Diane Whiddon

Diane Whiddon Results-driven Squarespace websites, digital marketing, and AI Photoshoots.

Website designer, writer, recluse, enthusiastic marketer, and recovering perfectionist.

You can't prompt your way around not knowing what you want.A prompt template asks for your goal. It can't tell you what ...
10/06/2026

You can't prompt your way around not knowing what you want.

A prompt template asks for your goal. It can't tell you what your goal is, or whether the one you typed is the real one or the one you think you're supposed to want.

That matters most when you build something real with AI: a client tool, a program, the system you run your business on. Who can see and do what. What happens when something breaks. What it will never do. How you'll know it works. Every one of those decisions traces back to what you want and who you're building it for.

And the why decides the how. Two experts can each want a booking form. One has gaps in her calendar, so every extra question costs her a client. The other is at capacity, so the questions are the point. Same what, opposite builds. Give AI only the what and it builds the average of the two.

Whatever you leave unsaid, AI fills with the most typical version, and the parts you care about most are the parts that aren't typical.

AI belongs to people who know what they want and why.

I wrote the full piece, including why I couldn't have built any of this ten years ago.

Read the article.
https://swayrisecreative.com/blog/you-cant-prompt-your-way-around-not-knowing-what-you-want/

10/05/2026

Most book launches announce the book. Sheevaun Thatcher's opened with "My wife banned my shoes."

In 2016, Sheevaun spoke on a sales training panel in San Francisco in comfortable grey shoes. A friend texted a photo to her wife, Karen, whose ruling was that those shoes were never to be worn again. Karen found her a pair of black-and-white oxfords instead. Ten years later, oxfords walk across the cover of her book, Sales, Shoes, Success.

She hired me to publish the book. The shoe story was too good to leave on the cover, so I built her launch around it.

The 40-second trailer opens on that line and moves through her real oxfords, her career, her three frameworks and Brent Adamson's endorsement before the cover comes to life. On-screen text carries the story, so it works in a muted feed. For the posts, I used AI to create scenes no photo shoot could have staged in a week: the book on a deck above the Golden Gate Bridge with her oxfords propped beside it, and a shoebox labeled "Size: Enterprise" opening on the hardcover. The shoes were generated from photos of her own pairs, and her real cover is on every book.

A personal story gives people a reason to stop scrolling before they know anything about the book. Then the book has their attention.

"Diane created some graphics for me, including a couple of videos that were instantly compelling and drew people's attention. I didn't expect it and that's what I love about Diane. She gives you the unexpected."
Sheevaun Thatcher, Google review

See the complete launch campaign.
https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/thatcher-consulting/

The cover has to tempt someone who hasn’t read a word.Moscow at night, a Paris skyline and a jeweled mask: three very di...
10/02/2026

The cover has to tempt someone who hasn’t read a word.

Moscow at night, a Paris skyline and a jeweled mask: three very different invitations from my book-cover archive.

These are Live from Moscow by Eric Almeida, Silke by Pato, and The Mermaid’s Tale by Grace d’Otare. I was creating worlds for authors long before I was making AI brand imagery.

I’m also helping another author bring her book to Amazon. More on that soon.

Your standing ovation doesn’t travel with the link to your website.Someone hears you speak and recommends you for anothe...
10/01/2026

Your standing ovation doesn’t travel with the link to your website.

Someone hears you speak and recommends you for another event. The organizer opens your website. They’re deciding whether to put their budget and their audience in your hands, and they didn’t experience the talk that prompted the recommendation.

Your bio can establish your credentials. It can’t let them hear your delivery, watch you explain a difficult idea or see how an audience responds.

That’s why I want your strongest stage footage doing real work on your website. Give the organizer a chance to experience the part of your talk that makes people recommend you. Then connect that performance to their event: who the talk is for, what problem it addresses and what their audience will be able to do afterward.

They may also need a boss or committee to approve the booking. I bring that footage, audience benefit, relevant client feedback and a direct booking inquiry together so they can share one page that makes the case for hiring you.

You shouldn’t need a personal introduction to every person involved in the decision. Your website should help them understand why you’re the speaker to choose.

Carol Cox’s Speaking Your Brand episode 489 explores the stage moments that make a speaker memorable and referable. I’m applying that idea to what happens when the referral reaches your website.

Speaker website design.
https://swayrisecreative.com/work/for/speakers/

Carol’s episode: https://www.speakingyourbrand.com/to-get-booked-and-referred-you-need-signature-stage-segments-with-carol-cox-podcast-ep-489/

Your new business shouldn’t make you look less accomplished than your last one.Viveka von Rosen brought a global LinkedI...
09/30/2026

Your new business shouldn’t make you look less accomplished than your last one.

