Building Community and Finding Personality Strengths as a Creative Introvert, with Designer Cat Rose

The Busy Creator Podcast with Prescott Perez-Fox

Cat Rose (@CreativeIntro) is an independent graphic designer and founder of The Creative Introvert, a website and community for creative professions who share introverted personality types.

In this conversation, we discuss the oddities of life as a freelance designer, the observed behaviour of creative pros and where they fall on the introverted/extroverted continuum, and the challenges of building online communities and creating compelling content.

SPONSOR

This episode is sponsored by the new eBook Building Brands: A Practical Guide for Creative Pros to Develop Strategy and Design Identity.

Show Notes & Links

• Cat lives in Brighton, England
• Prescott has visited Brighton, as well as Rottingdean, and the University of Sussex
• Farnham, a picturesque town in Surrey with a 10th century castle [av_video src='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxTrwF3rbrE' format='16-9' width='16' height='9']
• Cat remains a graphic designer, started as an illustrator
• Behance
• Spaghetti code
• Cat draws people's pets
• Prescott chatted with Matt Inglot on The Freelance Transformation Podcast
• Flash (dead in name only)
• How to use Sketch for print design (if you're a complete animal.)
• InDesign and Illustrator aren't great for pixel design
• "Leg It"
• The Irish Goodbye
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, system for determining personality types
• The Big Five personality traits, aka the Five Factor Model (FFM)
• Introvert-Extrovert spectrum
• Ambivert (both introvert and extrovert)
• Brighton Pride parade, a most extroverted affair
• People with "I" in their Myers-Briggs result aren't considered for management roles
• Would you ever go to the movies by yourself?
• Bill Gates, a well-known, successful introvert
• Empathy is an introvert super-power, as are deep though, analysis, etc.
• Limiting self-beliefs, rather than introversion per se is what holds people back
• Get Your Art Out Summer Camp, a four-week course from The Creative Introvert
• Learning styles (visual, written, auditory, etc.)
• Is there a link between learning styles and introversion/extraversion?
• Mignon Fogarty aka Grammar Girl, a guest on The Busy Creator Podcast, ep. 67
• "Applesaucing", re-using your content across multiple forms
• Pat Flynn wrote two articles (1, 2) about repurposing your site/podcast content
• Upcycling and Downcycling, terms from Recycling
• Masterminds vs. Accountability Partners, which do you prefer? (Introverts prefer partners.)
• Meetup.com
• The New York City Podcast Meetup
• Malcolm Gladwell's Connectors
• The Rule of 3 and 10 for growing organizations
• The Creative Introvert
• Cat Rose on Twitter
• Cat Rose on Facebook
• Cat Rose on Instagram
• Cat Rose on LinkedIn
• Cat Rose on Pinterest

Tools

• Behance
• MacBook Pro
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Trello
• Evernote
• Slack
• After Effects

Techniques

• Set a brief for yourself to make fine arts more of a "project"
• Build lasting relationships as a freelancer, even with your last employer
• Go minimal, if you can. Don't use a mouse and keyboard.
• Learn quickly, trust that you can teach yourself new tools
• Repurpose your content to serve different audiences (written vs. spoken vs. infographic)
• Be careful when creating a community
• Test and iterate, even on morning rituals
• Replace "routine" with "rhythm"
• Approach fearful projects in tiny increments (a six-second video vs. a feature film)

Habits

• Use the software for its intended purpose!
• Adapt to clients and their workflow
• Compose your thoughts before filming/recording yourself; not everyone is an improviser.
• Wake up 4:30-5:00am for early yoga, journaling, meditation
• Do "the hardest thing" during coffee

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