The hottest Creativity Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Art & Illustration Topics

A Fascinating Look at How a Hair Stylist Organizes Their Days

Culture Study • 3116 implied HN points • 27 Jul 25
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Hair stylists often use different business models, like commission or booth rental, which affect how they schedule and manage their time. Depending on the setup, they might have more control over their hours or have to follow strict salon rules.
  2. Clients appreciate personalization in booking. Many stylists prefer texting over online booking as it allows for better communication about appointment lengths and types, leading to fewer misunderstandings.
  3. Taking care of their bodies is important for stylists due to the physical demands of the job. They often need to find ways to prevent injuries and manage stress while providing great service to their clients.

The 2023 Kleon Studios Gift Guide

Austin Kleon • 5235 implied HN points • 24 Nov 23
🎨 Art & Illustration Creativity
  1. Books make great gifts for creative people, especially titles that inspire and help them with their work. Consider gifting titles like 'Steal Like an Artist' or 'Show Your Work!'.
  2. A one-line-a-day diary is an easy and fun way to keep track of thoughts and moments over time. It's a great gift for anyone wanting to start journaling.
  3. Creative tools like unique pencils, notebooks, and art supplies can spark joy and inspiration. Kits and bundles with these items can be thoughtful gifts for artists and writers.

my variations

sweater weather • 4894 implied HN points • 28 Nov 23
📚 Literature Creativity
  1. Repetition compulsion and variation are key elements discussed.
  2. Reflection on personal growth and understanding of past selves.
  3. Importance of staying true to one's unique perspective in creative work.

Meet NYC's Coolest Stealth Design Ninja!

CAFÉ ANNE • 3400 implied HN points • 22 Jan 24
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. The newsletter shares the fun story of Max Kolomatsky, a designer who redesigns NYC street flyers for free.
  2. He started the project for fun and ended up gaining a large social media following and big design gigs.
  3. Max's advice is to embrace doing creative work for fun or for free to nurture your unique creativity and spirit.
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Handmind is heartwork

Austin Kleon • 2457 implied HN points • 05 Mar 24
🎨 Art & Illustration Creativity
  1. Creating by hand connects our thoughts with our hearts. It helps us slow down and be more mindful about our work.
  2. Working with crafts can be a powerful way to express ourselves. It combines our ideas with physical creation.
  3. Collaboration and conversation can inspire new ideas. Sharing thoughts with friends can lead to meaningful projects.

The Future Belongs to The Imposter Writers

Kristina God's Online Writing Club • 739 implied HN points • 19 Jun 24
📚 Literature Creativity
  1. Feeling fear and self-doubt is normal and can even help you grow. It means you're pushing yourself and trying new things.
  2. Everyone has their own journey, so don't compare your start to someone else's success. You are exactly where you need to be right now.
  3. Instead of letting fear hold you back, use it as a motivator. Embrace your feelings and take risks for the chance of amazing rewards.

27 observations about AI and the future we’re sleepwalking into

The Rubesletter by Matt Ruby (of Vooza) | Sent every Tuesday • 641 implied HN points • 03 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Creativity
  1. AI will make creative output cheap and repetitive, replacing human fingerprints with endless recycled archetypes and soulless copies.
  2. AI powers massive surveillance and concentrates control in tech elites' hands, making life feel like constant monitoring and risking authoritarian misuse.
  3. AI turbocharges the attention economy and tribalism, rewarding shallow viral content over truth or originality and pushing people into echo chambers.

Make bad art & read terrible books

Austin Kleon • 5995 implied HN points • 15 Sep 23
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. It's okay to make bad art; everyone should try creating without worrying about being perfect.
  2. Reading bad books can also be beneficial; it helps you discover what you don't like and why.
  3. Joining a community of creative people can support your growth, even if you feel unsure about your own work.

Against "Brain Damage"

One Useful Thing • 3011 implied HN points • 07 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Creativity
  1. Using AI can help or hurt our thinking. If you rely too much on it, you might not learn as well, but with proper guidance, it can improve learning outcomes.
  2. In creativity, AI can generate many ideas, but they often lack diversity. It's better to come up with your own ideas first before using AI to enhance them.
  3. AI doesn't damage our brains directly, but careless use can harm our thinking habits. It's important to think, write, and meet first before leaning on AI.

