Atomic Essays

Most people have this backwards. They think complexity signals intelligence, and that difficult words, layered sentences, and industry jargon demonstrate mastery of a subject. In reality, it usually signals the opposite. It shows you understand something well enough to repeat it, but not well enough to explain it. The people who truly understand something can make you feel like you understood it all along. They can explain a concept in the simplest of terms that you can under

A few years ago, my days were an utter mess. Not in a dramatic way. On the surface, things were getting done and I was hitting all the deadlines I needed to hit. But underneath the calm waters of seeming productive output, I knew the truth. Every single thing felt reactive, as though I was always slightly behind on every project, always catching up, always ending the week with a list of things that were supposed to happen but didn't. To be honest, I put it down to not having

Thinking about the connection between Brand (with the capital B) and the content it publishes, the main thing I see is people treating the two as separate entities. Brand over here, content over there, with each doing its own thing independent of one another. That's the wrong approach. Brand isn't something that can be an afterthought when it comes to marketing. Brand is the layer underneath everything that, when it’s done right, influences every touchpoint, every message, an

Recently, our local council moved the regular weekly bin collection to once every two weeks, and then introduced a weekly food waste collection. Many people were befuddled at this choice, angry at the idea of this causing their bins to overflow by the time the fortnightly collection was made. I, too, was a little confused, as the reduction of the weekly connections — and then the addition of another — seemed totally counterintuitive. And right there a failure in how we think

You have to make bad stuff before you can make good stuff. Everyone who has ever made anything (written, designed, built, recorded, filmed, whatever) went through a period where what they were making was genuinely not good. Not just a little rough around the edges or “almost there.” Bad. Like stinking, awful bad. That period of being bad wasn't a little detour from the path of progression… it was the path. I learned how to use Photoshop — and learned graphic design in general

In last week’s atomic essay, I wrote about storytelling in marketing and how to actually define it. As I said in that essay, “storytelling in marketing,” has become a trendy buzz-phrase that plenty of people will bring out when they want to sound like they know what they’re doing. But many of these same people, if you were to press them, wouldn’t be able to define what it actually means. And that makes sense, too. With it becoming just a thing that people say, the actual mean

As marketers and content creators, we can sometimes overthink storytelling. “Storytelling” has become a buzzword that gets thrown around all the time, with the true meaning of the word being lost in a sea of jargon-heavy Slack updates and meetings that could be emails. When a client says their marketing “needs more storytelling,” they're not asking you to write a book. Instead, they want the message behind their brand to make their target audience feel something, guiding them

How often have you been excited to watch something – be that a cool new series or a film you’ve been looking forward to – only to then find yourself looking at your phone the whole time? Double-screening is something we’re probably all guilty of – I know I certainly am. It’s just become second nature to watch something on Netflix and look at the phone at the same time. We’ve become so accustomed to doing this that we don’t really think about how nuts it is. And it’s not just

When creating content for brands, you need to have systems in place to keep things in order. Without systems, you’re going to run out of ideas – especially if it’s an industry you’re not experienced with. When I begin working with a new client, there are three systems I set up immediately. Content Buckets Sitting down to make content is difficult, especially when you don’t have an idea already. When you sit down to work on content, you should already have an idea ready to go.

Doing challenging things is essential. And there’s actually psychology-backed data to prove it. Every time you avoid doing something hard because you don't want to face the challenge, you're telling your brain that comfort means safety, and discomfort means danger. But that discomfort is essential for progression. When you avoid doing something because it’s difficult, your brain begins to see that avoidance as the default approach to tasks. This then makes it even harder to d

A few of months ago, we were in the process of updating the Giraffe Social brand, and part of that was hunting around for new fonts. We dove into the various resources at our disposal – namely Freepik and Envato – and found some we liked. Another colleague (unrelated to the font sourcing) asked about the usage rights for something on Canva, which prompted me to look at the usage rights on the two platforms I mentioned. And I discovered something interesting. We couldn’t use t

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they start creating content is trying to speak about too many ideas at once. It can be tempting to fit as many things as possible into a single carousel (or a single article, LinkedIn post, atomic essay, or whatever else), but that’s a very quick way to both overwhelm yourself and your readers. We want to show that we know what we’re talking about, but we often bite off more than we can chew. Posts claiming to be “The ULTIMATE

I get asked about graphic design quite a lot. Most days I’m asked to look over some content or ads to see if they’re good to go. And I almost always end up speaking about the same four things. The same four things those who haven’t spent a scary amount of time learning about design get wrong. They’re simple, but when you keep them in mind, your designs can be hugely elevated. Limit Your Colours Designs live or die on clarity. Simple colour schemes keep designs consistent acro

The first draft is just thinking out loud. It’s a place to get your ideas down on the page, to figure out what direction you want to take. With the first draft, you don’t need to worry about grammar or punctuation or anything like that. Purely focus on getting the backbone of whatever you’re working on sorted. The real writing – the polished stuff – comes after. Editing is the Good Stuff Most people think that the writing is the hard part, but it’s really not. As Chuck Palahn

Self-belief isn't something you either have or don't. That’s the reassuring truth. All those people who seem to be super confident likely weren’t born that way. Self-belief is built through evidence. Every time you do something hard, something that you didn’t think you could achieve, you give yourself proof that you're capable of more than you thought. For example, consider someone who's convinced they could never run. That single belief (“I’m not a runner”) doesn't just live

The last film I watched in 2025 was Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man. The way I tend to watch films now is in about 20/30-minute chunks, so when I sat down to watch it with my breakfast one Saturday, I expected to finish my beans on toast, drink my coffee, then go about my day. But for the first time, probably in years, I watched a film the whole way through, excluding when I’m in the cinema and British politeness forbids me from leaving. I bloody loved it! Dystopian

At the start of this year, I gave myself the goal of writing at least 1,000 words a day. We’re going strong thus far, but what I’ve found is that there can be times when I have absolutely no idea what to write. I’ll sit in front of the laptop, the little blinking cursor on the infinite expanse of the blank page, and not have a clue what to do. Often when that happens, I’ll just start typing and see where it leads. To quote the great Michael Scott: Sometimes I'll start a sente

One of the skills that I didn’t expect to develop when I started working at a social media agency is the ability to research. But now, a huge part of what I do each day is research. For new clients and projects, researching to find out more about the respective industry. And then also research for industries I already work in, to keep up to date, figure out new angles for content, and so on. And over the years, one of the most invaluable tools - one I use virtually every time

Shower thoughts are those interesting, out-of-the-box, and sometimes a little weird ideas that pop into your head when you’re (obviously) taking a shower. Shower thoughts are credited as being the genesis of some pretty interesting ideas. The point isn’t really that the shower is some magical portal to unique ideas, but rather that it’s a block of time in our day with no distractions. Apart from the sound of the water, we have silence. And that silence is essential. You Need

There’s always talk of finding your voice in your writing, content, music, whatever. You have to find a style that’s uniquely yours. And at the same time, there’s this pressure, right from the very moment you begin creating, that you have to be unique. If you do something even remotely similar to someone else’s work, then you’re a plagiarist. But the reality is this: we’re not born knowing who we are. We don’t come into the world with a voice and a style all our own. From the