Bloomerangas Podcast

Listen or watch the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.Upgrade to paid membership to get full access to digital facilitation tools, Design Rewinds, the Creativity Kit, and more.I talked with Cal Thompson, a designer and product advisor who led product design and research at Headspace and now teaches product design strategy at Future London Academy.Our big question was simple: when AI lets anyone build anything, what should we actually build?Cal starts with a coffee cup. You pick it up, drink, and put it down. Nobody designed it to make you keep holding it. Yet so many digital products now measure success by how long we stay on them, a habit borrowed straight from social media.She has a lovely metaphor for what AI is doing to products. Picture a hammer, clear and simple, and then imagine someone adding a little bell, a ribbon, and a sheet of screen hanging off the handle. She calls these extras “user need hallucinations.” Features that sound plausible but don’t come from any real human need.One idea has stayed with me since: designers can advocate for human metrics. At Headspace, her team tracked stress, sleep, and anxiety, and found that the early habits that helped people feel better were the same ones that kept them subscribed.We also talked about why she paints to stay grounded, why AI has never been inside a human home, and the new engineering college in Vermont she’s helping design, where students can graduate with little or no debt.If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to watch or listen to the full conversation, and read the write-up on the blog here.Till the next time ✨All my best,EgleUpgrade to paid membership to get full access to digital facilitation tools, Design Rewinds, the Creativity Kit, and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

Upgrade to paid membership to get full access to digital facilitation tools, Design Rewinds, the Creativity Kit, and more.I talked with Tuomas Auvinen, Dean of the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University in Finland and co-founder of the university’s Centre for Radical Creativity.The “radical” comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. For Tuomas, radical creativity isn’t about small improvements. It’s about going to the root of a problem and questioning the assumptions we’ve stopped noticing.He starts from a simple idea: everyone is creative. Not just artists or designers. We make creative decisions every day just to get through ordinary life. The real question is whether our workplaces let that creativity out.One metaphor has stayed with me since: the creative sandbox. Leaders set clear boundaries, and inside them people get real freedom. If someone isn’t used to autonomy, you start with a small sandbox and let it grow as they get comfortable.We also talked about “holding leadership,” and the courage it takes for a leader to say, “I don’t know, let’s figure it out together.” Tuomas thinks that’s one of the hardest and most important shifts leaders face right now.And for anyone who’s ever been asked to prove that creativity pays off, Aalto’s Creative Leap research found that companies with both creative people and a creative culture were very likely to outperform their competitors financially.Aalto also runs a free online course, Diving into Radical Creativity. I’ve signed up myself, and I’d love for you to join me.If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to watch or listen to the full conversation, and read the write-up on the blog.--Upgrade to paid membership to get full access to digital facilitation tools, Design Rewinds, the Creativity Kit, and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

I talked with Stephen Bottomley, Head of the School of Design at Glasgow School of Art and a working goldsmith whose own pieces sit in the British Museum and National Museums Scotland.Stephen studies something called the overview effect, the shift in perspective astronauts describe when they see Earth from space. He uses it as a lens for craft too. The point was never the travel itself, it’s having new eyes for what’s already right in front of you.We talked a lot about the craft education in the age of AI, and he was refreshingly clear-eyed about it. His take: most AI recombines what already exists rather than creating anything new. He still uses it for the boring stuff, like summarizing a hundred emails, he just doesn’t mistake that for the creative part of the work.His research cluster at Glasgow gave students metal salvaged from a church roof that had aged outdoors for sixty years, and asked them to work with its color and history rather than melting it down fresh. That project has already had three exhibitions.We also got into why record gold and silver prices are pushing students toward new materials, what it actually takes to develop your own style instead of copying someone else’s technique, and how craftspeople are already experimenting with blowing glass in zero gravity for future life on the moon.If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to listen to the full conversation, and read the write-up on the blog. We don't have video from this one, unfortunately, but check out our LinkedIn and Instagram for some good reels from this talk with Stephen coming out soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

