THE STUDIO DIARY - NO. 2 CREATE - The tools change. The need to create doesn’t.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the word create.

What it meant when I first started out as a designer. What it means now. And, perhaps more importantly, what I hope we never lose as technology continues to change the way we work.

When I was at art college, creating really did begin with a blank sheet of paper.

There were no shortcuts. No undo button. No endless library of fonts at your fingertips.

Typography meant Letraset, or lettering carefully drawn by hand. Ideas were worked through on layout paper. Magic Markers, pencils, pen and ink were part of the everyday. You sketched. You experimented. You made mistakes. You started again.

And I loved it.

I was always drawn to branding. There was something incredibly exciting about taking an idea that existed only on paper and eventually seeing it out there in the real world, on a shop front, a piece of packaging or beautifully printed.

Then I discovered the Mac.

I remember immediately thinking: this is the future.

So, at 17, I made a fairly big decision. I left my BTEC course and headed to London to begin my first professional role as a trainee desktop publisher.

Suddenly, I was creating artwork digitally.

The tools had changed, but that excitement hadn’t.

I remember travelling across London to freelance jobs in Soho, A–Z in my bag, reading a huge QuarkXPress manual on the way because there was always something new to learn.

No Google Maps. No YouTube tutorial. No asking AI how to do it.

You figured it out.

And perhaps that has shaped the way I’ve approached my whole career.

Stay curious. Keep learning. Embrace what’s next. But never forget where the idea begins.

I’ve watched the creative industry change enormously through the 80s, 90s, 2000s and beyond.

Macs became commonplace. Software became more sophisticated. The internet transformed how brands communicated. Then came websites, social media, smartphones, video and a whole new world of digital content.

The creative landscape has never really stopped changing.

And now, of course, we have AI.

There’s no denying that this feels like another significant moment.

AI can generate an image in seconds. It can write, research, explore concepts, organise thoughts and help us visualise ideas faster than we could ever have imagined.

And I believe we should embrace it.

Technology has always been a tool. It’s how we use it that matters.

But there is one part of this evolution that I do think about.

What happens to the grassroots of creativity?

If everything can be generated instantly, where do the next generation of creatives learn to explore?

To make the terrible sketch before they find the brilliant one.

To experiment without knowing what the outcome will be.

To make an accidental mark on a piece of paper and suddenly see an idea they hadn’t thought of before.

To sit with an idea for a while, rather than immediately asking for the answer.

There was a slowness to the old creative process that, looking back, was actually rather special.

Waiting for a proof to arrive in the post.

Watching a black-and-white approval slowly reveal itself, line by line, through the fax machine.

Holding the finished print in your hands for the first time.

Things took longer, but perhaps that gave ideas a little more room to breathe.

I don’t think the answer is to resist technology. I never have.

I think it’s about knowing what technology should do for us, rather than allowing it to do all the thinking instead of us.

And there’s probably a little irony in all of this.

Anyone who knows me will know that, despite always wanting the latest Mac, the newest software and being endlessly curious about what technology can do, you’ll rarely find me without a paper notebook somewhere nearby.

And yes… I still have a Filofax. 😂

There’s just something about putting pen to paper.

Scribbling down a thought. Crossing something out. Drawing an arrow to something completely unrelated. Turning the page and finding an idea you’d forgotten about.

Maybe that’s the balance.

Embrace the new. Stay curious. Use the incredible tools we now have at our fingertips.

But keep hold of a little bit of the old-school magic too.

Because for me, creating still starts in much the same place it always has.

An idea.

A conversation.

A scribble.

A question.

A moment of curiosity.

Sometimes a blank piece of paper and a pen.

Then we have this extraordinary collection of tools available to help us bring that thinking to life.

And as those tools become faster, smarter and more accessible, perhaps our challenge as creatives is to become even more human.

To have ideas that feel original.

To notice things.

To question.

To experiment.

To create work with personality, imperfection, instinct and meaning.

Because brands are ultimately about people.

And people connect with people.

I’m incredibly grateful that I learnt my craft when I did.

Those old-school processes taught me the foundations of design. They taught me to think before I created, to explore an idea rather than jump straight to the finished piece, and to understand why something worked rather than simply knowing which button to press.

And I still think there’s something pretty awesome about starting with nothing more than an idea and making it into something that didn’t exist before.

Where does it all go next?

I genuinely don’t know.

But I do know that we’ll need to keep evolving, keep learning and keep finding new ways to stand out.

To be original.

To be curious.

To be human.

The tools will keep changing.

They always have.

But that little spark that makes us want to create?

I hope we never automate that.

Sarah xxx

Founder & Creative Director
The Creative Hut