What do you mean by “psychic?”
A combination of trusting my creative instincts, my psychological/people instincts, the things I see in my head, and the process of muddling through.
“I make all my decisions on intuition. But then I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.”
—Ingmar Bergman, “Ingmar Bergman Confides in Students” New York Times, May 7, 1981.
I came across this quote somewhere on Instagram, and it put into words a process that I’ve often struggled to explain.
In a college class, a professor once asked my class a simple question:
Where do your ideas come from? Do they come from you, or do they come from… somewhere else?
I immediately answered somewhere else. It was so obvious to me that I barely thought before I spoke.
Then, my best friend at the time looked at me like I’d done something unthinkable.
She went on to explain how she would pick up an ideal from one place, and then another from somewhere else, and of course you can always trace back where you found all the ideas that went into your new idea… that’s what you meant, right?1
That was the first time I realized my creative process was a lot more complicated than my materialist worldview at the time could account for.
I first started consciously playing with this when I began working in advertising, and found myself muddling through mastering art direction. I was trained in graphic design, which, leaving the technical explanations out, is not the same thing.
I had taken many photography classes, but had never wrapped my head around the commercial skill of deciding what a photo will look like before you get to a set (let alone making sure the photo looks that way once you’re on set). It was something I’d done unconsciously, on the fly, for my own photography practice, but had not intentionally “studied” beyond a few required classes for my degree.
Fortunately, I got to learn from someone who had also learned on the job, and worked very intuitively too.2 When I asked for guidance on how to actually do this, I was told: Just collect images that you like. Then see what you have later.
As a high-achieving 22-year-old trying to not get fired from my first full time job, that was frustrating as hell. But as I continued following those instructions as well as I could, clear patterns emerged.
While I continued learning to google and sift through image archives, something interesting happened with my design work as well: I would have an idea (from somewhere else), I would execute it, and it would work.
I couldn’t explain how I got there. I just threw the spear, and some combination of my training, taste, and something from somewhere else always made it land.
Which then landed me in some awkward, frantic pre-meeting brainstorming situations spent reverse-engineering the concept into an explanation that used the words in the strategy brief.
Having bosses and clients that depended on a logical explanation for my work meant I also had to learn to find the spear. Not because it was required to make the work, but because it was what sold the work.
What’s especially interesting in hindsight is what clients started to tell me: it’s like you read my mind! But I would have had no idea how to ask for this…
There are explanations for how this happened, both scientific and less-so. I’ve stopped relying on them.
Artists have known about somewhere else for millennia: see divine inspiration, the muses, The Artist’s Way. But as soon as art stops being “personal expression” and becomes a commercial asset that impacts a bottom line, it becomes taboo.
So here I am, a witch who started calling myself psychic on the internet this year, because those practices and identities have contributed to my understanding of branding in ways I never expected.
With that in mind, here is my version of where my ideas come from — or how the spear hits it target through the darkness:
When I have a conversation with someone about their business, I see things in my mind’s eye.
I don’t remember names or exact phrases from conversations well (which is why I take copious notes that don’t rely on over-simplfied AI summaries), but I do remember impressions.
The person who feels mossy and autumn and dark, always. The backyard that lit up like champagne: light, iridescent, bubbly. The Zoom room, even, that I left feeling warm, held, and bathed in incense smoke — whether or not any of that was physically in the air.
I follow the sense-memory back to the specifics: those images and moods lead me back to who I was talking to about that thing, or where, or when.
Having a vividly visual memory is very handy for creating visual work. It also makes me very efficient. The visual information comes through first, and so is the easiest place for me to start, rather than going through extensive research and strategy processes.
From there I can verbally explain the concepts that come to me through visuals, to guide the army to the spear, to make sure that the concept is both emotionally and logically resonant for the client.
Yes, there are grifters in “psychic” spaces. There are data-driven grifters who don’t live up to their conversion claims, too. I’m not interested in defending the method. I’m interested in whether it works.
If it works without the lengthy data collection process — if the thing lands, if it’s right — I’ve stopped trying to explain how I got there, and my clients don’t need the justification either once they see it.
This works because our reaction to branding, visuals, and sensory information in general has never been logical.
Branding resonates because it’s tangled up in identity, values, feelings, and general vibes. That recognition is a body thing, a gut check, a felt sense.
Technically “good” design is often said to be invisible — you don’t notice it, because it serves its purpose, and doesn’t get in the way of its function.
Which means that what is memorable is imperfect. Sometimes messy. Maybe even gimmicky. Something that a committee, a focus group, or an LLM would have smoothed out.
Something utterly indigestible to the people who won’t get it (like being psychic) yet immediately intriguing to the people who didn’t know it was a thing they could ask for (like a psychic brand designer).
Anyone can make something look polished. Not everyone can create something that viscerally resonates with exactly the right people.
Branding, and I would argue commercial art in general, isn’t a science — it’s still an art. In fact, too much objectivity tends to smooth out the human resonance of it. And the resonance is the function.
When that resonance is missing, something much bigger falls out of alignment.
There have been a handful of times when I see the thing, but the client asks for something else entirely. I see deep blue; they’re reaching for Louboutin red. I feel earthy brown; their personal inspiration is all brights and pastels.
I don’t argue with that, because I’m never going to force someone into a look that they hate. But I take notice, because it’s rarely really about a color choice. It’s usually the first sign of a bigger gap: between how someone wants to see their business, and what it actually is.
More than once, I have seen that gap grow into a big pivot, or even a closing, months after. Not because the rebrand failed, but because it wasn’t actually the change that was needed.
People hope that a rebrand will give them their old fire back, but if you can’t reinvigorate yourself, the brand can’t do it for you. It’s just pixels on a screen until you bring it to life.
That’s the risk in working this way. The spear doesn’t just hit the vision — sometimes it finds the truth underneath it, whether anyone’s ready for it or not.
So I’m going to keep throwing my spear into the darkness, and figure out where it landed later.
If you agree that whatever color makes the best-converting CTA buttons is less important (or interesting) than cultivating an overall impression that resonates with your people in a way that they’ll actually remember…
I’d like to invite you to try a short visualization meditation that I created so you can dip a toe into accessing your own psychic visions, or if you already play in those realms, connect them more directly to your business.
If it opens up your ideas about what “branding” can or can’t be, or how it should or shouldn’t be developed, then I’ve done my job. You can find it here.
