Creative sustainability is a big issue for us at almst. We always feel like we’re being tested to keep doing more, faster, easier, and cheaper. This isn’t sustainable for our industry and, most importantly, for our mental health. From music to digital design, and even fine art, I’m seeing more and more people burned out and in a mental health crisis because we build things for algorithms at a pace only a machine can output.

Let’s be real people aren’t machines, but companies like to treat us as such. We are not designed to function optimally under relentless pressure to overperform and to adhere to insane deadlines. It’s bad enough that we have to keep up with what's new, learning new skills and software on a monthly basis. I used to find pride in being multi-disciplinary, learning as much as I could about things that I genuinely found interesting. Now, everyone is a multi-disciplinary creative out of the need to provide as many services as possible to make a living, not because they enjoy it.

We have a lot of passion for our work. But I miss is creatives having a voice in the work that you produce. I miss fresh perspectives in design, music and movies. We’ve worked with companies in the past that only think about performance marketing and not the long-term vision of the brand. This doesn’t foster brilliance but stifles it; everything we see now is an ad that is dressed as insight from someone with an iPhone. I want creatives thinking about how a person sees a brand, and not just have an overwhelming force of performance marketing and SEO spam to keep you mindlessly scrolling.

A lot of blame can be thrown around on why branding and advertising is so boring but I mostly blame incompetent leaders who would rather see a momentary sales increase for a quarter while leaving the world in a boring entropy of bad design, poor planning, and terrible, cheap products. Having empathy for your customer is a key to building long term brand love, a 10% flash sale isn’t always the move you should make if you want to increase sales.

We need a fundamental shift in how creatives of the world view the work that we provide but also we have to educate clients on how to build better brands. At our studio, we value time and the well-being of our team and our clients. Our aim is to always add insight and value to the conversation through ideation and research. While some clients just want a pretty graphic for sales we have to aim higher than that and be more forward thinking. I also believe we have to get out of this relentless productivity, and grind culture because it is toxic, and having that mindset of always producing something is too. I want brands, and our brand included, to get back to telling stories that resonate with people and provide something real. We believe having a perspective and having damn good story to tell is how you stand out.