Finding a mentor as a creative is harder than most advice on the subject suggests, because the advice usually starts in the wrong place. It starts with "reach out to someone you admire" rather than with "become the kind of person whose work and thinking a mentor would find worth their time."

The most reliable path to mentorship is not cold outreach. It is proximity. Getting into the communities, programmes, events, and conversations where experienced practitioners are already present and participating, and then contributing enough that you become visible to them through your thinking and your work rather than through a request.

When genuine mentorship happens, it is almost always a relationship that developed organically out of repeated contact in a shared context. The mentor noticed something in the mentee's work or approach before any formal request was made.

Designer Babe creates that kind of proximity for creative professionals at multiple stages of their career, through community, events, and direct access to founders and practitioners.