Monday, December 9, 2019 – On Friday mornings all across the country, creative thinkers and doers all gather together to discover and discuss what inspires them. Sharing insights into the creative process, Creative Mornings monthly meetings are meant to stoke the spirit of creativity in all of us. On Friday, November 15, Creative Mornings St. Pete featured Adrenaline’s own Juliet D’Ambrosio speaking on flow, the mental state where the creator becomes one with her creation. Using poetry as the launchpad for flow, Juliet showed how an art form that exists all around us in our everyday life is both the process and product of flow.
Asked to present by the chapter’s founder and former student Tara Segall, Juliet traveled from Atlanta to share her experiences with flow. Juliet says, “One of the best things about teaching is that your former students go off and do amazing things. Tara saw a real need to develop a community for creatives to gather in St. Petersburg. I was honored to come to her chapter to discuss flow.” In flow, creatives often do their best work. The flow state is where creators of all stripes find themselves fully immersed in a feeling of focus, involvement, energy, and enjoyment at that spark of creativity. It’s the nexus of the best art and the most satisfaction.
With poetry in particular, Juliet says, “There is a connective thread of poetry across brand strategy and brand communications. Thinking about brands in the world, there are, of course, objective facts and drawing conclusions from those, but there is something that is very poetic about every brand. When we write brand manifestos, what we’re really writing is a tone poem about that brand. That’s what that manifesto is; it is utterly poetic language that distills an idea into its meaning in a language that lights you up inside. Just like poetry, it inspires and reveals.”
Any creative knows that flow cannot be manufactured, but Juliet says that there are reliable ways to access the flow state. Here, she outlines her strategies for achieving flow:
Single-Task.
Move away from the distractions inherent in multi-tasking. Put your phone in another room, shut down social media and put yourself in a “Do Not Disturb” mode.
Aloneness.
Creatives cut their teeth in brainstorms, but to really enter a flow state that happens when you are by yourself. Aloneness is creating that creative space for yourself.
Peak Time.
Any creative knows their times for peak productivity. For some, it’s early morning, for others, it’s late night. Use your own peak times for deep thinking to enter a flow state.
Calibrating the Challenge.
Anyone who has had flow knows you need the right level of challenge to tap your whole self and your whole mind. Find the right balance to avoid overwhelm.
Dissolve the Walls.
For robust flow, don’t have preconceived boundaries. In branding, a website becomes a story and a brochure becomes a film script. Don’t shoehorn ideas into prescribed categories.
Fall in Love.
Have a sense of meaning in the work you are doing, which will make you fall in love with it. You know you’re there when you would do this work if you weren’t being paid to do it.
Click below to watch a video of Juliet’s powerful presentation on flow.
To learn more about the creative process or talk to one of the leaders of our creative team, contact us at info@adrenalinex.com.
Adrenaline is an experience design agency that creates and implements end-to-end branded experiences through creative and environmental design. We enhance our clients’ customer experiences across digital and physical channels, from their branding and advertising to design and technology in their spaces. After transforming an organization’s brand, Adrenaline extends it across all touchpoints — from employees to the market to in-store environments. And, we focus on serving industries that sell human experiences including financial, healthcare, sports and entertainment.
