Stay Spooky, Design Studio PHL

Here at the Philadelphia studio, we’re always talking about the importance of play and how to maintain balance within our workday. We’re often helping clients work through complex issues, so we try to find group activities to keep things lighthearted where we can, such as the Collab series our design team hosts every week.

This past month, we set out on a challenge called Inktober. Inktober is a drawing exercise that people from all over the world participate in every year for the duration of October. Each day there is a new drawing prompt. Creativity is strongly encouraged, and the rules are simple:

1. Make a drawing in ink (you can also do a pencil sketch if you want) that follows that day’s prompt
2. Share it on social media or elsewhere online
3. Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2019
4. Repeat with the next day’s prompt

We challenged everyone in the studio to participate in Inktober, artist or not. Some folks might argue that the designers had an advantage, but we saw some great drawings across the board. Team members from all of our core disciplines (Design, Development, Research and UX Delivery) contributed. As a way to share our drawings within the studio, we created an #inktober channel on our internal communications tool, as well as an installation in the hallway of our stairwell. Each week, we added more new drawings to the wall. The wall installation was a great way to show off our drawings and get people interested, while the challenge itself was a fun way for people to break out of their creative comfort zone and do something out of their day-to-day norm to celebrate October.

This was the first year many of us ever participated in Inktober, but it will certainly not be the last!