Why creatives should travel and forget about vacations

Years ago, I went on a vacation to recover from a stressful work period. It was a nice hotel close to a national park, and I had hoped being ‘somewhere nice’ would make me feel better. But in the hotel, I only felt the same urge I felt in the city, only stronger—which was to escape. I remember ditching barbecue plans with friends to go into the jungle, where I finally found what I needed. Walking into the jungle was like entering a sphere of tingling instinct. It was a world of supreme and honest danger. I needed the danger of the jungle because my mind was numb from the normalcy. And I needed a world that raged with life and reminded me of death being possible any minute. And in a way, I did die that evening in the jungle; because I returned as a new person. For the first time in a long time, I had actually travelled. This was probably the beginning of my now firmly-rooted aversion to vacations, and a growing reverence for real travel. 

Just like TV is boring if it just presents a cheap reproduction of life, vacations are dull if they’re just extravagant versions of the everyday. Vacations do little for the creative mind. But travel, on the other hand—that is, real travel into new experiences—challenges you and makes you new, doing wonders to your creative capacity.

When I say vacation, I mean those extravagant renditions of life, where you simply go somewhere else to do what you do every day (eat, drink, chat, scroll aimlessly, pee, poop, stare, scroll some more, sit, sleep); it’s your normal life, except with a giant price tag, obligatory pictures and different scenery. When an experience mimics everyday life, no matter how extravagantly, it’s just an embellished version of the mundane. I think we should question if the point of taking time off is to do the same things at a different location, in more beautiful or interesting surroundings. Doesn't travel have potential to do so much more than just jolt the same neuropaths? 

I find real travel is when you go somewhere that shakes you out of your everyday narrative. This kind of travel makes you a new person. It effortlessly chips away at your old selves that have grown irrelevant and in that process, you adopt new selves that are far more interesting, useful, and most definitely, good for your creativity. 

The best thing about real travel is that it’s way more accessible than a vacation; because it doesn’t necessarily involve resort bills or faraway journeys. Travel is accessible in our own backyard, in the next town, down the back alley, in the woods, on the beach, across the country or just across the neighbourhood—as long as it offers you a different story, there’s potential to travel there. 

Discovering the story of a place is not as easy as picking up a book and reading, or watching a documentary about it. You have to find it. You have to wait for it. You have to feel it in its people, nature, buildings, patterns, sounds, and most importantly, in its silences.

When you travel, you find stories in places. The language of place-stories is layered. Discovering the story of a place is not as easy as picking up a book and reading, or watching a documentary about it. You have to find it. You have to wait for it. To understand its story, you have to see a place unfold as you watch its people wake up and go about making their morning. You have to pick it up through bits and pieces in conversations overheard on the street. You have to catch it in the nostalgia of someone who was born in that place, but had to leave. You have to dig it out of someone who hated it. You have to taste it in a tea shop frequented by its street labourers. You have to feel it seeping in through your pores while sitting alone at dusk, in its oldest quarter. You have to hear it in its silence.

For minds that need to be creative on demand, as professionals, on a regular basis, this kind of travel gives access to the reservoirs of newness that we need. I find real travel experiences help me improvise, think beyond the echo chamber, and most importantly, to be open to stories that are not my own.

“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.” 

– Kahlil Gibran

I leave you with this quote by Khalil Gibran, whose genius accurately penned the dilemma of today’s wanderlust epidemic about a century ago. I find this quote says everything about how travel should be a treasured experience that feeds our inner reservoirs.

To see how we translate travel experiences into stories, check this set of stories we made for the Colombo retailer Urban Island and these mini-stories on our former hometown Bambalapitiya.

Strong enough to hold them all; analyzing the Caregiver

One of the most frequently met archetypes in our work is the Caregiver. It leads to characters and brands that can inspire trust and loyalty in the audience. There is a fascinating duality to this archetype typified by its capacity to care. Whenever those under its care are threatened, from the same warm core that holds its kindness, rises a relentless protector.

