Creating your creative rituals

Dear First name / creative,

 

Sometimes the act of creation isn’t simply a matter of doing. Rather, it’s a matter of making space for it—about freeing yourself from the minutiae of administrative tasks so your mind can plunge deep into flow state for hours on end.

 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m aware that in running a business there are dull matters that need addressing, even as they wrench our attention away from the design process. We wouldn’t want the low hum of unease at the back of our head from all those trivial tasks left undone, would we? The overwhelm can quickly overrun our day-to-day reality if we’re not careful.

 

This is why it’s essential to develop creative rituals—habits or routines that take care of the more urgent yet less important things. Build systems to take your mind off the burdensome parts. By so doing, you allow yourself as a self-led creative to dedicate longer stretches of time to meaningful work, whatever that means to you.

Lately this idea has me reflecting on what meaningful work is for me. What lies at the heart of Squarestylist? I now realize that the answer can be distilled into two actions: Craft & Code.

 

That’s what I’ve decided to call my newsletter from now on, in honor of what holds my curiosity each day. Hopefully this stirs you the same way—to continuously find fascination in creativity, both in the midst of doing and opening yourself up to its possibilities.

 

For the meantime, I’ll walk you through some of my creative rituals so they can inspire your own.

There’s always room for improvement in my tech stack. Out of habit, I keep my eyes peeled for systems that enable my team to perform at our best. Notion is great for capturing ideas, but not necessarily for putting them in motion. This is where Airtable comes in.

 

As a cloud-based platform for shared databases, Airtable is a powerhouse in establishing relationships within your data and integrating them with automated workflows. I found it integral to managing backend tasks in my Standout®️ programs, such as onboarding, offboarding, and support extensions.

 

Meanwhile, below is a glimpse into how I’m currently using it to connect the different parts of my website now that I’m revamping it.

 

 

Did you know that you could also customize Airtable databases to publish on Pinterest for you? Each row corresponds to one scheduled pin. This saves me more clicks than I could possibly count. Tell me I’m not the only one who’s blown away by this setup!

 

When people hear about CSS, they tend to think it’s just all about adding bells and whistles to your website. But in my experience, my custom-coded builds are defined by what I add as much as what I choose to take away.

 

Consider the new Squarestylist site for instance. I began this project with so many transitions and animations in mind that I was thrilled to develop. But as I laid everything out, I realized that it would be far more effective to pare back my initial plans and forego most dynamic interactions so the site can load fast on every device.

 

I’d like to think the dev process feels a lot like sculpting—whittling away at raw material until it reveals a masterpiece far greater than I imagined. Ingenuity thrives within constraints.

Here’s a preview of the mobile experience for the directory so far. How are you liking it?

Nothing delights me more than seeing my students launch websites with their newfound knowledge of design and development techniques. That’s why I constantly keep tabs on their work and celebrate their wins alongside them—they keep me inspired in my work.

On that note, I’m happy to share that Heather of HJM Studio has just been nominated in CSS Winner, a platform that showcases cutting-edge site builds. My favorite part about her digital portfolio has to be the soft spotlight effect around your cursor using our Cursor Spotlight workshop from our Standout Squarespace program. With masterful restraint, she allows her dynamic circular motifs to shine against a clean, minimalist backdrop.

 

You can visit Heather’s digital portfolio here then give her a thumbs up here. Fingers crossed!

 

 

Regardless of how long you’ve been doing business, I strongly believe there’s always something new to learn from getting feedback. While I was working on offering Selling Squarespace Templates as a standalone course, I wanted to get a better grasp of what web designers need so I can improve the lessons.

 

As it turned out, many designers are eager to sell Squarespace templates of their own but feel overwhelmed by the idea of preparing post-purchase guides for customers, like video tutorials and support protocols.

 

I’ve been rolling out a couple of user-friendly resources in response to this concern, including the CustomFontWiz which automatically generates code snippets for installing typefaces.

 

I’m curious—are you also interested in setting up a template shop or would you like to improve an existing one? Let me know by filling out our short survey. Your feedback will be invaluable as I finalize my short course for you.

 

More updates to come over the next few weeks. Let me know if you’d like to hear more!

What do you regard as the most meaningful part of your work right now, First name? Any creative rituals that you’d like to share? As always, I’m open to hearing your thoughts.

 

Rache