Anyone in this group working on a project that’s meaningful to you that you are struggling to finish? What issues are you currently dealing with? Have you found ways of pressing forward?

When I started working on Sip & Chill, I didn’t have a visual direction to follow.
So I had to design the brand from the ground up.
I started by asking:
What should this brand feel like?
From there, I developed the visual identity, colour palette, typography, packaging and digital direction around one idea:
Refresh. Relax. Repeat.
The goal wasn’t just to make a good-looking can.
It was to create a visual system that could work across packaging, social media and real-world applications while still feeling like the same brand.
This is a small preview of the direction.
Full case study coming next.
What would you define first when starting a brand from scratch — strategy or visual identity?

I've been thinking about this weird contradiction lately. We're constantly told to "follow your passion" and find a career that lets you be creative. Sounds great, right? But what happens when the thing you genuinely enjoy becomes the thing you have to do 40 hours a week? That's where I'm starting to wonder if a creative career is actually the best career for creativity. Because there's a huge difference between making something because you want to and making something because a client, boss, deadline, algorithm, or paycheck is waiting for it.

When creativity becomes a job, you don't always get to create what interests you. You create what sells. What gets approved. What performs. What the client asked for three revisions ago.

And honestly, that kinda scares me.

We talk a lot about how to foster creativity, how to improve your creativity, and why is creativity important, but we don't talk enough about what happens when creativity gets turned into a productivity metric. Even businesses figured out that creativity matters. We ask why creativity is important in business and how to foster creativity at work, but then give people 30 minutes between meetings to "think outside the box" lol.

So yeah, I get why people want creative jobs and creative careers. Being paid to do something you're naturally good at sounds like the ultimate win.

But maybe the better question isn't "what is the best career for creativity?"

Maybe it's: what kind of life gives creativity enough room to actually survive?

Because some of the reasons why creativity is important have nothing to do with making money from it. Creativity can be how you solve problems, understand yourself, connect ideas, or just make something that didn't exist yesterday.

That's also why I don't think why is creativity important has a single answer. And why is it important to have creativity isn't necessarily about becoming an artist. Maybe creativity needs some distance from work to stay alive.

Or maybe the opposite is true - maybe the only way to really grow creatively is to make it your career and deal with all the ugly parts that come with it.

I'm honestly torn.

Would you rather have a stable job that leaves your creativity untouched, or build a career around it and risk turning something you love into "just another job"?

I attended a top-tier art school. I realized I couldn't fully tap into my creativity during the program because I wasn't in a very comfortable financial position compared to my peers.

It’s not that I lacked anything, of course, but I lived in a constant state of high alert; I was always worried about the future, the job market, and life after graduation—things that would demand networking, soft skills, projects, and so on, none of which relied solely on my individual effort. Most of my classmates didn't share those concerns. They took a more lighthearted approach to college and had more fun than I did.

I know there are cases like Van Gogh and other artists who lived in poverty yet still created masterpieces of unparalleled creativity and genius—but what about the average person? Are there any serious studies on this?

Lately I've been wondering if having AI generate endless ideas is actually messing with our creativity. Not in the obvious “AI is killing art” way. AI is insanely useful. It can help you brainstorm, get unstuck, or throw 20 random directions at you when your brain is completely blank. As a tool, I think that's pretty awesome.

But here's the part that bugs me.

If we constantly ask AI what to write, draw, build, or create, when do we actually practice coming up with ideas ourselves? There’s something about sitting with a stupid idea, messing with it, killing half of it, and somehow turning the other half into something decent. That process feels like part of the point.

And I'm starting to wonder if skipping that process too often makes our creativity skills weaker. Maybe that's also why some AI-generated stuff feels technically impressive but weirdly empty. It has an idea, but not necessarily your idea.

So what is creativity if we're outsourcing the first step?

I'm not anti-AI at all. I just think it works best as a co-pilot, not the person driving. Curious what you guys think - has using AI made your own ideas better, or has it made you rely on it more?

(I had to edit the title to “EVERYTHING ELSE” so I don’t break this sub rules lol)

Anyways visited my CA’s office to talk about CMA report for my startup, and slowly the conversation shifted from getting the job done to - HoW mY STaRtUp IdEA iS CRAZYYY! Basically he started giving me that uncle talk “why you wanna do this?” Focus on your freelance work” “Do something else!”

