Some Brands Should Post Less

Some Brands Should Post Less

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Not every brand needs to post every day. Some probably shouldn't. Social media made consistency one of those words we rarely question. We build calendars, define frequencies, fill empty Tuesdays and worry when a week doesn't have enough content. But consistency and frequency aren't the same thing.

I've worked with brands where three strong posts a week make perfect sense, and others where posting simply because there's an empty space in the calendar would make the brand less interesting. Think about the brands you genuinely like. You probably don't need to hear from all of them every morning. A restaurant doesn't necessarily have seven interesting things to say every week. A fashion brand doesn't need to manufacture an opinion about every trend. A hotel can let an extraordinary photograph sit for a while. A small business doesn't become irrelevant because it didn't make a Reel on Wednesday.

We have always had too much to look at

Long before Instagram, sociologists were interested in what happens when people are exposed to more stimuli than they can reasonably process. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Georg Simmel wrote about life in the modern metropolis and the psychological adaptations required to deal with its extraordinary concentration of people, information, sounds, encounters and demands for attention. One response was what he called the blasé attitude: we learn to become less responsive because responding intensely to everything would be exhausting. More than a century later, the environment has changed, but the problem feels remarkably familiar. Open Instagram and hundreds of brands, creators, friends, news organisations and strangers are competing for the same finite resource: attention. The interesting question for a brand, then, isn't simply how often it can appear. It's whether appearing again adds anything.

Familiarity has a limit

Psychology gives us another useful concept here: the mere-exposure effect. Repeated exposure to something can increase our familiarity with it and, under certain conditions, our preference for it. It helps explain why repetition matters in advertising and branding. Recognition takes time. A brand people encounter regularly has an obvious advantage over one they barely remember exists. But "people need to see you more than once" somehow became "you should always be posting." Those aren't the same idea. Repetition works particularly well when recognition itself is being built. Once every appearance becomes interchangeable with the previous one, frequency can stop adding much. You know the feeling without needing to know the terminology. Another behind-the-scenes Reel. Another POV: you found your new favourite...Another awareness day tenuously connected to the product. Another photograph from the same shoot because Thursday's slot still needs something. Eventually, more communication can contain less information.

Scarcity communicates too

There is also something interesting about absence. Sociology has spent a great deal of time studying how value is socially constructed rather than simply inherent in objects. Pierre Bourdieu's work on taste and distinction is useful here: what we value, reject and recognise as desirable is shaped by social context, cultural codes and systems of differentiation. Brands participate in those systems too.

Luxury has understood scarcity forever. Fashion understands anticipation. Publishing understands editions. Restaurants understand limited tables. Musicians disappear for three years and return with an album. Digital marketing, strangely, often behaves as though absence automatically equals irrelevance. It doesn't. Sometimes restraint is part of the language of a brand. A company that publishes one extraordinary campaign every few weeks can communicate something completely different from one documenting every afternoon at the office. Neither is inherently better. They are simply constructing different relationships with their audiences. The mistake is assuming they need the same content strategy.

More content can mean less meaning

Sometimes the pressure to produce more creates the opposite of what branding is supposed to do. You start repeating yourself. The photography gets weaker. The captions could belong to anyone. Suddenly you're publishing things that would never have made the cut if there weren't a content calendar asking for another green square. And people notice. Maybe not consciously. Nobody scrolls past a mediocre post thinking, this brand appears to be suffering from an unnecessarily ambitious social media frequency strategy. They just scroll. That distinction matters because attention isn't the same thing as visibility. A brand can appear constantly without becoming more meaningful. And a brand can communicate relatively infrequently while remaining culturally present.

There is no correct number

None of this means brands should disappear. There are perfectly good reasons to publish frequently. A new business trying to become known has different needs from an established restaurant with a line outside the door. A creator and a luxury fashion house aren't playing the same game. Launch periods are different from ordinary months. TikTok isn't Instagram. Stories aren't the feed. Frequency should follow the job communication needs to do. Sometimes you need repetition because nobody knows who you are yet. Sometimes you need information because your audience actually needs updates. Sometimes the community itself is the product, which makes frequent participation essential. And sometimes you already have attention. In that case, filling every available space isn't necessarily maintaining relevance. It might just be filling space. Social media gives brands an almost unlimited capacity to speak. That doesn't mean they need to use all of it.

The answer can't always be post more. Sometimes it's simply: have something worth saying. And if you don't today, Tuesday will survive.

