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Creativity is Carefully Considered Content


While I have always loved to read, and appreciated writing as a creative art, I had not always liked to write for myself as much as I do now.  I'm sure many designers can say the same as we work through editing in the era of "content is king." I started with a love of creativity and typography. My formal design education taught me the beauty in letter forms. There are simple and subtle differences in fonts and letters that is an art in and of itself. I personally love a sans serif with a perfectly round O, but the ability to use Optima as a serif or sans serif font makes that choice pleasing too.

The ability to write interesting content didn't come from formal education, but almost from osmosis. I've learned many things by osmosis. I've joked that I've learned liturgy by osmosis while working for a religious organization. I'd even say my parenting skills have come from being immersed in my little one's lives. That's not to say I didn't work at becoming a writer. The challenge to write for social media in under 140 characters encouraged good word choices. Also, a desire to add meaningful copy as textural patterns to collages further assisted my creative writing habit. Then, a year spent freelance writing for a content farm solidified my careful consideration of content — did I mention I like alliteration?

Composing the right headline or descriptive paragraph of body copy has become just as exciting as creating visual art. Finding the perfect word combination is a joy. Creating a witty line, even better. One of my favorite standup skits is George Carlin's "Some Werds." "Here are words that no one has ever said before. ..."Hand me that piano." As a parent I do find myself putting word combinations together I never expected. I laughed out loud after I realized I have said things like "we don't drag people in this household" and "I am looking for the monkey butt."

While I'd dare to say creativity comes easily to me, it originated in the visual arts; now creative writing is a part of my repertoire. Still, finding the right words is not always easy. It's taken years to hone a writing style I'm comfortable with. A new challenge has been putting words together for a long story, as I've found starting to write a dystopian post-apocalyptic book. Just like in visual art, when the ideas are spinning around in my mind, I have to solidify them somewhere!

I enjoy writing because of a love of reading and spending two decades manipulating bodies of type. If you are an artist, I highly suggest you embrace your inner author. To put it as George Carlin once said: "Writing is really a wonderful art. A lot of this is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that's our job as writers is to just notice them and bring them to life."

Photograph: Carefully Considered Content by Janet Pahlau

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