The following content can also be consumed via headphones. Just listen to it on creative.fm or directly in iTunes.
Last week, I launched Creative FM, the brand new, independent and free creative makers podcast where I will be speaking to designers, makers, and interesting brain-workers from across the world to hear their stories and discuss creativity.
I always wonder what drives other creative people to do great work, what their thinking behind particular projects was, what their secrets of success are, whether I even could identify some patterns, and what I could learn from their wins as well as their failures. If you feel the same, you may want to subscribe to the podcast. In that case, you are most welcome to join me in my attempt to get answers to questions we might share and to come up with even more questions that we can ask ourselves in order to become better creatives.
In this article, I’d like to explain how this project got started in the first place and what the whole idea of Creative FM is about.
The Idea
Podcasts surfaced at the time when the first iPhone got introduced over 10 years ago, and ever since I was fascinated by the medium and listened to literally thousands of episodes. Together with a former marketing team, I even started a brand-related podcast series before podcasts became what they are today. But priorities changed and it ended before it even really had the chance to grow. I’ve always regretted that. However, recently, my podcast obsession went almost out of control, mainly because I was experiencing a stage in my life where the professional learning curve had became steep again. So I started to consume more podcasts than ever before simply for the sake of learning. It didn’t take long to realize that I wanted to start my own.
This often happens to me. I feel an urge to start my own version of something I am deeply interested in. Ages ago, I had a very similar experience with blogs. What happened back then was that I read so many blogs and articles that I simply had to setup my own. The project was called Fontwerk, and was a semi-popular German-speaking blog on typography, fonts, design, and different other topics. I participated in a couple of other blogs as well.
Writing it was so much fun; it helped me learn a lot about my favorite topics and led to so many unexpected things in my life. Today, I have a feeling that I’m right there back again, yet this time is with podcasting. So here we go, I look forward to learning new things and to making mistakes by just doing something new, something that personally challenges me. And setting up your own podcast is quite a challenge as so many things need to be considered. It took months to develop it (in my spare time) before I could eventually publish the whole thing. I wouldn’t say that I underestimated the amount of work, but maybe rather that I overestimated my spare time.
But isn’t this what a creative life is about? To start something, to make mistakes, and to iterate? To me, being creative is about learning and constantly improving. Creativity is a muscle that needs exercise. So here I am, exercising.
Another proof point of how challenging this project to me is, is actually the language. I am not a native English speaker, but I am so hungry to also get better at this matter. Ich könnte das Ganze schließlich auch in meiner Muttersprache machen, aber wo wäre da die Herausforderung? This means, that I could easily do it in German too, but what’s exciting about that?
Starting, failing, iterating, right?
Three episodes are already available on creative.fm and iTunes, one with graphic and type designer Jonathan Barnbrook, one with designer and podcast legend Debbie Millman, and one with marketing pro and bestselling author Karen McManus.
Creative FM is a solely private project which, for now, starts as an irregularly published podcast, with a new episode every few weeks. At the moment, I cannot afford a more frequent and regular cadence.
This podcast would not have been possible without the support of some beautiful people. Therefore, I’d like to give a huge shout-out to William Phillips for the podcast theme, ‘Captain’ Eli Wilkie for the introduction, Alexander Roth for helping me with some conceptual things, Angie Poon, Lucy Beckley, and Fabian Posada for their linguistic support, and Frank Rausch for helping me with the project website. Also a thank you to all the beta testers and friends who helped me deciding on the name (which might be worth a separate article).
Last but not least a very special thanks to you for reading and hopefully listening. If you like what you hear, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes.
Take care and keep exercising your creative muscles.