The Analog Renaissance, Episode 1: The Wake Up Call
16 Feb 2026 · 14 min
In the inaugural episode of the nine‑part "Analog Renaissance" podcast, the host recounts a rare in‑person team retreat in Atlanta where 13 virtual creatives convened to redesign the 2026 edition of the Surface Design Immersion course. Recognizing that simply updating the curriculum would be insufficient, the team decided to rebuild it from scratch, guided by a collective sense that the design industry—and creators at large—are experiencing digital overload. The host cites striking statistics: average screen time of seven hours per day, 64% of the global population on social media, 75% of ad spend now digital, yet 50% of adults actively trying to cut back and 62% feeling overwhelmed. These data points frame a broader cultural shift toward analog experiences, illustrated by rising sales of vinyl records, Kodak film, increased gardening, backyard chickens, and a surge in analog‑themed Etsy shops and craft‑store searches. A timeline (2020‑2026) maps the analog resurgence from pandemic journaling to the "analog bag" movement. The host positions analog practices not as anti‑technology but as a human‑centric coping mechanism in an AI‑driven world, emphasizing the current "pattern renaissance" and promoting Adobe Illustrator as the tool of choice for creating repeatable designs. The episode previews eight forthcoming episodes, each detailing a major analog‑focused business move (e.g., face‑to‑face interaction, physical product creation, attention‑rich experiences, screen‑free learning, door‑step deliveries, productizing completion, meeting audiences in analog life, and novel filming approaches). The host acknowledges the challenges of 2025—economic headwinds, long‑game investments like a trade‑show debut—and underscores the intentional, sometimes risky, commitment to lead the industry through analog innovation.
Chapters
Well, hello my friends. I'm so excited to be in your ear today. This is episode one of a nine part series called the Analog Renaissance. Let's go to April 2025. My team was just gathered around a table in a hotel conference room in Atlanta, Georgia. Our pens are out, our papers ready, coffee orders are arriving in bulk. And this is one of the most special times of the entire year because my team of 13, we're all virtual, we're all scattered across the United States. And so it is a rare occasion that we all get together in one room. And when we do, we're ready to go deep. We love each other. We're so excited to be there in person. And this particular time we had a lot to discuss. Specifically, we were there to plan the 2026 rerecord of surface Design Immersion. And that's week course where I teach creatives how to turn their doodles into patterns that they can license for products like greeting cards, gift wrap, wallpaper, curtains, pillows, and the list goes on. It teaches them how to build a full career from their creativity. Now, I've re recorded this course in its entirety every two years since its first launch in 2018. So this would be the fifth edition. And somewhere in the middle of that we had to reimagine it all. We decided that it can't just be an update, which is typically what we do. I teach Adobe Illustrator as well, so the program updates so often, so really every two years it's an updated version of the course. And what had us there was we can't just update it. We really need to reimagine. So much has changed since 2018. We're different, students are different, learning behavior is different and the needs are different. So we decided to take it down to the studs. My team, there was no hesitation because we'd really all been feeling it, we'd been seeing it a shift in the design industry and in our creative world in how people are responding and learning and buying and creating. We set out to build the course as if it was our first time ever. And the question was, if it was our first time ever, how would we make this course 2026's course? So that got us deeply intertwined in the conversation and also researching one of the things we went around the table and said, how are you feeling this year? Tell us about your education habits, like what is the last course that you took and what did you love and what did you not like? And just how are we feeling collectively as creatives who are always learning and that got us talking about tech and tech overwhelm. And so this is where our curiosity led us. We found out that people are spending more time on screens than ever. This is an average of seven hours a day that we're spending collectively on devices. 64% of the world is now on social media. That's of the entire world. That is insane. And 75% of ad dollars are now digital. Now that is really interesting when you think about the history of advertising, when you think about billboards and magazines and print and all the different ways that people get their message heard, 75% of that is all spent digitally. But here is the twisty part. 50% of adults are actively trying to cut back. 62% of them feel overwhelmed by technology and time spent on their digital devices. So we're more connected than ever and, and also somehow more exhausted than ever. The insight here was everyone is zigging. That's digital. And the question in Atlanta, Georgia was, what if we zagged? We started researching and in every rabbit hole we learned something new. Barnes and Noble is opening 60 new stores this year. That is more than they opened in between 2009 and 2019 combined. Vinyl has hit its 18th consecutive year of growth. And this is so true when we look at my own user behavior as well. I totally bought my kids vinyl record players for Christmas last year. Kodak film has doubled in demand in the last five years. 