention and making meaning — with different materials. These are seven habits I lifted straight from the writing world, and the very real projects where each one saved me.
A single line in an email — 'Can you walk me through this number?' — sent me into a spiral and then, eventually, into a whole new way of pricing my work. Here's what I learned about value, framing, and why the invoice is the last step, not the first.
Six months of recruiter silence taught me more than any design degree ever did. Here are the seven changes I made to my portfolio—and the before/after evidence that proves they worked.
After a decade of splitting my time between writing and design, I'm convinced the future belongs to people who refuse to pick a lane. Here's how to cross-train your creative brain—starting this week.