Nils Leonard on Why Creativity Lives When Creatives Make

Is creativity dead, resting or pining for the fjords? Or is it more alive and electric than it’s ever been? It’s all a matter of belief. Which may sound kind of fluffy and nice, but take a glance at the corners of the social media dominated by the creative industries, and you might just find that there are lots of people believing creativity to death.

It’s a state of affairs that Nils Leonard, Uncommon co-founder, is finding incredibly frustrating. “We talk like proud reporters on a slow-motion car crash,” he says. “Thousand-word essays on LinkedIn mournfully posted late at night about how our castles made of bean bags and free Haribo are falling down around us, about how fragile creativity is… except it isn’t. Yes, we are the passengers on the bus falling at a thousand frames from the bridge, but we are also the drivers. Technology, in-housing, and influencers didn’t kill creativity – we did. It dies every time we spend more time wanging on social and every time we start believing our jobs are content solutions. Shut up and make. The biggest threat to our jobs isn’t AI, it’s apathy. If we believe creativity is dead, if we believe it’s alive, we are right.”

It’s that burning belief in the vitality of creativity that’s behind a new manifesto and brand campaign for D&AD. Gorgeously gothy, it takes inspiration from the sombre wonkiness of hand hewn gravestones, a testament to humanity’s ancient drive to build beauty in the face of death.

The campaign will kick off today (November 19th) with an activation in New York’s Times Square and seeks to challenge creatives and makers everywhere to back their belief in creativity with action. To swap moaning for making.

LBB’s Laura Swinton Gupta caught up with Nils to ask him about gravestones, fairies and creativity.

LBB> When D&AD came to you at the beginning of this collaboration, where did the conversation start and how did you get to the place of calling out this apparent death-wish and this very specific behaviour of doom-scrolling and doom-saying on social media?

Nils> We always look for the friction in a brief. A fault line in culture that a brand can play on. Now I have always loved and (when I missed out) hated D&AD. But the one thing you can’t deny is that they are the creative holy grail. They are the one. But when the brief to put the most important creative platform on the map came up, it just so happened that creativity within our industry was at its most threatened.

If D&AD couldn’t call the creative industry to arms, who could?

​LBB> Why do you think the creative industry is so prone to self-flagellation?

Nils> We are needy. I’ve come to terms with this many times, so I say it as one of the worst offenders, but we are. We need to be seen, to matter, to make things of note. How else could anyone convince themselves to spend hours writing pure folly, shrouded in doubt, only to go through needles of public reviews and dissection then the literal physical pain of production to make an idea real. Neediness is a side effect of the discomfort of a leap, we need to know it was worth it. But our industry has got to a stage where it has somehow created a rhetoric where all of this just isn’t as good as AI, or as effective as tested materials, or as efficient as in-housing. We have created a thousand amazing words: innovation, integration, synergy, 360 thinking, iterative making and a salad cyclone for anything but the special sauce we actually have a chance at selling – for a premium: creativity.

Creatives started talking ourselves out of power when we believed we just did the colouring in. That we couldn’t lead. That we were an indulgence. When we are scared, we need to make a thing instead of a thought piece. We need to stop listening to people that can’t make telling us the value of making. We need to stop listening to out-of-work planners telling us on LinkedIn that the game has gone. We make the music, we choose when it stops.

LBB> I guess one pushback might be that we are immersed in these systems (technological, economic, social) that are designed to hook our attention, and that keep us stressed and drained and polarised and paralysed, and in many cases these systems reward and amplify negativity, conflict and arse-covering – is that just a cope or an excuse that we hide behind? Or is there something in it? If so, how do we escape it and rediscover faith in creativity?

Nils> We need to shut up and make.
Famous work will solve all your problems.
Want your brand to win?
Want your company to change?
Want that promotion?
Want your pay rise?
Want your start-up to work?
Want your mum to be proud?
Want to piss your ex off?
Want to feel better on a Sunday?
Make famous work.
Making matters.
Your mum won’t frame your Linkedin comment.
No one gives speeches about the meeting where you decided not to do something.
No passengers.

LBB> It's all about belief. Maybe it's because we're nearly at panto season, but there’s a scene in Peter Pan where JM Barrie writes, "Whenever a child says, I don't believe in fairies there's a little fairy somewhere that falls right down dead.” It feels resonant with this campaign and conversation, somehow. So what's making you really believe in creativity right now? Any creators or artists in particular that are really exciting you and that fuel your belief that creativity lives?

Nils> Great quote. Max Porter is the most exciting writer. How has our language been around for so long and yet pairings of words still hit new: ‘Aphrodisiac disaster. Unkillable trickster.’ Every time I read Max, I raise my game.

Luke Hall Studios are cool.
MORQ architects.
The Durimels have a thing.
Port Magazine.
Restaurants are story, art, experience:
Tomos Parry. Magnus Nilsson. And the London Shogun Jeremy King (new book ‘Without Reservation’ is class).
Katto knives. CDLP. The Deftones.

Then there are moments:
Rosalia’s listening party. Jacquemus drops.
The Avestan store on Brewer Street.

LBB> And what does all this mean for an organisation like D&AD? How important is its role in nurturing a belief in creativity?

Nils> If creativity as we know it is in peril, how can D&AD sit by and watch its best succumb to a social opium?

LBB> I'm really curious to learn how you strike the balance between using social media to amplify great work and interesting ideas, which you do really well, without getting sucked into that negativity-vortex/car crash/self important 'wanging on'. Do you ever feel or struggle with the pull to the dark side? How do you stay focused and self disciplined?

Nils> We have this phrase: ‘No passengers’ on the wall at the studio. It’s a humbling statement. It was a phrase that captured the feeling of being in an industry but not mattering. Of being along for the ride. Of being a part of it, but somehow never having made it. We all know this feeling. How dare we work this hard not to matter? How dare we relegate ourselves to a place of commentary? So we must make or die. But work that no-one sees isn’t work, so we put it all out there. For ourselves and for our partners.

What keeps me on track is a personal story. I went to a creative festival in Germany once and there were fly posters down one wall with blank gravestones on. Someone had scrawled ‘CONTENT SOLUTIONS’ on one of them. I was like, “yeah OK fuck that. I’m not working this hard to have made some content.”

This is what it is to be a creative. We don’t like to admit it, but we don’t just want it to add up to some cheesy ads, we want to matter. To have made something that might outlive its media booking. To have made things the world might actually want around. I always looked at Uncommon this way. It was never the studio I worked at, it was a brief alongside all the others. How do we make ourselves matter?

LBB> Talking of getting out and making, the manifesto film draws beautifully from the design language of the headstone. I'd love to know what you and the team learned from immersing yourself in this medium, as it really embodies an ancient human urge to create beautiful things in the face of death. As designers and makers you've really zeroed in on the details of the texture of stone, the tiny quirks of the hand graven lettering...

Nils> Death is the original creative idea.
Time is the most powerful brief.
Undertakers used to all have a clock outside, what could be a more powerful advert for life than the passing of it? The craft, age and beauty of the stones some of us are lucky enough to have is an amazing world to draw on. I hope you can feel the research, endeavour and proximity to the stones in our film. And maybe a little of the beauty and humour.

LBB> The manifesto specifically names AI as one of the things people say is killing creativity. As I don't think you're legally allowed to do an interview in 2025 without asking about AI and I know you're someone who likes to get a hands-on feel for different tools, what's your experience of AI as a creative tool?

Nils> We use AI.
But it’s not our favourite.