80% of Americans now garden. That's at a five year all time high. 11 million of us. 11 million of us now have backyard chickens. Etsy is reporting a 40% surge in analog themed shops. And Michaels, the craft store says that analog hobby searches are up by 136% in just the last six months. So the revelation is that this is not like a trend. This is something that is happening in our industry. This is something happening universally at the human level. We're reaching for things that we can touch. And so that got me thinking about, well, how did we get here? And that led me into all kinds of research as well. So take a listen to this timeline. In 2020, the lockdown ignites this journaling and letter writing. Like Renaissance. In 2022, TikTok trends Stationary Addict and FilmisNotDead. In 2023, vinyl sales surpasses CD sales and analog cafes become like a whole thing. In 2024, Etsy reports the growth. In 2025, analog escapism is named the top cultural Trend. And in 2026, there's the analog bag movement. This is when you create an analog bag to keep with you so that when you're in the carpool line or waiting at an office, you reach for that instead of your digital device. This is the thing that I want you to kind of grasp from that is that going analog, it's actually a coping mechanism when we feel overwhelmed by the world, what's happening in the world when we are overwhelmed by technology and high technology. So AI is here now. The way that we cope with all of it is through our analog touch points. So this is not an anti digital conversation. We love digital, we love high tech, but it's more of if we're going there, how do we cope with it? So how do we cope with the high technology? It is not anti AI, it's not anti tech, it's a both. And if we're going to be here in this digital AI accelerated world, well, we're also going to be baking biscuits and tending our gardens and putting our hands in the dirt. We're going to cope by creating. And I am so here for it. Pattern is having a moment. From bold wallpaper to checkered mugs to stripey pajamas and floral notebooks, the the world is embracing color and texture and personality again. We are officially living in the era of pattern drenching. And honestly, I'm so here for it. If you've been noticing it too, and thinking, I wonder if I could make patterns, you absolutely can. And the best way to do it is by using Adobe Illustrator. It's where I created my very first repeating pattern over a decade ago. And it's still the tool that I use and teach today because it's designed for this kind of creative work and it's trusted across the entire industry on a global basis. Illustrator makes designing seamless, repeating patterns feel intuitive. You can easily tweak colors, scale your artwork, and move things around without starting over. Everything stays crisp because it's all vector based. And when you're ready to put your pattern onto a real product, well, Illustrator works beautifully with printers, manufacturers and licensing partners. So whether you're creating patterns for your notebooks, your living room walls, or dreaming of turning your creativity into a career, Illustrator helps your ideas. Go from sketch to look at what I made, head on over to our show notes, open Adobe Illustrator and have some fun. Pattern is having a moment and Illustrator is how you join it. So the question that changed everything for us, the pivotal moment was I was surrounded by these data points, points and the statistics. And one question really crystallized in our minds. What if the biggest innovation of all wasn't digital at all. What if it was deeply and beautifully human? This is a longing for analog, a rise in the need for tactile and tangible. The data changes the game for us as creatives and as entrepreneurs. So this is what we went all in on in 2025. And I'm so excited to share with you what I've learned. That's what this entire new podcast series is with you. We're calling it again the Analog Renaissance because over the past year, my team and I went all in on this concept. We made eight major moves in our business and I'm going to share every single one of them with you in these upcoming eight episodes. Now, we did some wild things and you don't need to feel like you've got to do the same things that we did. But I'm confident that the principles underneath these eight analog changes that we made in our business, in our entrepreneurship, it's going to change how you see your creativity and how you see your business. So here's a preview of the upcoming eight episodes. Number one is going to be going face to face when the world went virtual. The second is creating physical products that sit on people's desks and live in their lives. Number three is building something that holds attention 50 times longer than its digital counterparts. Number four is designing learning that gets people off of their screens. Number five is sending something to your students doorsteps or your audience's doorsteps. Number six is making completion the product, not consumption of it. Number seven is meeting people in their analog life. And number eight is filming in a way that I haven't seen online education do before. Each one has surprised us. We have learned so much and we're so excited to kind of open it all up and share with you our takeaways, what we learned, what worked, what didn't work, and what ideas we have for you to use as well. Every single one of these just has radically changed our business and we're super excited to dive into them all with you. Now, I'll be honest with you, this past year was hard. 2025, most of what I'm about to share with you, it's not full of a bunch of quick wins. Okay? What we did was we played the long game. That meant that the year was full of new things. You know, inventing the wheel was not a rinse and repeat year. It was full of new, new, new things that we had to figure out for the first time, things that we had to learn the hard way for the first time. It was trying and it was beautiful. The magazine is a long game. The E Commerce store is a long game. The trade show we did that was a massive investment with a decade long return. And we happened to couple all of this with one of the most difficult economic years we've ever faced as well. So this was not. Want you to hear me, a safe path, but it was so incredibly intentional and it was so very necessary. But we decided something. If we want to lead this beautiful industry that we're in, not just participate in it, we had to do what no one else was willing to do. And that meant showing up in public, maybe failing in public as well. So over the next eight episodes, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of every single move that we made. The wins, the terrifying moments, the things that worked, the things that didn't, and the one insight that ties them all together. In that hotel conference room in Atlanta, Georgia, as my team and I planned the 2026 rerecord of surface Design Immersion, we made a decision. If Analog was truly the opportunity we thought it was, we were going to go all in. And we did. One month later, in the most digital high stakes environment we could think of, we showed up in person the at the world's largest licensing trade show our very first time. We only had six appointments on the books when we arrived, wrangling fresh rose bushes, clay birds and yards of patterned fabrics. Analog galore, surrounded by LED lights and sleek polished booths and brands who had never heard of our name before. I'll tell you the whole story in the next episode, my friends. Create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.