HeyJaredCreative for Creatives
Style doesn't solve challenging business problems. Creative ideas do. Yet theory and tools aren't enough. Here, I explore creativity for designers and creatives seeking actionable inspiration in a distracted AI world. Ready to discover your creative edge?
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
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- Sep 24, 2026
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- Jul 16, 2026
Latest issues
The Parking Garage I Still Remember Twenty Years Later (opens the original)
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Even twenty years later, I vividly remember my first visit to Santiago Calatrava’s addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.The building itself is dramatic—a sculptural addition with a movable sunscreen stretching 217 feet, opening and closing like the wing of a bird or the sail on a boat as it adjusts to the light.At first glance, It’s easy to assume this is why the building feels so spectacular.But it isn’t.It’s the parking lot that made the biggest impression on me.And it explains something desig
Want to sharpen your creative thinking? (opens the original)
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What’s for dinner? That simple question has more in common with creative thinking than you might expect.Open the fridge and find carrots, wild venison, miso, eggs, and a handful of greens. On the counter, you have tomatoes, onions, garlic, and a loaf of bread. What can you make?There isn’t one right answer. Far from it. The better you understand what each ingredient can do, the more possibilities you see in what’s already there.Design works the same way. Designers work with a surprisingly small
What do we miss when we already know what we’re looking at? (opens the original)
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Most of the time, we don’t really see.We recognize.We move through familiar things on autopilot—categorizing, labeling, and moving on. An advertisement is an advertisement. A product is a product. A post is a post. Visual noise fades into the background because we've already decided it’s noise.Every once in a while, something interrupts that pattern.That happened to me in 1997 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I had gone to see an exhibition—A Personal Voice: Self-Taught Art from the Ruth & Robert Vo
What if your first good idea is the problem? (opens the original)
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In nearly every advanced design class I teach, I notice the same tendency: students start designing before they’ve read the content.Even after seeing it so often, I’m still surprised.They’ll start exploring layout, experimenting with grids, and making decisions about typography before they’ve even taken the time to understand the problem they’re trying to solve. <a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c3dQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:stee
Rethinking "The Good Client" (opens the original)
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I used to think the defining characteristic of a good client was trust.It turns out I was only half right.Recently, at a University of Illinois student design show in Wicker Park, I was reminded of a lecture by David Colley—a remarkable teacher and designer, and the professor who most shaped how I think.He called the lecture “The Good Client.”David’s example was MillerComm, a university-wide lecture series supported by the Center for Advanced Study. Over many years, he had designed a remarkable
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