Vol. 18: Scenes from SXSW 2024.

A weekly newsletter on our modern Renaissance, the issues and ideas driving today's creative work.

The Renaissance is alive and well: A recap of SXSW.

From my Substack,?Renaissance Plan. Read the full article here.

I love traveling and engaging with design and branding professionals, learning how their work is changing and how we can help drive value for them through our products. But as I’ve written on before, I believe the best way to learn and inspire yourself is to spend time outside of your own discipline, to learn from people who are applying a similar spirit to a different sphere. And so I was very excited to have the chance to attend (and speak at!) SXSW in Austin for the first time last week.

Among many themes, one that stood tall across each day of the conference was the revolution of creativity happening everywhere. The “Renaissance” is alive and well. And at SXSW, perhaps spurred by the converging festivals for film/tv, comedy, music, and creative / technology, brands and people were collaborating in unexpected and brilliant ways. Following are a few of the many lessons I’m bringing back home with me, hopefully amongst the mountain of SXSW recaps you’ve likely seen, these have some use for readers who weren’t able to attend this year.

Community is the lifeblood of creativity.

I knew this to be true (and it’s not rocket science), but it is always good to remind ourselves how critical community is in driving not just creative expression but innovation and growth. SXSW embodied community so differently than other events of similar scale that I’ve been to, as speakers, sponsors, attendees, and people just local to Austin all mingled and learned from one another throughout the week. There was no “gate-keeping” happening with high profile speakers and panelists, if you were out in the action, you’d certainly meet several interesting people who are building the future of their particular disciplines and industries.

Aside from the thought leadership, an undercurrent at the event is sentiment around creativity and innovation. People are exploring amazing new ways to express ideas, unexpected partnerships are springing up between retail x entertainment x lifestyle brands, and talented folks are reimagining how and where work gets done.

• Pourri, the makers of Poo-Pourri, sponsored the opening event for the music festival.
• We spent three days visiting the “Australia House,” an activation on Rainey Street bringing together Aussie brands, creators, musicians, and more to promote tourism and business in a region about as far away from Texas as one can travel.
• Delta won the week from the travel industry, as a premier sponsor the brand took over a luxury space in town for an on-site “Delta Lounge,” complete with a speakeasy and giveaways. As a Delta loyalist, I noticed the partnership right when I logged into my wifi on the flight, as a message popped up asking “Are you going to SXSW? Check out these awesome activities that Delta will be hosting.” All you needed to participate was a “SkyMiles” number.

These were just a very few of the partnerships that stood out in my very limited experience of the full week. But it highlighted the importance of brands taking chances, investing in in real life activations, and stepping outside of traditional campaigns to achieve growth.

Protecting creativity while optimizing productivity.

Of course, AI was a topic throughout the week in a number of sessions that I attended. Moreover, it was an undercurrent of conversation outside of the official event itself. One day, I walked past an organization staging a "strike" called "Save the Designers," with a focus on how AI run amok will challenge the design industry and strip not just jobs but the magic that happens between human creators. Another organization was collecting petition signatures for legislation to ensure musicians are compensated when their work is used to train AI models for derivative work. Even the co-President of SXSW, Hugh Forrest , during the last session of the week, began by saying “I want to believe AI will make us more creative but I’m not so sure…we cannot afford to make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media.” I’d infer he is concerned, in part, about the loneliness epidemic happening amongst young people who have grown up primarily with social media platforms.

At this event, most people see opportunity with AI, to enhance our collective ability to produce amazing work, but only with the right protections and intentionality as we proliferate access to the fast-growing technology.

Brand-building in the “creator economy” era will look different than it does now.

I learned a lot from a panel on "Working Harder, Not Smarter" featuring Silvia Oviedo Lopez of Canva, Peter Jung of NASCAR and Mohan Ramaswamy of Work & Co. A few key insights:

• How do fans of your brand find you? It may be different for legacy brands than it once was. For NASCAR, Jung highlighted that in the past, people became fans because their parents or families were fans. Today, it's far more fragmented. For young people it may be from brand activation on Roblox or TikTok. Content needs to be optimized for the places where your fans (and future fans) may come from.
• Those of us who create always struggle with the idea of "when is good enough, good enough?" Silvia had perhaps the best articulation of this I've ever heard, "Usually, perfection is more about fear of failure than about polish." In essence, take the risk. You have to give work the attention it deserves, but then you need to put it into the world and see what happens. With so much noise on social channels, creators and brands alike must find the balance to be successful.
• Fast Company SVP of Marketing, Damian Slattery , citing Christopher Nolan at the Oscars (who noted that cinema is only 100 years old), asked what content production will look like in 100 years. Among the panelists, a consensus emerged that content across all mediums will be more personalized, more localized, and more scalable across emergent channels. If done well, creators will use artificial (or “augmented” - a word that makes AI seem more approachable) intelligence to achieve the right mix of scale & relevance.