Moving Beyond the Bumble Brag

Seven Senses • 699 implied HN points • 15 Jun 24
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. It's important to share your achievements and talents. Hiding them can stop others from benefiting from your skills.
  2. Self-promotion should be seen as a way of showing respect for yourself and your work. It’s not about being boastful.
  3. Being too modest doesn't help anyone. Everyone deserves to shine and be recognized for their hard work.

Why Did I Start The Ruffian and Has Paul McCartney Read My Book?

The Ruffian • 356 implied HN points • 03 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. A newsletter grown from social platforms can become a sustainable, full-time project if you stick with it, move to a monetizable platform, and keep improving the product.
  2. Effective writing often isn’t the result of a rigid system: regular deadlines, saving half-ideas, and committing to a messy first draft help you find what you actually think.
  3. Singular cultural phenomena like the John‑and‑Paul partnership were tied to a specific historical moment, so today’s fragmented, niche-driven media landscape makes an equivalent global creative dominance unlikely.

Day 14. Fun Lesson: HOW TO HAVE FUN... DRAWING (Closed Eyes, Alternate Hand)

DrawTogether with WendyMac • 2928 implied HN points • 14 Jan 24
🎨 Art & Illustration Creativity
  1. Day Drawing Habit involves fun drawing lessons with no tests or rules, encouraging experimentation and new perspectives.
  2. Drawing should be fun, and to keep it that way, focus on playfulness, connection, and flow while letting go of perfectionism and judgement.
  3. Having fun while drawing helps retrain the brain to focus on positive things, promotes wellbeing, and can replace the urge to seek entertainment on social media.

Publish your enthusiasm

Austin Kleon • 5755 implied HN points • 04 Aug 23
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Sharing your excitement can be really powerful. When you show your enthusiasm, it inspires others too.
  2. Reading a good book can transport you to another world. Dive into your favorite stories for a little escape and joy.
  3. Engaging in creative activities like drawing or painting is rewarding. They combine thinking and pleasure, making it enjoyable and satisfying.

The Freaks Are the Last to Go

Working Theorys • 276 implied HN points • 09 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Some creators—"freaks"—encode meaning so tightly that you have to work to understand it, and that effort is part of the pleasure.
  2. Modern culture prizes legibility and frictionless consumption, which flattens art and flattens us. Freaks deliberately keep mystery and timing so meaning arrives later and feels deeper.
  3. Freaks resist being named or sanitized by success and are rare, so find and support them early—they are the stubborn keepers of cultural depth.

The Great (im)Balance

Endless Explorations • 79 implied HN points • 27 Sep 24
🎨 Art & Illustration Creativity
  1. Everyone has a logical side and an intuitive side. The logical side helps us stay on track, while the intuitive side can inspire creativity and lead to new ideas.
  2. Balancing logic and intuition is important for personal growth. We often suppress our creative side, but letting it express itself can lead to amazing results.
  3. Everyone has an inner voice that deserves to be heard. Listening to this voice and nurturing our creativity can unlock opportunities for more fulfilling experiences.

Why Creativity Will Matter More In An AI Age.

The Future Does Not Fit In The Containers Of The Past • 68 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Creativity
  1. AI is putting powerful creative tools into everyone's hands, making creativity a widely accessible way to stand out and add value.
  2. Creativity is fundamentally human self‑expression and choice, so authenticity and emotional perspective will matter more than purely data‑driven decisions.
  3. As interfaces shift from search and scrolling to conversation, storytelling and imaginative, poetic work will become the primary source of value rather than technical plumbing like targeting.

Sharon Olds's huge archive of thinking and feeling

Subtle Maneuvers • 3321 implied HN points • 27 Nov 23
📚 Literature Creativity
  1. Sharon Olds writes by hand and fills notebooks with writing as a way to think and feel through the world.
  2. Olds organizes her writing and creates a huge archive of thinking and feeling, even if not all of it gets published.
  3. Having fun with writing, treating it like drawing or dancing, can be an important part of the creative process.

