Design Phase of Creativity- Introduction

Today we are talking about designing our creative work to align with everything we have researched so far and prepare us for the work to be done in 2026. I will also tell you the story of Isamu Noguchi.

Reflection Questions:

•What are the best ways to approach expressing your concept, idea, emotion, story?
•How can you be sure that what you create offers meaning to your audience and makes an impact?
•What interpersonal skills will your audience need to have in order to gain the most from their experience of your creation?
•What is the best way to present the content to every individual achieves the same basic understanding of your work?

More on Expander of the Week- Isamy Noguchi:

• Noguchi Museum Website – https://www.noguchi.org/
 • Isamu Noguchi: A Sculptor’s World – https://www.amazon.com/Isamu-Noguchi-Sculptors-World/dp/3869309156
 • The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum Catalogue – https://archive.noguchi.org/CR/Index
 • PBS American Masters: “Isamu Noguchi” – https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/masters/isamu-noguchi/ 

If you’re ready to explore what real partnership could look like for your project, your business, or your creative direction, I invite you to reach out.

You can email me directly at camelieleboeuf@gmail.com to book a FREE, 30-min 1:1 with me to explore how I can help.

And if you want to learn more about some of the ways I work with my clients, you can visit www.amecollaborative.com where Âme Collaborative is continuing to take shape.

You don’t have to do this alone. I don’t believe you were ever meant to.

Keep it up. Keep it Creative!

- C.

Transcript

Hello to all my makers and shakers!  Today we are talking about designing our creative work to align with everything we have researched so far and prepare us for the work to be done in 2026.

I am writing today’s podcast on my laptop in a den, listening to ASMR rain sounds, and multiple chainsaws from the house next door.  Having a buffer period to recalibrate between the chaos of packing and the chaos of traveling was well needed!  I feel centered, calm and ready to work.

How has the week been for you? Last week I asked…

·       “What is a creative obstacle you are facing right now?” 

·       “What are you struggling with which is eating up your energy and taking up the space needed for creativity to thrive in your minds and bodies?” 

·       “What feels endless to you at the moment, which seems impossible to get past?” 

Someone shared with me this week that the change in weather and amount of sunlight was already deeply affecting them.  If you don’t know what SADs is, it means Seasonal Affective Disorder.  And many experience it during the winter months.  Creatives are more sensitive than most, so if you can relate, you aren’t alone!  But just as I told this friend, I hope you will continue to put your creative needs first instead of last, which we all tend to do when other struggles get in the way and creating seems impossible.  She and I discussed her getting a SADs sun lamp and she admitted that every year she somehow dissuaded herself from getting it. I don’t like admitting that I need help, and often do the same thing.  Instead of giving myself grace, I tell myself to be tough and deal.  But that mindset is usually my brain getting in the way of my heart.  SO, I asked my friend, how does it FEEL now in your body and how might it FEEL once you get a sun lamp to use every day?  Our brains are coded based on previous experiences and data.  We can retrain them.  But our hearts and guts don’t lie.  SADs isn’t about logic anyway.  It has affective, or influenced by feeling or emotion, in the name.

I hope each of you continue to prioritize your hearts and intuitions as well as your minds in this way.  That’s what this podcast is all about.

Ready to engage your minds now?  Let’s learn!

When you hear design, you might think of the act of creating, but for ADDIE, the design phase requires more thinking and more empathy.  If we were making a physical building, we would lay a foundation first.  This was our analysis phase.  Now we have to create the map, or the architectural blueprint.  This is design.  The design must therefore make sense with the foundation (our research and objectives) and the structure (to be created as part of the development phase).  We are conceptualizing, visualizing, organizing, etc.  I love this phase.  It’s what I am the best at, and what I think people need the most help with, as often I see people want to jump directly into development (the fun part).

We are only going to be covered this phase for two weeks!  That’s the great part.

This week, our introduction, will explain what we should consider as part of our designs, and next week will explain what we should consider for our audience as part of the initial introduction to our designs.  And then, guess what?  The FUN begins!  It will be time to develop something based on everything we have been gathering since September.

Next week’s episode will be the final one for the year to allow for two weeks of holiday celebrations and rest.  We will start back up on Friday January 9th, where you will find me in Auckland, New Zealand!  My first episode of the year (as with every 5th episode) will be story focused, but then our development phase will begin… and this podcast will be a bit different than what we have been doing… because there isn’t a damn thing I can teach you here.  This is ALL you, working within whatever medium you choose.  I will be telling you about my progress on my own work… which has evolved into building community through sharing my voice… through this podcast, social media, and my business.  I plan to continue exploring creative expression and sharing what happens with you on my own journey.  We will have 12-weeks (3 months) to develop something new together.  This means that through April 2026, all of us should be creating as a community and ready to showcase or launch our work to the world.

So let’s get into design already!

Decisions about meaningful design occur at two levels.  We must consider both the individual’s experience of what we create and the best strategies for an individualized approach as well as incorporate our objectives into each layer.

