"Creativity has always been a selfless thing for me" (Sam Mensah-Bonsu bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. As you can hear, my voice is just about being back to normal. And if you listened to the last week's episode, especially the bonus episode, I'm really sorry. The seasonal cold got me, but I powered through. Anyway, I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper at what makes them special. This week I was chatting to Sam Mensah-Bonsu, a London-based creative director, and experienced designer at Microsoft. In our conversation, we explore what it meant to be building a career on curiosity and generosity, how giving back became the foundation of everything Sam does, and why AI is our invitation to stop thinking small.

0:45Radim Malinic:The episode published a few days ago was titled Dare to Speak Every Creative Language, and it features a beautiful snapshot of Sam's career to date. If you haven't checked out the full episode, let me share with you these four standout moments. and to learn these things and become so equipped and so believable and efficient in it that they believe that i've always been this way but i hadn't it's something that that was learned and taught essentially so when i find myself in these rooms one of my bosses at the time he made me realize that you're not here to fit in you're here to stand out purposefully your power and a company like this isn't how you stand out because at the time i used to come to work wearing like everyone else basically and it felt good to wear a suit to work it was like that's not you and you don't need to do that and your power is not in that your power has been able to be who you are but still communicate value and impact the way you can to these other folks that wear suits and tires every day and when i began to understand that i felt a lot more comfortable in those rooms with the c-suite leaders because at the end of the day all we're communicating is value and impact and you can have all the suits all the fancy numbers like in jargon and elaboration so Sam's career is a beautifully linear, non-linear experience of different companies, consultancy companies.

2:06Radim Malinic:I don't know anybody else who used to work at McKinsey that is now a designer. And in Sam's case, he dressed for the career that he thought he had. And this moment is beautiful because he got told to stop wearing suits to blend in and instead of lean in into being different. I love this because it's the word purposefully that is what matters and as you know potentially from my written work and for this podcast I am very much the advocate of being the odd one out standing out like holding your space where you need to be because it's not about being contrarian or difficult it's about actually understanding that your difference is your value and that communicating that impact doesn't require conformity many creatives shrink themselves to fit the room they've worked so hard to get into whereas sam's story is a reminder that a room invited you not a version of you that looks like everyone else so even from the beginning my design philosophy like a creative philosophy has always been about homage paying back giving back inspiring others because at the end of the day it's an essence of free energy and free inspiration essentially so we take it and we make things well and we give it back to the world eventually i don't know where it came from that that's a very good point to make and i never really saw it like that until now but absolutely like even from the get-go i've always been a case of giving back and an understanding that it's not for me to hold on to it's for me to make things with i can give back and the goal is to try and inspire others i can show people i can give it out there if it does amazing but maybe sometimes it doesn't and even those times that's okay as well but the goal is to always make something that aims to inspire that next person that's like domino effect essentially yeah sam describes creativity as a kind of circular system when you think about it something in the universe gives freely and something we're obliged to return what's beautiful here is that how early this showed up for sam i was really really curious about it right from the start thinking this is quite a responsible career because before sam even had a career before he had clients he was already tracing dragon ball z printouts so he could hang something back that instinct never left it shaped his movement youth worldwide his mentoring work, his presence at Microsoft.

4:36Radim Malinic:Some people think that generosity as something you earn the right to practice once you've made it. Some just shows off that it's actually the engine that gets you there, and it keeps you going once you arrive. And it may not always work, but at least now I'm on the road to making things, to producing things, to making action. That's the main thing that I feel like AI has given us creators, is that bridge in the gap of action of thought and action, that gap being information and data. That's what we have now. We have that information now. That bridge of thinking and action is now being decreased or completely eradicated even.

5:18Now we can go straight from thought to AI to raw action and therefore get creative ideas out faster and easier. And that in turn allows us to think bigger and to think about more things

5:31Radim Malinic:that we can do with it as well. The gap that used to be filled with doubt, delay, and paralysis of not knowing where to start. Now, what makes his perspective on AI so refreshing is that it doesn't come from hype. It comes from someone who has spent years watching creativity get stuck between the idea and the execution. And you could argue that at Sam's role in Microsoft, the design experience is to help people think bigger, move faster, and use AI as a genuine creative partner rather than a shortcut. And this take isn't that AI replaces the creativity, is that it finally gives the creative enough runway to ask the questions that actually matter.

6:11Radim Malinic:It's a meaningful distinction and worth sitting with. I'm sure lots of people have a different view on creativity versus AI and how much of the process should be aided. It made me laugh the other day seeing someone on LinkedIn complaining that Claude cut off their usage. Like, oh, this is going to be, you know, this is going to be reset later on today and they were complaining that for twenty dollars a month that they haven't got sort of an unlimited supply of sort of supported thinking and i'm thinking is that how far we made it that we admit that we don't want to think we admit that we want to help and we complain that we don't have enough of it because it wasn't that long ago when people were anti-ai and now we're complaining it's not fast enough or not strong enough or there's no bandwidth so i think there's many different views but i appreciate sam's view on this because if you want something real quick if you want to get that you will get there and the tools are here to use because they have been used by everybody else like my first taste of that was an akaqa and that's the reason why i also go back to that and say i can make it an influential poster like you know for a few thousand people or i can make an influential app like an influence a billion people And that was what, again, made me realize, okay, eventually I'll get to the point where I am doing something along these lines, designing for a co-pilot.

7:38But now that we're here, yeah, it's a real challenge to actually fit those shoes and actually take it on. I can do it right. There's a lot of morality thinking as well. Is this the right thing to do? Is the right way to do it? And I think, over anything, I'm always just thinking about the user. what they need in the current moment in time, what makes their experience as beneficial and useful as possible.

8:06Radim Malinic:The whole conversation with Sam was about many, many pivots, and those pivots are very much at the heart of Sam's career. In the moment when he stopped thinking about craft and started thinking about reach, he realized those two are not mutually exclusive. When you think about it, it explains everything seemingly unexpected moves, and if you haven't listened to Sam's conversation just yet his story goes but he goes from AKQA to McKinsey from McKinsey to Microsoft there's internships at BFI MTV he's done really interesting run of micro pivots that got him to where he is today and I think it's kind of the place where he's chasing the place where creativity could do the most what really made me notice this moment and the Sam story is that it challenges the question every creative person should ask themselves am I playing at the scale my ambition actually deserves because not everyone needs to go to Microsoft but everyone can ask themselves the question is it something I can do thank you for joining me on this bonus episode with Sam Benso Bonsu I hope I can encourage you to listen to the full interview because it's full of generosity and humility and I'll see you in the next episode.

9:23Radim Malinic:If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding, and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10 % of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.