good things

Vanilla Skies is a personal project started in 2020, during the early days of the COVID lockdowns, which explores the flow state and how it can impact mental health for the better. As I’ve grown, into my career and personally, I understand the pressures that seem to multiply whether you’re a C-level executive, managing a household, or anything in between. Life doesn’t slow down, and today’s pace of life doesn’t allow for much space in our days to reset. Each moment can be filled with a little dopamine hit, every second begs for progress. The flow state is a stopgap built into our operating systems, to the sometimes overwhelming experience of being human, it gives us a chance to recharge exponentially, and without much forcing. Athletes and artists already know what the flow state feels like, but I’ve come to realize that lots of others might not, because it requires discipline as an adult. I am pretty easily able to drop into this experience if given the right mix of time and environment, but it’s something that I have to plan around to fit into my life. For me, and others I know, being engrossed in something, literally anything that lights you up, is incredibly rejuvenating and can provide the energy needed to jump through our next set of pressures and hoops.

Early 2020 was, for me, a blessing because it gave me not only the time but the permission to not feel like I had to be super productive. Some picked up sourdough, and although I’m kind of jealous that’s not part of my cache of skills now, I was able to marry two hobbies I used to do growing up - reading magazines and collaging. I spent days and weeks indulging in old magazines that, yes, I had kept in a few boxes and moved with me throughout my adult life. I love photography, typography, color, layout, all the fun designer indulgences, and started tearing out pages and cutting up spreads to put back together, in a new way. These sessions sometimes lasted all day, and absolutely dropped me into this flow state when the world around was….something. About a year later, I layered phrases, letters, and digital elements over these collages in Photoshop. What I was doing seemed a little different than other collage work I’d been watching, usually more vintage and analog in style. I wanted to take the cut paper and hand-placed imagery and layer what was going on in my mind over and within them - phrases to inspire and motivate, during times of wild confusion.

The collages represent the overlapping thought patterns that can sometimes come up for all of us, impacting our mental health. These combine found imagery, photos taken on long walks during these first few years of COVID, with typography inviting closer inspection. The provocative phrases are meant to be uncovered versus obvious, and create a layered piece that presents itself slowly, over time, requiring the viewer to pause. I later turned these into stationary and tiny motivational cards. One rests on my laptop stand as I’m writing this….Good things are coming. Something I need to hear this week.

Not every piece is finished, but that just means I get to spend more time working on these. My hope is that this collage series provides tiny boosts of joy and reminds you to put the pieces of life together a little differently, and change your perspective when things get confusing. You got this!

The Millenial Approach to Business Decisions

How can understanding different generations help drive business decisions and brand development? Many years ago, I was given the assignment to develop an infographic interpreting trends outlined in a Pew Research article published in 2014, discussing the differences in motivations between generations in the then-current workforce. Although outdated for current implications, it remains that executives and workforce leaders understand the styles and motivations driving the different generations in the workforce. Today’s workers span from Alpha to Boomer, with the differences even wider than this 2014 article described. The graphic here largely discusses the differences between Millenials and Gen X/Boomers. If I were to re-do this today, I’d need at least three axes, since the generation undernePew Research article published in 2014ath Millenials have brought an even wider range of talents, motivations, and influences than were present before they entered the workforce, and thus those having disposable income.

The dark blue portions of the infographic below represent the Generations born before 1980. They are, when compared to later generations, more motivated by external forces. Things like their family and friends, their built environments, the activities they take part in, the economy and social norms. These forces "push in" and drive their behaviors. It’s not that they accept whatever comes their way, but they have a reverence for the way things are, and adjust accordingly. Generations born after 1980, in light blue, are driven by internal desires, motivations and see their external world as something that is to be shaped, instead of being shaped by it. Their actions "push out" on these external forces, molding the world into their ideal visions.

What can understanding these differences do for the workforce? What happens when team members are motivated in completely opposite ways? How can these insights generate return over time for your brand? Working with and selling to Millenials, the answer seems to be, speak to their sense of self, appeal to what they value, let them choose you. For older generations, deliver a sense of purpose, a reason to show up: choose them, need them.

The graphic below isn’t a typical ‘infographic’ and wouldn’t appear in a report or academic publication. I wanted to create a designer’s interpretation of the facts presented in the article. Something that invites thought, consideration, something that could be hung over an office desk to invite further inspection. That said, viewing this almost a decade later and some glaring typographic inconsisentcies are jumping out to me. In the last decade I’ve honed both my research skills and my typography taste, I guess. I still enjoy looking at this, as a different way of looking at data - circular, balanced, and as a visual story.

Design Thinking and Healthcare

A few years ago, I worked with the Women's Health service line of a hospital system to define their strategic direction–a strategy statement, Vision, and set of guiding principles in line with their long-standing Mission as part of a large, regional integrated health system. Women's Health is a key service for many reasons, and the group had achieved success as a provider of healthcare services for women as they progressed along the continuum of care - for women that’s typically measured by phase of life (age). This particular hospital system had excellent statewide and regional performance and outcomes for Maternity care, including pre- and postpartum. The clinicians and leaders were proud of this and were looking for the next set of strategies to set their sights and goals. A clear direction would help grow their services, unite the employees and physicians and signal their commitment to continued excellence in a market that was becoming increasingly competitive in this specialty.

I worked in the corporate strategy office at this health system, aside an extremely smart team focused on market growth, finance, business development, and strategic planning. I was able to marry my background in strategy, consulting, and design to contribute to the work our team performed, and for this retreat ended up designing a set of visioning exercises as well as prioritization exercises for identifying which key strategies would most impact the vision and direction of this group of clinicians and leaders. Pre-work consisted of empathy interviews aimed at uncovering core issues and common themes, which would form the foundation for the two-day offsite strategy session. Around 50 clinicians and business leaders came together to level-set on their current state and were walked through a structured, collaborative thought process to uncover and align around a future vision.

The work done during this project became a vision statement and set of ten strategic priorities, many of which years later still inform the strategic plan and related priorities. My role was as a designer and facilitator of retreat sessions, materials, takeaways and directing the next stage of strategy work. This type of collaborative process was new for the organization, and could have easily  been replaced with a series of smaller, business-focused meetings, but bringing a mix of clinical and administrative leadership together, without distractions, was invaluable and helped develop the working relationships needed to continue pushing these efforts forward.

As a designer and strategist, this hit all the sweet spots–seeing groups come together to collaborate and ideate, deep-diving into particular topics, designing a thoughtful way to walk groups through complex ideas, and storytelling to advance the ideas into actionable insights and takeaways.