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A Half-Day Boat Trip from Split to Amaya Beach Club, Brač

A Half-Day Boat Trip from Split to Amaya Beach Club, Brač

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One thing everyone tells you when you live in Split is how beautiful the city is. And it is. But every once in a while, it is worth changing perspective and seeing it from the sea. I recently joined Blue Travel Split for a boat trip from Split to Amaya Beach Club on the island of Brač, and discovered a place I had never visited before, despite living just across the water.

Leaving Split with Blue Travel

Blue Travel Split organizes boat tours and day trips from Split to different destinations around the Dalmatian coast and islands, from the Blue Lagoon and Brač to some of Croatia's best-known island destinations. Our trip started in Split, and honestly, the journey is already part of the experience. There is something completely different about seeing Split disappear behind you while you cross the Adriatic. The boat is fast enough that you don't spend half your day travelling, but the ride itself is still part of the fun: music, drinks, sea, islands and some very good views along the way. And this might be one of my favourite things about taking boat trips from Split: they introduce you to places you might otherwise never think of visiting. Amaya was one of those places for me.

Amaya Beach Club in Brač

Amaya Beach Club is located in Likva Bay, near Sutivan on the island of Brač. The setting is exactly what you want from a summer afternoon in Dalmatia: incredibly clear water, sunbeds, food, drinks, music and plenty of space to spend a few hours doing very little. We had around three hours there, which I found to be a really good amount of time. Enough to swim, have lunch, get a drink, relax and actually enjoy the place without turning the excursion into an entire-day commitment. Lunch was included in our experience, and it was genuinely very good. Sitting by the water having lunch after swimming in Brač is also not a particularly difficult way to spend an afternoon.

A different way to experience Split

I've lived in Split for years, and experiences like this still remind me how much there is to discover around the city. You don't necessarily need to plan a full weekend away or organize a complicated island-hopping itinerary. Sometimes you can get on a boat in Split, cross to Brač, discover somewhere completely new, swim in ridiculously blue water, have lunch by the sea and be back in the city a few hours later. That's what I particularly liked about this trip. It's easy. You can make it part of a day rather than the entire day. We went to Amaya, had our little island escape and came back to Split with plenty of time left to continue with whatever else we wanted to do. And the ride back gives you another chance to see the Dalmatian coast from probably its best angle: the water.

Is the Blue Travel Split trip to Amaya Beach Club worth it?

For me, yes — particularly if you're visiting Split and want to experience one of the nearby islands without dedicating an entire day to an excursion. It's also a good option if, like me, you're already familiar with Split but want an excuse to discover somewhere new. You get the boat experience, views of the coast, time on Brač, swimming, a beach club and lunch, while still keeping the experience manageable enough to fit into the rest of your day. And even if you've seen Split hundreds of times from the Riva, Marjan or the old town, seeing the city and the surrounding islands from the Adriatic is something else entirely.

Thank you Blue Travel Split for having me and for introducing me to another little corner of Dalmatia I hadn't discovered yet🤍 Sometimes the best thing about living here is realizing how much there still is to see.

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Everything I learned from being a rock journalist

Everything I learned from being a rock journalist

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I started writing about music almost by accident. I started my first blog sometime around the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010. I also played bass — I still do, kind of, although not nearly as much as I would like — and at some point Franco Ruarte, director of Noche Polar, at the time the number one magazine in Patagonia, saw the obvious connection before I did. “You write and you're a musician. Why don't you write about music?” So I did. And then it became my main thing. Not just something I wrote about, but pretty much everything I dreamed about doing professionally. I loved music. I still love music. And somehow journalism gave me permission to enter that world from the other side.

Over the years, I interviewed musicians I had grown up listening to. I interviewed Marky Ramone twice and CJ Ramone. I have a recording somewhere of Luke Pritchard from The Kooks saying, “Hello, Florencia.” I covered Lollapalooza Argentina. I wrote for Billboard. I reviewed albums and bands. Eventually, I wrote the first book about Patagonian music. There are probably a hundred things I did that I don't remember anymore. But there are some things I learned.

