Once upon a time…
My name is Jeff Woods, and I’m the Chief Creative Officer at Storigami, which means I have the privilege of leading the creative vision and working with a team of imaginative, curious people to bring that vision to life. Over the past twenty years, I’ve helped shape brands, direct creative teams, and tell stories that connect with people in meaningful ways.
My time with Storigami began with a few conversations with our CEO and Founder, Carey that didn’t feel like strategy sessions or business planning. They were just honest questions about what the future of media might look like, and whether we had anything meaningful to contribute to it. I wasn’t looking for a new job or chasing some trend in AI. I just found myself getting more and more drawn into the possibility that we could build something that brought real storytelling into the next wave of technology, something that felt warm and personal and considered. Something that could stand up creatively and compete for the attention of kids, while offering parents something they could feel good about.
Why embark on this adventure?
What excited me most was the idea that we could take the tools of generative technology and use them to give families more authorship in the stories their children experience. Not just content made for kids, but content made for them, uniquely shaped by the people who know them best. That was a big idea, but it didn’t feel like a gimmick. It felt like an opportunity to bring creative thinking into a space that desperately needs it.
We’re not here to make content just to fill a gap. We’re here to build stories that matter. Stories that inspire imagination, reflect real emotions, and stay with you. When done well, storytelling has the power to shape how we see the world and how we relate to each other. And in a time when screen time is increasing and attention is fragmented, we have a responsibility to make sure that what ends up in front of kids actually contributes something.
“I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.”
Walt Disney
AI is a tool to enhance storytelling, not define it. Used well, it can help us create media experiences that wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago. It can help parents stay involved in what their children watch and open up opportunities for connection and conversation. We’re not trying to replace human connection. We’re trying to accentuate it.
What inspired the name?
The name came early, before anything else was locked in. Storigami. It reminded us of those paper fortune tellers we used to fold in school. You’d write a few words, fold carefully, and suddenly a simple piece of paper became a story, unique to everyone who played, shaped by the imagination of its creator. That felt like the right metaphor for what we were trying to build.
The road ahead.
The road ahead is about execution. We’re building toward a creative standard that can hold up against the best of what kids are already watching. That means developing a consistent visual language, creating characters that feel emotionally real, and building worlds that children can recognize and return to. It means crafting narratives that resonate with families and creating space for messages that matter.
My job is to help hold ourselves to that standard and never compromise on what we believe great storytelling should be. To stay close to the details, support the team, and make sure the final product lives up to the intention that started it all.
If we can do that, I think we’ve got a fighting chance to make real change.
That’s it for now. More soon.
