One of the most common questions I get asked is “How do you know?” Specifically - Where and how do I collect information, inspiration, and the skill to confidently make color, design, and messaging decisions today that will resonate with people’s lifestyles and desires, one to many years out?
Let’s answer this!
Today, I’ll start by sharing the research and inspiration gathering I do - the process I follow that establishes my color and trend POV and builds the foundation of my work.
This constant collecting and distilling provides, what I call, The Global View. The Global View pays attention to the prevalent, emerging influences, innovations, and changes happening at a universal, cultural, and/or hyper-local level. It requires a broad, open view and curiosity about what is going on in the world. The Global View forecasts future, important shifts and possibilities by finding the connecting points and patterns in different sources of information.
The Global View is one of three key areas I draw from in my client projects. The other two are The Brand View and The Brand Framework. Whenever I am designing color and trend strategy and assets, I consider each of these factors.
A quick snapshot of all three:
1. The Global View is the worldly, arising shifts and innovations affecting how people live, behave, feel, work, and interact.
2. The Brand View is the brand-specific vision, vibe, and community. It’s about understanding a brand’s personality and aspirations, and filtering trends through this brand-specific lens. I’ll dive into this in next month’s issue.
3. The Brand Framework is the brand-specific logistics, necessities, history, and reality. It creates the guardrails for the more open-ended, creative side of color design and trend strategy. I outlined how to build it in The Math of Color.
Where these three overlap is the sweet spot to create from. There is never only one right way to solve aesthetic and emotive decisions for a brand, but there is assuredly a definitive, focused space where the best, most meaningful, (and thus, most sustainable and engaging) solutions come from.
You always want to work from this rich place.
So, let’s figure out how to get there, starting with building a thriving Global View. Here’s my approach -
photo: Giulia May on Unsplash
1. Research
My research focuses on seeking out information on a range of topics from a variety of sources, industries, and voices. My goal is to be aware of the crucial news, events, and human experiences happening around the world, across markets, geographies, demographics. So, I read (and listen, watch, observe) a lot - about the economy, environment and climate, fashion and art, politics, sports, popular culture, science and technology, healthcare, and education - all interconnected systems that affect each other. I bookmark and save the things that stand-out as pivotal, noteworthy, or fascinating.
At the same time, I gather information specific to the industries that my work focuses on (active and outdoor, apparel and footwear, housewares, tech and consumer goods) as well as tangential ones (beauty, food and drink, automotive, interiors). These industries are interrelated too; each is likely to impact the others with no set-in-stone hierarchy. Here, I am noting how products, design, materials, and processes are evolving. I am curious about how people’s lifestyles are changing - new behaviors, stressors, preferences, expectations, routines. I am especially looking at color - combinations, prevalence, disruption, and how it is being used to visually communicate stories and emotions.
I am infinitely fascinated about the inner landscapes of humans, so I spend quite a bit of time learning about new science and findings on what it means (psychologically, spiritually, emotionally) to be human. I love understanding how we are wired, how elastic we are, and how engrained our primal beliefs and needs are. If you drill down to the nugget of what the best designers and forecasters do, it’s creating products and experiences that are attuned to our nervous systems. Hence, my focus here.
These are a few things from my recent research:
Fractal Nature on Atmos - How can understanding the beauty and patterns of fractals in nature inspire change within ourselves and the world?
Awe: A Powerful Tool for Collective Healing on Therapist Uncensored Podcast - The neuroscience of awe as an antidote to our stress response system.
State of Menswear on Highsnobiety: This was an intriguing newsletter series exploring the role gender labels currently play in fashion and the call now to move past “unisex”. From issue 3, “Un-gendering style was a necessary step in creating a more fluid fashion system. But it’s not the final destination. …[D]iving into the meanings and evolutions of gender has become the new progressive future. …[M]asculinity and femininity are shared spaces, to be celebrated and embraced by everyone.”
A Way to Feel the Music Through Your Skin on NYTimes (gift link): Wearable backpacks allow people to experience music as vibrations on their bodies.
close-up of a mobile by Mark Leary
2. Participate
The next thing I do to build my Global View is participate in the creative community, specifically with other color and trend forecasters and strategists, but also with designers, futurists, thinkers, and artists.