Your favorite musicians are people

This sounds incredibly obvious until you're sitting in front of one of your favorite musicians and trying to remember how human conversation works. During my first interviews, I used to get incredibly nervous. And because many of them happened over Skype — from Patagonia, with Patagonian internet — one of my biggest fears wasn't even the interview itself. It was the connection dying. Or the phone not working. Or some technical catastrophe happening while someone I had listened to for years was waiting on the other side. Eventually, I started reminding myself of something very simple: they're people. Talk to them normally. Most people don't particularly enjoy being treated as if they aren't human. Of course, some do. But mostly, I've found that people want you to say hello, ask how they are, do your job and have a conversation. You don't need to immediately ask for a photograph or an autograph even when internally you are absolutely dying to do both. Just chill. Or at least appear to chill.

When I interviewed Marky Ramone for the first time, this required considerable effort. I've been a Ramones fan since I was around 15. I even have a Ramones tattoo. I travelled with my friend Seba Pardo from Pardo Guitars, a luthier who now lives in Barcelona and works with some of the best musicians in Latin America. We interviewed Marky and then, at some point, we were having lunch. Marcelo Gallo, another important name in the punk scene, was there. And then Michale Graves from Misfits, who was playing with Marky at the time, simply appeared next to us and ordered a coffee with milk. And you're sitting there thinking: That's Michale Graves. But outwardly you're just...Fine. Completely normal. Having lunch. At the end, of course, I asked Marky for a picture. I'm not insane.

The second time I interviewed him, I called him at his house. At some point the telephone connection dropped. So I called Marky Ramone back. And after the interview I remember sitting there with a glass of wine, finally allowing myself to process the fact that this had just happened. Maybe that's the first thing music journalism taught me: you can be completely fascinated by someone and still meet them as a person.

It's not about you

This one took me a little longer to learn. When you're young and suddenly getting access to people and places you once only saw from the outside, there is a very strong temptation to make sure everyone knows that you were there. I definitely did this. I interviewed Marcelo Burlon, huge name in fashion and a sull rockstar, when I was around 22. He was in Ibiza and, as many of my interviews happened back then, we spoke over Skype. At the beginning of the call, he told me I was cute. And I wanted to put that in the interview. Not because it had anything to do with the story. Not because it told the reader anything interesting about Marcelo Burlon. I simply wanted everyone reading it to know that Marcelo Burlon thought I was cute. Which, looking back, is absolutely cringe. But I was 22. Of course I wanted to be seen. I had suddenly found myself talking to all these people I admired, and some part of me wanted to say: Look! I'm here! This happened to me! Eventually, journalism taught me that the story isn't about you.If you're interviewing a musician, people came to hear the musician's story. Let them talk. Your job isn't to show everyone how clever your questions are, how close you got to them or what they thought about you. A good interview doesn't necessarily make the interviewer the most interesting person in the room. The best thing you can do is almost disappear. And strangely enough, I think I learned that lesson a little too well.

I spent years behind other people's stories. First musicians and artists, and later brands and clients. I became very comfortable putting my own perspective aside and asking instead: What are we trying to communicate? What does this person need? What does this client need? What serves the story? That's an incredibly useful thing to learn. I see the opposite happen all the time now, especially with content creation. A photographer is hired to shoot something for a client, but becomes more concerned with making behind-the-scenes content for their own Instagram than with the photographs they're actually there to make. Of course we all need to show our work. I do too. But the person paying you shouldn't become a prop for your personal brand.

The work comes first. The funny thing is that now I'm learning the other half of that lesson. After spending so many years making it not about me, at some point I started behaving as though none of my own stuff mattered. My stories weren't important. My perspective could stay behind the scenes. The client mattered. The work mattered. The person in front of me mattered. And now I'm finding my way back from that. Because there's a difference between making everything about yourself and allowing yourself to exist in your own work. Maybe that's partly why I have a blog. There are places where the story isn't about me. And there are places where it absolutely can be.

Know what you're talking about

I come from academia, so perhaps I never stood much of a chance with this one. I studied. A lot. If I was approaching a genre, an artist or a particular subject, I wanted to understand what I was talking about. I read Simon Frith and Greil Marcus. I read Pablo Alabarces and his work on popular culture. I took workshops with Sergio Marchi. Sergio Pujol was one of my teachers. I read journalists, theory, biographies and memoirs. I still do. One of the most recent ones was Jarvis Cocker's Good Pop, Bad Pop, which I absolutely loved. There is an enormous difference between having an opinion about music and knowing how to think about music. And I think journalism taught me to respect that difference. You can love something instinctively. You can hate something instinctively. But if you're going to sit down and interview someone, review their album, contextualise their work or tell somebody else why any of it matters, you should know what you're talking about. 