·       Individual experiences involve presenting content in a way that lands with everyone at their own pace and within their own comprehension ability and consumption needs.  The strategies you use to do this should align with the research you did about your audience during our Analysis phase… the skills, attitudes, abilities, characteristics, beliefs, perceptions, etc. I would like to note that MANY people forget about individuals with ability needs here.  Please make sure you aren’t one of them.  There is no reason why your work shouldn’t be accessible to all that desire to experience it.  The strategies should also consider what you are trying to express to your audience and through what medium.  Empathy is key at this level.  

·       Incorporating objectives involves choosing the right platforms and strategies in a generalized enough manner so every single person “gets it” and reaches those objectives in the end.  

I mentioned last week, that I would be sharing my objectives in this episode, and I will.  But, let me tell you a story first.  See if you can recognize how it connects to the concepts which I just summed up for you…

I saw the movie “Mother!” when I was living in Orlando, FL.  I went to Disney Springs to see it because the parking is easy, and you can walk around to people watch, grab a snack, or just enjoy the vibe both before and afterwards.  I saw it alone.  That movie wrecked me.  I was barely holding it together at the end when the credits started.  There was a pause.  In the same moment my throat had clenched itself into a fist, the entire theatre around me erupted in laughter.  Shocked, I went into the bathroom, and was just able to shut the door to the stall before sobbing my eyes out.

Quite often I feel alone in how sensitive I am to the world, but in this case, I know I was the audience member that movie was meant for.  I felt it entirely.  I understood the messaging and visual representations of the concepts they were expressing.  But the rest of the theatre?  Not so much.  And that movie, as beautiful and moving as it was… did not do well.

Here’s a strange idea to consider… movies should be released in specific theatres with more well-formed identities.  Not every piece is meant for a world-wide audience. The world accesses art in a very different way than they might grocery stores, hotels, theme parks, cruise lines, airlines, etc. Sure, there are specific types of museums and galleries, but even then, it’s there for anyone and everyone.

While so many experiences are offered through tiered levels of economy and luxury… art is just thrown out into the abyss.  You either choose to experience it or you don’t.  How wild would it be to offer the arts in a more individualized way?  Blockbusters and hotel art over here… nuanced art-house films and master works over there.  The problem is that art is subjective right?  I would spend more money to experience elite creativity just as I would spend more money on a travel experience.  I LIKE it when things “feel like they are meant just for me”.  I LIKE it when I am offered something “with me and my tastes in mind”.  Don’t you? It seems obvious, but the end game is always the money.  Make the money.

The movie “Mother!” was not meant for the average person.  It didn’t have an obvious plot, villain, or fabled moral.  It didn’t follow a traditional rhythm.  And that’s why I loved it.  I do wonder if the artists who created that film considered the individual audience member’s experience as they considered their unique approach to creating its layers.  I wonder what their objectives were.

So as your partner, collaborator, and personal cheer squad, I want to ask you: In your own work, have you considered those who it might NOT land well with at all?  And if not, what might you change or tweak or ponder to try to connect it with as many individuals as possible?  Or is this also not important to you?  Have you created objectives which align with a tighter niche that not everyone will understand or emotionally resonate with?  If you DO indeed desire to make the biggest impact as possible, I will have reflection questions at the end for you to consider this week.

Partnership and collaboration are key for my personal objectives for this podcast and highlighted in our Expander of the Week story this episode, Isamu Noguchi.

The story of this artist begins long before the first sculpture, long before the first collaboration, long before he knew the shape of the life he would carve out for himself. It starts with a boy whose identity was split between continents before he could speak, whose very existence seemed to unsettle the adults around him.

Isamu Noguchi (ee-SAH-moo noh-GOO-chee) was born in 1904 to a Japanese father and an American mother, a pairing that thrilled no one on either side. His father was a poet who prized distance and abstraction, and his mother was a fiercely imaginative writer who believed the world could be changed through beauty. Their relationship dissolved almost as quickly as it flared, but the child remained. For each of them, Noguchi was a living reminder of a connection neither family readily embraced. His mother raised him alone, moving from place to place as if trying to find a pocket of the world where he might fit.

He didn’t.
 Not at first.

Noguchi spent part of his childhood in Japan, where his mixed heritage marked him instantly as an outsider. The children in the village called him names. The teachers dismissed him. He lived surrounded by the beauty of Japanese craft, with its clean lines, reverence for materials, and quiet, but he was never allowed to feel like he belonged to it.

When he returned to America as a teenager, sadly, the story didn’t change. Different place, different language, same sense of displacement. He was too Japanese for America and too American for Japan. It carved a question deep into him: Where does someone like me belong? It’s a question that can haunt a person for a lifetime if they let it.

Isamu Noguchi did not.

He started making things. Simple things at first. Little objects shaped with his hands, as if he could sculpt an answer to the ache inside him. He wasn’t trained yet. He didn’t know the rules. But the instinct was there, whispering. When he entered art school, he expected to feel at home. Instead, the critique rooms felt just as cold as the classrooms of his childhood. The professors told him he lacked discipline. They told him sculpture was not his calling. They told him to quit.

And he almost did.