Being in connection and conversation with others fuels my imagination, encourages more diverse thinking and solutions, and creates a potent space to discuss, brainstorm, and learn. For me, participating includes attending workshops and conferences, being on panels and podcasts, having regular dialogue with a circle of peers, and being part of networking groups that each focus on a unique aspect of creative work.
There are also several fantastic trend services organizations out there, and I get a lot out of the content and seminars they produce. Some of the ones I look to and recommend are: WGSN, Coloro, Fashion Snoops, Edelkoort Inc, Trend Bible, and pej gruppen.
These are some of the creatives I’m inspired by:
Michael Jager - Brilliant, soft-spoken, incredibly creative. I leave every conversation with Michael changed. Solidarity of Unbridled Labour is his graphic design and brand strategy studio. They do amazing work.
Mark Leary - Artist who creates beautiful, colorful, organic mobiles (art that moves!) and feels things deeply. This post of his and subsequent conversation factored heavily into my A Search for More Meaning issue.
Margo Stoney - Graphic designer focused on helping conservation nonprofits and sustainable-minded brands. She runs High Mountain Creative. Lovely human, A+ style, and a champion for good.
Ideology Firm - Advanced research firm and design studio. This team innovates like no other. I am continually blown away by their work, energy, and smarts.
Sarah Housley - Design futurist and trend forecaster. I recently came across Sarah’s writing on futures forecasting and love it. It’s impactful, insightful, and understandable.
one of Bekah Worley’s gorgeous color combinations
3. Collect
Always, I am collecting inspiration - colors, color combinations, patterns, textures, designs, mood images, materials, and shapes. Usually these are images, but sometimes physical things. I do this constantly, both online and in the real world. Instagram is a great source for me, as are an ever-rotating list of brand, trend, news, and creative websites. Sometimes it’s the actual subject of the image that may inspire me, but it can also be a zoomed in, precise slice of a larger image that I find particularly interesting.
I am inspired greatly by nature and adventuring in wild spaces. I love how colors are represented organically, how they are naturally combined, how they change depending on the season, time of day, quality of light. I tend to take a lot of pictures when I’m outside to jump-start future ideation - of the colors, patterns, textures, and shapes.
I am also a constant observer and snap pictures of or save random things that delight or interest me - a feather in an exquisite shade of coral, a picture of the outfit a woman was wearing at the park (teal, dark bronze, olive, a bit of cobalt and lime), the wooden mural in a hotel lobby.
Some visual candy:
Bekah Worley - Artist, illustrator, painter. I LOVE Bekah’s color combinations.
Lauren Wager - Designer, author, color specialist. She creates stunning mini mood boards.
A Dictionary of Color Combinations - A book with 348 color combinations from Sanzo Wada.
The Leo Is All In The Mind - A wonderful feed of moody color images.
Nature - Some of the organic things that caught my eye on a recent bikepacking trip.
nature inspiration while out in the woods
4. Connect
After gathering all of the above, I distill the information. I look for the connections in the research, conversations, and inspiration. Where are the heavy concentrations of ideas, innovations, energy, behaviors, aesthetics? What could these indicate? What possible outcomes could these lead to?
I organize the information into themes. A lot of this is intuitive. I look for the threads between the topics, data, and images that feel true, meaningful, directional, significant. I look for ways (especially new ways) the dots are connected and likely to connect, finding the patterns among seemingly unrelated things and noticing how established lines joining items may have shifted.
I look at color. I arrange color information and inspiration by color family as well as overall mood, demographic likelihood, product category, market relevancy. As I have mentioned many times before, color is a tool - a powerful, evocative, immediate tool that conveys meaning, style, personality. I merge the colors I am tracking with the themes, determining key colors and strong color stories to use with each. These selected colors will enhance the strength of the themes, visually supporting the message of each.
Finally, I give language, potential future directions, and vision to each of these themes. This creates my Global View.
Next month, I’ll share my approach for defining a brand-specific color and trend view (The Brand View), which builds off of The Global View.
Until then, I’d love to know - What keeps you inspired, creative, and informed?