Prepare. And then be willing to throw the preparation away

I used to prepare interviews obsessively. I wanted good questions. I wanted to know what the person had already been asked a thousand times so I wouldn't ask exactly the same thing. I wanted to find something they hadn't discussed before. And that's still how I think you should prepare. But one of the best lessons I got was learning that once the interview starts, you have to be willing to abandon the interview you prepared. I remember interviewing one of Argentina's biggest punk bands early in my career. At some point, one of the musicians started singing in the middle of the interview. Just to be funny. And instead of enjoying the fact that something interesting and completely unscripted was happening in front of me, I panicked. I was thinking: We have to get back to the interview. Afterwards, the producer told me something I've never forgotten. Next time something like that happens, go with it. Ask him to sing another song. Ask something about what just happened. Follow it. Not everything needs to happen according to the rules. And sometimes the thing you didn't plan is much better than the thing you did.

An interview is a conversation

That lesson changed the way I interviewed people. You have your questions. You have your research. You know where you want to go. But you also have to listen. That's actually the whole point. An interview isn't a questionnaire performed out loud. It's a public conversation. If someone says something interesting and you're already thinking about question number seven, you've lost something. You have to be present enough to notice the unexpected sentence. The hesitation. The joke. The thing they suddenly become excited about. And then you have to be willing to follow them there. I also always tried to be nice. That sounds like an absurdly small thing to call a professional lesson, but I don't think it is. I wanted people to feel comfortable talking to me. I wanted to create some kind of empathy, to make the person sitting opposite me feel that this was a safe and enjoyable conversation. Not fake nice. Not strategic nice. Just the way I would want someone to approach me. And very often, that's when you get the best out of people.

Learn to be fast

Journalism also taught me speed. News is fast. Festivals are fast. Concerts are fast. Album releases are fast. If you're covering something that happened tonight, publishing the perfect article three weeks later isn't necessarily very useful. So you learn to make decisions quickly. But being fast doesn't mean knowing less. The reason you can make good decisions quickly is because you've spent years building the background that allows you to recognise what's important. You learn how to discriminate between good information and bad information. What needs checking. What matters. What doesn't. What belongs in the story and what can disappear. You learn to write when you're tired. You learn to decide. And you learn to deliver.

And then, polish it

This might sound contradictory after saying journalism taught me to be fast, but I don't think it is. Be fast when speed matters. Take your time when time makes something better. Some of the best things are thought through. Research them. Write them. Leave them alone. Come back. Move something. Delete something you loved because it doesn't belong there. Find the sentence you were actually trying to write. Journalism taught me both things: how to work very quickly and how to recognise when something deserves more time. Maybe that's one of the things I've carried most clearly into everything I've done afterwards.

You can be a fan and still do the work

I don't think loving the thing you write about makes you less serious. For me, it was the reason I started. I played bass. I went to shows. I read about music when nobody was paying me to read about music. I wanted to know who produced an album, where a sound came from, what scene a band belonged to and what somebody had been listening to when they made something I loved. Being a fan gave me curiosity. Journalism gave that curiosity structure. Of course, at some point you have to separate the person sitting in front of you from the person you've constructed in your head. You have to be able to ask questions. You have to be able to dislike an album. You have to do the job. But I never wanted to become so professional that music stopped exciting me. And thankfully, it never did.

You decide what your age looks like

When I was at the height of my music journalism years, I was still very young. I was probably somewhere between 25 and 27, although by then I had already been doing it for more than five years. And I was constantly surrounded by people older than me. People in their thirties, forties, fifties, sometimes sixties. And they were the coolest people on Earth. I think that changed something very fundamental about the way I understood age. These weren't necessarily rock stars living some completely separate existence from everybody else. Especially in the independent music scene, many of the musicians I knew couldn't — and didn't — make their entire living from music. They had jobs. Some worked for the government. Some taught at universities. Some had companies. They had partners and children and responsibilities. Many of them were incredibly accomplished at whatever they did outside of music too. And then they got onstage. They made records. They rehearsed. They created things. They dressed however they wanted. They went to shows. They remained curious. They remained artists. Their jobs didn't cancel any of that out. Having children didn't cancel any of that out. Turning 40 or 50 or 60 certainly didn't cancel any of that out.

