Nobody Thinks They're Creative

Case Study: Faber-Castell and Leisure Arts (Comcast NBC) Craft Retail, Publishing, and Creative Education Role: VP Design and Product / Editor / Art Director (Faber-Castell); VP Design, PD, Global Sourcing / Editor / Art Director / Model (Leisure Arts) Category: Consumer Art Products and Instructional Publishing

The Brief

Most people do not think they are creative. They think creative is a talent you are issued at birth, like height or a good singing voice, and the rest of us are meant to admire it from a folding chair with a plastic cup of rosé. My work across Faber-Castell and Leisure Arts (a Comcast NBC company) was built on the opposite premise. Creativity is a skill. Skills can be taught. And a well designed product is, quietly, a teacher.

The brief across both partners was really one brief wearing two coats: take intimidating art forms, watercolor, marbling, calligraphy, abstract painting, and hand them to a beginner in a way that made success the likely outcome on the first try, not the tenth.

The Work

At Faber-Castell, I operated as VP of Design and Product, Editor and Writer of Content, and Art Director, which is a polite way of saying I wrote the instructions, designed the box that held the instructions, and then made sure the instructions did not lie to a nine year old about how easy something was. That work included:

Directing beginner focused kit lines in watercolor, marbling, and modern calligraphy, each built to get a first time user from blank page to finished piece in one sitting Writing and editing instructional content so the reading level matched the confidence level, since nothing kills a new hobby faster than jargon Art directing packaging and in kit materials to feel less like a school supply and more like an invitation

At Leisure Arts, under Comcast NBC, I served as VP of Design, Product Development, and Global Sourcing, along with Editor, Art Director, and, on occasion, the model demonstrating that even a person with an MBA and a deadline can hold a paintbrush without ruining the tablecloth. That scope included:

Editorial and art direction on Happy Abstracts, Fearless Painting for True Beginners, a guide built around the idea that abstract work is the most forgiving entry point into painting, not the most advanced Global sourcing and product development for the physical kits and tools that shipped alongside the instructional content, so the book and the box could actually work together Building paint party style content and experiences that translated the DIY guide format into something social, so learning happened at a table with friends, flowers, and questionable macaron to easel ratios, not alone in a basement

The Translation

The hard part was never the technique. Watercolor, marbling, and calligraphy are all teachable in an afternoon. The hard part was the psychology sitting on top of the technique, the part where a grown adult picks up a brush for the first time since third grade and is fully prepared to hate what they make. My job, across both companies, was designing that failure out of the first experience. Forgiving mediums. Sequenced instructions. Materials that behaved predictably even in unpredictable hands. An MBA will tell you this is called reducing time to first value. An art teacher will tell you it is called being kind.

The Outcome

The result across both partners is a body of work that treated craft retail and instructional publishing as the same discipline: giving someone permission, and a clear enough path, to call themselves creative on the first attempt. Not because the bar was lowered, but because the product did the quiet work of raising the beginner up to meet it.

Case study prepared by Delanie West, MBA, Founding Principal, Be Super Creative