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.

A new theme

Creativerly uses Ghost* for its website. While I absolutely love the CMS, its features, the fact that it is open source, and the constant updates, I feel a bit limited when it comes the design part of the website. The reason for that is you either need to be a developer and code your own theme, or you rely on some pre-built themes by the Ghost Team or grab one from the Theme Marketplace. My dream would be to design my very own theme for Creativerly. However, as of now, I can not justify that expense. Nevertheless, in the near future, that would be dream.

But for now, I will stick with the already existing themes. Since, I started to write an increasing number of long-form posts, the tags on Creativerly got more important. Therefore, I was on the hunt for a theme, that emphasizes those tags or categories, and makes it easy to browse through them and discover all the posts I wrote. Besides that, I wanted to get rid of the magazine character the previous theme I used had. I did some research and browsed through Ghost's Theme Marketplace. Once I stumbled across a theme called Thesis by Priority Vision, I immediately knew that it will become the new theme for Creativerly. I really liked the sidebar, using icons for the navigation, the focus on the post tags/categories, and in general the overall vibes it gave me. It lets readers switch between light and dark mode, highlights featured and the latest posts on the homepage, and it looks gorgeous on mobile.

You can now easily find all of Creativerly's tags within the sidebar and on the homepage. I hope you enjoy browsing through the archive.

Updated pages

I did not update Creativerly's About, Welcome, Contact, or Support page in five years. Since Creativerly evolved and changed in that time, it was about time to give them a refresh too. Therefore, they all now reflect the current Creativerly's vibes.

New advertise formats

I have not been focusing on partnering up with new sponsor partners for Creativerly in a while. However, since I want to keep Creativerly a sustainable side-project, I was thinking about ways to make the sponsor and ad formats in Creativerly more attractive to potential partners. The overall goal is always to create a fruitful partnership for both parties. Therefore, I decided to only offer sponsor and classified ad packages.

From all the past sponsors and advertising partners, I got the impression through feedback that they had the most success with placing ads in Creativerly when booking a minimum of two spots. Based on that, I am now offering two sponsor packages, one for two weeks consisting of two main sponsor spots as well as a banner on top of the website for two weeks, and anoter one consisting of four main sponsor spots and the website banner being live for a month. So, this means there will be a Two Week Sponsor Package and a Monthly Sponsor Package. I applied the same to the classified ad spots. The huge advantage of placing an ad in Creativerly is that all the newsletter post will also get published to the website immediately, so your ad will not only get send out to over 2,200 people, but you also profit from SEO, as your ad will be visible in the post on the web for as long as Creativerly is live.

To get more in depth information about the possible sponsor and ad formats, simply head over to the Advertise page.

The Creativerly Community

Most of you probably will not know that there is a dedicated community space on Discord for Creativerly readers. It once was a kind of vibrant place, but I failed at the role of being a good community manager, and therefore it became a more quiet place. With social media being fragmented, I always dream of a community place for all kinds of creative minds to discuss, learn, share, and simply hang out. The Creativerly Community can be excatly such a place. It is not a replacement for social networks, but it is open place for anyone who simply wants hang out with like-minded folks.

Creativerly subscribers are free to join the Discord community. If others feel similar, I will try my best to become a better community manager and turn the community back into the virbrant place it once was.

The future ahead

Other than that, I will still keep evolving Creativerly, I will evolve my writing, and I will do my best to provide you with the best content possible. I am incredibly thankful for every single subscriber and reader. It always warms my heart when I see that someone shared something I wrote online, or when I receive an email from a reader saying that they enjoy reading what I create. That is the biggest support I can get, and it is such an amazing feeling.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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. ☕️ 🥰