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Confessions of a Creative Director tells the stories behind the ideas as told by some of today's best and brightest Creative Directors. Hosted by veteran CD Jaime Cabrera, the show features in-depth interviews, fun segments and of course a confession or two, all over a few cocktails.
How creatives can play a part in battling hate with Nick Adam — Associate Partner & Design Director of Span
On this episode of Confessions of a Creative Director, we’re getting into how creatives can actually play a role in fighting hate.
Design Director Nick Adam’s roots aren’t in design school. They’re in the punk shows, graffiti, and rave culture of ‘90s Chicago, scenes that taught him how visual language shapes belonging, safety, and identity. That lived experience came rushing back during a recent moment in when he saw someone covered in Nazi symbols being treated like it was no big deal.
That’s the wake-up call: hate is hiding in plain sight. And if creatives want to do anything about it, we have to know how systems of exclusion and identity really work, not in theory, but on the ground.
In this episode, we talk about identity as civic infrastructure. About visibility as protection. And why real belonging isn’t something you declare it’s something you design into lived experience.
Because every creative decision either reinforces the world we’ve inherited or helps build the one we actually need.
To dive deeper, check out these links mentioned on the show:
Help Stop Hate (https://span.studio/projects/help-stop-hate)Slow & Low 2025 (https://span.studio/projects/slow-and-low-2025)
2024 (https://span.studio/projects/chicago-lowrider-festival-2024)
the book (https://span.studio/projects/slow-low-book)
8 Jan 2026
The Ultimate Brief: Your Own Idea, with Alejandro Quillici
As a creative director, when you’re working on a client project, there’s this a bit of a built-in safety net. You’ve got their goals, their guardrails, their brand voice to guide you as you solve their problem.
But what about when the idea, the brand, the product is yours? When you’re the client? Now that’s a whole different story.
The vision, the execution, the timeline, the risk—it’s all on your shoulders. It’s equal parts exciting and absolutely terrifying.
On this episode we speak with Entrepreneur, Creative Lead and Marketing Consultant, Alejandro Quillici about that moment when you stop thinking about the thing and start doing the thing.
We’re talking about what it takes to actually bring your idea to life—with no safety net and no one to blame but yourself if it fails.
We’ll get into why inspiration energy is not the same as execution energy, how to build momentum with tiny, no-pressure moves, and why treating your idea like a client project can weirdly help you to actually finish it.
For a deeper dive into some of the books and ideas mentioned on the show, check out these links:
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries: https://theleanstartup.com/ (https://theleanstartup.com/)
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Act-Way-Being/dp/0593652886 (https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Act-Way-Being/dp/0593652886)
- What are KPIs and Metrics? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZlTixh6Bs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZlTixh6Bs)
More on Alejandro:
Website: https://www.alejandroquilici.com/ (https://www.alejandroquilici.com/)- Instagram: @_allezalex (https://www.instagram.com/_allezalex)- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/allez-alex (https://soundcloud.com/allez-alex)
18 Nov 2025TRANSCRIPT
Why This Global Creative and Brand Director Thinks Brand Books Are Passe with Edmund Lam of Cozey
Edmund Lam, Global Brand and Creative Director at Cozey, argues that principle-driven branding surpasses traditional brand books, fostering authentic consumer connections through experimentation in this interview.
Inside a recent episode
How creatives can play a part in battling hate with Nick Adam — Associate Partner & Design Director of Span
Published 6 Feb 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] They're up to some cool stuff, and this is just one of the pieces. So what we talk about this next kind of principle here, which is visibility as protection, are we talking about just the idea of showing people back to themselves so that they can feel, is this about inclusion, or what do you mean by visibility as protection? So I think in a moment where we're encountering all sorts of characterized versions of difference through algorithm showing it to us, making communities visible and present in public spaces, becomes a countermeasure, and so what I mean is we're often kind of seeing in social media things that aren't true, things that depictions of other people, of folks that are different from ourselves, and they're being characterized in a manner that's not true, and maybe some people start to believe it, because they live in their own bubble or their own silo, or they live in a community where they don't see these types of things. […]
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