MANILA, PHILIPPINES — When it comes to Graphika Manila, you can always expect some of the biggest names in the creative industries, and Graphika Online 2022 certainly wasn’t an exception. One of the amazing artistic minds on Graphika’s impressive lineup was illustrator, animator, filmmaker, podcaster, and content creator Campbell Walker, or as he’s better known by over a million fans online, Struthless.
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“The thing that made me ready for this was a lifetime of creative experiments,” he said during the event. He said it was what led him to things — like seeing his art on a billboard for the first time or directing and co-writing Spotify’s first-ever original Australian podcast — that indicated that he should keep going.
Keep going, he did, and he definitely has the resume to show for it. He now runs Struthless Apparel and Struthless Studios, has over half a million subscribers on YouTube, and recently wrote Your Head is a Houseboat, a book that became an international bestseller.
Wondering what kind of practices, outlooks, and habits got him there? Luckily, his talk was all about sharing the guide he created for himself and has helped him throughout his creative journey — his 10 Rules of Creativity and Life. “I’m gonna take you through the ten rules I like to live by,” he said. “And hopefully, you can get something out of it.”
Here are Struthless’ 10 Rules of Creativity and Life:
Rule 1: Constraints lead to more creativity than freedom
Rule 2: Ask yourself a question and your brain will give you an answer
Rule 3: Always give your guest the nicer plate of food
Rule 4: If something takes less than 2 minutes, do it immediately
Rule 5: Balance your work with things that properly energize you
Rule 6: Hell yes or no
Rule 7: Compound interest isn’t just a financial concept
Rule 8: Generally the cliches are true
Rule 9: Perfect is the enemy of done
Rule 10: Ask yourself “how is this the best thing that ever happened to me?”
Expounding on how action creates motivation, he talks about how just the instruction to draw one thing every day helped him build his #brand and expand his #creativity.
Here are a couple of his #illustrations of the "one thing" he chose — the ibis. #GraphikaOnline2022 pic.twitter.com/w1sTiZXL09
— adobo magazine (@adobomagazine) February 5, 2022
As the title of his list suggests, these aren’t just rules that will help you create better. Rather, these rules also help in forming a creative journey that’s right for you and makes you happy. With his ideas, anecdotes, and examples that made these rules even more tangible and doable, it quickly became clear how this list can definitely help creatives — and people, in general — everywhere live better lives.
Struthless makes sure to end with a caveat: don’t pressure yourself with the binary thinking surrounding rules. “When we talk about rules, it’s easy to get caught in the idea that unless we do the rules, unless we are perfect, we are somehow failing,” he says. Struthless makes it clear that the point of the rules isn’t a rigid map but a north star to guide you on your journey. “The aim is not to be able to do all the rules but to know where you’re going.”
Want to learn and see more from Struthless? Follow him on Instagram and check out his works on struthless.com and Struthless Studios. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel for more great insights on life and creativity.
adobo magazine is an official media partner of Graphika Online 2022.
