New Name, Renewed Aims
An end-of-year recap and some thoughts for the coming year!
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and General Salutions!
It’s been a turbulent year in the world—genuinely horrifying for a lot of people in some parts of the globe—and next year doesn’t look like it will be letting up much. But we continue.
Here’s to positive action in the new year.
Some updates on this blog below, as well as some thoughts on the year ahead. As always, thanks for reading, and any algorithm-boosting engagement with this post is much appreciated :)
Welcome to the Breakdown
As you may have noticed, I've changed the name of this blog to better reflect what I want to do with it.
So, to refocus, Creative Breakdown is a blog about branding, design and communication in the climate crisis.
It's about the visual world and the creative sector, breaking down trends and recurring themes, and the intersection of politics and graphic design. It's about being creative and having a crisis of conscience, from my personal experience of working in both the commercial and non-profit worlds.
It's about trying to do the right thing in your work.
It's about the kinds of things I want to write about.
It's my blog :)
100 subscribers!
As I refocus the blog, I'm also pleased to report that I've now reached over 100 subscribers! It's a small milestone but I think worth celebrating :)
I started this blog in September 2023 as somewhere to put my errant thoughts, without much expectation of an audience, and it's been gratifying to see some of my writing resonate with people. Just knowing someone will read gives me a little more motivation to write!
2024 Recap
The past year has been something of a rollercoaster for the news cycle, and at times it's been difficult to muster the spirit to face the world, let alone write about it. I find the urge comes and goes, along with the flow of design work. That's evident in the lack of posts in the first half of the year, with a glut of red-hot takes in the past few months!
Let's recap:
This year I've been working closely with a few different climate-change-focused groups, and I've noticed this space is as susceptible to jargon as any other: it's natural to develop a shorthand between the people you're working with to make communication more efficient. This piece focuses on the word 'climate.' A word we've come to use as a catch-all for basically everything to do with our work—both on its own and as a prefix—and those of us who are familiar generally understand it to mean 'to do with the climate crisis and general ecological breakdown.' I make the case that we can't assume the public at large has the same level of familiarity with the subject, and sometimes we have to be more specific, even though it might feel like we're repeating ourselves or labouring the point.
In this post I wanted to work through what a transition to a sustainable economy could actually look like for those of us working in the creative industry. From the type of work we do to the kinds of businesses we run. I want to encourage people in this industry to start thinking and making changes right now for the future we will be otherwise forced to adapt to.
It seems that October was a bit of a rough one for the old mental state. This one is a bit of personal catharsis. I think I just had to get all the bad thoughts out. Apologies, but also, not sorry ;)
During the election season in the US I was struck by how the branding of the Harris campaign felt like some of the slick brand campaigns coming out of the fintech and consumer retail sector. Beautiful work that ultimately (in my opinion) sanitises politics and feels indicative of the Democratic Party's disconnect with the public.
This one came on the heels of an appearance by venerated creative guru and vice-chairman of Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland, on the Cleaning Up podcast. Beyond the obvious contrarianism, his reactionary squirming betrays a reticence to confront his own fears. I think he is like a lot of people, in that he wants to keep doing what he's always done and hopes that everything will be ok. Except that, unlike most people, he has a very influential position as one of the chief marketers of fossil fuels, and thus one of the major blockers of the political action we desperately need. An example of the toxicity of Wishful Thinking.
“There's potential for the creative industry to be a real driver of change, as well as an example to others of how it can be done. We are supposed to be problem solvers, after all.”
2025
Looking to the next year—without making any firm resolutions—I want to commit to writing with more resolve in 2025 (if that's not an oxymoron!)
I think there's a gap in the creative industry, where the dynamic between our work and the world around us isn't really being seriously taken into account. There's plenty of writing around sustainability and graphic design, and I've had a lot of conversations recently about minimising our impact in the materials we use, the hosting of our websites, the bandwidth of our case study videos and other resources. These things are all of course important to consider, but I think we can easily get distracted by them.
The climate emergency is only going to become more urgent, and we need to be thinking and talking as a sector about how we transition to a non-extractive economy. That touches everything from the type of clients we choose to work with, to the business models of our agencies, to the importance of effective public communication. There's potential for the creative industry to be a real driver of change, as well as an example to others of how it can be done. We are supposed to be problem solvers, after all.
In the next year, I aim to explore this more, and in some small way stimulate much needed discussion of these topics.
Thanks for joining me this far, I hope you'll continue to read in 2025 and beyond!
My replies are open if you feel the urge to respond to anything I've talked about above or in future :)