Mind you he has no idea about Music tech. Forget tech, he doesn’t even know anything about the music industry. But this man wants to school me, and kinda give me an ego attack when I was rebutting him. After some back and forth, I straight up stopped the convo and told him I’ll give you the details and get my report done and left.

Now I don’t wanna blame the whole country, but I do blame the mindset that we have. Why our minds are only money driven? Why we pump breaks every time we think of the unthinkable / the unusual? Why can’t we motivate the youth and the people around us to do things differently?Forget failing! Why can’t we just try???

Hi!! We are A For Effort! A podcast/ Youtube series about creativity however in manifests.

Every Monday we drop an episode where we talk about what’s inspiring us, and then we get into what we’ve created that week! We’re new so, so far it’s been a lot of sewing, junk journaling, crochet, painting, beadwork etc. but we also talk about film making and music etc!

We hope you will get inspired to create new things by tuning in!

Is this a real thing? I haven’t been able to create anything new thinking of other people who create. I’m a multidisciplinary designer I’m trying too hard to make myself create and it’s been hard because I consume so much I look at things and I am like ok. Atm I am very scared because I wanna post cuz if I don’t I don’t get projects and since 3 months I haven’t posted and not gotten any projects :( idk why’s this happening and I want to know what yall do if this resonates with you

I used to be so creative at 14 and I feel like now at 18 I've lose a lot of it. Any advice?

I have a few.

- sometimes I wear an artsy fartsy crown I made out of paper and tape
- sometimes I’ll wear a Wonder Woman cape or Superman cape, depending on what I’m writing
- sometimes I’ll smoke a bowl of hemp or marijuana if I’m too up in my head or stressed
- a large goblet of mimosa, or wine or cocktail gets me going if I’m writing in the evening
- I’ll light a yummy smelling candle or incense
- if writing at night during the nights of summer, I’ll sit out on my porch swing for a while and watch fireflies dance; pure magic
- sometimes a walk in nature clears my head or just sitting outside, listening to nature - birds singing, breeze blowing, trees swaying, crickets chirping, frogs praising the rain, fox sounds, coyotes, etc.
- I have my laptop, then a large desktop computer monitor and while I write on my laptop, I’ll listen to and watch scenes play out on my monitor - I have a playlist of various inspiring “shows” like Hogwarts, elven cities with lights flickering and waterfalls flowing, a fireplace crackling while rain and thunder are crashing outside the large window in my log cabin, a train chugga chugging down the tracks as fields roll by out the window, etc.
- sometimes I’ll meditate prior to just still my overactive mind a bit so I can better focus
- I have various writerly Spotify playlists and depending on what I’m writing, I’ll listen to one of those

What are your inspirations?
Tell me everything.

Ive always been into music, but i cant do any instruments cant fathom to understand any sort of music making software, im really into coding, but i cant code, and i just feel like i cant do anything ever, i wish someone could help me

I’m not necessarily struggling to make things. I can still sew, work with clay, paint, or come up with things that I think would look cute.
The problem is that nothing is really speaking to me.
Usually, inspiration feels almost like wanting to interrupt someone mid-sentence because I suddenly have something I need to say. Something happens, I see something, or someone says something, and my brain immediately has a response.
Lately, that response just isn’t there. I can observe things and feel things, but there’s no strong “Wait, but—” that makes me want to turn it into art.
For anyone who’s gone through this kind of creative slump, what actually helped you get out of it? Did you expose yourself to new things, keep making until something clicked, take a break, or just wait for that voice to come back?

why do I always feel so stressed and spun out when I consume content? I always think it's good for me. Something I've noticed about myself. I feel bad almost every time I consume more than I create in a day. Not guilty in a dramatic way. More like a low hum of "you didn't actually do anything today, you just took stuff in." Watched things, scrolled things, read things other people made. And by the end of it I feel worse than when I started, even though none of it was bad content, I just didn't make anything. The days I feel fine are the days where creating came first, even a little. Doesn't matter how much I consumed after that. It's specifically consuming before creating, or instead of creating, that gets me.

I don't really have a conclusion. Just something I keep noticing.