In this short report, we cover:

• Caregiver brands

• The Caregiver in stories

• Understanding the archetype

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Caregiver brands

The Caregiver archetype resonates well with businesses that prioritize its nurturing and caring qualities. Healthcare and wellness industry brands looking to emphasize how they focus on the well-being and care of their patients or customers are easily linked to the Caregiver. We’ve also noticed brands that offer personal care products, like skincare, body care, or beauty products, naturally gravitate toward the Caregiver archetype.

With the Caregiver archetype closely associated with the nurturing and guidance of children, brands in childcare, and education also take to this archetype. Agriculture is another industry that fits seamlessly with the Caregiver archetype. Organizations focused on social services, environmental protection, humanitarian aid, or non-profit initiatives also embody the Caregiver archetype often enough. These brands can emphasize their commitment to making a positive impact on nature, individuals or communities, promoting compassion, and addressing social and environmental needs. Businesses in the pet care industry or those dedicated to animal welfare can embody this archetype for their brands by focusing on the safety, health, and happiness of animals as well. We’ve encountered the Caregiver archetype most often through the hospitality and service industry. Brands in hotels, resorts, restaurants, or travel experience-oriented businesses can emphasize how they take care of their guests creating safe, welcoming and comforting experiences; it’s a perfect fit. This doesn’t mean that a motorcycle manufacturer, for example, cannot be a Caregiver brand. It all boils down to what the business values and aims to bring into this world.

If caring for this world is how you approach your mission, there is a Caregiver in your brand. We use a Brand Articulation Framework to figure this out.

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When we work with Caregiver brands, we help them emulate the archetype through what they really do out there as a business—real stories of how the business is affecting communities or places, how processes and raw materials are handled with care, and how a place is loved and cared for.

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The Caregiver in stories

A caregiver brand would focus on telling stories that highlight its nurturing qualities. Themes like healing and growth are natural arcs for the Caregiver. Wherever it’s available, we try to draw out stories where businesses contribute to bettering and developing an individual, like a staff member or a sponsored talent, or their community at large. Stories of discovering one's own inner resilience and becoming a strength to others, or inspiring others to lean on their own are also great story narratives for Caregiver brands, showing how they walk their talk in a very authentic sense. Caregiver brands can also focus on stories that involve mentorship and guidance, imparting wisdom, knowledge, and lessons to others; these stories help them establish themselves as pastoral figures who play an active role in consumers’ personal and collective growth. A story theme that we always stress on Caregiver brands to incorporate are those demonstrating how they preserve, contribute or grow; without these stories that evidence the real work of the Caregiver, businesses may come across as disingenuous. We encourage and help our Caregiver clients to tell these stories authentically, sharing the outcomes of their work. In our experience, such stories reinforce Caregiver brands.

Like all archetypes, the Caregiver also has its shadow which is controlling, suffocating and hovering over, preventing the independent development of those under its care. In brand storytelling, we don’t usually bring in these negative aspects of archetypes for obvious reasons; but in our creative work for the Public Works monthly stories subscription, we sometimes delve into the shadow and different Caregiver perspectives like this story of a young woman finding comfort in a place.

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If your business takes pride in how its consumers are well taken care of, how its work changes the world for the better or how it builds a place where others can find refuge, the Caregiver resonates with your story. To find out how to tell the story of your Caregiver brand to build a deeper connection with your audience, get in touch with us.

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Understanding the archetype

The archetypes we use to model brand personas are from the works of Carl Jung—the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known as the father of analytical psychology for his work on the collective unconscious and individuation. The Caregiver archetype is one of the first archetypes described by Jung. The Caregiver archetype represents the nurturing and caring parental aspect of the human psyche. It embodies the qualities of compassion, kindness, selflessness, and a desire to support and care for others and alleviate their suffering.

According to Jung, archetypes are universal, primordial patterns or images that are inherent in the collective unconscious of all humans. They are innate and play a significant role in shaping our thoughts, behaviours, and interactions with the world. Archetypes manifest in various forms, such as myths, symbols, and recurring patterns in human experiences.

The Caregiver archetype is seen in characters in popular culture, through different works of art and fiction, religion and as brands of businesses built on providing service, care or help to people. As humans whose first experience of the world was shaped through our parents, grandparents or other carers whose nurturing and mentorship shaped us, many respond to the Caregiver archetype with a sense of nostalgia, affection and trust, making it very effective for brands that want to establish deep connections with their audience.

