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My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.
Hey and welcome to Creativerly 282 👋With this week‘s Creativerly issue, I am excited to finally share and introduce the refresh I have been working on for the last couple of months. Therefore, this week‘s post is all about the why‘s and how’s regarding this refresh. It is always fun to work on those kind of refreshes, and it has been quite some time since the last one for Creativerly. My main focus is to always make sure I put out my best writing, and the ultimate goal is that you enjoy reading that. However, things like having a modern and clean website, that supports the reading experience are key factors too. Therefore, I am really excited about this refresh, and I hope you are too. As always, if you have any feedback, inputs, or suggestions please feel free to drop me a message. There are still some minor bugs on the website I will fix over the upcoming days, but so far I am super happy with the result. Enjoy reading this week's post.
A refresh for Creativerly I am writing and curating Creativerly since over five years. During that time, the content changed quite a bit. Back in 2019, when I pressed publish for the first time, Creativerly was mainly a curated newsletter, consisting of four apps, two gadgets, one inspiration, and four articles. Within the first year of publishing, the newsletter evolved. I started adding my own thoughts to the apps I featured, removed the gadgets and inspiration sections, and reworked the others. While doing that, I increasingly discovered my passion for writing, which led to the urge of doing more writing than curating in the newsletter. As a result of that, I further evolved the content. The main change was that I reduced the app section to two apps per week, but instead of just sharing a link to and a couple of thoughts about those apps, they became more in-depth featurings, giving an overview of their features, functionalities, workflows, as well as my thoughts and observations while giving them a try. Although Creativerly constantly evolved, there was one more recent change that led to the overall idea of giving the whole project a refresh. Earlier this year, I wrote about the urge I felt to introduce a new content format, and the struggles I got faced with while ideating. I no longer enjoyed writing only about apps that much. Besides following the regular publishing schedule, I wrote a couple of long-form posts about news from the fields of design and tech, thoughts and ideas surrounding workflows, and deep dives about apps, giving them the attention they deserve, and providing insights about the app and the folks building it. Those were the posts I deeply enjoyed writing. However, I hardly ever found time to write them, since I was already decked out with the regular publishing schedule. I was unsure whether I should make a radical change like switching from writing only about apps to all kinds of thoughts, notes, and ideas at the intersection of creativity, design, tech, and software. There were not that many people subscribing to Creativerly every single week, but it was still a significant number. I asked myself what would people think when they suddenly received posts about things they did not initially signed up for. I shared those struggles with the Creativerly readers, and I was overwhelmed by the feedback and inputs I received. Almost all of them mentioned, that the most important thing is to enjoy the writing. They told me if they can feel the joy and fun I had while writing something, it is a way better experience for them, compared to when I simply write because I have to write about apps. I was overwhelmed by all the positive vibes I received via email. Ultimately, all those words helped me make that difficult decision. I decided that from now on, there will be one single long-form post each week. And that post could be a deep dive about an app, a news story, an interview, or some regular thoughts and notes about a specific topic at the intersection of design, creativity, note-taking, tech, software, and more. It felt incredibly refreshing to work on long-form posts rather than just the newsletter. I deeply enjoy writing those posts, and I can also already see the positive effects this practice brought to Creativerly. Over the last couple of weeks, I further worked on some additional changes as part of this refresh for Creativerly. Read the full post here:
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Avid Creativerly readers know that I am a privacy advocate. Privacy is a right. Therefore, I am deeply invested in writing about and highlighting apps and tools that have a dedicated focus on privacy. It is crucial for me to use tools that not only respect my privacy, I want to make sure that folks who are reading Creativerly or visiting the website can expect the same respect. Based on that, I am using Fathom Analytics which is a privacy-focused analytics service that makes sure that no kind of data is related to any Creativerly visitor. But at the same time, it gives me the tools and insights I need to make sense of the traffic that happens on my website.
There is no doubt that Fathom Analytics offers probably the most-beautiful dashboard of all the various analytics tools out there. It is pure joy to see and visualise the traffic happening on creativerly.com, especially when I can make sure that at any time the privacy, security, and data of my visitors gets respected.
Fathom Analytics is not only a great solution for small sites like Creativerly, among the customers of Fathom Analytics you can find Fortune 100s, banks, governments, and companies of every size.
