Creative survival guide: Five ways to start the year right

It’s Nice That’s 2024 Forward Thinking series is supported by AKQA, the globally renowned design and innovation company. AKQA is at the forefront of creative technologies, telling unforgettable narratives across service, experience and product design that capture the imagination.

We’ve all heard the saying “new year, new me” calling you to create a number of resolutions and completely turn your life around for the better. It could be in the form of signing up for a new course, creating a whole new daily routine, or getting rid of any objects, habits (or even people) that are deemed a negative influence, all in the hopes of bringing about holistic change.

But we’re well aware that when these often grand changes you’ve set for yourself (inevitably) start falling through, the guilt and sense of failure can be pretty overwhelming. So, instead of helping to load onto that guilt, with the help of some creatives we’ve come up with five simple, more accessible ways you can hopefully spark some change in your creative practice this year, big or small, short-term or long. We’ve got a mini-brief from Elliot Ulm, tips on how to sort out your posture from Angela Lian, and some ways of giving back to your community from Olivia Twist. So read on to find out why the nature you crave might be closer than you think, and how looking back to what you’ve already got might be the best source of inspiration.

Hold on to what you’ve got

When we’re looking for a fresh start, many of us start throwing away miscellaneous items, objects and collectables of the past year as a way to clean house and usher in the new. But, what if you sat with them for longer and thought about how they can truly benefit creativity throughout the coming year?

Having become a popular phenomenon over the past few years, there is no doubt that archiving strikes a cord; it’s no longer purely an institutional practice, with individuals finding creative ways to hold onto and incorporate inspiring digital and physical content into their work. But, some of the most interesting examples we’ve seen are those who have an almost symbiotic relationship between the items and the creative because of some eccentric interest that later became a huge part of their work. And we simply can’t help but reflect on some of those shining examples on It’s Nice That last year.

Jane Housham is an artist and writer with a love for investigating the past, but she’s also a collector, as we explored in our article last year. In this piece, Jane spoke about her journey from her childhood collecting small dolls to curating her collections of small versions of everything – from toy cameras, phones and televisions to bloodshot eyeballs. She tells us, “the tiny things I’ve accumulated are very useful. They’re like a shorthand language for trying out inspiring combinations of things: colours, materials and textures, but also the memories and ideas attached to them.” She adds: “Being playful and lowbrow, they can spark creativity purely through their endless combos.” And, with a long journey of admiring, preserving and showcasing objects, Jane has undoubtedly seen the benefits of holding on to what you’ve got.

Artist Jeroen van den Bogaert’s journey is deserving of similar awe. When we spoke to him last year, he told us about his start collecting images from both classical paintings and modern imagery found on Google and social media that he was drawn to because of his interest in masculinity and behavioural patterns. What’s most interesting about his practice is that he probably doesn’t come across any more imagery than the rest of us, he simply tunes in and admires the cultural relevance of them. And when it comes to his process, he spends hours and hours going through what he has already collected over the years, before finding new ways to incorporate them into his tapestries.

In 2020, it was estimated that we share and forward 3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of videos daily. With this having a great impact on the environment, leaving high carbon footprints, deleting everything may sometimes seem like the way to go. But, as we will always be impacted by images (online and off), there’s a likelihood that after a few months, weeks or even days of clearing everything out, we'll go back to mindlessly collecting again. Jereon’s process teaches us that not only can keeping your digital collections enhance your practice, but it can help bring greater intention and appreciation for the countless images you do see.

So, whether your things are digital or physical, serious or fun, here’s your chance to stop and ask (before throwing it all out): how can what I already have aid my creativity this year?

Sorting out your posture

The life of a designer: long days spent working at your desk hunched over a laptop, with little time allotted to get your body moving. It comes as no surprise that it’s an industry well known for inducing bad posture.

Angela Lian is a designer who uses her playful, video-led practice to highlight issues surrounding the physical health of creatives, and she advocates more awareness of the impact your work is having on your body. Much like the design studio Yonk, who use VR body suits to create characters, Angela’s trademark is putting herself in her work, using her body and physicality to enhance her work’s visuals.

Prior to becoming a designer, at the age of 12 while a competitive gymnast, Angela suffered a back injury after her coaches refused to listen to her body. From that point onward, Angela’s spinal health has deteriorated significantly, a factor that made studying graphic design at college the “ultimate test”. Angela explains: “My stress, chronic pain, and bad posture were at its peak while I was making projects I was most proud of. It wasn’t until I graduated that I could properly take a step back and see what design can do to my body.”

Now working as a full time designer, Angela tells us that she has “no choice” but to listen to her body if she wants to continue, and she’s set herself on demonstrating what other designers can learn from taking the same approach. “Movement means something different for everyone, but as long as you are listening to your body as you do it, it can become a new way to think about your design practice,” she says. “That physical flexibility can lend itself to mental and creative flexibility.” Here are Angela’s top three tips for engaging your body with your design.

Daily movement

Find a place for movement in your practice as much as you can throughout the day. Is it taking a walk during the brainstorming phase? Stretching during meetings? Designing for 20 minutes at a time followed by 5 minutes of moderate exercise? Find your groove.

Minimise inflammation to maximise creative potential

Besides exercise, this could mean eating more anti-inflammatory foods and less inflammatory foods, getting an air purifier for your space, managing stress better, using ergonomic tools, improving your sleep, hydrating often to flush out toxins, and cutting back on screen time (my greatest culprit.)

Wellbeing over productivity

When creative people are in the flow, it’s hard to recognise when we should stop. But bodily pains can build and accumulate to something bigger. Remember that physical flow can also be so beneficial to creative flow. Listening to your body can only help your design practice in the long run.

Companion Platform is a creative studio founded by Lexi Visco and Calvin Rocchio whose work is “ecologically oriented”, seeking to uncover the intricacies of our natural environment. They’ve provided a few simple tips for how you can feel more engaged with nature when you’ve not got heaps of time on your hands.

One is the act of ‘visiting’, making a conscious effort to visit a nearby individual organism when stepping outside; a tree, plant or even a bend in a river. “A mutualism arises when you share your attention with an individual from another species, as well as a certain kind of intimacy,” they say. Moreover, when you’ve only got a small green space to engage with, the pair often find it useful to “zoom in to smaller worlds”, paying closer attention to small aspects of nature – a patch of soil, a decomposing log, the underside of leaves. “Worlds tend to emerge the longer and more closely you look, sometimes involving very little physical movement, and more of a shift of perspective.” Finally, they advocate for sharing your observations with others: signing off your email with a summary of the weather outside of your window, or sending a digital postcard to your friend over text: “it’s this act of sharing that enlivens much of our attention and time outdoors”.

So whether it’s taking a moment to appreciate the nature that surrounds you in your own four walls, or being more engaged on short moments outside – before work, on your lunch break or at the end of the day – there are small yet effective ways of feeling more at one with nature, that don’t involve packing up your kitchen sink and embarking on a days-long voyage.

Giving Back

Few established creatives haven’t attempted or been called to give back – to their communities, people wanting to get into their particular field or local initiatives. But oftentimes we usually see this as something quite grand, you know, philanthropy and the likes. But there are so many ways to offer a helping hand, advice and your skills to others, that can also help to remove you from the tunnel vision of your own practice and birth new ideas.

Olivia Twist is an east London based illustrator, arts facilitator and lecturer in animation illustration at Kingston University. Over the years, her visual work has offered a unique tapestry of social history and community that she defines as having three strands: “place, the mundane and overlooked narratives”. Having created in collaboration with her local community and embedding facilitation as a core part of her practice, we couldn’t think of anybody better to demonstrate the power of giving back.