By Rosa Stancil

Over winter break, my college counselor suggested I start building my LinkedIn account. So, I did, and it’s come quite a long way since I first started if I do say so myself. However, as I continued to build my account and grow my network, I noticed it was all so very business- professional. As someone wanting to go into a creative field, I felt like I lacked connections with creatives in the industry. However, after searching and searching, I couldn’t manage to find many creatives on LinkedIn. So, I wondered if something else serves the same purpose as LinkedIn, but for people looking to go into more creative fields. Well, it turns out there is! 

A new platform called Creatively was launched last year. It is co-founded by Stacey Bendet, the CEO and founder of fashion brand alice + olivia. It was created exactly for the purpose of filling that creative hole in LinkedIn that I came across by providing the same opportunity to connect with others for the likes of designers, illustrators,  photographers, etc.

“Creatively champions and connects the world’s most valued creative community through best-in-class portfolios, collaborative features, and opportunities around the globe. Designed by creatives and for creatives, Creatively is an active space for creators to showcase their work, and for companies and brands to discover amazing talent.”

But will this new platform be able to stand out against the rest of the other more established sites of its kind? Creatively CEO Greg Gittrich certainly thinks so as he says, "if you’re a creative person or if you’ve ever hired a creative team, you know the truth is other professional networking sites don’t properly serve the community and don’t allow you to easily discover talent or see their work. Creatively solves that.” Additionally, the site has an entirely different look and feel to it as the design is much more simplistic and easy to follow. There are three tabs found on the home page: Follow, discover, and jobs. When clicking on each of these tabs, the information is laid out in a format similar to Pinterest. The emphasis is placed on the images rather than information, thus having a more visual feel. This more visually focused design continues as you build your profile as you can add “projects” to your profile that will appear similar to the layout of a Pinterest board. There are also spaces to put more professional information such as work experience and resumes as well.

So if you’re a creative, looking to go into a creative field or just connect with other creatives, what are you waiting for? Go make a Creatively account!