Viveka von Rosen brought a global LinkedIn training career, Fortune 500 clients and bestselling books into Beyond the Dreamboard, her coaching business. The business was a new direction. The expertise behind it was already substantial.

I designed her website and AI brand photography to make that experience apparent from the first screen. Her portrait has the scale and confidence of an established leader, with the publications that have featured her directly below it.

Then the website explains how her experience relates to the coaching she offers. Her career and personal story give the private coaching and group programs a foundation beyond a list of services.

I carried that level of design through the Countess Code Journal and its signup page. The journal gives prospective clients a usable introduction to her approach, with the same purple, teal and gold they’ve seen on her website.

From the opening portrait to the resource someone downloads, her coaching business is presented with the care and authority of the career behind it.

If you’re changing what you offer, your website can introduce that next business without making you look like you’re starting from scratch.

See Viveka’s website, imagery and journal.
https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/viveka-von-rosen/

09/29/2026

Pi’s brand photos were seven years old, but she dreaded replacing them with another live shoot.

She wanted fresh professional images. The process was the problem: in her review, she described a live shoot as “time consuming and anxiety producing because it felt so staged.”

Then she found my AI brand photoshoots through Google.

For Pi Venus Winslow, a transformational coach, I designed an office around the warmth and witchy aesthetic of her brand. Deep burgundy, dark wood and books, with candles and crystals on the desk. We could create that setting for her images without finding a location to photograph.

I made portraits of Pi at work, close-ups of her writing and short films. She has her own images for her website, writing and teaching, including details she can use when she would otherwise reach for stock photography.

Her review begins:

“I'm in LOVE with these images! 💖”

And she wrote: “They have a timeless feel to them, so I know I can use them for a long time anytime a photo or stock image is needed.”

09/28/2026

The brand photoshoot went well, but you’re still explaining why you cost more to clients.

You have the portraits, the outfits and the beautiful setting, but your pictures still leave you doing all the work of explaining what someone gets from hiring you.

For Pi Venus Winslow’s AI brand photoshoot, I built a collection around the change her clients are seeking. Through Full Venus Rising, she helps people reclaim their sense of self after a narcissistic upbringing.

A fractured mirror and an isolated room give that loss of self a visual form. A bowl repaired with gold brings healing into the story. Then the collection opens into the Pacific Northwest coast, with Pi standing above the water, arms outstretched.

That coastal portrait means something different beside the image of isolation. You can see the freedom her work is about, and Pi becomes the guide toward it.

This is where the brand strategy shapes the photoshoot: understanding what makes the work worth seeking out, then creating images that let a prospective client see it.

Explore Pi’s brand photoshoot.
https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/pi-winslow/

An imaginary afternoon in Italy. Good light. No itinerary.A little Friday escape from my AI concept series.
09/18/2026

An imaginary afternoon in Italy. Good light. No itinerary.

A little Friday escape from my AI concept series.

Crystal Hines is shaping the future of trauma therapy. Her website needed to reflect the caliber of her work, right down...
09/16/2026

Crystal Hines is shaping the future of trauma therapy. Her website needed to reflect the caliber of her work, right down to what it could do.

Crystal trains therapists in IFS-Informed EMDR. She also runs Align Therapy and Consultation, where therapists can find support for their own lives.

Building her website meant understanding how all of that fits together: her framework, her training pathways, her team, and the people who come to her.

That understanding gave me ideas for things I could build specifically for her business.

I created a Training Pathway Planner that recommends a clinician’s next step based on their background and goals. And a Therapy Finder that matches visitors with members of her team based on location, specialty, and approach.

The questions, recommendations, and pathways come directly from how Crystal’s business works.

That’s the depth of custom work I want to bring to a website. The design reflects the client’s standing, and the experience shows how thoroughly I understand what they’ve built.

Crystal has created something exceptional. I wanted that to be evident everywhere someone encounters her work.

Explore her website:
https://www.aligntherapyandconsultation.com/

I want a quiet farmhouse in Indiana. I’m still bringing my city shoes.I love Chicago, but my idea of a good afternoon in...
09/15/2026

I want a quiet farmhouse in Indiana. I’m still bringing my city shoes.

I love Chicago, but my idea of a good afternoon increasingly involves a porch, fireflies, and considerably fewer sirens. So I started The Buttered Porch, my home and lifestyle brand, to bring some of that feeling into my life before I actually make the move.

But whose version of country life was I creating?

An early sketch of this artwork had work boots beside the flowers and watering can. They fit the farmhouse scene. The faded blue high-tops felt like something I’d actually leave by the door.

The flowers stayed. The watering can stayed. Suddenly, I could picture myself living there.

That’s the thread running through The Buttered Porch: a city girl making room for a quieter life, with her personality coming along.

Even my farmhouse fantasy wears Chucks.

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