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Is the Caregiver a gendered archetype?

We don’t think so.

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The Caregiver archetype can manifest as masculine, feminine, or non-binary, as it represents a fundamental aspect of human nature that extends beyond gender roles. It’s often associated with the maternal figure who provides comfort, support, and protection. However, the Caregiver archetype also has a paternal aspect that offers guidance, relief and strength. We considered Carl Jung's views on the Mother and Father symbols to get a glimpse into what the Caregiver archetype means to the human mind in its full breadth.

"The mother archetype corresponds to a power that is intimately related to life, that lays down the laws of our whole psychic structure, that seems to determine the course of our lives in advance, and that seems to prepare the way for our future ahead of time."

"The father archetype is responsible for the process of consciousness, for the overcoming of inertia and unconsciousness."

—Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

In classical Jungian terms, the mother symbol is characterized by nurturing, containing, and generative qualities of motherhood—like nourishing, warmth, comfort, fertility and growth. Parallely, the father symbol is a more active and assertive principle dominated by intellect and will, shaping and guiding the mind. We found the mother symbolism connecting the idea of a supreme protector and nourisher, source of life and growth to the Caregiver archetype, while the father adds the strengthening, guiding, and pastoral functions. We think that by understanding the traditionally feminine and masculine parent symbolism and their consolidation, the Caregiver is an archetype that can easily lend itself to masculine, feminine or non-binary personas.

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This balance is particularly interesting to understand how the Caregiver archetype is not limited to biological caregiving but also exists as teachers, spaces, growers, healers, guardians, and community figures. To find out how to tell the story of your Caregiver brand to build a deeper connection with your audience, get in touch with us.

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GIF shenanigans

Welcome back to another designer's soup. We recorded this edition at the PW studio in Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka. Below I'll be discussing the GIF. Particularly three attributes: its potential to evoke strong emotions, opportunities to strengthen common ties within a group, and add meaning to a message.

Welcome to another designer's soup; on this episode, we are talking about GIFs.

I'm going to refer to it as a GIF (...as opposed to a JIF).

They take an emotion that you're trying to communicate and it can stretch it, exaggerate it, and make it more complex. It allows for more sophisticated forms of communication with just one image; if you're like me, and think in imagery, you might find (writing) time-consuming or even difficult to articulate in words.

An image like this (GIF example) allows us to communicate strong feelings without having to use any words. When you consider visuals or messaging in terms of evocative emotion, (GIFs) can add a layer, and sophistication (like the gift does in this case) by contextualizing and reinforcing the meaning of the message.

GIFs also reference other stories. They are in fact a citation or simply a clip from an existing story. They are a form of meme; by definition an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users. Because of its viral quality, it can also illustrate popular ideas and trends. (for example...) When you open up WhatsApp or any messaging application with built-in GIFs; look at what GIFs are trending. Usually, these are the GIFs that appear first when the tool is selected. These trending GIFs illustrate the general emotional state or the ideas that are most popular at that time. So if you use a popular GIF, you are referencing a popular thought. And I think that connects you with others. When shared, they can demonstrate similar views, shared perceptions, and common interests. They become symbols of a stronger connection within a group. If your objective is to grow loyalty within a group, for example, if a business is attempting to connect with a customer segment, an appropriate GIF can tap into a general idea of a group of people.

A third attribute of the GIF is its scope for meaning. I've used GIFs to inform a client that we (PW Studio) haven't received their payment. As a text-based message, there are often misinterpretations and in my case, it can be difficult to draft a syntax in a way that is appropriate. Finding the right words and tone of voice that is on brand with my business's way of articulating, while also being sensitive to the client or customer is time-consuming for me.

A lot of how we communicate involves body language, eye contact, or other facial features; we pick up on these signals when we're talking face-to-face with someone either subconsciously or consciously. If someone is sitting a certain way or leaning forward, we have a tendency to lean back or we might lean forward in order to create more intimacy. These are helpful signs are not present in a conversation that entirely text-based; GIFs supplement this dialogue through these three attributes: emotional tone, commonality, and contextual meaning.

Food thought…

Alain Parizeau

Director, Public Works

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