Until then, I think I had unconsciously absorbed the same idea a lot of us do: that certain things belong to certain ages. That eventually you're supposed to become a particular version of an adult. You settle down, become serious, and gradually leave certain parts of yourself behind. But I was surrounded by living evidence that you didn't have to. What made these people cool had very little to do with how old they were. It was the way they carried themselves through life. They had decided to keep making things. To keep being interested. To keep showing up for whatever mattered to them, even when there were jobs and bills and children and everything else that comes with being an adult. And I think that's one of the biggest lessons I took from that entire period of my life: You decide what your age looks like. One thing doesn't cancel the other. You can have a serious job and play in a band. You can raise children and make art. You can run a company and go to shows. You can be responsible without becoming boring. You can get older without slowly editing away all the things that made you interesting in the first place. I learned that when I was in my twenties, mostly from people much older than me. I don't think I understood then how much I would need that lesson later.

Once a rock journalist, always a rock journalist

I don't work as a rock journalist anymore in the way I once did. But when I think about it, an enormous amount of how I work now came from those years. Research before speaking. Prepare and then improvise. Listen. Be curious. Treat people normally regardless of the name attached to them. Work quickly when you need to. Polish when you can. Know enough about what you're doing that you can make decisions when there isn't time to overthink them. And maybe most importantly: stay interested. Music journalism gave me an excuse to be endlessly interested in things. Who made this? Why does it sound like that? Where did this come from? Who influenced whom? What's happening in this city? Why does this tiny band matter? What's the story nobody is telling yet? I don't think I realised until much later how much I loved living that way. Maybe that's why, all these years later, I can still pick up a record, a book, find a new place, meet someone interesting or stumble across something completely ordinary and immediately want to know more about it. And then, inevitably, I want to tell someone else. Maybe I stopped being a rock journalist. I'm not sure I ever stopped looking at the world like one.

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Family Hotel Adria Biograd na Moru: Our All-Inclusive Family Getaway

Family Hotel Adria Biograd na Moru: Our All-Inclusive Family Getaway

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Last weekend, we stayed for one night (and a little bit more) at Family Hotel Adria in Biograd na Moru. Part of Rudan Hotels & Camps, Family Hotel Adria is a four-star all-inclusive family hotel that reopened in July 2026 after an extensive renovation. Surrounded by pine trees and only around 300 metres from Soline Beach, it now has a new concept built around family holidays, with indoor and outdoor pools, Kids and Mini Clubs, entertainment, sports facilities and plenty for both children and adults to do.

What we really wanted was to rest, find somewhere Lana could have fun, and not make a single decision. That’s why the all-inclusive option sounded fabulous. Looking for parking, checking menus and deciding where to eat can be fun, in fact, that’s part of exploring and discovering new places. But sometimes, with a tired and hungry four-year-old, it can get a little chaotic. Instead, for one day (and a little bit more), we wanted to sit by the pool, play, eat good food and not worry about anything.

A room actually designed with kids in mind

The room is really comfortable and clearly designed with children in mind. There’s a cot available, a sofa bed and additional beds that pull out from the main bed. There are also kids’ amenities, a little colouring book and pencils, a step stool so they can reach the sink, and a toilet seat adapter. There are even little details in the decoration, like a very cute picture with fish above the bed. You might think, “And what difference does that make?” Well, when you’re getting ready and your husband starts counting fish with your daughter, it makes quite a big difference. There are children’s TV channels too, which also comes in very handy when you want to take a shower and need them happily entertained for a few minutes.

All-inclusive really means not having to think much

We arrived just in time for the afternoon snack, so naturally, we went to eat something. There were doughnuts, cookies, pretzels, fries, nuggets, hot dogs and fruit, plus juice and soft drink machines that Lana absolutely loved. She could serve herself whenever she wanted, which made her feel very independent. There was also coffee, beer and wine. The official all-inclusive offer includes buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner, an afternoon snack and drinks throughout the day, so once you understand the schedule, you really don’t have to think about food very much. And that was precisely what we wanted.

Pools, slides and a LOT to do

There are three pools: two outdoor pools and one indoor pool. One of the outdoor pools also has a shallow area ideal for younger children. At the pool bar, we could get alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, slushies, ice cream, draft beer, sangria and wine. The queues were never particularly long, although I would recommend getting to the pool early because finding a sun lounger becomes a little more difficult later in the day. What I really loved, besides having waterslides for different ages, is that the pools have different depths too. It’s one of those details that makes being there with a small child much easier. Dinner had plenty of variety, and there’s a Kids Corner where children can choose what they want. There were soups — Lana loves soup, so she was very happy about that — pizza, and a dessert bar with cakes and fruit. After dinner, we went to the playroom for movie night. There are arcade games, a PlayStation room, ball pits, archery, a racing simulator and honestly so many things to do that we stayed until it closed at 11 pm. There are also spaces and activities for different ages, sports facilities and a sauna. The hotel has dedicated Mini and Kids Clubs, plus a baby corner for children up to four and activities for older kids and teenagers.