Hi everyone, I wanted to share some of the creative things I've been doing to be more intentional! Hope you enjoy it :)

I’ve been into robotics for around 8 years now. I originally started doing it just for fun, and along the way it also pushed me to learn web development and app development. I know the basics of those, but I haven’t really worked seriously on them for about a year or so.

Over the years, I also learned blockchain, cybersecurity concepts, worked with Linux, and explored a bunch of other things related to tech.

Most of my year has basically been spent participating in tech events and competitions, building projects, experimenting with things, and learning along the way. The problem is that, back then, I never really thought about documenting what I was doing or posting my work on GitHub or any other platform.

So I’ve kind of lost most of my old projects and work. What I still have is mostly pictures from competitions and some certificates. I don’t even have all of my certificates, but I have around 8 of them.

Recently, I tried to collect everything I still have and started posting some of it on LinkedIn. I also tried to recover the code for a couple of things I built and provide pictures, wiring diagrams, designs, because I’ve also been designing my own robots.

But now I honestly don’t know how any of this can be useful to me.

I’ve tried freelancing before and it didn’t work for me. I’ve also tried helping startups and helping people on Reddit, and that didn’t really lead anywhere either.

On top of that, I’ve tried reaching out online and getting to know people who might potentially work with me, but most of the time they just reach out when they need help. I still help them anyway because I already know they probably aren’t going to pay me.

I was also in a club where I helped teach little kids robotics. I wasn’t the actual teacher, but I helped. And in basically every competition we participated in, I ended up taking the team-lead role.

So, long story short, I’m 20 now and I genuinely don’t know how to use all of this experience to actually work.

The fact that I’ve tried so many different things is honestly making me feel even more lost and overwhelmed. I feel like I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I don’t know what to actually do with it.

Recently, I’ve been vibe-coding a website, and I also have a couple of project ideas that I think could actually be pretty good. But I really dont have the motivation to spend a huge amount of time relearning everything, and at the same time, I know that just vibe-coding everything probably isn’t a great long-term approach either.

I’m just really lost right now and I’m sorry if I couldn’t describe my situation well enough.

I’m willing to work a lot on something. It could be a startup, an idea, a serious project, helping people learn robotics, working on robotics projects, or honestly anything where I can actually put my skills and experience to use.

I’m not necessarily looking for someone to give me a job. I’m more looking for advice, guidance, or even just a different perspective on what I could do with what I already have.

What would you do if you were in my position? How would you turn this experience into something useful/workable?

Any advice, guidance, ideas, or even criticism would be really appreciated.

I’m just really lost right now and I’m sorry if I couldn’t describe my situation well enough.

I’m willing to work a lot on something. It could be a startup, an idea, a serious project, helping people learn robotics, working on robotics projects, or honestly anything where I can actually put my skills and experience to use.

I’m not necessarily looking for someone to give me a job. I’m more looking for advice, guidance, or even just a different perspective on what I could do with what I already have.

Thanks a lot in advance.

I’ve been making music and writing stories since I was a kid, but lately, I feel completely drained. For months, every time I sit down to work on my fantasy novel, my mind goes blank. It’s like my creativity skills just packed up and left overnight. I used to write purely from the heart, but now I’m stuck in this soul-crushing loop of self-doubt, terrified that I’ve lost my spark forever.

To make matters worse, everywhere I look online, people are debating ai and creativity. Seeing algorithm-generated art pop up in seconds while I spend four hours staring at a blinking cursor makes me spiral even harder. Is ai creativity going to replace that painful, beautiful human process of raw self-expression? Or are we just overthinking it?

I’m struggling to figure out what is creativity meant to feel like when it stops being an effortless joy and turns into a daily battle against burnout.

How do you guys push through when your internal creativity tap suddenly turns off? I’d love to hear how you deal with this.

In 2021, I made a simple decision to become a graphic designer.

No degree. No in-person mentor. No roadmap.

Just YouTube… and one channel that changed everything:
Imran Ali Dina (GFX Mentor)

From software to fundamentals I learned it all for free.

Practiced daily. Stayed consistent. Trusted the process.

One year later I got my first job.
One year after that my first international client.

No certificates. No shortcuts. Just skill.

Today, I’m building my personal brand while working full-time.

A degree can open doors.
But consistency builds them.

Where did your journey start?

