CREATIVE MARINADE

That time I shared my creative friends with the world through my own podcast

SYDNEY · WORLDWIDE

PROJECT: CREATIVE PODCAST

Inspired by my many lockdown video calls with my creative friends around the world, Creative Marinade began as a way to open the gate to show people that creativity can be as open and diverse as me. Showing young people a lot of creatives from different cultural backgrounds, locations, geographic backgrounds, and cultures. It takes time to bring out your flavour.

ROLE: EVERYTHING

Starting with an idea that spiraled into a world of tech, hardware, friendship, and charisma. I branded the podcast. I got the software and hardware to work. I hired freelancers. I sourced the talent. I hosted the podcast and shared it on social media.

Sharing creative stories like your grandma would

From the inception of this project, I was very clear to not have a high-end designer look for these conversations. They needed to be as warm as a cup of tea. And the concept of creative marinade is inspired by my own family home, where music and recipes are passed down from generations. Every curry tastes different from another auntie's curry. That's our original creative starting point, before we even heard the word design.

Life is a marinade

Influenced by my recent video call with my Mexican artist friend @holalou and the recent taco shops that have been opening in Sydney, I wanted the brand world to feel as both warm and opening, but also with a contemporary edge as a trendy taco truck. Therefore, the brand Creative Marinade was born, and I sourced a local illustrator @emmaturney through Instagram to help me create, illustrate, and animate the logo mascot.

It takes time to bring out your flavour

The idea of Creative Marinade is now I'm in my 30s and so are my friends. I want to show young creatives that when you look at people like us, there was a journey we had to go through before we got to our current career to give them hope and confidence that they are okay where they are. The marinade was the perfect metaphor for this and spoke to my home and my culture and a cheeky tomato became the mascot. Alongside a Cooper font logo to keep up their hip retro vibes.

Join me for a cup of tea

I knew I was the main character and I had to set the vibe. This was not a one to one with slick graphic designers with perfect design bookshelves. This was speaking to your creative friend with artwork on the walls and a warm cup of tea to set the vibe for a good conversation. So I set the tone with a home recorded advert.

Setting the tone

I then had to reach out to the talent, my friends. Some people were comfortable being in front of the camera, some people weren't. For some, it was a great experiment in putting themselves out there, but I wanted to make everyone feel comfortable and at ease with what this chat is about and who it's for, is to be able to help your younger self.

A painful process of trial and error

I didnt realise the hardest bit was to come. I got the logo, got the animations, got the hardware and the software, but the reality of doing the first pilot interview sent me on a multiple month long journey to figure out the right hardware, software, and lighting to get the most out of the precious time I had with my friends attention for that hour or so.
 
 
 

10 creative friends from around the world hosted by Cisco

I only started my podcast after I had 10 interviews recorded. I wanted to capture the diverse array of people that I know that inspire me from the UK and from Australia, in various different creative practices. It was fun, and it was real.

My friend Sarah tells how creative technology became her thing after always wanting to be both creative and technical whilst in school.

My friend Julien who makes a living from producing music that gets played on Spotify tells us how he first got put into the Chill Hop Spotify playlist.

My friend Bal tells the realities of being a mum, a pregnant mum, whilst running her own PR agency. Legend. 

My friend Jon tells us what it's like going from designer to owner of a design studio. ✨

My bro Anita from Argentina tells us how she stalked and found her big Service design job through Linkedin and making connections.

My best mate Harvey tells us how his simple hobby of reviewing rap videos took him all around Europe as a superstar.

My friend Sarah, whose work went so viral one day it ended up on the news tells the realities of being a designer, moving countries and having a life amongst the ups and downs of being a designer.

My mate Sean, everyone's best friend, top guy, real East Londoner and talented designer talks about his life and his family influence him in leading his design teams.

Nick tells us about Growing up in New York and how it influenced him in life now in Sydney, Australia.

Hear from my friend, designer, entrepenuer and curator, Kara showcasing art from the African Diaspora from London to the world.

A Readymag website that’s warm and welcoming

Using my more entrepreneurial now than my pixel-perfect digital designer self, I created a cute animated microsite in ReadyMag, housing my brand, my stories, with the soundtrack of my brother's song.

And then I wimped out

Out of the many mountains of hard things I had to do for this project, from branding, art directing an animator, solving hardware and software problems, sourcing talent, recording the videos, cutting the adverts, and having a folder full of ready-to-go video clips, I realized the hardest bit was to keep up that momentum of charisma, of advertising yourself and others and putting yourself out there after the hype of the initial launch has died down. And this is where I didn't even make it to my 10th podcast, and so there are some episodes that haven't even seen the day of light, which is sad because this project was made with such good intention, but putting myself out there on social media at that time in my life was a bit tricky.

FRANCISCO

REBELLO.COM

FREBELLO.DESIGN@GMAIL.COM

@FRANCISCOLONDON