I sat down with Patrick Collins, a sales coach and consultant, to talk about something almost every creative person I know quietly dreads: sales. His first line on the subject set the tone for the whole conversation.“I’m not sure anybody who likes sales.”He doesn’t think that’s a problem to fix. He thinks it’s a sign the word itself is broken.Patrick completely reframed how I think about sales. He tells everyone he trains to cross out the word and call it education instead. Nobody likes being sold to, but people love being taught something useful by someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about. His simplest hack: export your LinkedIn network, run it through Claude, and ask it who you haven’t spoken to in 60 days. That list is almost always easier to work than any list of strangers.The name of his new project, Unemployable, comes from his own story. Years ago, in a job interview, he was told he’d be perfect for the role, then told in the same breath that he couldn’t have it, because he wasn’t employable. He’d already pointed out everything wrong with the company’s website.That instinct to question things rather than just do as told is exactly what he’s building a business and a community around now.In this talk, you’ll learn more about relationship building, using AI strategically, understanding what you want, and how to get out of the 9-5 trap. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

I talked with Amanda Schneider, founder of ThinkLab and author of Work for What's Next. She was also just on The Oprah Podcast talking about the book, if you want another taste of her thinking.One thing she said has stayed with me since. We’re still running our workplaces on analog era norms, in a digital speed world. That gap, more than any single generation, is where most of the tension we feel at work actually comes from.It changed how I think about Gen Z, too. Amanda’s research keeps landing on the same point. They’re not really asking for anything new. They just grew up with more access and more context than any generation before them, so they ask for it louder.We also talked about what actually kills creativity inside a company. It's not a lack of tools or talent. It's fear, busyness, and certainty, in that order. Certainty is the one that worries her most, as AI gets more confident and more persuasive by the day.One more interesting idea stayed with me that Amanda shared: the difference between a game’s goal and its purpose. The goal of Monopoly is to win. The purpose is to connect with the people you’re playing with, think strategically, and enjoy the time together. She thinks most organizations have quietly optimized for the goal and lost sight of the purpose.We also got into why loyalty isn’t dead, just no longer blind, what Gucci’s shadow board did for their sales numbers, and what it might take to prepare the generation coming up after Gen Z for a future none of us can fully predict.If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to watch or listen to the full conversation, and read the write-up on the blog. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

I talked with Heidi Rundt, CEO of Hyper Island, the Sweden-born creative business school that has spent thirty years training people in design, marketing, and innovation. Hyper Island now runs programs across Europe, the UK, Japan, and South America, but what struck me isn’t the reach. It’s how untraditional the model still is.The school has no teachers. Instead, it works with in-house facilitators and a global network of industry practitioners who bring in whatever is actually happening in the market right now. As Heidi put it, “We actually don’t have any teachers.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

I recently talked with Ana Maria Pinto da Silva — architect, former UX design leader at Microsoft and Amazon, founder of PechaKucha Seattle, and now Professor at the Carnegie Mellon School of Design — about a question she’s spent her whole career chasing: where does creativity actually come from?We got into the difference between learning and education, why friendship and nature are our original teachers, and why AI, in her view, makes education more urgent rather than less. She also shared what a decade of building PechaKucha Seattle taught her about community, and made a compelling case for design as a fundamentally optimistic, democratizing act. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

Here’s the advice Ekaterina Solomeina gives every designer who wants to be seen as a leader, not just an executor: learn the language the business actually speaks.I talked with Ekaterina — creative director, writer, and co-founder of Future London Academy — about what actually gets creatives into the room where strategy gets decided. Her answer wasn’t “make better work.” It was: translate the work you’re already doing into terms leadership cares about.“If you want to show that you are capable of bringing strategic value, start to understand all the language of PL, CAC and LTV, TAM-SAM-SOM.”Not instead of caring about craft — alongside it. Present the beautiful brand and the business value it created. That, she told me, is how promotions actually happen. It’s part of a bigger argument she makes: as AI commoditizes technical skills, the core creative ones — imagination, nonlinear problem-solving, empathy — become more valuable, not less. Her hope is ambitious: more chief design and creative officers sitting alongside the CFO and COO.Ekaterina spent twenty years as a creative director working alongside people like Michael Wolff and Donatella Versace before co-founding Future London Academy in 2013. Its alumni now lead design at Apple, Nike, Netflix, and BMW, and she also hosts her own podcast, Creative Capes.We also got into why 80% of creatives said they’d rather work at a company under 50 people, brand as a belief system rather than a campaign, and why founders need a “third identity” completely unrelated to work (hers is Muay Thai). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

