Creative Tooling

Explorations in Future Forward Thinking












FOUNDER, THE LUNA COLLECTIVE
Sophie Gragg

Sophie is a creative & entrepreneur currently based in Austin. After starting The Luna Collective in 2018, Sophie has connected with a plethora of creatives & worked on a variety of projects including magazines, merchandise and events.

Sophie also works in marketing and project management. Sophie's freelance services include photography, marketing strategy, content planning, influencer management and more. 




What mediums do you create in?
Creative entrepreneur - working in print/digital medium on digital art, working on marketing & strategy

Latest inspirations?
Simplicity, modern design, clean cut fonts and patterns - white space, finding balance with less, fun Gen Z video advertisements

Most surreal project?
Luna project - creating a hard cover print book called Introspection, working with over 100 creators, introspecting and combining in-depth processes with their visual work. Making something meaningful to myself and creatives, as I had the idea for so long

Creative habits?
Don’t look to other similar brands (since I run a magazine, I don’t look to inspiration from other magazines), instead getting inspiration from clothing brands / products in completely different industries rather than sticking to my own bubble

What is your creative process?
Copy design build, streamlined

Day job has honed my process, whereas side projects are built in your own world

Creative brief + research, translate action items (as a project manager), understand what stakeholders need to bring to life, brain dump after conversation with people on a team

For freelance/side projects, similar process of copy to design to internal review to revisions to review to final

What are the challenges in your creative process?
Hardest part in freelancing, Luna, working with artists and my day job is managing the revision process with internal/external reviews to drive clear expectations and communication

Working with external stakeholders (partners, other creatives) for the revision process is the biggest painpoint due to different styles of communication

Oversees the marketing team, uses Clickup, knows the process, how to communicate the feedback, and how to work with the programs that designers use to communicate revisions

If working externally with artists/partners, the revision process goes out the door 

Managing communication styles, figuring out how to translate the revisions (with feedback like “make this look better”), understanding what the designer needs to change (ie. cool tone images, cleaner font) vs. “don’t like this”

Train people on how to give feedback and put my foot down on revisions that I don’t agree with or require too long of a timeline. There’s opportunity for a better revision tool.

If a creative needs to redesign, they shouldn’t spend so much time on the first draft and rather make a dent on the second version

Set the process up as specifically as possible with external partners when creating assets for a campaign

Create a spreadsheet breaking down each asset with Google Drive links to assets and what changes can be (copy changes, branding changes, image swaps) so everything has a revision card. It can get annoying with too many assets and too many sheets but it’s easiest to see

Map out your creative journey
Realistically:
(1) Pre-creation - 30%, using ChatGPT for the brief/copy generation process

(2) Creation - 20%

(3) Post-creation - 50%

Dream answer:
(1) Pre-creation - 20% - flows easily with the vision (knows the product/campaign)

(2) Creation - 30-40% depending on assets, most amount of time

(3) Post-creation - 40% revisions, postmortem, analytics, learnings


Favorite design tools and why?
Adobe - compile magazines in Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator

Canva - uses it at work to create a base asset then bring into Adobe, now will do the majority of the work in Canva but export to use texture. GIF compression is great, animation is easy, it’s easier to use than Adobe and there are lots of templatized designs for social media in Canva

Sketch - uses it at work, “if all Adobe products had a baby”

Figma - “a little but not really”

Clickup - for organization, brought it into my whole company for task management

Pinterest - for inspiration 

TikTok - for inspiration

Really Good Emails - for inspiration for email campaigns

How do you gather inspiration?

Day job is very company branded (there’s a set vibe) so not a lot is needed in the mood board process, yet you’re supposed to include a mood board in the creative briefing. Will build a deck of generic things I like that are not specific to a campaign.

For Luna/freelance, it’s about creating a sense of what you like. Will do moodboards for photoshoots, not for design.

When are you most inspired?
At home alone, at night, consuming media for the sake of consuming - not seeking inspiration out (not purposefully sitting down to make a mood board, instead collecting things all the time)

Where/how do you do your best work?
Go to a coffee shop, ideally a big industrial warehouse vibe, grab an iced green tea and zone out in the morning on the weekend, don’t rush. Most productive in the morning in the office

Thoughts on some new creative tool ideas?
  • Actionable feedback tool - 9/10, Very interesting to me, Figma/Canva/internal tools exist for comments but a 2.0 version would be needed
  • Visual concepting tool - 8/10, curious to see ChatGPT for mood boarding


How do you hope to grow as a creative?
Be a better mentor/manager - if you’ve been creating for a long time, it’s important to pass it along. Interested in education, extending that and helping others be better creators. Did the first publishing course last year to teach people how to make their own print project and find more ways to provide resources and assets.