Breakfast in bed

The next morning, they sent breakfast to our room and Lana was VERY happy about it. The breakfast buffet itself has tons of options too and, again, there’s something for everyone. You can go into full holiday mode and eat whatever you feel like, or you can still stick to your usual habits, there are plenty of choices either way. Yes, the dining room can get a little noisy, of course. But as my mum always says, happy children make noise. For lunch, we decided to sit outside, which was much quieter.

Would we go back?

Absolutely. We genuinely had such a good time. Lana was happy, we actually got to relax, and for a little family escape from Split it felt incredibly easy. Biograd na Moru is close enough that this doesn’t need to become a huge trip or something you plan months in advance. The hotel is also only around 300 metres from Soline Beach, although, to be completely honest, there was so much happening at the hotel that we were perfectly happy staying there and enjoying everything. It was our first time experiencing the newly renovated Family Hotel Adria and we would definitely come back whenever we feel like switching off for a day or two. Sometimes exploring means seeing as much as possible. And sometimes it means finding somewhere where, for a little while, nobody has to decide what’s for dinner.

  

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International Business in Croatia: Creating Local Impact at Innovate Split

International Business in Croatia: Creating Local Impact at Innovate Split

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On September 11, I’ll be moderating International Business in Croatia: Creating Local Impact at Innovate Split, a panel I had the pleasure of putting together with FBOA Split-Dalmatia.

The conversation will bring together Geoff Bratton, Sara Dyson, John Rogosić, Kit Pepper and Jennifer Gilman to talk about building businesses in Croatia, becoming part of the local ecosystem, and creating meaningful impact beyond business itself.

A big thank you to Lana for trusting me to put this panel together, and to the amazing Tech Park Split team for making it happen.

Joining the panel are:

Geoff Bratton, President of FBOA
Geoff is President of the Foreign Business Owners Association and co-owner of Fig Restaurants and Stardog, supporting international entrepreneurs and strengthening Croatia’s business ecosystem.

Sara Dyson, Founder & Consultant of Expat in Croatia
Sara helps entrepreneurs, digital nomads and international professionals successfully build their lives and businesses in Croatia.

John Rogošić, Founder & Principal of Split International School
John is advancing internationally focused education through innovation, robotics and modern learning approaches.

Kit Pepper, Founder of Cheers Wine Group
Kit promotes Croatian wine and wine tourism while connecting local producers with international audiences through education and storytelling.

Jennifer Gilman, Founder of New Way Health Coach
Jennifer is a Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach helping professionals prevent burnout and build long-term resilience through science-based wellness strategies.

See you at Innovate Split on September 11 🤍

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Sailing the Dalmatian Coast with The Anchor Croatia

Sailing the Dalmatian Coast with The Anchor Croatia

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A few days ago, Dani Vladović invited us to spend the day sailing with The Anchor Croatia. We left Split in the morning and spent the day along the Dalmatian coast: swimming, taking far too many photos, talking, listening to music, drinking Aperols on deck and, eventually, stopping for drinks before heading home.

The setting was beautiful, obviously. But the group Dani brought together made the day particularly fun. Sarah, behind Move with Sarah, is a Canadian creator based in Split whose work revolves around movement, wellness and mental health. Margo, behind Graceful Margo, is a Ukrainian creator living in Split. Her videos document life here and have that wonderful ability to make you want to discover places you’ve probably walked past a hundred times. She also makes some seriously good TikToks. We were joined by Michelle Rosel, a British singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist who has performed internationally and is also behind Sound Circle Croatia. At some point during the afternoon, a ukulele appeared and Michelle started singing on deck, which is a fairly difficult moment for the Croatian coast to compete with.

And then there was Dani Vladović, the person responsible for putting all of us on the same boat in the first place. Dani is the founder of Solis Social, a social media marketing agency working with tourism, wellness and lifestyle brands through social media, email, storytelling and strategy. The Anchor Croatia is one of the brands she works with, and this trip was a very good example of something she does particularly well: bringing the right people together. Dani is excellent at what she does, and spending the day with a small group of women working across content, music, wellness, tourism and creativity made for some very good conversations.

