I just finished an awesome course, ‘Airtable for Creatives’ by designer Kristina Hultkrantz, and thought you might like to know about it. If you’re anything like me you’re gonna love it!

Airtable is a free spreadsheet-meets-database app, but please don’t let that description put you off. It’s a genius organisational tool that can help us bring order to our sometimes chaotic creative businesses and brains!

I’m an organisational freak… One look at my wardrobe and you’d know what I mean. Everything is folded to the same width. I’m pretty much like that with my digital information. My computer files are also folded to the same width, so to speak…

This is also why I’m obsessed with lists, storage systems and all apps that help me organise my life one way or another. There’s so much information to keep track of when you’re running your own creative business; designs you’ve created and want to get done, current and dream clients, long and short term goals, projects and to-dos, money matters, marketing efforts, digital files, courses, and a million more… We need a simple, accessible and efficient system to keep all this stuff in!

I’m also obsessed with having a peek into how other designers/creatives manage and organise their businesses… There’s so much we can learn from watching how other people work and what systems they use!

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I created this course for you, my fellow illustrators, surface pattern designers, letterers, or other creative people because I know first hand how difficult it is to keep track of #allofthethings when you are trying to run your own business.

Kristina Hultkrantz

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So, when I found Kristina’s class, ‘Airtable for Creatives’, I thought it was the perfect chance to learn more about the app. I’ve been playing around with it for a few months, but being able to see it from the perspective of another designer like me, has helped me see more clearly how it can be used to organise and keep track of everything in a creative business.

Airtable does that job beautifully. It’s easy to learn, simple to use and it’s very good looking, which is important for visual folk like us. A lot more appealing and user-friendly than your usual spreadsheet software, that’s for sure…

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You can organise anything with it, and the more you use it the more things you find (and want!) to organise. You can throw at it pretty much any content you like, including attachments, notes, checkboxes, URLs, single and multiple select, formulas and even link to other records in other tables. You can also collaborate with other people and sync all your info across different devices.

One of my favourite Airtable features is the option to see all your information in a different view from the usual spreadsheet grid. It has a calendar view, great for managing social media and blog posting, for example. A Kanban view (think Trello), good for project managing, and a gallery view, amazing to keep track of your design portfolio!

Another powerful feature is the ability to filter, sort and group all your information just the way you need it. All these views can also be saved so you can easily get to them later.

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Kristina, an illustrator, surface pattern designer and online educator, has been using Airtable for a few years and swears by it, and you can see why when you see all the ways she uses it to organise all her business stuff.

My creative business hasn’t always run smoothly, and my file organization and planning system has previously been a joke. A couple of years ago I finally prioritised creating a simple system for my business and it has helped me in more ways than one. I not only feel more confident in my business because I treat it as an actual business rather than a hobby, organizing has also helped me to achieve more in less time with less headaches. And now I’m so incredibly excited to share all my systems, tips, and tricks in this course with all of you. Woo hoo!

Kristina Hultkrantz

In her ‘Airtable for Creatives’ course, Kristina shows you how to keep track of things like:

• Your big, dreamy, long term goals
• Your quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily tasks
• Your designs, sortable by categories (my favourite!)
• Your business contacts
• Your sales and licensing deals
• Your financial goals, reviews and statistics

You can see the course curriculum below, but please visit her website to see a complete breakdown and all other information…

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You get 32 video lessons, a master checklist to keep you on track and you get 3 Airtable templates including 19 tables set up for your business HQ, financial goals and master to-do list. It only takes approximately 3 hours to watch it all, so it’s very doable…

The ‘Airtable for Creatives’ course is usually $47, but from Friday 21st to Monday 24rd February 2020 it will go down to $36, as Kristina is celebrating her birthday with a sale!

If you’re not interested in getting the full class right now, she has a 5-day free challenge to gently introduce you to Airtable to get a start on getting your creative business organised. I took it and really recommend it…

I now have Airtables tracking all the courses I own and want (yes, I’m an addict!), short and long term goals, recurrent tasks, mockup files, and all the product research for my upcoming online shop, ‘Republic of Happy’. I’ve plans to make loads more, including projects, finances, design portfolio, clients, branding assets and all my editorial and social media content planning…

If you have a geeky side like me I promise you, once you give Airtable a go you’ll be obsessed. And even if you don’t have geeky tendencies I recommend you take it for a spin… It might just change the way you work forever.

We’d love to hear from you… what other productivity apps and classes do you love and recommend?

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