From Houses of Worship to School Districts: How Rebecca Hoffman Injects Creativity into Unlikely Places
Rebecca Hoffman founded Good Egg Concepts to bring creativity to unexpected places. Image courtesy of Hoffman.
We don’t usually teach kids in school that one day, instead of becoming a fireman or a lawyer or a police officer, they can work in a field like strategic communications. And like so many, Rebecca Hoffman, founder of Good Egg Concepts, learned the work of communications on the job (really, in many jobs) — from her time spent at universities, art museums, and one very influential design school — until she created her own consulting practice. Throughout the different chapters of her career path, one thing became increasingly clear: The attention to the human factor brings any place from good to great.
If you’re making stuff, you have to think about how people are going to relate to it. That’s Hoffman’s philosophy to her work, where she injects her creative touch into everyday spaces like houses of worship, funeral services, law firms, and school districts. Here, she shares how she brings unique branding work to common places, including why good design should create tension and not anxiety, how the Bauhaus traditions guide her work, and her advice to those who experience burnout.
Why do you work with businesses that you wouldn’t normally think of for branding work, like funeral services, law firms, and school districts?
These businesses and organizations are the backbone of every community and people often take their presence for granted. Non-profits, smaller businesses, professional services practices, and houses of worship are the bones of every community. But in a world with so much noise, it is important for businesses and non-profits to communicate with their audiences about what they offer. At the end of the day, it’s all about being visible to the world and connecting with the right customer, client, or donor. That’s why these businesses must create awareness of the services, products, and benefits they offer to people through strategic marketing, communications, and brand work.
How does this branding work?
Organizations have to think about the language that they use and make it approachable. If their language feels like a story, people will come closer and try to understand it and join with it. Good design should aim to create tension and not anxiety. By that, I mean that good communication will hold one’s gaze. Places like the IRS get a funny reputation because everything they send is so technical and confusing, which makes people very nervous and scared. But as soon as things are written in plain language, it makes sense.
If a client, say a school district, comes to you with an ask, how do help them tell their story?
First, the house asks some basic questions for the client: Who are you talking to? And are they hearing you? And when I say that, I mean almost like the demographic avatar. For example, I work with a school district that provides wraparound services for their students to make sure that nobody falls through the cracks and everybody has a fair shot at the best possible education. And the district is funded by many investors, so that year round, everything is in place to make sure those students and their families are supported, whether it’s with job training, backpacks, health services, dental care, you name it. The branding and communications is about telling that story to the entire community in the district, so that the work continues to radiate and so that the investors continue to care about it.
The mechanics involve choosing the social channels and brochures, which takes resources. But the creativity lies in the “how.” How do we make sure that everyone always feels welcome, and that we walk together through this life, and that we share in this important experience?
What are the Bauhaus traditions that guide your approach to creative work?
The Bauhaus was an art school with famous professors like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. It was a place of thinking, about questions like, how do we move from a world where everything is handmade, to a world where everything could be machined or industrially manufactured, but still very human? A lot of design ideas came out of there that we’re still reacting to, to this day. Now, it's sort of fetishized, like mid century modernism, and so forth. But the reason why all of that is so appealing is because people thought a lot about what the human factor is in a world of technology.
Creativity breeds creativity, but we all experience burnout at one point or another. As someone whose job it is to come up with fresh ideas, how do you navigate those mental blocks?
I experienced that burnout when I had my kids. I was physically tired, and I remember worrying, What would I do if I stopped being creative? And that’s when I started filling my free time with new experiences. I started cooking because working with my hands was restorative because it wasn't sitting in front of a computer, and it wasn’t work, and it wasn’t child rearing. I even took improv classes at Second City to hone my skills of non-judgmental ideation and brute creativity.
So I think for people who feel tired or the potential for burnout, you have to refresh yourself and experience the world, which is a creative endeavor in itself. I have this app on my phone that listens to bird songs and identifies which birds are humming. It’s like Shazam for birds. Now I’m starting to hear bird songs like conversation.
You have 30 plus years on your belt working for art museums, universities, and PR agencies. Is there a guiding philosophy that you have, that has carried you through these different career chapters?
We arrive at various junctures where decisions have to be made. It’s like the old Robert Frost poem. No matter which fork in the road that I arrive at, I will never have a plan. That’s how my career path is — like a braid, everything is drawing upon everything.
As a woman, this mindset is valuable because I used it when I stepped out of the formal workforce when my children were born. But I wasn’t a stay-at-home mom, I was a hybrid. And people would ask me, “What’s that?” Well, I work all the time. But I’m also raising my kids. Chapters aren’t mutually exclusive.
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