Burnout by design – How to protect creatives’ purpose and passion
Burnout, it seems, has changed. For many creatives, it looks less like exhaustion and more like a vanishing of curiosity.
It has many faces – dwindling drive, a persistent sense of underachievement that’s hard to shake, creeping self-doubt, or a dull detachment from work. Burnout, we’re learning, isn’t about running out of energy. Rather, it’s an erosion of purpose, confidence and joy in making.
“Burnout and tiredness are totally different,” says Chara Smith, co-founder and copy chief at US agency Smith & Diction.
“Creative work is naturally tiring because it requires so much brain power. But on a good day, it’s a satisfied kind of tired, like how you feel after a long run. But with burnout, there’s no longer satisfaction in the work. The work just becomes work, with more piles of work behind it.”
From taboo to talking point
Across the industry, burnout has shifted from taboo to a talking point. Once dismissed as a personal failing, it’s now seen as a structural design flaw baked into agency economics, client expectations and the myth of constant passion.
Designers are often expected to be endlessly inventive, always brimming with the next great idea, yet that pressure collides with a troubling reality – burnout is widespread.
Nearly 70% of creatives reported experiencing it last year, which in one way might be seen as good news. “We are finally starting to say it out loud,” says Emmi Salonen, a designer and the author of The Creative Wellbeing Handbook.
The way burnout shows up in the lives of creatives is quickly evolving. As Salonen points out, Dropbox’s 2025 report highlights chronic focus loss, procrastination, irritability in collaboration, and creative blocks, shifting the emphasis from burnout as fatigue to burnout as attention and idea depletion.
“Gone are the days when being the last to leave the office was a badge of honour.”
In 2023, Salonen conducted the Creative Wellbeing Insights survey with 58 creatives based across 17 countries. She asked designers about the biggest challenges they face in their work and their answers revealed four themes – motivation, management, time and pay.
“The pressure to create on-demand, coupled with unclear briefs, poor communication, irregular work hours and project management issues, makes managing creative projects complex. And, with limited time for testing out new ideas, it’s difficult to push boundaries or find new avenues,” she says.
“Added to this, there’s often a lack of appreciation for creative work, and sometimes insufficient financial compensation. This can make it hard to believe in the worth of our work and, ultimately, our own self-worth.”
Spotting the early signs
As complex and varied as its causes are, burnout always has tells – subtle changes in behaviour, energy or attitude. Design leaders need to learn to spot these signs early.
“You can often see burnout or feel it in your gut. It’s difficult to hide,” says Nick Howe, CEO at Uniform Group. “Notice when and how long people are working; have they taken enough holidays, or are they always ‘too busy’ or ‘soldiering on’?”
“As a leader, you need to model healthy habits so your team can see them – leave on time, take a lunch break, get some exercise, enjoy life outside of work,” he explains.
“Encourage balance; make sure people don’t miss their kids’ school performances or meals with friends. Gone are the days when being the last to leave the office was a badge of honour.”
As conversations around burnout deepen, the creative industry is also undergoing a quiet cultural change. The romanticisation of overwork – once seen as a mark of dedication – is beginning to lose its shine.
In some corners of the industry, glorifying exhaustion now feels outdated, even tone-deaf. But awareness alone won’t fix things, not unless this shift is matched by tangible structural reform.
“A change I’d love to see industry-wide is to plan to 80% capacity and build pause into the schedule,” Salonen says. “When weeks are booked to 100%, there’s no room to think, learn or recover – the very inputs creativity runs on.
“An 80% plan gives you space for pause, and protects quality. That goes hand-in-hand with pricing and scoping for a sustainable pace, not ‘more, faster’.”
AI exacerbates the problem
The industry’s built-in obsession with speed has only been amplified by the rise of AI. According to Salonen’s research, AI has become a stressor in itself.
“When teams are mandated to adopt generative AI, many describe it as soul-crushing and ethically murky,” she says. “Secondly, job anxiety and morale dips are widespread – replacement fears, a saturated market, and even client feedback that’s clearly ChatGPT-generated.”
Clients expect agencies to use AI to do more things, more quickly, and more efficiently. But this survey of UK agency workers reveals that AI has actually increased workload for one in five staff, turning the promise of automation into a new front for burnout.
With fresh pressures compounding old ones, studios are realising that tackling burnout means acting on several fronts at once, from supporting individuals and redesigning team workflows, to rethinking organisational pace.
But even as studios become more focused on employee wellbeing, one kind of burnout still remains less openly discussed – the strain on founders and leaders.
The pressure on leaders
After more than 25 years of leading Uniform Group – and following a period of long COVID – Howe experienced what he calls “complete burnout.”
“I was signed off by the doctor and had to take three months off to recover,” he says.
“Lots of therapy and accepting that I didn’t have to be everything to everyone helped me take a more balanced approach. Letting go was important, as was managing the guilt of not always being present.