Empty Laughter

Where's Your Ed At • 16914 implied HN points • 16 Jan 24
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Art should be unique and come from personal experiences, not generated by AI or copied from others.
  2. Creativity is limited by the individual, and the magic of art comes from the context and experiences of the artist.
  3. Plagiarism and reliance on generative AI for art creation show a lack of curiosity, entitlement, and a desire to imitate rather than create.

Why it’s so hard for writers to ask for money for their work

Subtle Maneuvers • 4206 implied HN points • 17 Apr 23
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Asking for money for writing can be challenging for writers due to internal conflicts and complexities.
  2. Writers may struggle to ask readers for payment because of feelings of guilt and the fear of burdening others.
  3. One possible explanation for the difficulty in asking for money is the internal conflict arising from seeking compensation for creative work.

The Sequence Knowledge #680: Can we Evaluate Creativity in AI Models?

TheSequence • 2297 implied HN points • 08 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Creativity
  1. Evaluating creativity in AI is tricky because creativity involves personal feelings and tastes. Researchers have created special tests to help measure how creative AI really is.
  2. There are different benchmarks available to assess AI creativity, focusing on originality and emotional impact. These benchmarks help researchers understand how well AI can mimic human-like creativity.
  3. OpenAI's HumanEval benchmark is one important tool that helps measure AI's ability to write code creatively. It plays a key role in assessing how AI can perform tasks that require innovative thinking.

How to Become a Professional Writer

Shades of Greaves • 1946 implied HN points • 06 Feb 24
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. There are various paths to becoming a professional writer, such as pursuing a career in novel writing, freelancing, television writing, or teaching writing.
  2. Writing professionally requires patience and perseverance; it is a challenging, unpredictable, but rewarding journey.
  3. To excel as a writer, you need to master the craft, be willing to break and rewrite rules, and navigate the complexities of the modern publishing landscape.

we are each other's heaters

Both Are True • 158 implied HN points • 16 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Having a warm, reliable place or community makes the coldness of sharing creative work feel manageable.
  2. Other people act like heaters — honest, caring relationships let us be vulnerable, recharge, and go back out into the cold again.
  3. If we don’t have real warmth we chase surface-level online validation that won’t truly warm us, and those tokens only mean more when we’re already whole inside.

A love of life (or lack thereof)

Subtle Digressions • 599 implied HN points • 01 Jun 24
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. As we grow older, we often lose the excitement and dreams we had when we were younger. Life becomes more practical and less about following our passions.
  2. It's important to give ourselves permission to be creative and to fail. We often hold back because we worry about how our work will be judged.
  3. Being honest with ourselves and others is key to finding joy and meaning in life. When we stop pretending and show our true selves, we can reconnect with what we love.

What Valentin Bunea Learned Writing Every Day for the Last 10 Years

Kristina God's Online Writing Club • 559 implied HN points • 05 Jun 24
📚 Literature Creativity
  1. Waking up early can boost creativity. Many people, like Valentin, find that they think better in the morning, so he wakes up at 5 AM to write.
  2. You can't please everyone with your writing. It's essential to stay true to your voice, even if some people disagree with your ideas.
  3. Daily practice in writing leads to improvement. Valentin learned that writing regularly helped him overcome his fears and build a strong love for writing.

Why You Should Still Build Your Raft of Art in the Sea of Slop

Counter Craft • 1494 implied HN points • 11 Aug 25
🎭️ Culture Creativity
  1. Making art is still important, even when it feels hard because of all the noise around us. Your work can be unique and valuable, so focus on creating instead of getting distracted by trends.
  2. Don't worry about what others are doing or how popular their work becomes. Your audience will be different, and what you create is special to you, not a competition with mainstream stuff.
  3. Art enriches your life in many ways, and you should make it because you love it. Enjoy the creative process, regardless of whether anyone else sees or appreciates it.

The Arc of it All

CRAFT TALK • 3636 implied HN points • 30 Aug 23
🎨 Art & Illustration Creativity
  1. The author reflects on their writing journey and the unexpected evolution of their career.
  2. Writing novels is challenging but familiar, while exploring self-help books presented a new set of difficulties.
  3. The upcoming book focuses on creativity and writing, drawing inspiration from various voices to guide aspiring writers.