This year has felt like a dumpster fire. Maybe even the whole landfill. Just all of our collective garbage, going up in flames. The climate, the racism, the politics, the pandemic. I don’t have to tell you this stuff. So I won’t. But I do want to talk about something…

In our office we’re always uncovering some new video, podcast, song or book — which is wonderful, because The More You Know and all that. But what we don’t spend much time talking about is alone time. Or, to make it sound less frightening, “solitude.” I wrote this a while…

I would consider this less of a blog and more of a PSA — a public service announcement about something I didn’t know existed until a few weeks ago, and which made my artsy designer heart extremely happy. …

Brands are a lot like people, each having a purpose, personality, and voice all its own — Branding is a thing designers have to explain a lot. “That’s not your brand.” “Let’s make this more on brand.” “Let’s look one more time at our brand guidelines and see if we can find Giddyup anywhere near the section on brand fonts.” But recently, I had to explain brands…

Before you volunteer your skills, get clear on what causes are most important to you — Raise your hand if you’ve ever been hit up for free (or deeply discounted) work. Keep your hand up if you said yes to doing the free (or deeply discounted) work because it was “for a good cause.” Drop that hand onto your face if you ended up hating everything…

Harnessing the unexpected is the key to designing a successful engagement campaign — For eight years I’ve been designing logos, brands, and engagement campaigns for a brand strategy and creative agency called Black Sheep. We’re called Black Sheep for all the reasons you might guess: We do things differently. We’re ahead of the curve. We break the rules. …

To unlock creativity, you have to be a collector of experiences and ideas — I love estate sales. I’ve been going to estate sales since I was 15. If ever I have a weekend free of social commitments, I can most certainly be found poking through used junk at an antiques shop, flea market, or other type of sale. I love the treasure hunt…

A couple years ago I read my first enjoyable non-fiction book. …

This story first appeared on The Black Sheep Agency Blog — It seems like we never stop hearing about how creative children are. We marvel at their “unexpected” clothing choices; we’re charmed by their nontraditional blanket forts. We fight back laughter when an incredibly unconventional fib puts the blame for the missing cookies on an unlikely scapegoat. Tragically, though, the average…