Get inspired by things around you!
How I help you develop a style and establish a design concept.
Inspiration is the engine of creativity. We can begin gathering ideas well before we get started by the influences and images that are around us. The guide to selecting the perfect design style is a bit of a process of keeping an open mind, looking at the vastness of potential material, collecting the most relevant and then organizing them in one place such as mood board, manila folder or digital bulletin board. Inspiration for interior designs can come from anywhere: Pinterest, magazines, museums, buildings, stores, restaurants, indigenous materials, grandma’s old retro basement, books or a unique color sensibility of a particular culture. I have found inspiration form antique windows, old fabrics at a relatives home or even from vintage furnishings. Once I see it, I can’t unsee it. Once sparked with the vision, the color scheme and design elements begin to come to life and the potential unfolds.
The great thing is that inspiration gathering is a continuous and ongoing endeavor. Ideas are constantly being discovered and filed away for future use. Design inspiration is not passive, it is deliberate and purposeful and very much related to the particular challenge under study at the time. Often a strong idea emerges while I digest and analyzes the minutiae of a space. Any element within the room can call for action, attention and spatial organization. This may all sound a bit abstract, but using inspiration from all things around us is the most practical way. Your entire design concept can be taken from that buttoned- up chesterfield and a plush u-shaped sectional while shopping. To establish a stronger design concept, I find it helps to write down a statement which articulates the feeling and function of the space you want to achieve. Even for novices, the exercise of putting words on paper can be extremely helpful. That being said, when it comes to explaining a concept, a picture is worth a thousand words. With more images and a computer automated design concept, we can tweak things and play with ideas as they percolate during the concept development stage.
