30-Day Craft Your Art Direction DNA Course/Week 4
Building your vision
Hi everyone,
A BIG thank you for helping me get 10.000 subscribers. That’s such a crazy number and I’m so grateful and shocked to see how many people are reading what I have to say. It can be so hard to imagine, but I’m really loving this journey on Substack so far, but also how it’s helped me staying inspired by visuals around me and bring that to you through my newsletter. I’m thinking of what I can do to do a little give-away for reaching this milestone, but haven’t decided yet. Any suggestions are welcome! It will probably be later next month as I’m currently moving apartments and leave straight after for London and Amsterdam.
Welcome to Week 4 of Craft Your Art Direction DNA. The almost final step. If you’ve been keeping up, you’ve identified your creative instincts, expanded your visual influences, and refined your aesthetic. Now it’s time to take all that groundwork and build a clear, actionable vision for your career.
This week is about translating your creative identity into a roadmap, whether that’s landing freelance jobs, securing agency work, or creating passion projects that align with your unique style. It’s not just about how your work looks anymore but it’s about how you position yourself in the industry.
How This Works
Craft Your Art Direction DNA is a 30-day challenge designed to help you build a structured creative playbook. Each week focuses on a key area:
Week 1:Laying the Foundation – Understanding your creative instincts and influences.Week 2:Exploration Beyond the Familiar – Expanding your visual world and references.Week 3: Refining Your Aesthetic – Defining your unique creative language.Week 4: Building Your Vision – Translating your identity into a clear direction for your career.
Week 5: Crafting the Playbook – Bringing everything together into a toolkit you can use for years to come.
This one is all about your vision, and how you can take your aesthetic you’ve refined from last week into a clear career vision, including creating a roadmap to position yourself on the market.
Why Building Your Vision Matters
Refining your aesthetic is just one part of the equation. The next step is to connect that aesthetic to real-world opportunities. Your creative DNA is not just visuals, it’s also about how you communicate your value, position your work in the market, and align with the right clients or projects.
Think of the most successful art directors or creatives you admire. Besides their strong aesthetic, they also know exactly how to present it. They’ve built a vision that’s not only clear to themselves, but also compelling to the people they work with.
Your vision is what will guide your career decisions, whether you’re freelancing, working in-house, or launching personal projects. It will help you choose the right clients, set the right rates, and stay consistent with the type of work you want to be known for. It’s a journey, but an always growing one.
Free Task: Week 4 Exercise
If you’re not ready to commit to the full challenge, here’s your Week 4 task:
Write a one-paragraph description of your creative identity and where you see it taking you.
Think about:
What type of projects excite you the most?
What kind of clients or brands align with your vision?
Are you more interested in freelance work, agency roles, or personal projects?
How does your aesthetic fit into the current market?
How would you describe your vision and introduce yourself as a person in 1-3 sentences?
This exercise helps you connect your creative identity to your career ambitions. It’s about seeing the bigger picture and understanding how your work fits into the industry.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get access to a deeper, step-by-step framework to build a full career roadmap, plus industry insights and practical tools to help you position yourself effectively.
As a paid subscriber you also get access to all my guides on using references, colour and impact in your projects, where to work and what skills are needed, mentored briefings with feedback, inspiration, the entire archive and much more.
And as an extra. February is my birthday month (tomorrow is my bday!), it’s also a cold month so the perfect time to hibernate and reflect before spring comes. So I am treating on a limited offer for this month, to get 40% off on the annual subscription.