If you want to switch to a privacy-first, GDPR-compliant, and cookie-free website analytics solutions, make sure and give Fathom Analytics a try. Simply start with a 7-day free trial, after that the pricing starts at $15 per month. By using the URL provided by me, you will save $10 on your first invoice, and at the same time you will support my work, Creativerly, and independent media. This is an affiliate link to support Creativerly. If you are interested in putting your tool, product, or resource in front of over 2200 creative minds, consider advertising in Creativerly and book a sponsor or classified ad spot. Find all the important information at creativerly.com/advertise.
Fresh Updates & NewsAffinity just announced that you can now grab a six-month free trial of their award-winning photo editing, page layout, graphic design, and illustration software. And even if you already tried it before, this new six-month trial can get applied too. Starting the trial means no obligation to buy, no payment details are required to sign up, which means it is a true trial that gives you loads of time to explore their apps. Switching software, especially in the creative and design field can be daunting. Therefore, Affinity made the decision to give you more than plenty of time to test their apps before committing. I have been using the full Affinity Suite as a replacement for Adobe CC for quite some time. I have not looked back since then, and I am more than happy with the decision to ditch Adobe and fully switch to Affinity. I can definitely recommend all their tools, and with their new six-months trial you get the perfect chance to explore. Earlier this year, Ghost announced that it is working on federating its service through ActivityPub, the protocol that is used by Mastodon, Flipboard, Buttondown, Tumblr, WordPress, Pixelfed, and loads of others. Through a dedicated newsletters, the team at Ghost kept sending out updates about the status quo joining the fediverse. The most recent update included a huge milestone: Ghost federated its one newsletter, making it the first federated Ghost instance on the internet. This means, users can now follow the newsletter through their preferred federated app at @index@activitypub.ghost.org. Ghost warned that there will be bugs and issues, as the work continues. Nevertheless, those are some amazing and promising news. I am looking forward what will come next. Proton is continuing its mission to provide a full suite of privacy-focused tools as alternative to the products from big privacy-invading tech giants like Google or Microsoft. The newest product they recently announced are Docs within Proton Drive, creating a collaborative document editing experience that is actually private. Docs in Proton Drive are end-to-end encrypted and privacy first, as they are built on the same privacy and security principles as in all of Proton's services. Docs in Proton Drive allow you to write with privacy, share and invite anyone, collaborate in real-time, leave comments and replies, and import and export with ease.
Mental Wealth❯ Five Ways to Protect Yourself From Stress and Work Overload – “If so, you (and I) are not alone. The challenge with these identities is that they can lead to burnout. That was the experience of author Kandi Wiens, who shares in her new book Burnout Immunity about her own relationship with overachievement, rooted in self-doubt and insecurity she suffered after growing up in poverty on an Indian reservation. She experienced repeated incidents of burnout, until it put her in the hospital and she decided she had to make a change.” ❯ From Chaos to Control: Transforming Your Day with Time Management. – “Do you find yourself conflicted between attending meetings and doing your work? Do you struggle to find time for the things you want to spend time on when the demands of your job leave you exhausted and fit only to crash on the sofa at the end of the day?” ❯ Who Really Benefits From Remote Work? – “The prevailing narrative of remote work has often been boiled down to: Workers love it, and bosses hate it. But according to Natalia Emanuel, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, it may not be that simple.” ❯ On Change and Denial – “Central to our ambivalence about change is the fundamental difficulty of letting go. I am not sure what is more difficult — the heartache of enduring a change made against your will and without your consent, which is the foundation of all loss, or the inner turmoil of having to make a necessary change yourself, breaking the momentum of patterns propelled by a lifetime’s motive force, which in turn presupposes the loss of a familiar way of being, the letting go of a habitual self.”
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Appendix❯ ICYMI Are you looking for simple, lightweight, minimal, and easy-to-use writing and note-taking apps? I got you covered. In the third part of my content series Tiny macOS utility apps I love, I focused especially of gathering and highlighting note-taking apps. Bike, Tot, and Focused definitely stand out when it comes to providing super simple and distraction-free interfaces to write, jot down thoughts, and take notes. Check out Tiny macOS utility apps I love – Part 3. ❯ Quick Bits
Till next time! 👋 Support: Do you have a friend who is looking for inspiration, news about design, and useful tools and apps? Forward this newsletter to a friend or simply share this issue and show some support. You can also show some love by simply clicking the button down below and keep this newsletter a sustainable side-project by buying me a coffee. ☕️ 🥰
Some of the links in my newsletter and my blog posts are affiliate links. Those links are marked by an asterisk. If you buy something through the link, the product will not cost you anything more, but I will receive a small commission which not only supports Creativerly and my work but also helps me to keep this publication a sustainable side-project. Creativerly is proudly published with Ghost*.
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