The importance of protecting the source of content came through as well in the first session I attended in the week, which was a 1:1 conversation between Scott Soshnick of Sportico with the one and only Stephen A. Smith, on the evolution of media and how he has built his unprecedented career as a multimedia personality. Aside from his style and humor (Stephen A. is always entertaining), his perspective on building your voice really resonated. "I believe that my opinions could ultimately propel me. If I was reporting the news I could have been shoved aside but if I was valued for my opinions the audience would come to rely not on the information but on the person who provides it." Profound lesson in the age of AI and content farms. The perspective is more important than the output.

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Monotype was sponsoring SXSW for the first time, and hosted a half-day event at the Cedar Door, an indoor/outdoor venue in the center of the action. For the first time in its four year history, we recorded a live episode of our popular “Creative Characters” podcast, which featured amazing guests:

• Valerie Vacante , VP of Solutions Innovation at Dentsu
• Jessica Staley , Director of Brand Design, eBay
• Holly Fraser , VP of Content at WeTransfer & WePresent?
• Mike Storm , COO, Neurons

My colleagues wrote a brilliant recap of the event, with learnings from each guest, which you can find here. Please do read it, as there were plenty of salient takeaways for anyone responsible for building brands of the future. And be sure to look out for the podcast episode when it drops soon.

How can we build a future with direct control for creators?

The blending of branding and the creator economy was on full display throughout the week. “Influencers” feel so much less exciting than “creators,” as brands attempt to connect with audiences that align with their values, and more often brands are being spun up off of the audience built by creators themselves. Still, in a world where platforms hold enormous control over how and where audiences and creators engage with one another, and against the backdrop of a House vote in the US to ban TikTok domestically, there is a lingering question about where we go from here? The final session of the week featured Jack Conte, founder and CEO of Patreon, a platform that enables creators to build businesses by directly connecting with their most ardent followers.

Conte walked through his amazing journey as a creator, from being a musician who traveled up and down the west coast playing to (as he noted) completely empty bars and venues, to building a following on YouTube, to transitioning it to fun products and concerts and eventually, building Patreon to help others achieve the same results.

Conte has an incredible energy on stage, he feels so genuine. And as an aside, I have to say as someone who has performed (comedy, not music) for dozens of empty bars and venues in so many cities, I 100% empathized with his journey. Those of us who have chased a passion through the emptiness of any industry recognize how brutal it can be, and thus, how exceptional it can be when you find an audience.

Walking through the history of the web, from early dot com (MySpace pages) through to the TikTok / Instagram led economy today, Conte pointed to the profound concept of “the follow” as a way for artists to reach their audiences. Early on, YouTube and other platforms enables users to “subscribe” to artists, bolstering reach and tapping into high-value fans for new product launches, tour dates, etc. Yet as Conte noted, we’ve increasingly moved toward an algorithm-led world, where platforms push users to content that is likely to keep them scrolling (rather than to creators they may want to specifically support). “The subscribe button is not a silly feature,” Conte notes. “The concept of the follow changed my life.”

This paradigm shift has been hard to swallow for creators, and Conte went further by calling the weakening of the “creator-led community” the single biggest threat facing the creator. But it’s not all doom-and-gloom. The emergence of “direct-to-fan” businesses (yes, like Patreon, of course he had to promote his own platform) but also GumRoad, Kajabi, Substack (which I’m using now!), Moment House, and more, are bringing creators tools for them to become their own businesses. So they can directly engage with followers and more importantly own the relationships.

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One last takeaway that I picked up over the course of the week. SXSW was very intentional about creating a space where everyone felt safe to enjoy themselves. In the restrooms, they promoted safe spaces and hotlines where you could call if you were struggling. Throughout the week they held sober meetups and a sober lounge for folks who wanted to celebrate without the presence of alcohol. Folding these considerations into an event like this enables people of all backgrounds to better enjoy them, which enriches the event for all of us. Well done.

Did you attend SXSW? What were your takeaways? What did I miss?

Until next year!

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Community Thoughts.

Join me in Boston on April 11th.

I'm honored (and very excited) to be featured as a main stage speaker at the upcoming Community-Led Alliance Summit in Boston on April 11. I'll be giving a talk on one of my favorite subjects:? Iconic moves: Building communities through surprising partnerships.

I've written before about being inspired by an Interbrand report I read in 2020, which literally pushed me to change my career and move into partnerships. In this talk, I'll share some examples of how we at Monotype are building community through strategic alliances. And I'm looking forward to learning from the more than 30 other experts who will be taking the stage. If you are in a community role, check out the event. Boston is lovely in April ?? .

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Meet us at OFFF Barcelona April 4-6.

Yes, event season is upon us. And for the first time, our team will be sponsoring the very popular OFFF Barcelona design festival in just a few weeks. My colleagues Phil Garnham and Tom Foley will lead a workshop called "Calligraphy to Concept." If you'll be there, shoot me a note!

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The Renaissance requires a new education.

I really like this article in Fast Company about the importance of teaching #creativity as a skill in an AI-driven world. As I wrote above, we have a real opportunity to reimagine creative work with AI support, but also we are at risk of delving into a deeply depressing reality where 99% of what we see is middling content spun up by robot creatives. How do we protect human creativity while deploying technology to proliferate its potential?

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Wishing you a creative week ahead!