In my last post, I talked about how I was setting up a pathway to minimize distractions and to get me in a creative mindset. This post, I want to talk about how I’ve been starting that process called the “Creative Breezeway”.

“Why title it as a breezeway?”

A breezeway is described as “an architectural feature similar to a hallway that allows the passage of a breeze between structures to accommodate high winds, allow aeration, or provide aesthetic design variation”. This symbolism went well with what I hope to accomplish this year. High winds (or as i saw it, aerodynamics) referring to create without resistance, aeration for this process to be refreshing and not a burden, and aesthetic design variation being that I want it to look good and be proud of what is produced.

The SWOT analysis

My main goal is to create and distribute one project per month. I started a SWOT analysis to process what would be strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that would effect this goal. Here’s what I came up with:

Strengths

Natural creativity
Perfectionist
Love & care for people
Story-teller
Flexible with various artistic mediums
Single (able to delegate out my own time)

Weaknesses

Lack of creative motivation outside of work
Self-doubt
Perfectionist
Being busy
Start a lot of things without finishing (we’ll get back to this)

Opportunities

Accountability
Creative growth
Break lazy habits
Ambition
Better focus on projects

Threats

Creative laziness
Burnout
Life changes
Too much time setting things up, lose creativity (troubleshooting)
Loud roommates

As you can see, one of my threats was that my creativity is slowed when there’s aspects of troubleshooting. Now, coming from someone who loves tech and finding solutions to tech issues, it’s not the best when getting into a creative workflow. On the opposite end, one of the opportunities I saw was ambition (or inspiration) to do this. With that was breaking lazy habits. It’s easy to get home from work, sit down, and watch a movie (or 20+ YouTube videos about woodworking… they’re addictive). At the same time, a weakness and threat is business and burnout. I know I work well with rhythms in life, so that was another aspect I needed to tackle.

Troubleshooting, daily rhythms, and inspiration. Here’s how I’m working towards all those areas.

DISCLAIMER: This is what works for me right now. I live with roommates, I rent out a room in a house I don’t own, and don’t want to go into debt buying a whole bunch of gear. If what I do works for you, sweet! Copy away and live your full creative potential! If it’s not: you’re creative. Take some of the ideas in this video and make them work for you.

Inspiration

Let’s start with inspiration, since this solution affects a lot of other aspects. I wanted a portable set-up. I get inspiration from being out and about in different environments. Not having to adjust a whole bunch between a coffee shop and home would require the least amount of troubleshooting. I also plan on traveling a lot this summer and don’t want to feel like I’m compromising away from home.

So a laptop or an iPad, right? Well… here’s the thing, I hate doing most things on an iPad. I’ve owned a Gen 3 Pro for a few years now (the one with the Bionic chip before Apple decided to create something entirely new… we’ll get back to that…). I have the Adobe suite since I run just about all the apps. Here’s the rundown and thoughts of the Ipad:

For video editing, Adobe Rush is trash and I’d need an M1 iPad for the next Davinci Resolve app.
Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom are pretty garbage on Ipad.
There’s no InDesign.

After months and months of trying to get the IPad to work, I gave up and just decided to get a Macbook (the iPad will come in later). Now which one? In an ideal world, where money isn’t an object and strangers at a bus stop sing show-tunes, I’d get the 16” M1 Max Macbook Pro with 4TB SSD and 64GB memory… but I’m not wanting to drop 5k on that. More than that, I don’t need all that power. So what are my needs? At least 16GB RAM, Mac (because of compatibility with my other devices), and a decent battery life. Along with a ~$1,000 price tag I hoped to pay, my options were limited. As I searched for either a Macbook with the last compromises, prayers were answered. I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and ran across a Macbook Pro for an absolute deal… Something’s wrong… So I messaged the guy to see if I can check it out. We set up a time, I got ready with all the diagnostic codes, and get ready to turn it down. The guy was insanely nice, solid, trustworthy dude, and the laptop was in AMAZING condition.

So, by absolute miracle, I’m working on a 16” 2019 Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM and an I7 with a dedicated AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB graphics card that was an absolute bargain. Now, why did I get an almost 4 year old laptop? Yes, in 4-5 years, it will (more than likely) be obsolete. But for what I paid for it, what I want to accomplish with it, and how new Apple’s M-series chips are and how they’re still improving them (going back to the Bionic-chip in the Ipad), I’m good with getting a new laptop in a few years.

I also want to tell you, if you’re wanting to get a computer to get into any creative medium, you don’t need the best. Even if you’re starting in After Effects, you don’t need a behemoth of a computer. That’s part of creativity, making what you have work until you can’t any longer.

Now, as for the iPad, I’m using the sidecar function as an external display. This gives me a.) a tablet type option for Illustrator and Photoshop, b.) a separate display for premiere for source content, and c.) just more screen real estate. Overall, the full set-up is powerful, portable, and gets the job done!

Daily rhythms

This is the newest problem I’ve had to address. How should I balance my time and energy for my physical, mental, spiritual, creative, and social health? It’s a rough template now, but I’ve started to spend time on a bulk of the No Holds projects every Friday and Saturday (my two days off). Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are usually my meetings and social days, and Mondays and Tuesdays are my creative days for work. I also have a prayer and Bible devo rhythm every evening (or morning if I have plans that night), a running rhythm (right now anytime it’s dry out, and hoping that changes soon this summer to every other day), and social rhythms (hanging with friends, phone call check-ins, and trivia).

My hope is to eventually overlap these areas in as many ways as possible. For example, a run club that covers social and physical health or a creative project hangout that covers social and creative health.

Troubleshooting

As I mentioned in the inspiration section, I needed a portable set-up to reduce troubleshooting time between idea and execution of that idea. There’s a few things that i’m still working on with this (like a music set-up and portable studio).

The first part has to do with templates. I needed to be able to open up any program and RUN with my creative thoughts. I didn’t want to open illustrator and have to create the artboards, set up a Wacom tablet, or update a thousand things. Just open and go! I created templates for each Adobe app I use often (Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, and Lightroom… Basically all Adobe).

The biggest lifesaver so far has been Malinote. I have it always open in a window on my computer. Malinote is the perfect blend of left and right brain. It’s messy enough to get my ideas across and organized enough to understand those ideas. Honestly, it’s the most important aspect of my whole workflow. I have all my projects and ideas on boards, an overall No Holds focus and organizational flow on another, and even branding on a separate board.

One of the things I’ve started to notice of myself is that I like to start a lot of projects and, right now, I need to execute them. Since starting this month, I’ve started PNW Parks Card Deck, New Tattoo Illustration, and Car Camping/Portable Kitchen boards. I’ve worked on all of them the same amount. Didn’t I say something about an opportunity of better focus on projects???

Wrapping it up

There’s a lot of aspects of creativity I love. The Breezeway is my hope to better capture those ideas and mediums. I’d love to know how you get creative and stay in that process! Let me know your ideas in the comments or shoot me an email. Love y’all, and see you soon!