Essays

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

Social media is entirely shifting our relationships with celebrities, and as such is transforming our feelings of envy. Let me explain why. Feeling jealous of your friend is common. You see them having something you want, and you feel envious of them; it’s a simple situation. Before social media, those feelings of envy were limited to just the people around you. This, however, has been flipped on its head. Having worked in the world of social media for nearly a decade, I’ve s

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

What does a sleep paralysis demon have in common with an Amazonian spirit ritual and the theories of a Swiss psychiatrist? More than you might think.

Every single year I think that it cannot possibly get as hot as it did the year before. I delude myself into thinking the hot spell of the last year was a fluke accident, a flash in the pan that will simple never happen again. But, lo and behold, Spring comes around and the heat begins to ramp up. It starts slowly at first, with the odd hot day here and there, just to remind you what’s on the way. Then, suddenly, there will be a morning where you wake up and it’s as though yo

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

To quote the British rapper Scroobius Pip: “ nothing is original .” That quote isn’t original either. Any number of people before Scroob have echoed the same sentiment. When we think about the work we make, we often put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be original, to come up with a concept that the world has never seen before. The reality, though, is that (big surprise) nothing is original. Every creative concept is built on what came before. Most concepts we believe to be

I come from the era before Spotify and Apple Music. Not quite as far back as the days of vinyl, but rather the days when physical media was just beginning to die. Caught in the weird transition period where CDs were on the way out, and big companies hadn’t yet figured out how to swindle us for monthly payments to listen to music, there was a sea of pirate websites where youngsters like me could get hold of music. The two biggest ones that I remember kids at school using were

At the start of the year, I began a mission to de-rot and de-slop my life. With our attention being pulled in a million different directions, it’s easier than ever to resort to the default habit of consuming meaningless content for hours on end. With so much of my time being pissed away scrolling on Instagram, watching garbage on Netflix, or – even worse – just staring into space, I decided that enough was enough. It was time to make a change. The Changes I treated it like a

Have you ever walked into a shop and seen a product that’s NOW ON SALE? When this happens, you’ll also see the Before and After price. It’s satisfying to see the Before price crossed out, with the After price below it in big, bold letters, isn’t it? And because you’ve seen how high the Before price was, it looks like an absolute steal in comparison, right? This is the Anchoring Bias at work. How It Works Our brains are associative in nature. This means we link things to other

Working with a client is a two-way street. They come to you for your expertise and your ideas. Yet many creatives forget that. Many will stop suggesting ideas and concepts, stop pushing back on bad ideas or things they don’t think will work. This doesn’t happen all at once, though. They’ll explain ideas. They’ll show other options. They’ll try to improve the original idea. But when these ideas aren’t actioned or taken on by the client, creatives can feel disheartened. All too