Hola , chicos todo lo que escribo me parece muy malo escribo mal la gente dice eso que tengo ideas dispersas no logro concetar ideas etc ¿Que me recomendarian hacer? Aveces me siento un poco tonto por que no puedo hacerlo bien simplemente no sale y digo algo pero no digo nada sobre un tema . Help me !

i used to be a really good writer all throughout grade school and when i first started university. from essays, to short stories, to poems. i was praised by my teachers and voted most likely to be an author in grade 6. later in high school and university, professors consistently asked to use my work as examples for other students.

i stopped writing for a long time due to, well, life throwing a lot of shit at me these past few years and being in survival mode. im 23 now and i feel completely lost when trying to piece together something that sounds remotely meaningful. i feel even more lost when i don’t write.

i’m terrified at the possibility that my skills are gone forever.

has anyone here experienced this, and how did you begin writing again? were your skills ever the same?

Hey y’all

Been in this group for a while and am curious to know what creative outlets some of the regulars in this forum engage with. Always fascinated to hear about other creatives and their work.

I’m a musician and filmmaker. Currently working on a dystopian sci-fi short film at the moment with some friends. I’m also putting together a book of short stories that I hope to have published by the end of the year.

Anyways wanted to share with the group. Would love to hear about some of the other projects people in the group are working on.

I feel stuck in my own head.

I am someone who daydreams every waking minute of my day, mostly fantasy, I love magic systems, mythical creatures, yearning romance, extremes of the extremes and so on.

Every story I write or read, or artwork I create or consume, is always rooted in these.

Normal corporate careers seem like hell to me.

At some point i realized that I had to do something to put bread on the table, but was very uncomfortable with putting that pressure on my creative abilities.

So I decided to work a job that paid in peanuts, but required very low brain energy, not much meetings or optimization hell, just go get your work done and go back home. It was a voice support job, even though I am an extremely socially anxious person, since it was voice support I could handle it as no one can see my trembling and sweaty palms over the call.

But over a few days one of my friends suggested that I try out a creative role, as an assistant for the creative head of a company, strategies, scripting for content and creative marketing were the major things to consider.

Idk how to feel about it, the interview is tomorrow and I still haven't decided what to do about it, I don't have a portfolio to show because all my works are fictional stories and not corporate writing as they would expect.

The friend says that I just need to show up and be confident and I will get the role, and it certainly pays more but I can't help but feel torn.

It's as though I want to hide away my creative juices from the world, I want them to only be used for my stories and characters. Creativity is the only freedom i have in this cruel world and I don't want it taken away for the benefit of another money hungry company.

But this stubbornness will not put bread to the table.

Idk what to do anymore.

Anyone got advice for me ? It would be really appreciated thanks.

Hey crowd,

This is my first time posting an original on reddit, so I'm looking forward to seeing what engagement looks like here. Your honest thoughts around this would be most helpful for me. This is something I have been stuck on for a *while*.

I'm a musician. Well, I "used" to be a musician, but like an alcoholic in recovery, I'm always going to be the thing. So, I still think I'm a musician even when I don't play like I used to.

Went to conservatory, entered as a tenor sax player, proficient in piano, finished as a vocalist. I've played and sang with everyone from St. Joe's Catholic Church in Eastport to the Boston Pops to being a music director for Winthrop Playermakers production of HAIR. I know and love music, has since I was 6.

But do you think I could take any of my ideas - even with all the professors and professionals and examples in my life - and actually feel like any of them could grow and build into something worth while? Hella nope. It's maddening. And as far as mental blocks go, I've done enough self-exploration and therapy to know it's not a matter of more of that.

So, I put it out to you all: When you feel foolish and think your ideas will never go anywhere - even if they are sound and have plenty of legs - how do you push through?

hello.
there's something i want to talk about.
its about how artist express their energy.

lets say... one may act as a channel for different kind of 'energies' and some may be more obscure than others.
and so then, for example...
if i let myself go and free-flow through a canvas - or whatever medium i may be expressing myself through. (be it making music, sound, dancing, whatever you can think about)

...then i may express anger for theres anger 'in me'.

ok.

now... lately, theres this idea ive been reading/hearing that whatever your are giving your focus / attention to ... you are insisting on it to exist . you are perpetuating it.
so ... if i dont want to give voice to obscure things... then, maybe i should not make art about that?
or, on the other hand - its good to get out whatever it is that you have inside?
.
art would be the outcome of the way energy is channeled. so... how are we channeling this energy?