A few years ago, Dr. Chris Mitchell did something unsettling in his classroom at the Royal College of Art.He fed the same assessment brief his students were working on into a generative AI tool and then asked the students to evaluate the output. Almost all of them said it was a pass. He looked at it again on the train home, and thought: yeah, I think so too.His first reaction was terror. His second was more useful.“It was a reflection of my bad assessment design.”If an AI could pass it, he realised, then the assessment was never really measuring the things that mattered — curiosity, imagination, personal investment in the work. It was measuring the ability to compare and summarise information. Generative AI is very good at that. But that is not what creative education is actually for.So he redesigned it. Instead of comparing X and Y, he asked students to take a teaching session that had meant something to them — personally, formatively — and redesign it, explaining why. The results were completely different. Impossible to fake. “We had examples of people drawing on learning in a choir, or a workshop around ocarina making,” he told me. “It’s just so much fun to mark.”That moment captures something important about where we are with AI and education right now — and it’s just one thread in a really rich conversation.Chris is Head of Academic Strategy Development at the RCA and the creator of the MA in Creative Education. We talked for over an hour about what formal education is genuinely for, why the RCA builds everything around making and reflection, how hybrid learning can be done well (and what goes wrong when it isn’t), and why creativity is something every person can access — not a trait some people have and others don’t.We also got into the RCA’s long-standing pass/fail grading system — no marks, just detailed written feedback — and what it demands from both tutors and students.👉 Watch the full conversation on YouTubehttps://youtu.be/BIrrwVRFUzc👉 Read the blog posthttps://bloomerangas.com/blog/reimagining-creative-education-in-the-age-of-ai-insights-from-royal-college-of-art/I hope it sparks something for you — whether you work in education, whether you’re a creative practitioner thinking about AI, or whether you’re just curious about what it looks like to build an institution around the act of making things. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe

Can creativity be taught?This is the question we explored in the newest episode of Bloomerangas with Ruta Valušytė, Head of the Design Centre at Kaunas University of Technology.Every person has the native ability to create. But like any muscle, creativity needs to be used, trained, and nurtured. If we stop using it, it fades. If we practise it, it becomes more natural and intuitive.What I found especially interesting in this conversation is that creativity does not necessarily need complete freedom.Very often, a blank canvas blocks people.What helps is a thoughtful structure: a clear task, a useful example, a safe environment, and enough freedom to experiment. Ruta describes this as a kind of creative playground: a space where people can explore, fail, try again, and slowly build confidence in their own creative process. Surely, this resonates with us very much as we create creativity playgrounds for offices and spaces for exactly this purpose.We also spoke about AI.AI can be a fantastic tool, but it is still a tool. Ruta compared it to a pencil: if you know what you want to draw, it can help you. But it cannot replace your intention, your judgement, or your imagination.This feels especially important now, when creativity and innovation are so often discussed through the lens of speed and productivity. AI can generate quickly, but true innovation still requires us to question the status quo, define the right challenge, and imagine something that does not yet exist.In the episode, we also talk about:* how universities can nurture creativity* why struggle is part of the creative process* why structure and play need each other* how design education can support a more sustainable future* what it means to design beyond only human users* why curiosity is still one of the most important creative skillsOne of the strongest ideas from the conversation is that a creative environment is not only about tools, studios, or technology. It is about culture.It is about the values, behaviours, and ways of thinking that make people brave enough to explore something unknown.I hope you will enjoy this talk as much as I did. Read the full summary here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit creativity.bloomerangas.com/subscribe