But then, someone lifted the veil of isolation. He was introduced to the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși (KON-stan-teen BRON-koo-shee), a man who carved elegant truth out of stone the way others carve words into poetry. Brâncuși saw something in him. Not potential. Not raw talent. Something more elemental.  What Noguchi had that no one else did, was an imagination shaped by two cultures yet fully claimed by neither.

Noguchi became his apprentice, and the world cracked open.

Brâncuși did not teach him how to carve. He taught him how to see. How to listen to the material. How to allow a form to reveal itself. How to shape an experience, not an object. How to design for the senses, not the gallery.

He learned that design is not decoration. Design is intention.

The greatest shift, though, came from something deeper: for the first time in his life, he wasn’t creating alone. He was witnessing what collaboration could be. One artist’s idea flowing into another’s. A shared rhythm. A shared purpose. Not hierarchy—alignment.

That became his compass for the rest of his life.

Collaboration and partnership became the underscore to his creative work throughout Noguchi’s life.  He worked with choreographer Martha Graham to create sets that were less sets than they were physical expressions of an emotional landscape. With architect Buckminster Fuller, he explored how art could merge with engineering. With designers, dancers, filmmakers, and thinkers, he built a lifetime of work rooted in connection. He shaped gardens, furniture, sculptures, playgrounds, and public spaces… continually invited for each piece. Not to look, but to participate.

Noguchi believed art was never meant to be isolated. Not on a pedestal, not locked behind glass, not locked inside the mind of a single genius. To him, the world was a studio, and its people were collaborators whether they realized it or not.

And yes, he struggled.
 He faced discrimination.
 He faced rejection.

When World War II broke out, he even faced imprisonment, and he voluntarily entered a Japanese American internment camp in the hope of improving life for those trapped inside. He thought he could design spaces that created dignity. He thought he could help. But the government ignored him, and the project collapsed. He was left inside the camp longer than he ever intended, a collaborator betrayed by the very system he tried to support.

Most people would have shut down after that.
 Noguchi did not.

He kept creating, and he kept collaborating.
 He built bridges between communities through design.
 He sculpted places where people could gather and feel something together, those same things he longed for as a child…belonging, curiosity, delight.

If you look closely at his work and at the clean lines, the gentle curves, the glowing Akari lamps, the sculpted landscapes…you can see the child who wandered between worlds. You can see his longing for home transformed into something universal. For Noguchi, it was a kind of emotional architecture within himself and a way to construct belonging where none existed before.

Isamu Noguchi’s life is a reminder of what we’ve been talking about for weeks now: great art is never created in a vacuum. It is designed with intention. It is shaped by empathy. It is carried by collaboration. And its purpose and objectives are rarely about the object itself. It’s about the experience created in someone else.

As we wrap up today’s episode, I want to share my objectives for this podcast with you and then give you your final reflections for next week.

My objectives for this podcast might seems obvious to some listeners but a bit muddy for others.  We have chatted about objectives several times at this point, beginning with Episode 9.  Here, I explained my “wishes” for this podcast and for my audience.  I have now turned these into measurable cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) objectives.  Objectives don’t have to be crazy.  And keeping them to being three or less is good practice.  

By the end of Season 1, my audience will:

1.       Receive (affective) and recall (cognitive) at least one expander which inspired them in their own creative work.

2.       Value (affective) and apply (cognitive) aspects of best practices in design which might benefit their own creative processes.

3.       Respond (affective) and discuss (cognitive) episode takeaways and their projects as part of community building efforts through a consistent weekly reflection practice. 

As you reflect on and manage your own creative work, as well as the thoughts, feelings, and hurdles that come with it, I hope you will also create your own measurable objectives first, and then answer the following. 

·       What are the best ways to approach expressing your concept, idea, emotion, story?

·       How can you be sure that what you create offers meaning to your audience and makes an impact?

·       What interpersonal skills will your audience need to have in order to gain the most from their experience of your creation?

·       What is the best way to present the content to every individual achieves the same basic understanding of your work?

Let’s engage in conversation! Tell me all about YOU and send me YOUR questions.  

1.       What was your main takeaway from this week’s expander?  Do you have a favorite expander yet?  Please give me suggestions for others you would love to hear me tell the stories of!

2.       Have you used any design principles and best practices you have learned yet in your own work?  What happened?  Which ones fell flat or felt the least useful for you?

3.       What projects are you working on right now?  What hurdles are you trying to get over or barriers are you trying to get through?  What struggles keep you away from your creative expression?

You can add anything you would like to share in the comments section or email me directly at camelieleboeuf@gmail.com.  This will be in description for you.  No one monitors this email but me.  So, I welcome your thoughts.  And I would love to address them (with anonymity) in future episodes.  Let’s grow this community of creatives and innovators together!

Finally, one last reflection: Noguchi’s life asks us a question worth carrying into your own creative design work: Who are you building your world with?

I created my business to serve as the partner and collaborator for creatives and innovators to bring their visions to life through grounded actionable steps.  If you would like to learn more about how I support my clients, please check out cameliedesigns.com.  That’s cameliedesigns.com.