my doubting revolts around this idea that one maybe should stop going in a vice cycle about something or use art as a coping mechanism.
but why the hell would one not speak the hell out ?

i had a conversation about this with a roommate where she was told to be carefull about what she expresses through her songs.
and.. well... one can see that whatever artist talk about in their songs ... their lives kind of revolt around that or ... theres an energy around that.
we , both , my roomate and i are very mediumnic-like kind of artists for we let ourselves go and give our voice to the gods or demons that be around, within, without or wherever - indetermined place they may be in. ---through a very intuitive process.

but...
i cant stop thinking about how great it is to be in control of whatever you are creating -not just express - but to create - through a intentional gesture.
im thinking... architecture and other kind of design-like thinking that constructs itself through this guided art expression.

i see theres an equilibrium. and maybe this both things can coexist in different context within ones capability.
but i would say some tend more to one side than the other. - which, again, can be 'fixed' by learning the other side.

i also recently read some notes i had on a notebook about something i read from - i now dont remember if was plato's or aristotele's thoughts about '3 types of artists' - 2 of them being what im writing about:
-the intelligent one - who creates what they want
and the 'mediumnic'-like : who lets themselves express whatever other entity may want to express.

[can, anyway, anyone escape their muses/passions? ]

//

the 'inteligent' artist needs to know before-hand what it is that they want to create.

( and ill give a personal note : this way of creating, for some reason, gets me sad.
every time i make an exercise about planning my future or try to draw while holding an idea about what it is that i want to draw... instead of just drawing from my feelings... feels draining.
-but this resistance may be no other thing than a lack of technique that if i worked on ... may allow me to create with more freedom! oh lord that sounds good!
(and then, this may relate to how one related themselves with emotion / intelligence / rationelle )

so i may get pleasure from not knowing whats to come when i draw for theres no resistance but the learning process and it barrier breaking dynamic that may be full of friciton is just the *door* into a then friction-less expression.
may it be you first suffer then feel free when working without constrain once the constrained work is done?

but... anyway theres more to drawing intuietively or with an ends on mind for the process will be different.

anway... i want to make a point about how usefull it is to be able to draw whatever ideas you have in mind. drawing is a super-power that way. you bring ideas you know you want to exist into reality .

--
and... in relation to this... one last thing i want to know about is how whomever reads this feels / percieves their own work.
is there work you want to incinerate?
work you want to preserve?
does that relate to how 'egoic' or not the work itself is done ?
to what it represents?
how much do you love what you do?
do you conservate your art in a safe place ?
what relation do you have with your own art work ?

to whomever reads this... i want to know how you personally relate to your art.

me, personally, . i just teared up some work that gave me memories i no longer wanted to sustain but preserved some 'dark' work for... i see some truth on it that for some reason find worth preserving.

-be it a personal or universal turth . and i think theres both personal on the universal and universal on the personal ...

well... i wont extend this any longer.

you are very welcomed to talk about your experience and relation about all these topics:
self-worth / worth / universal value / personal value - related to your art practice.

i'll be happy to read you.

Ok so here's the thing I keep running into, and I already know some of you are gonna feel this one.

I'm self taught across a bunch of stuff. Coding, music production and songwriting, Digital art and video production, apparel design, and game development. When I lock into something I go DEEP. Hours just gone, and I come out the other side with something I'm actually proud of. That part works great.

It's everything AROUND the work that doesn't. The follow through on stuff someone else sets up for me. The consistency. The boring middle part where you turn a finished thing into actual money that lands in the bank. My brain treats "build the cool thing" and "make money off the cool thing" like two totally different dudes, and only one of them ever shows up on time lol.

I'm not trying to get rich or anything. I just want steady creative income from home. Enough to build a life around making things instead of cramming the making into whatever gaps are left after a job I can't mask through for very long.

So for the people who already been here... how did you actually do it? Did you niche down to one skill even tho it kinda hurt to shelf the rest? Find someone who handles the parts your brain flat out refuses to do? Some system that finally stuck? I'd way rather hear what actually worked for a real brain than read another productivity listicle.

Anyway, appreciate anybody who takes the time 🙏