The Anchor Croatia offers private sailing experiences along the Dalmatian coast, and one of the things I loved was how personal the whole day felt. Our skipper knew the area incredibly well, helped us decide where to go, took us to the Blue Lagoon, cooked for us and recommended places along the way. He even joined us for a swim. It felt less like following a fixed tourist itinerary and more like discovering the coast with someone local who genuinely knows it — and, importantly, we felt completely safe and taken care of throughout the day.

There were cameras everywhere. We photographed each other, swapped ideas, talked about work and life in Croatia, swam, sang, ate, drank and spent a very disproportionate amount of time finding the right light. I came home with hundreds of photographs. Here are a few of them.

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Una publicación compartida de Flor Nieto (@flornietoblog)

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Lifestyle Photography in Split: A Morning with Jennifer Gilman

Lifestyle Photography in Split: A Morning with Jennifer Gilman

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I recently spent a morning photographing Jennifer Gilman in Split for a lifestyle session.

We moved through different settings and situations, creating portraits, working shots, details and more relaxed everyday images. I really enjoy this kind of session because it gives us time to try things, change locations and create a varied collection of photographs that can later work across social media, websites, press and other projects.

Jennifer and I also work together through SHE – Women Wellness Exchange, so getting to spend a morning together with her on the other side of my camera was especially fun. Here are a few of my favourites from the session. You can also follow her here, and see more 🫶

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The art of collecting ideas

The art of collecting ideas

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Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon has become one of those books that almost everyone recommends to people who work in creative fields. It's short, easy to read, full of illustrations and handwritten notes, but underneath the playful format there's a surprisingly practical way of thinking about creative work. I read it in literally 30 minutes. 

The title is intentionally provocative. Kleon isn't suggesting that artists should copy each other. His point is that nobody creates in isolation. Every creative person is shaped by the books they read, the films they watch, the music they return to, the conversations they remember and the people whose work makes them curious.

One of the ideas I liked most is that every artist should build their own collection of influences. He even suggests creating your own "genealogy": tracing the people whose work led you to discover someone else, and then someone else again. Instead of trying to consume everything, the book encourages you to become selective.

I kept thinking about how much of our education happens outside formal education. The writers we discover by accident, the magazines we collect, the albums we listen to for years, the essays we bookmark and return to. Those references quietly become part of how we think. Also is something that always truly amazes me how we are always, and of course, influence by a very specific context, which is basically our own life, experiences, mentors, and people we know along the way. 

The idea of building your own genealogy reminded me of something more common in literature than in marketing. Writers have always talked openly about influences. Borges wrote about Kafka. Patti Smith writes about Rimbaud. Joan Didion about Hemingway. Nobody expected them to invent themselves from scratch.

Another recurring idea is simple: make the work you wish existed. If there's a book you want to read but nobody has written it yet, write it. If there's a publication, a project or a business you wish someone would create, maybe that's your project. It's practical advice because it shifts the focus away from trends. Instead of asking what people want, it asks what you're genuinely looking for.

The book also argues for spending less time in front of screens. Not because technology is the enemy, but because creative work needs other kinds of input too. Reading on paper, walking, making things with your hands or simply allowing yourself to be bored all become part of the process. Also to make analogic work, write in paper, doing something that you can actually touch. 

One chapter that surprised me is about geography. Kleon pushes back against the idea that creative work only happens in certain cities. The internet makes it possible to learn from almost anywhere, while your local environment gives you something that no one else has.

There's also an entire chapter about being nice. It sounds almost obvious, but it's advice that rarely appears in books about creativity. His point is that creative communities are small, reputations travel quickly, and people remember generosity just as much as talent. It's one of the most practical chapters in the book.

Another section celebrates ordinary life. Having a stable routine, paying your bills, building healthy relationships and protecting time to work might not sound particularly artistic, but they're the conditions that allow creative work to continue over the long term.

Finally, Kleon writes about limitations. Instead of seeing constraints as obstacles, he treats them as creative tools. Working with limited resources often forces better decisions than having unlimited options. It's a perspective that appears throughout the book and probably explains why so many independent artists identify with it.

Steal Like an Artist isn't really a manual about originality. It's a reminder that creative work grows from curiosity, careful observation and years of collecting ideas. The book simply gives those habits a name.

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