Creativerly
The internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.
2019 – Today
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Design, Writing, Strategy, Growth
Summary
Creativerly is a newsletter and publication packed with musings, curations and writings about apps and software, explorations on trends in design and tech, that I am writing, building, and maintaining since 2019. I am writing the weekly newsletter consistently for almost six years. Creativerly is the passion project I have been working on for the longest time.
Intro
During my studies, I worked on numerous group projects. While working on those projects, I always suggested different apps and resources that we could use to streamline our collaboration, boost our workflows, and assist us for our endeavors. Some of my colleagues were excited about those suggestions, and asked me where I found those things or if I have more resources to share.
As an internet citizen, I browsed through various websites every single day, and stored my findings in my personal internet library. So, yeah, I had more to share. Opening up my bookmarks, so my colleagues could browse through the apps and resources I have gathered over years was easy and streamlined. Since I was using (and still am today) Raindrop, I was able to publish a collection of bookmarks with just a couple of clicks. The collection continued to grow every single week. It became hard for my colleagues to stay on top of all the things I added to the collection. They asked me if there is a way to subscribe to the collection to get notifications whenever I added something. There was no option in Raindrop, but I had a different idea from which not only my colleagues could profit, but anyone who is interested in apps and resources.
A couple of days later, I had set up a newsletter called The Creative Abstract.
Evolving
As an avid note-taker, slowly entering the realm of personal knowledge management back then, I wanted to build up a writing habit. While I was already taking notes on my projects, what I was consuming, and finding online, I wanted to write more, and setting up this newsletter was the perfect opportunity to do so. I shared it among my colleagues and got the first couple of sign-ups. After setting up a super quick and easy landing page with Carrd*, and posting about it on social media as well as Indie Hackers, I built up a habit writing and curating the newsletter every single week. It was pure joy, as I built and launched my very first side-project.
The newsletter itself consisted of four apps, a resource, four curated articles, and one visual inspiration. It was heavily influenced by my design background, which was also the reason I mainly featured design apps and resources. After a little bit over a year, the newsletter had 100 subscribers, a magical number. Within that year, I renamed the newsletter to Creativerly, reworked its visual identity, switched from and to multiple newsletter services, and restructured its content. After all these changes, suddenly I went from 100 to 200 subscribers within 5 months, three months later I was at 300, and just two months later Creativerly had 500 subscribers. Now, I am unsure if those changes affected the overall growth of Creativerly, or if I was just riding the wave of newsletter popularity. Nevertheless, I was thankful that so many people started reading my little newsletter every single week.
At this point, I was no longer just curating Creativerly, but rather writing it. Instead of just telling subscribers "Here are four apps that look and sound cool", I explored those apps and wrote down my impressions, thoughts, and feelings. I also started documenting and writing about my journey writing, building, and maintaining a weekly newsletter, for example why I moved the newsletter from Substack to Ghost (where I am still happily hosting it until today), or why I introduced advertising in the newsletter.
Today
Fast forwarding to today, Creativerly is a small, sustainable publication. It attracted over 2200 subscribers, generates over 3k views per month, and I am publishing one long-form post every week together with the newsletter, which I have been writing consistently for over five years now (as of writing this). The long-form posts span across the categories of deep dives into apps, notes about the field of design and technology, news, and interviews with creative minds. Back in 2019, I had no idea that I am about to launch a side-project, build, grow, and maintain it for over five years, and that it ultimately becomes an integral part of my life, a true passion project. However, here we are.
Creativerly taught me lot and provided the perfect setting to dive into different fields to learn and grow on a personal level, and acquire new skills. I dealt with all sorts of email service providers, built websites, and even self-hosting Ghost*, updating regularly to its newest version by using the terminal and SSH. Besides that, I made great connections with internet friends, and throughout my work of handling sponsorships and partnerships, I sharpened my communication and organization skills. Throughout my work on the visual identity and especially the post artworks, I can express my design background. However, since I am on a tight publishing schedule and writing the posts takes up most of my time, I am heavily relying on the remarkable creative tools packed into Figma Plugins like Prismatic Generator by Jacob Waites, or Displace by Mike Bespalov.
Conclusion
Creativerly is the perfect example for why I am a side-project enthusiast: it gave me the possibility to widen my horizon, acquire new skills, strengthen and sharpen existing ones, connect with other creative minds, generate some income, create a habit, and pursue my passion for writing.