WEEK 21 - Send your creativity to summer camp
Hey there, thanks for joining us for Week 21 of HOMwork 2020!
Summer is upon us, friends. (Well, not officially, but we’re getting close!) For whatever reason, summer always makes me think of camps and scouts and adventures and learning how to navigate with a compass and stuff.
When I was a kid I never actually DID any of those things but I still always think of them when the weather warms up. That’s my flavor of summer vibe. ️
Lately I’ve had merit badges on the brain. Although I wasn’t *in* any scouting program I was always fascinated by merit badges. Aside from the obvious draw of some great graphic design (I started early!) merit badges celebrate an acquired skill - something that someone learned by doing.
Learning by doing is a hallmark of creative work. So creative merit badges seem like a great way to celebrate the big and small skills we develop as we explore our creative practices and find our creative voices.
The point of this week’s assignment is to think about specific skills (in your creative life) that you would like to learn by doing. These can be concrete like “art in a different medium” or they can be more abstract, like “improve my social media presence.” They might be more business related or they might be more about your creative voice and practice. They could celebrate “big” achievements like finishing your first mural or smaller wins like “posted on Instagram and did NOT refresh every 10 seconds to see how it was performing.”
{Actually that’s still a pretty significant win haha.}
Celebrating our creative skills-milestones is important because creativity is work. On the surface creativity seems easy and fun because that’s how it feels when we were kids. But finding that sweet spot between creating authentic art and building an audience and reaching a client base that values your work is really fucking hard!
We should be celebrating and commemorating when we take the time and effort to study our craft, develop a new skill, or level up on an existing skill!
Which leads me to this week’s assignment…
Your assignment: Design a set of merit badges for creativity!
Thought starters: Many of the badges I came up with started with something really specific I wanted to learn or improve. The learning can be super specific and the badge might reflect that, or you could make your badge a more general representation of the overall skills category.
Here are some suggestions of specific skills you might want to learn (with an alternate, more generic badge suggestion in parentheses):
How to do decent shading and extrusions on curved 3D letters like S and Q (3D Lettering)
Figuring out what the Instagram analytics even mean (Social Media Metrics)
Why are so many fine artists obsessed with oil paints‽ (Oil Painting)
Getting Giphy to approve my artist account so I can finally post my own stickers on Stories (GIF Stickers)
How to sound and look like I know wtf I’m doing on social media videos (Video Filming and Editing)
Developing some kind of system for deadlines and invoicing so I can actually get paid (Invoicing)
Animation seems like a thing that more and more digital artists are getting into and it looks like a lot of fun (Basic Animation)
How to feel peaceful about a video post with a garbage cover image that I shouldn’t delete because it already has likes and comments (Healthy Marketing Practices)
Deep thoughts: There’s a lot of value in thinking of a merit badge as something earned - you don’t get a canoe-building merit badge from trying to build a canoe. You get the badge when you build the canoe. The badge is about the whole process that got you from canoe-building know-nothing to official canoe builder.
The badge celebrates the failures along the way as much as it celebrates the wins.
Caption suggestions: Explain your development process for your badge(s), including what you want to learn and why. Be transparent about how you are going to earn your badge - what are you going to do that will help you achieve this new skill?
Engagement ideas: Traditional merit badges are earned with the help of subject-matter mentors. Ask your followers for pointers on your merit badge goals! I’m always surprised by how many people are willing to share their expertise when I ask for help. (You can also invite your followers to learn along with you.)
Make sure to use the hashtag #HOMwork2020 and tag me @homsweethom when you share your creativity merit badges on Instagram. I’ll be posting some of my favorites on my Stories!
Xoxo Lauren
P.S. Want to collaborate with me? I’m working on a project with HitRecord that redefines what it means to be an artist, and I’m collecting answers from the creative community (aka YOU)! Click here to finish the sentence ‘You are an artist if you….’
