The Analog Renaissance, Episode 3: The Hotel Room Conversation

We are tired. We're tired of staring at screens. We're tired of watching talking heads. We're tired of courses that over promise and under deliver. I don't want to consume anymore. I want to create. I want success. I want to move quickly through the learning phase. My team and I sat around a table, notebooks open, as we reimagined the Surface Design Immersion course. The way that we learn has changed. The way that we want to learn has changed. And the question that cracked everything open, what would make this the 2026 course? Not an update of earlier versions, but a complete reimagining. What if we were starting today with no history? What would we want to create? Well, we decided to first start by asking questions. This is something that I think might be easy to forget, but it's so incredibly foundational, is to always start with a big idea or a big turn or something by asking the people who are already in your audience. So we surveyed our 15,000 alumni. What we heard is that they agreed. They wanted less time online, more time with their hands. They wanted to feel like they were building something, not just checking boxes. They deeply wanted to create. They wanted analog. They wanted tactile. The joy and mess and magic of actually creating. Underneath all of it were some fears. Is it too late for me? Does my art still matter? Is there really room for me? But one of the things that we learned on the trade show floor that I shared with you in the last episode, I heard the same thing over and over and over again from buyers and art directors and art agencies with, we want art with a story. We don't want AI anything. We want the human at the center. And we want to know who the artist is and where the inspiration came from. The industry, it isn't leaving you behind. It is calling you forward. This is the moment people want to hold something in their hands and say, I made this. I'm doing this. It is really special. And they want analog creativity. So we threw out eight years of work, and this work was good work. This work has changed thousands of people's lives. It's generated millions of dollars. Work that had a wait list, work that people loved. We pulled out a blank sheet of paper and we began reimagining the Surface Design Immersion course with the focus tactile tangible. This is episode three of the Analog Renaissance. In this series, I'm breaking down the eight ways that we're leaning into this very analog moment as creatives and also as entrepreneurs. Now, each episode focuses on one shift, why it matters and how we applied it in our business and how you can begin applying it in yours as well. If you want more context and all of the data that led us here, you'll want to Listen to episode 11 in this series, which is called the Wake Up Call. Today is the second shift we made and it changed how we think about products and education. Analog advantage way number two is physical products. Now people want something that they can hold in their hands. The world is craving tactile and the data proves it. Creator revenues from merchandising has tripled in between 2021 and 2024. 85% of people remember the advertiser that gave them a promotional item. Why don't you just think back about this yourself? Is there a time where you interacted with a brand, you got an item, and instantly this makes it more memorable. So in a world of endless digital content, physical products have a way of cutting through the noise and being sticky. They're memorable. Physical goods create an emotional connection that digital products just can't replace. So our first application, we've kind of applied this in many different ways, but the biggest one was through launching our e commerce brand called Flowery. Now, Flowery exists because it is an extension of the creative lifestyle that we teach. Made tangible, it creates touch points beyond our digital offerings like surface design immersion. It turns customers into, you know, ambassadors, people who are really loving and living with our products every day. It builds brand loyalty through daily use. So even when you step away from your digital counterparts, you've got something from our brand that is still interacting in your daily life and hopefully it becomes a solid revenue that's not necessarily tied to our digital launches. The deeper reason is this. We didn't want our brand to live only on screens. We wanted it to live in your life. We wanted it to live on your desk and in your studio and in everyday creative rituals. So we focus on heirloom quality products that are meant to last. Some are meant to be passed down from generation to generation. Things that you don't throw away, but that you want to keep. Objects that quietly remind you of who you are and what you're building. So I'll link our shop Flowery in the show notes if you want to take a peek at how we've translated our brand into products. The website is shopflowery.com, but it's spelled F L O W E r I e. Shopflowery.com pattern is having a moment. From bold wallpaper to checkered mugs to stripy pajamas and floral notebooks. 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 then we asked a bigger question. What if this isn't just true for marketing, but for learning too? What if people could hold a pattern that they created in their hands before even joining Surface design immersion? Okay, so we created something that's going to do just that. It's called the Print and Pattern Revival Workshop. And if you're listening to this close to the air date, you may still have time to come join us. This is a free workshop that invites you to kind of step away from the scroll and get messy with your creativity and use your hands. I'm going to be teaching how to create a pattern and then bring it to life on wallpaper, gift wrap or fabric and experience this joy of designing something tangible and something real so that you can experience surface pattern design in a really analog way. You know, surface pattern design is an incredibly analog career. Of course, we use our digital counterparts like Adobe Illustrator to make our work into something that can be used in the industry. But the entire beginning process, gathering inspiration, it pulls you into your life and into the things that you love the most. And then there's all this artwork creating, which is pens and paint and paper, and it's gorgeous. And then we transfer it all into the digital space, which allows it to go far and reach every corner of the earth. And then you get returned to you a physical product with your artwork. On it. It's one of the most analog careers that I can even think of in present day. So back to the print and pattern revival as of today. I literally cannot believe this. We have nearly 80,000 people signed up to come join us. Creatives that are aching for analog interaction. They want to create beauty that they can hold. And so we're about two weeks away from the beginning of this workshop. And I am just in the depths of making it as good as it possibly can be so that I can just be in the presence of that many people being creative. I get teary eyed just thinking about it. So many people have signed up because when you create something physical, you change. You stop wondering if you're creative and you start seeing proof that you are. If you want to create your own product, I would love for you to come join us too. The free workshop is February 11th through the 16th. You can sign up at bonniecristine.com revival. Okay. Bonniechristine.com revival and I'll link the sign up in the show notes as well. It is entirely free, the whole workshop. Okay. So when people can hold proof that they are creative, their life changes, their belief changes. There are a couple of ways that this shows up in business. I think physical products extend your brand into real life. And in education, physical, tangible outcomes prove that the transformation is happening. So two questions for you. What could your audience hold that proves to them that they're having progress? This whole series is actually a bit of a brainstorm for you. What could your audience hold that proves that they're making progress? And what physical object could reinforce your message when the screens are turned off? Our realization was that the 2026 surface design immersion course would look nothing like the 2018 version of it that I started with. Still all of the technical skills, always, we would never water those down. Still the career foundation, of course, but way more connection, way more humanity, more creativity, more mess. A course that feels less like watching and more like being there. Sitting with me in my studio, walking with me through my garden, building something beautiful with our own hands. So we rewrote every single lesson, every page of the gorgeous linen bound workbook. We reimagined what it would feel like to learn in this way. Not on a screen or in a silo, but as a part of something alive creativity that you can hold. Reimagining the Surface Design Immersion course with the focus of tactile analog. Once we committed to physical proof, it forced us to rethink something even bigger. If students are holding their progress, where do they put it? Where do they gather it? Where does the story of their creative life live? In the next episode, I'll show you how we printed workbooks and analog materials to really become the backbone of our entire learning experience for this course and and why paper might be the most powerful technology that we have today and how you can implement this in your own business as well. My friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.