“I learned that protecting my own energy and health allows me to be the best version of me for our board, our team and my family. That starts with looking after yourself mentally and physically, setting healthy boundaries, and trusting the people around you.”
Burnout has a way of forcing change. It can sometimes be so unsettling that it alters the course of a creative’s career journey.
That was true for Smith, who experienced burnout while working at an agency in 2021, near the end of the pandemic – a period that would ultimately push her to rethink how, and why, she wanted to work.
“Back then, everyone was still working from home, on Zoom calls nine hours a day, and with actual work to do after that.”
After “a miserable few months” Smith where co-founder Mike Smith was “running Smith & Diction essentially alone,” they rethought the culture, taking time to define what they wanted, and what they didn’t.
This meant making intentional changes, including a “no after-hours work” policy, turning down projects once the team reaches capacity, and avoiding the creative stagnation that comes from sticking to the same types of projects.
“To help protect our team from burnout, we actively try not to get stuck in specific niches. This business is constantly trying to convince you to make more of the same, and it’s hard not to get burnt out and lose that creative spark when you’re working on, say, your 11th financial services rebrand in a row,” says Smith.
“So we always try to keep different kinds of projects coming into the studio, which helps the work feel fresh and unexpected.”
“It wasn’t about working too much, it was about caring too much about everything, all the time.”
Underpinning this approach is a commitment to transparency, and a quiet challenge to the expectations of what a studio should deliver, and how.
While working on the identity for Perplexity, the team spent about two weeks “banging their heads against the wall” trying to create a second logo option.
“We just didn’t have anything that could hold up to the first logo. So we told the clients, ‘We can burn ourselves out forcing another idea, or we can show you the one we believe in,’” says Smith.
“Luckily, they got it immediately, and we were able to move forward without virtue signalling by trying to have more options in the mix that we didn’t really believe in.”
That same philosophy extends beyond process to principle.
As they see it, burnout isn’t just about long hours or deadlines; it’s what happens when passion drains out of the work.
“There are many ways that happens,” says Smith, “like lowering your standards or letting mediocre work out the door. Mediocrity sucks the life out of creatives just as quickly as overwork.”
“Protect your curiosity”
Quality often erodes as it passes through layers of hierarchy, leaving creatives feeling they’ve lost control over the very work they make.
That was precisely what Penelope Stephens and Eden Brandenburg aimed to escape when they left full-time jobs to start Boring Studios. It’s a creative studio turned e-commerce brand now offering tools, templates and courses that help creatives – especially those leaving 9-to-5s – learn business skills and scale on their own terms.
“In agency life, everyone has a say in client work, and no-one wants to stand up for what is actually going to move the needle or produce the best creative. Designers are always so defeated and just need to get through the day,” says Stephens.
“We were tired of creative work going back and forth with advice from departments that aren’t creative. We felt our opinions, work and ideas as creatives weren’t valued,” she adds. “Boring Studios was built out of the craving for freedom in our work – to be able to complete the vision from beginning to end. And to be able to do it on our terms.”
As founders who left behind employee life to become entrepreneurs – and who now create tools for other creatives taking that same leap – they’re acutely aware that running your own practice can be even more demanding than a steady day job. And it comes with its own heightened risk of burnout.
“Burnout usually comes from a lack of clarity, not overwork. You need systems, plans, structure, discipline – that’s where freedom is found,” says Stephens.
“When starting your own business, the goal isn’t to escape structure – it’s to design your own version of it. And yet, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. We always say it’s easier to work for someone else, because frankly, it is. You go home and you get your paycheck.”
Where burnout once came from overwork, it now comes from overexposure – “too many platforms, opinions, and comparisons,” says Stephens.
“There’s also the new wave of digital fatigue that’s hard to avoid as a freelancer or business owner,” she adds. “You have to be ever reachable, build a personal brand, build a business brand. It’s exhausting.”
That kind of always-on culture can quietly push even the most self-aware creatives to the edge. Stephens says she and Brandenburg recently came out of what she describes as a six-month “burnout slump” – their first real experience of it.
“It wasn’t about working too much,” she says, “it was about caring too much about everything, all the time.”
To course-correct, the duo stepped back completely – switching off social media, rebuilding their routines, and learning to draw clearer lines between their work and their wellbeing.
“We build breaks into the work, not around it. Rest isn’t the reward; it’s part of the system,” says Stephens. “When things feel heavy, we zoom out, remembering that we don’t need perfection, just progress.”
Having come out the other side, Stephens has a grounded message for anyone caught in a similar cycle.
“You have to keep the momentum rolling – living in the real world, talking to people, going outside, learning, growing. And at the end of the day, protect your curiosity like you protect your profit. Once curiosity dies, burnout isn’t far behind.”