Inspiration

orking in the creative industry can be challenging. The reason being is that you constantly have to come up with ideas. And no matter how creative you are sometimes, you get stuck.

That's why I believe that everyone (not even creative individuals) should have an inspiration binder. Actually it doesn't have to be in the form of a binder. It could be an inspiration board/folder/etc. I have a binder at work where I keep hard copies of tears that I find in magazines, books, prints. Then at home I have an inspiration bulletin board and I even have a folder in my computer where I keep inspiration shots of food, photography, décor, packaging, fashion, props, covers from magazines, typography, beauty, and anything that comes to mind that could be in a category. Every time I'm in a creative rut I go through these inspiration folders/binders and then I immediately come up with an idea. Sometimes it doesn't come right away, but when I'm lying in bed. So I challenge all of you to do the same and start an inspiration folder/book/board/binder!

I thought I would share a snippet of an example of this for something I did at work. The story was a story on spring jackets. We had just finished our winter issue where we covered a story on winter coats. I didn't want it to look like the same as the winter coats feature, but I also didn't want to shoot the spring jackets on white with copy explaining where the jacket was from below. I wanted it to look pretty and feel spring-like. So I went searching in my inspiration binder...

I had a shot of men's coats hanging on a clothing rack in my inspiration binder. I thought that I could use the same idea to execute the spring jackets story for my magazine. The spring jackets story was a 2-page story so I thought we could shoot the jackets as a DPS (double page spread) and put the copy directly on the image below the jackets. Once I decided to go this route I immediately thought of wallpapers and props that we could use in the shot to evoke the feeling of springtime.

I contacted Farrow & Ball, which is a high-end wallpaper company based in the UK, and they sent me 5 rolls to use in our shot. We chose this squiggly pattern because it looked really bright and cheery. Can you believe the patterns are hand painted???

And this is our final shot with the real copy. I also called in the baseboards and rod from Home Depot to create this shot and the prop stylist sourced the umbrella, the umbrella stand, and Hunter boots. Of course, I gave him direction on what to source. My colleague sourced all the jackets. Because my colleague knew what my idea was it was really easy for her to find colours of jackets that would go well together. We all worked together to make my vision become a reality.

And to think it all started with the inspiration binder...