Stella Achenbach

Creating is fun. Maybe this is why to the general public it often doesn't look like work. But behind the scenes creating is personal and requires a lot of experimentation, energy and knowledge. These two points are also why a lot of people who used to be bystanders or observers think they can easily replace creatives with AI and on the other side creators think that AI can shoulder a lot of that energy loss for them. The truth is simple and yet complex, neither of them are really getting it r......

I love traveling. It can be exhausting and expensive at times, but more importantly, it opens the world a bit wider for people who want to see and understand more of it. Understanding means observing and seeing, often even reading between the lines. To process what I had observed, I decided to wrap it into a design project I call 'Traveling Patronage.' This ongoing project of mine began as a result of traveling abroad. The goal was, and still is, to capture my observations in condensed design......

I can barely count how many times I have heard this in my life: "Take a break, Stella!" The truth is, for the longest time, I felt ashamed to even think about taking a break. It didn't make any sense. Almost like that word doesn't exist in my vocabulary. I know, partially, I could just make my heritage the culprit, but today, I believe it goes even deeper than just my Germanness. Cultural origin can help make sense of something, but while we are influenced by our environments as humans, we ar......