Jay Clouse  00:01

Welcome to Creative Elements, a show where we talk to your favorite creators and learn what it takes to make a living from your art and creativity. I'm your host, Jay Clouse. Let's start the show.  Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of Creative Elements. It's Thanksgiving week, one of my favorite weeks of the year. And so I'm coming to you with just a short episode this week to help us both create more time and space for our families and loved ones. This has been a pretty wild year for me with a lot to be thankful for in both my business and in my life. I got engaged in late December of last year, we bought a house in February of this year, we're getting a dog next month, a golden retriever and all the while I worked more this year than I ever have before. And some really great things came out of all that work. My business has never been more healthy and you are a big part of that. This show has really become the focus of what I do. And going into next year, I want to double down on this show even more. So I'm always asking myself, what could I be doing differently or better to make this show even more successful? And for a while now, I've been thinking more critically about the artwork for this show. I'm not talking about the episode specific artwork that's done by my sister, Emily Clouse, and you should absolutely follow her on Instagram to see her comics and her comedy. She's hilarious. I've linked to her profile in the show notes. It's also tagged in the creative elements Instagram account. But no, I'm talking about the overall artwork for this show where I'm drawn as a mad scientist. That artwork was made in January of 2020, if not earlier, and I love that artwork, it was done by an illustrator named Uriel Grimaldo of Black Collar Illustration. It's fun, it's different than other shows but from the beginning, I've had a lot of visual creatives in frankly, graphic designers tell me that it didn't quite fit the vibe of the show. And when a designer tells me that the design of something of mine doesn't quite work, I really listen to that feedback. I internalize it and I start to think, okay, what can I do differently or better? And here's the thing, the original artwork is super detailed, it's really not a smart idea to have a super detailed cover image for your podcast because that detail is never seen. I literally have a podcast course called Podcast Like The Pros. And when I was filming that course last year, last November, actually, I didn't feel good about using my own artwork as an example of what to do for your artwork because it's just too detailed, it's too busy. It has these really thick, dark black lines that feel more intense than my personality. And it's just so sciency, I do think of myself as a student of somebody studying these creators, playing with the ingredients, I love chemistry in high school but the science vibe doesn't really align with the fun, lighthearted, creative content of this show. So I've been thinking for a while that the artwork isn't a very good representation of the listening experience. But to be honest, I was super worried that you would be mad at me if I change this artwork. Seriously, I was worried that you would be so upset, people would riot in the streets and tweet at me and say what are you doing changing this? So to test the waters and my assumptions that people would be upset, I added a question about it to the listener survey that I ran a couple months ago. 21% of people said the artwork was just okay, 3% of people said they hated it actually, 30% said they loved it and it would be sad to see it change and 46% said they loved it but would be open to a redesign. So to me, that's 70% of people saying they're open to a redesign. That was enough for me to follow my gut. So today I'm unveiling that new artwork, which you may have already noticed when you clicked on this episode. I love this direction, I hope you do too. My goal for the artwork was for it to feel more aligned to the vibe and content of the show. I wanted to represent the different creative instruments people use and I wanted it to feel hand made. I wanted the title of the show to be front and center as opposed to my face. The show isn't about me, the show is about you and your art and your creativity by putting more emphasis on the title of the show. The cover is much stronger and stands out in a sea of other podcast covers. And lastly, I wanted to give a nod to the original artwork. So we added one creative element to the cover and it's belief. If I were a guest on this show, I would talk about belief, to me is the first step in accomplishing anything. You need to believe that it can be done and you need to believe that you are able to do it. This year has been a big year of belief for me and it has paid off. So thank you for believing in what I'm doing here and I encourage you to believe in yourself more. I would love to hear your feedback on the new artwork. I'd love to know what you think. Please tweet at me @jayclouse or send me a direct message on Instagram @jayclouse, let me know you're not gonna hurt my feelings. I hope you love it but I would love to hear your feedback. Thank you to everyone who completed that listener survey and gave me the courage to make this change. Thank you to Johnny Ropple at Brave Little Beast here in Columbus, Ohio for making new artwork for this show. Thanks to Nathan Todhunter for mixing the show and Brian Skeel for creating our music. Have a Happy Thanksgiving and thank you. I appreciate you. If you want to show any things for the show, just leave a review on Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week.