How My 2018 Moodboard Influenced a Year of Work

No surprise here, I'm a visual learner. Having inspirational visuals in my workspace provides direction and reassurance when I'm designing and it's a big part of my artistic process. I like to start each year by making a fresh moodboard to reflect what's currently inspiring me. It's kinda like my Pinterest boards but in real life. 

At this point I'm already weeks into working on my first two one-of-a-kind collections for 2019 (I'm changing the way we restock here on the site and will have more details about these collections later this month!) so it may surprise you to read that I haven't yet visually mapped out my inspiration boards for the new year. As a small studio, we're all heads down working in a blur through the holidays and I'm still too in it to start purposefully reflecting on my inspiration for the next year until after Christmas. Sure, I have general ideas of where my next year of work is heading, but I really need a little down time to work it out visually. That's exactly where I am today on the first day of 2019, magazines at the ready to start clipping out that inspiration!

While I work on my 2019 moodboard I thought it'd be fun to share with you the 2018 board I've lived with in the studio this past year and to analyze how that inspiration did or didn't make it's way into my work last year.

Color:
The color palette on my board started out fairly minimal-- just look at the above photo as I was first starting my board last year. Lots of white, watercolor washes, gold details. Sounds pretty spot on for Suite One Studio. By the end of the year my board was filled with color, and notably a LOT of blue! I wouldn't have said blue was a big color for my work in 2018, but I happened to have just checked my "Top 9" posts on instagram last night for all of 2018 and to my surprise this blue photo below was my most-liked photo of the entire year! Pretty interesting, right?

Line:
This is another surprise to me, and something I haven't fully seen realized yet in my work, but wow there are a lot of dynamic lines and angled geometrics on my 2018 moodboard. My forms tend to be softer, rounder, organic shapes not the diagonals seen on my board so this was pretty interesting to reflect on! I'm interested to see if this will make it's way into my 2019 collection.

Pattern:
I started painting again last year, informally but with more purpose than I have in years. It all started with the label I painted for our seasonal candle released initially in Fall 2017. That project got me thinking about pattern design and how to incorporate my aesthetic into a product that wasn't ceramic. I haven't been able to shake this fascination and expect to see more painting and pattern designing in my 2019.

Plants:
Foliage and leaves are trending in decor and I got the memo. My mom has always been a gardener and I grew up spending a lot of time around plants. Since buying my own home I've been aware of a desire to garden more, and to actually keep my house plants alive instead of just replacing them with newer, greener ones like I used to (so embarrassing to say that out loud.) I think those personal elements combined with the greenery trend made a big impression on my 2018 moodboard. We did make a Fiddle Leaf Fig Cheeseboard this year as a limited design, so it's fair to say this inspiration made it's way into my work last year. (We have one more of these coming before the design is retired. Click the pink Waitlist button on this page to signup for a restock notice if you want to make it yours!)

I wonder if there will be any big surprises on my 2019 board! Right now I'm suspecting I'll be playing more with texture in 2019, and making some slight shifts to the palette I've become known for. I don't know exactly what that'll mean yet, but it's a feeling I have about what's been catching my attention lately.

That gets back to one of the reasons I love to create a moodboard to begin with-- by getting all of your inspiration out in a single place it becomes possible to step back and really look at it and the common elements become so apparent!

Pinterest preforms a similar function for me digitally and I love that I can store my inspiration on the go on my Pinterest boards. Two of my favorite boards right now are this Art board and this Making Mealtimes Beautiful, but there's something so immersive about physically cutting the inspiration and organizing it both intentionally and intuitively that really speaks to me.

Do you keep a moodboard as part of your creative process? Come talk about it on instagram!

Cheers to an inspirational year!

xoxo Lindsay