The Bigger Picture: A Creative Renaissance

The Commodification of Art:

We all know what it’s like to spend half the night hopping between streaming services & scrolling through an endless abyss of titles, all of which fail to provoke any real sense of interest, desire, meaning, or… general feeling. 

In the era of short-form, more-is-more, content-king-domination there is a real craving for something with substance.

Which is why, now more than ever, your unique perspective has all the value.

The best art is a reflection of life. The job of the artist is to observe the world and offer an interpretation – to make the invisible visible. 

What makes art meaningful, valuable & impactful is the humanity of it.

What separates art from content is it gives us the ability to experience the world through someone else's point of view in a way that leaves an emotional impact.

Art forces us to ask questions we haven’t considered before. It reveals hidden truths about ourselves & the world around us. It asks us to imagine scenarios we never could have dreamed. It challenges us to accept a reality we have no control over. It dares us to be curious. 

Crafting your personal narrative:

Crafting your personal narrative is the process of peeling back the layers of your life & work, and packaging it together like a story. 

Who are you? What do you want? What keeps getting in the way? 

We'll walk you through brand framework exercises to leave you with a media kit and style guide that clearly communicates your unique value, who you work with, what you offer and the purpose driving you in a story framework that sets you up for consistency and success.

"Why", you ask?  

★ Brand guidelines are intended to be used as a roadmap to make it easy for you to show up consistently over time — key for building trust & connection with an audience.

★ This gives you the freedom to pass off posting with ease knowing exactly how your image is being used

★ Persona & communication guidelines are a strategy to maintain healthy separation between who you present yourself as online & who you are in your real life.

★ We take mental health seriously at Squid's Ink — which is why we advocate for persona & narrative strategies. We help artists build communication frameworks that allow you to share your lived experiences in a way that honors dignity & respects your humanity.

• Your unique perspective holds all the value – it exists within you independent of whoever else is in the market and who the gatekeepers are 

• It’s not about being palatable for everyone, it’s about being wholeheartedly yourself & letting people who identify with that find you 

• There is actually enough space for everyone when we embrace collaboration over competition 

• We help you put your vision into words

Humans : the story-telling animal 

Our world is built on stories. Literally. 

—

It is impossible to separate humans from story. 

Language is the most significant invention in humans history -- so significant it's believed to have driven the evolution of our large complex brains. It is the primary tool used to accumulate and transmit knowledge. It plays a crucial role in organizing people to work collectively; form hunting and gathering to the global-economy we live in today. Without language, we are unable to express complex ideas and struggle to connect with others. 

We live our lives inside stories. By nature, we use Narrate Thinking to make sense of life -- mentally narrating stories to construct reality & formulate a sense of what you are experiencing at any given moment. 

We do it automatically, reflexively, without thinking about it.

We play story by instinct. Children across the world act out the same plot lines of mommies & babies, monsters & unicorns, mermaids & missing parents. Dead serious fun. We use the stories we play within to rehearse for adult life. The themes are vast & wondrous, riddled with existential trouble, and confronting dark forces.

• story as a tool used in evolution, culture, organization & play

• Narrative thinking : we reflexively try to fit our real lives into narrative story structure to make sense out of the chaos

• There is no story without conflict

Brain Magic : The Anxiety Spiral & The Creative Spiral

Using creativity to process & transform our experiences

• conflict : whenever I try to focus on xyz problem I end up anxiously spiraling down every worst-case-senerio I can imagine

  • It’s not your fault

  • All brains have a negativity bias because we are more likely to be hurt by something negative so we focus on it

    • this is the entire job of your amygdala —> to scream & get your attention

    • The amygdala becomes activated when we are afraid

      • This fear then becomes a story and, when we are trapped in anxiety, that story becomes reality

      • suddenly, we are completely out of control

    • The anxiety spiral comes from the stories we tell ourselves

      • When we are in this fear-based state, we perceive anything that is different as dangerous

      • When this happens, the right-hemisphere of the brain goes off-line (this is the part responsible for creativity, spacial ability, visual information, emotional processing, intuition and motor control)

      • If you’ve ever experienced it, you know, the anxiety spiral is really fucking scary

      • During hemi-spacial neglect, we might struggle to navigate time & space, recognize faces, understand & recognize emotions, be able to make quick rational decisions, or access fine motor control skills like balance and coordination

      • The worst part? The more fearful we become of the anxiety spiral, the more we feed into it — because the anxiety is fundamentally rooted in fear.

      • The best part? If you can kill the fear, you can out-wit your own anxiety.

Alchemy : Awaken to your powers