Well, Reader, I'm looking at my to-do list this week and quite frankly, considering I'm the Creative Director at Kit, it's not very creative...
Here's what's on my plate:
- Figure out Figma licensing across our 100-person company
- Finish writing a career levels matrix for the Brand Studio team
- Sort out merch budget tracking
- Close down our old merch warehouse
- Improve our team's Notion hub so SOPs are more findable
- Create an internal brand processes satisfaction survey
- Write an SOP for getting our logo updated on partner sites
- Q4 project prioritization
- Prep to onboard a new team member
- Review research and test results and pulling out learnings
- Build an AI workflow for tracking project completion rates
Of course I'm also responsible for reviewing the design and copy work my team is doing and providing them with good feedback and direction. And the tasks I'm working on are connected to creative work (for example: merch helps us build brand affinity and awareness, and onboarding a new team member gives us access to a new creative skillset) but the work itself? Largely not inherently creative.
When I became Creative Director 5 years ago, I was adamant that I would continue designing things myself. I was going to keep being responsible for at least one design project โ I'd stay hands-on in Figma while also leading the team. I was sure I was going to make that happen, because I couldn't imagine a world in which I was creatively fulfilled if I wasn't moving pixels around on the screen.
Oh how things change ๐
While I can still step into Figma and whip up an asset when I need to, it's rarely my responsibility these days. By choice, and by necessity. I have a fantastic team of talented creatives who own the actual creative output.
And guess what? Despite my to do list looking like a boring list of admin tasks, I somehow still feel creatively fulfilled.
Honestly if you told my past self that I'd be perfectly content with not having any hands-on design tasks on my plate I wouldn't have believed you.
These days, I get my creative fulfillment from directing creative work rather than being the one to create it myself. Helping my team solve creative problems, giving them feedback, pushing them when I know they can take a concept further โ there's real satisfaction in giving feedback in the right way or knowing exactly what feedback will help someone reach a better outcome.
Building with AI to solve systems problems, and doing strategic deep thinking work also make use of the creative side of my brain.
Most importantly though, I don't rely on work as my sole source of creative fulfilment anymore. My sewing projects are a creative outlet that keeps my cup full, as do my writing sessions as I work on my marketing design book.
The challenge, though, is balance. When operational tasks take up the bulk of my time in a work week, and there's not enough deep focus time for creative strategic work, that's when I can start heading toward burnout territory. And I'm gonna be honest the past few weeks have felt that way.
I've added a new tagging system to my personal Notion task database so that I can see visually when there are too many admin/process tasks on my plate and know I need to add in a fun creative problem to solve to balance it out (hence the AI workflow building this week)
I'm looking forward to getting the Figma plan renewal and merch logistics done and dusted so that I can dedicate more time to strategic work next week!
What does creative fulfilment look like to you? And how much do you rely on your work for filling that creative cup? Hit reply and tell me about it.
Talk soon,
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