Often my student designers and mentees will ask me this question: "How do I find my own artistic style or my authentic design voice?" It came up again recently during a Mentorship here in the studio, which inspired me to gather and share my advice with you here on the Journal. The tips and practices I've included in here will support you in finding and feeling so much more in touch with your authentic design style in your floral and creative work.

 

01 — The Monthly Creative Practice

The one practice that I recommend to all of my mentees and student designers (a ritual I adhere to myself, religiously) is what I call the "Monthly Creative Practice."

The Monthly Creative Practice (MCP) is simply a date with yourself, once a month, where you get yourself flowers and block off dedicated time to just create and explore. There is no pressure. There is no expectation. This is purely time for you as a creative to immerse yourself in and reconnect with your creative spirit.

The MCP benefits you in multiple ways. On the one hand, it gives you a dedicated session each month to practice your techniques, which builds more confidence in your design work (and your ability to make new or different calls as you go along). Repetition builds confidence. On the other hand, this practice gives you dedicated space to explore and play, which helps you expand. When we are able to play creatively, big leaps or new discoveries can happen simply because we are making space to create and explore without pressure. Exploration builds expansion.

Having a regular, pressure-free, and playfulness-forward practice will directly help you discover and hone your own creative style by building your confidence and encouraging you to explore and expand.

02 — Mood Board Exercise

Another approach to discovering and developing confidence in your own creative voice is to practice creating mood boards in styles and vibes that you like.

Jump on Pinterest and set an intention for a mood or a concept you want to explore and collect. Bring together images that are not just floral too — pull together images that mix florals with fashion, architecture, culture, textile, landscape, other art forms, and human movement. Begin with an emotion you want to evoke or with a color or palette palette you are drawn to lately. 

Make a few boards in different registers and styles, each one as though you were planning an event you will flower based on this mood. The point is to get yourself used to collecting together a visual story that you create, which builds confidence in your creative intuition and direction.

Think about the story you want to tell with your colors, shapes, textures, and gestures, just as you will do with your flower ingredient selections in your designs.

03 — Train With Your Heroes 

Collect specific images of floral work (or work in your creative field if you're a creative outside of florals) that you admire. Put these together and do two things:

(1) Observe and make a list of what it is specifically you like about each design (ex: opulence, clusters, branchyness, minimalism, particular flowers, color palettes, design shapes, layering, textures, etc). This will become a great list to guide your next flower selections or creative exploration in your Monthly Creative Practice.

(2) Assign yourself one of your favorite images to intentionally imitate in your next Monthly Creative Practice. Try to loosely replicate it — not to copy or become like the designer who created it, but to learn from their moves. Allow yourself to create something new in the process.

Note: If you share what you create, especially if it retains a lot of the design that inspired it, just be sure to mention the designer and thank them for the inspiration in your caption. Imitation is a huge complement when credit is given or appreciation for the inspiration is shown.

04 — Draw Inspiration From All Things You Know & Love

You can draw inspiration for your creative work from anything — seasons, characters in books or movies, countries, cultures, colors, words, music, neuroscience, anything that intrigues you!

Practice designing with flowers (or creating in your medium) using one of these areas or elements as your inspiration. This is another way to explore and discover more about your own creative preferences and authentic style.

 

05 — Let Yourself Evolve

While you are on this creative self-discovery journey, know that your design voice and style will also change over time. You will be “into” something for a while, or curious about something for a time, and you will get very good at it, maybe even known for it; and, that very thing will also inevitably lead you to something else. This is normal and totally wonderful.

In short, as you explore and seek out your creative style and voice, remember that it is not a fixed thing. Everything in nature continues to evolve, as do you. Allow yourself to be where you are and to grow into and out of how you do things creatively as you go along.

06 — Look to Your Personal Style

One of the best ways to gain more awareness of and confidence in your authentic design style is to take an objective look at your own personal style. What are you drawn to in clothing, home goods, interior design, and travel? You already know, right now, things that just immediately feel like "yes, that's me." You also know things that repel you or elicit no reaction worth noting. 

Draw from this awareness of your personal style and preferences as you play with finding your voice as a floral designer. Build trust with yourself based on this innate knowing of what you like and what feels aligned for you.

07 — Shake it Up and Get "Serious"

There is an old TED Talk from the early 2000s given by the iconic graphic designer Paula Scher in which she talks about the concept of "Serious Play." In it, she describes how being creatively "serious" — which is actually playful, inventive, daring, exploratory, and engaged — is different from (and preferable to) being creatively "solemn," which happens when we get too familiar, rote, and therefore stuck in certain approaches to our creative work. 

I always think of her and this idea of "Serious Play" when teaching about finding your creative style, as it is freeing and a good reminder that when we get too confident, too certain, and too comfortable, the work can start to become solemn. When it does, we need to shake things up, try something weird or different, and get "seriously" playful again to reinvigorate creativity.

Scher concludes her talk by saying that once your work becomes too familiar or solemn: "...all that's left for you is to go back and to find out what the next thing is that you can push, that you can invent, that you can ignorant about, that you can be arrogant about, that you can fail with, and that you can be a fool with, because in the end that's how you grow, and that's all that matters."

No matter where you are in your floristry career or your creative work, remember that while these cycles of serious play and discovery come along with stable times and plateaus of solemnness, you also have an endless wellspring of creative growth available to you if you continue to push the envelope, try something new, and let yourself be a beginner again. That's were huge creative leaps forward happen, right around the corner of the next experiment or exploration of "what if I try this..."

 

Happy creating, and if you want to dive in more deeply, reach out about a one-on-one Mentorship. I offer both Remote Coaching sessions and in-person Studio Mentorships, both designed to holistically support your next beginning, pivot, or expansion. 

Keep blooming!

XX  

 

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Cover image: Sposto Photography