A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the audience at a CreativeMornings San Francisco event. Slow Street Coffee in hand, the room buzzing, people actually talking to each other instead of staring at their phones. Then Rachel Paul, the official CreativesMornings San Francisco host, walked on stage. She wasn’t over-rehearsed or trying to impress. She was just present…and awesome as usual. At some point during that morning, it clicked for me that what Rachel is doing isn’t just hosting events. She’s designing something much harder to replicate…something that I have been a part of (and inspired by) for decades. She’s designing for community.

So…I did what I normally do when inspired by an awesome creative intelligence: I invited Rachel to have a conversation with me for this newsletter and podcast.

As you’ll read below (and hear on the podcast), we talked at length about why designing for trust, imperfection, and real human connection matter more than polish or scale. And…how as AI accelerates execution, the value of creativity is shifting toward process, presence, and the experiences that can only happen in person.

Read on for my main takeaways from our conversation. 🎧 And…listen to the recording of our full conversation on the Design Shift podcast on Spotify and Apple and the Design Shift YouTube channel.

— Justin Lokitz

Though my conversation with Rachel was just under an hour, what stood out most was how intentional she is about what she’s not trying to control. When I asked her what it means to design for community, she didn’t talk about programming, logistics, or production…all things that I immediately think of when designing an event. Instead, she talked about creating a space where people feel safe enough to speak, where imperfection isn’t just allowed but welcomed, and where the pressure to perform drops just enough for something real to happen.

In my mind, that’s a very different kind of design problem that’s more about designing for trust than it is about optimizing for efficiency or clarity.

What surprised me most was how Rachel thinks about why people show up and why they come back. While I sort of thought it would be about the speaker lineup or the free coffee, it turns out people show up in droves to CreativeMornings’ events for The Feeling they get by being around each other! And…people return because of the connections they make and the conversations they have. The experience stays with them.

At the same time, Rachel is also deliberate about consistency. CreativeMornings always happens on a Friday morning. That constraint is about creating identity as much as it is about simplifying logistics. Doing so makes the experience distinct. And…it becomes part of a ritual that stands out.

Where Rachel’s approach really diverges from most event design is in how she balances structure and spontaneity. Most people (me included) over-design experiences. They script everything and try to eliminate risk. Rachel does the opposite (which is wild). She leaves room for things to go off-script. She leans into improvisation and models that behavior as the host, so others feel permission to do the same. If everything is too polished, people disengage and become passive observers.

And…if the whole point of community is participation, instead of designing a perfect experience, she’s designing one that can breathe.

As you might guess, we also spent some time talking about AI, because whether you’re in design, media, or community, it’s reshaping everything. Tools can now generate in seconds what used to take days. Outputs are faster, cheaper, and increasingly indistinguishable, as you well know by now.

But…when I asked her what becomes more valuable in that world, her answer was immediate: trust. It wasn’t speed or scale, but trust. And that comes from the parts of the process that can’t be compressed. The uncertainty, the vulnerability, the small risks people take when they show up as themselves. Online, those edges get smoothed out, while in person, they don’t. That’s where Rachel believes the value is shifting.

This was a real wow moment for me, as it has real implications for anyone building a brand or platform right now. Most people are still optimizing for reach, trying to produce more content, distribute more widely, and play to the algorithm. Rachel is focused on something else entirely. She’s building something that feels right for the people in the room, not chasing a formula or trying to fit into a system. As the internet fills up with what she described as a kind of universal average, the things that stand out are the ones that don’t try to. They’re specific, human, and a little imperfect.

That same mindset shows up in her podcast, The State of Creativity. She didn’t start it because she identified a gap in the market. Much like me, with Design Shift, she started it because she wanted a reason to talk to people she admires. That decision alone says a lot. Instead of optimizing for audience first, she optimized for curiosity. Through those conversations, her definition of creativity has expanded. To Rachel, creativity is something everyone expresses, whether they label it that way or not.

When I asked her what connects everything she’s doing, from brand storytelling to community to media, her answer was simple: authenticity, storytelling, connection, and joy. There are uniquely human things. What’s more, when we talked about what’s next, one thing stood out: she has had to unlearn the idea that she has to do everything alone.

That’s a meaningful shift from what I have been exploring for the last couple of months, with solopreneurship. A lot of creative work gets framed as individual effort, but the opportunities Rachel sees now are collaborative: working with other creatives, exploring personal projects, and following what feels interesting rather than what feels expected.

If there’s a thread through this entire conversation, it’s this: as execution gets easier, what matters changes. It moves away from the artifact and toward the experience, the process, and the environments we create for people to connect in ways that don’t translate through a screen. Rachel is building those environments. And in a world that’s increasingly automated, that work is only going to matter more.

If you’re building something right now, it’s worth asking whether you’re designing for scale or designing for connection.

Want more? Check out CreativeMornings, Connect with Rachel, and tell her Justin sent you! You can also follow Rachel on Instagram and listen to her podcast, The State of Creativity, here.

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