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Good day you wonderful bunch of thought-stroking reprobates. Today's newsletter is brought to you by the letter 'P', the Museum of Failure, and a lonely sheep from Iceland. I hope you enjoy it.

How Spotify Gets You Hotify

For some God unknown reason, us humans tend to live under the illusion that other humans care about what we think. Especially when it comes to the real arbitrary subjective stuff.

“Oh my God, I haven’t seen you in ages. I simply MUST show you what colour I’ve painted the underside of the cistern in the downstairs toilet. You’re going to love it.”

No one cares about your little quirks, your little likes, and your little choices - [I’m actually in an amazing mood despite how fecking negative this is sounding so far].

Anyway, sometimes a clever sausage comes along and figures out exactly how to tap into the human psyche’s need for self adulation. Cue the entrance of Spotify wrapped. A shareable summary of one’s listening habits throughout the year. This mix of personalisation, social sharing ability, and the humble bragging of our self-titled “interesting” musical tastes has lead to an incredibly impressive win for Spotify. One that has seen several imitations from other companies wanting to jump on the success bandwagon. Apple, Duolingo, Tinder, and even Aldi to name a few.

If you want to learn anything from a success story like this, in order to tickle your own creative thinking, learn this: Make your customer the hero. What can you do to make their experience all about them. Their likes, their interests, and their individuality. Find a way to tap into that and you’re onto a winner. Make it easily shareable for extra juicy brownie points.

The Creative Rundown

1. Something to intrigue you:

“The Museum of Failure” – A fabulous graveyard of flops from the past, like Colgate Lasagna (yup, that was a thing). A perfect reminder that even idiots with terrible ideas somehow get funding. That should put some pep in your step.

2. Useful Tool:

Typewolf – A site for font inspiration that shows off different typefaces in real-world usage, helping designers find the right look for their next project.

3. Website to Visit:

Instructables – A DIY hub with thousands of creative project tutorials. From woodworking to digital design, this is a fantastic resource for hands-on creatives.

4. Game to Play:

A Fake Artist Goes to New York – A social drawing game where players try to guess the “fake artist” among them. It’s fun, challenging, and perfect for groups. I suck at it.

The "Who TF Did I Marry?" Saga

Last year, TikTok user Reesa Teesa casually dropped a 50-part video series dissecting her marriage to a pathological liar. It’s like Succession meets Catfish meets your next door neighbour’s 3 a.m. Facebook rants. And the internet became quite obsessed. Why? Because it’s raw, messy, and proof that “authenticity” isn’t just a buzzword your boss slaps onto a PowerPoint slide every other Wednesday.

The next time you’re brainstorming an idea, ask yourself: “What’s the weirdest, messiest, dumpster fire version of this idea? All the warts, all the mistakes, nothing held back.” You gotta be extra ballsy for this one, but if you can present an absolute car crash of a situation in a short episodic fashion with the occasional cliff-hanger… you might just stumble onto something special.

Creative Tricks to Pinch

1. The “First Idea, Best Idea” Challenge:

Write down the very first idea that comes to mind when you think of your project. Try exploring it without judging or refining it too much. Sometimes, our gut instincts hold hidden potential.

2. Write the Ending First:

Imagine you’re at the end of your project or goal. Write a summary of what it looks like and how it turned out. Starting with the end can give you a clearer direction and remind you of what you’re aiming for.

3. The Forbidden Fix:

Rule One - No obvious solutions are allowed. Define your creative challenge, but ban the most common, practical, or expected solutions. Write down all the standard approaches you can’t use. Force yourself to find bizarre or unconventional ways to solve the problem without using any of the forbidden methods, then take the most intriguing workaround and refine it into something genuinely usable.

Handy Things to Flick Through

Podcast: The Daily Creative – Todd Henry’s podcast offers practical advice on how to be “brilliant at a moment’s notice.” His words obviously. With episodes on productivity, problem-solving, and motivation, it’s a decent listen for busy creatives.

Articles: "The Creative Power of Daydreaming” – The wonderful Dan Martin shares his thoughts on how daydreaming stimulates creative thinking and why it’s beneficial to allow yourself unstructured mental time. This is music to my unstructured ears.

Tool: Patterninja – A pattern-making tool that allows you to create and customise patterns from scratch. It’s ideal for anyone looking to experiment with backgrounds, textures, and unique visuals. Especially anyone who hasn’t dabbled in the playground of patterns before.

A Wee Challenge (if you’re up for it)

The “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Game

1. Go to Wikipedia’s “Random Article”.

2. Whatever pops up (e.g., “History of Icelandic Sheep”), mash it with your current project.

3. Create a tagline, design concept, ad or product.

4. Post it online with #creativesnug. Bonus points if it gets exactly 3 likes.

And one last thing…

“The best way to have good ideas is to have LOTS of ideas… and then mercilessly set 90% of them on fire.”
— Linus Pauling (presumably wearing mismatched socks at the time).

Now go forth and be gloriously, unapologetically average. Then set the average on fire and do the cool stuff.