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Meg! Lewis on design, joy, and being real

Meg! Lewis has built a creative career around joy, play, and being unapologetically human. With a background that spans performance, clowning, and design, her work challenges the idea that professionalism has to mean dull or distant. In this conversation, Meg! shares how joy became a throughline early on, why design is a form of performance, and what it looks like to stay loudly yourself while working with teams and clients of every size.



1. Your work radiates joy and play. When did you first realize that those qualities were part of your creative voice?

When I was a kid and I thought about what I wanted to “be” when I grew up, nothing was ever that clear or obvious. Some of my ideas were owning an ice cream truck, being a comedy actor, or dressing in a costume and handing out cash to people?? It was clear that the throughline was clearly just making people happy. Making them smile. It’s all I wanted to do. I am grateful that I realized pretty early on that adults were incredibly boring, unhappy, and being a kid seemed so much better. When I grew up I just didn’t want to become a boring, sad adult, and wanted to do what I could to prevent others from becoming that too. So, here we are now!


2. You have this mix of clowning, performance and design in your background. How do those pieces shape the way you approach a project now?

I believe that all of life is a performance! We’re born as the most authentic, real versions of ourselves. And at some point the adults come along and tell us how we should be instead. What the “right” way of dressing, behaving, designing, reading, writing ~you name it~ is. We’re all just walking around performing as the version of us we think we should be, rather than being who we actually are. It’s the reason why we’re all walking around behaving “normal” and not crawling to the coffee shop or singing loudly down the aisles of the grocery store.

 

Some days I like performing as “normal” when I don’t feel like being perceived. Other days I prefer to perform as the closest-to-real-me version of myself! I find that design is the best way to visually communicate whatever performance we’re putting on. Whether you want to perform as a authoritative, serious bank for boring adults or a friendly, relatable non-profit for tweens. Design can help facilitate and communicate that performance. 


3. You often help brands move toward something more human and bright. What does that look like in your creative process?

I know myself well enough to know that I’m here to make the world a brighter place. Historically the most boring, powerful adults have suppressed love, joy, curiosity, and play ~RUDE~ and they’ve chosen to make us feel lost, stuck, desensitized, and hating ourselves instead. My mission and greatest challenge, is to undo that as much as possible, to try and fix everything and make the world shinier, brighter, and more full of love and joy and curiosity and play. The more I communicate loudly about my mission, the more I get work that aligns with that mission. When I keep my eye on that mission, it makes my creative process really shine from every client communication to content planning, design, and beyond!


4. You talk a lot about being fully yourself. How do you stay true to that while working with different clients and teams?

This is the world’s hardest task, but I’ve found that once I decided to get out of my own way and be embarrassingly, loudly myself as often as possible and not wear a mask even around the most intimidating people, it’s helped retrain my brain to realize that it’s actually ... okay! In fact, the more confidently myself I am, the more I attract better relationships, more opportunities, and more happiness and fulfillment and self-confidence in myself. Because I have been doing this for so long, I’m the same person around my barista, my mom, my arch nemesis (a secret only I know), and the executives I meet at the biggest most boring corporations. Okay, maybe it helps that I'm a loving, caring, empathetic, fun person and not an asshole!


5. When you hit a slow or stuck moment, what helps you get back into a playful headspace?

Annoyingly, the answer is time. And trust in myself that I always get my playful self back. Sometimes I just need rest and time.


6. What’s something you’re curious to try next in your creative life?

I have a doc of 77 things currently that I want to do someday with my creative life so I'll give you a list of a few things on there: design a fully immersive funhouse, work with a restauranteur to concept an all-day diner, record a Christmas album, create a proprietary dance fitness routine, create open-source secret handshakes for people to enjoy, instruct comedy meditation classes, and eat my way through all of the remaining Old Spaghetti Factories.


Bonus Question: What’s one small moment from recent years that reminded you why you do this?

Literally every person I meet after my conference talks who comes up to me crying because I just changed the rest of their life. They are why I do this!



Talking with Meg! is a reminder that joy is not accidental. It is chosen, practiced, and protected. Her work makes a compelling case that being fully yourself is not only freeing, but effective. In a world that often rewards sameness, choosing brightness can be a radical and generous act.


If you’re looking for work that feels more human, more joyful, and more you, Meg is someone worth working with. Collaborate with her, invite her into your next project, or help her cross one more thing off that wonderfully ambitious 77 list. https://meglewis.com/



This series grows through word of mouth and the creative people who nudge me toward the next conversation. If someone comes to mind whose creativity inspires you, send them my way.


Until next week, Christine

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