At some point in the last decade, all of us got a second job. Nobody interviewed us for it and nobody pays us. The job is creative director of our own existence.
I know how that sounds. “Personal brand” is one of those phrases that makes people roll their eyes, and usually the response is “that’s an influencer problem, I’m a normal person.” But I don’t think there are normal people in that sense anymore. If you have a phone and any kind of profile anywhere, you’re in it.
You’re doing it too. Yes, you.
Let’s start with the most “serious” platform. LinkedIn is personal branding in a blazer. The headline you rewrote four times. The post about what a difficult quarter taught you about leadership. The headshot where you look approachable but competent. That’s art direction. You chose the lighting, the wardrobe and the script.
Now take work out of it completely. Open a dating app. Six photos and three prompts to communicate an entire human being. So you pick one photo that says you travel, one that says you have friends, one with a dog if you can borrow one, one where you’re laughing so you seem fun, and a prompt that’s funny but not trying too hard. That is a campaign. You have a target audience and a conversion goal.
Then Instagram. Even people who “never post” will spend fifteen minutes on one story. Which of the eleven nearly identical photos. Which song. Whether the text should be the small typewriter font or nothing at all because nothing is cooler. Whether to post it now or wait until more people are online. I’ve watched a friend reshoot her coffee because the foam had settled.
None of these people would call themselves creators. All of them are making creative decisions about how their life is presented, many times a week.
How we got here
I don’t think vanity explains it. People have always cared how they come across. What changed is the tools and the stage.
For most of history, only brands, magazines and film studios could produce a polished image and put it in front of thousands of people. Then the internet handed every one of us a camera, an editing suite, a publishing platform and a live audience, all in one device. And when you give people the tools of a magazine, they start behaving like one. We learned about composition and colour grading and “the grid” without ever meaning to. My generation can tell you what a moodboard is before we can tell you how taxes work.
On top of that, the platforms are built to reward it. The nicer the image, the more it travels. So the pressure isn’t only social, it’s mechanical. The app itself is quietly coaching you to present better.
And then real life started depending on it. Recruiters look you up. Dates look you up. Landlords, clients, your cousin’s future in-laws. Your digital self arrives before you do, so of course you want it to be well dressed.
The part I actually love
I’m not going to pretend this is all terrible, because it isn’t, and I’d be a hypocrite.
There’s something beautiful about millions of ordinary people developing an eye. People notice light now. They notice how a table is laid, how a colour sits next to another colour. Someone in a small town with no access to the “right” circles can build a visual world on their phone and be found by people who get it. I’ve seen that happen, and to a degree it’s how I ended up doing what I do.
Curating your life can also be a way of paying attention to it. Choosing to photograph your morning chai because the steam looked nice is a small act of noticing. That’s not fake. That’s just being awake.
And the part that worries me
The trouble starts when the direction comes first and the life comes second.
When you pick the cafe because it’ll look good, not because the coffee is good. When you’re at a concert watching it through your screen to get the clip. When a holiday feels incomplete until the photo dump is up. When something lovely happens and your first thought is “this would make a great story” instead of just… having it.
That’s the shift from living your life to producing it. You become both the subject and the crew, and the crew never gets a day off. It’s tiring in a way that’s hard to explain to yourself, because nothing is technically wrong. You’re just never fully off set.
There’s also the comparison problem, which we all know about and all still fall for. You’re comparing your unedited Tuesday to everyone else’s final cut. Even when you know it’s a final cut, because you make one yourself, it still gets you.
And I think it’s making us more similar. When everyone is working from the same references, the same presets, the same trending audio, “curating your life” slowly turns into arranging it to look like everyone else’s. Which is a strange outcome for something that was supposed to be self-expression.
Being “authentic” is also art direction, sorry
The usual answer to all this is “just be real”. Post the messy photo. Do the casual dump. No filter.
But we all know the casual photo dump is one of the most carefully art directed things on the internet. The blurry one goes third. The ugly-cute selfie is selected from nine ugly-cute selfies. Messy is a look, and it takes effort. The moment being unpolished became desirable, it became another style to perform.
I don’t say that to be cynical. I say it because I think “just be authentic online” is advice that can’t really be followed. The second there’s an audience, there’s a choice about what to show them.
So keep some of it for yourself
I don’t think the answer is deleting everything and moving to the hills. Most of us can’t, and a lot of us don’t want to. I like making things look good. It’s half my job and most of my personality.
What I’m trying to do instead is keep a part of my life that has no creative direction at all. Dinners that never get photographed. Outfits nobody sees. Opinions I don’t post. Days that would make terrible content. Not as a detox or a challenge with a name, just as a normal thing, the way life used to be by default.
Because a life that’s fully art directed isn’t a life, it’s a portfolio. And you deserve to have a few things that are yours simply because you were there.
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